Meeting bingo

There’s an old office game called meeting bingo, where you catalogue all the buzzwords and clichés that people use in meetings. Sometimes, there’s a good reason for using a particular piece of jargon or saying, but all too often they become meaningless catch-phrases, with everyone bandying them about in the hope of proving how smart they are.

Here are some of my favourites currently doing the rounds:

• Pro-active. An oldie but a goodie. Being reactive is now considered a bad thing (but when you’re a hospital or fire station, this is exactly what you want to be). And whatever happened to just being active? No one’s active anymore, only proactive.
• Learnings. One of those great verb to noun conversions, now we never have to say that we learned anything, we instead get learnings. Or if they’re really important, then key learnings. Closely related to outtakes.
• Actioning. As an equal opportunity mangler of English, we can also convert nouns into verbs. So instead of “have you done it”, we get “have you actioned those key learnings”.
• Critical mass. People love to take very particular scientific terms and use them in a vague, generic sense. Critical mass comes from nuclear reaction, but now it’s used in relation to the latest awareness campaign. “What’s the critical mass we need to action those key learnings?”
• Going forward. A marvellous tautology to rival the superfluous “pre” prefix for its sheer redundancy (pre-pared food, pre-booking). We’re also looking to improve the business going forward, which is great, as I’m sick of getting in that rickety old time machine and going back to improve the business in 1924.
• Interfacing. Another mangled technology neologism, we don't just talk to people any more, or comment on their work, or even go see them, we interface with them. I once met someone whose job was essentially customer management, and their job title was (I kid you not) interface facilitation. Do I sound like a musical robot?

Gym paradox

A guy at my gym decided to buy a bulk lot of protein powder to save money. He found a cheap supplier and got himself a nice big bag of unflavoured whey protein. He was discussing this purchase with another gym-goer, and the conversation went something like this:

Protein guy – yeah I got this bag of unflavoured whey protein. It’s really good value
Interested party – oh, it’s unflavoured. What does it taste like?
PG – well it’s unflavoured so it doesn’t taste like anything. I normally mix it with milk, so it tastes like milk.
IP - oh so it’s vanilla flavour?
PG – no it’s unflavoured
IP – yeah but what does it taste like?
PG – what part of UNFLAVOURED don’t you understand?!

Related comment - it makes me laugh when bottled water companies advertise their water as having a "splash of lime" or similar, to make it easier to drink. What, you don't like the taste of water? Goddam air, it taste like crap.

Flatmates

What's the etiquette around having your bf/gf to stay when you live in a shared flat?

My flatmate has gotten into a routine of having her bf over at least 3 nights a week. Now, she also stays at his place an equal amount of time, but to me it's starting to get a little unfair.

There's the inevitable inconveniences, like shower/bathroom congestion (i've been late for the bus a couple of times as a result), but it's mainly the awkwardness of the coupley-ness that does it for me. I can't really sit at the table browsing the net when they are snuggled up on the couch watching a rom-com together.

It's not awful, just uncomfortable. Time to move out I guess.

Black C(r)aps

Another batting master class from Black Caps. They are looking likely to score under 250 in both innings- truly pathetic.

A lot of people are commenting that NZ has lost too much talent in the last couple of years, with Fleming, Astle, Cairns, McMillan all departing in a short space. (As an aside, why do people talk about them in the plural form- "NZ has lost a lot of great players, the Flemings, the Astles, the McMillans" ? There's only one of each!).

But have we really lost much? Granted, it's a lot of experience out of the team, which can't be quantified, but looking at their records, they are hardly exceptional players:

• Fleming, ave 40.06, 9 hundreds (and his average only got into the 40s in his last innings, it languished in the 30s for almost all his career)
• McMillan, 38.46, 6 hundreds
• Astle, 37.02, 11 hundreds
• Cairns, 33.53, 5 hundred, 29.04 with the ball, 11 bags of 5 wickets

So what have we really lost? Most of the current crop (Taylor, Ryder, McCullum) are likely to be players with similar sorts of records- mid 30s.

How about some planning?

I see this woman has been granted a medical waiver to allow her to stay in New Zealand. Which is great, as it would have been very cruel to send her away.

But what stunned me was the fact that the couple has gotten married in the Phillipines, come back to New Zealand and "assumed Evangeline's application for residency would go smoothly".

Um, how about making sure you've got all your residency sorted before starting a family? Wouldn't you want to be extra careful so that there was no chance of your family getting split up?

Blackcaps at full strength

I heard on the news that, despite a severe stomach bug going around the team, the Black Caps have a "full strength" team to choose from for the 2nd test against Sri Lanka.

A bit like having a full strength shandy really...

Our daily bread

There is an ongoing debate about whether folic acid should be added to bread. Pregnant women who increase their intake of folic acid have much lower rates of spina bifida, and given that bread is a staple, the suggestion is that putting folic acid into bread will decrease birth defects.

Unfortunately, there is also some evidence (although much more limited) that high intakes of folic acid can cause some cancers.

Regardless of the scientific debate about the health effects of folic acid, should we really be forifying our foods to make up for dietary deficiencies? We all know that people don't eat enough fibre either, so why not beef up the amount of fibre in bread? Why not add in the whole spectrum of vitamins and minerals, cos, you know, most people aren't getting their RDI.

When will the osteoporosis, diabetes and scurvy lobby speak up about all the other things should be added to bread?

Smacking

Has there been a less-intelligent public debate than the ongoing discourse about smacking kids?

The law was originally introduced in response to a number of cases where parents had used weapons (like sticks or jug cords) to severely beat their children. The parents claimed a 'reasonable force' defence, and, defying all possible logic, they were excused on those grounds.

In response, we got the anti-smacking law. Actually, the problem was with the jury's interpretation of reasonable force. Therefore what was needed was either better instruction of juries, or a tightening of what was meant by reasonable force.

But no. The law was amended into an equally ambiguous provision which prevented smacking for the purposes of correction, but allowed it if necessary to prevent harm to the child.

And now we have had a farcical referendum on the issue, with both sides of the debate equally guilty of dumbing down the arguments. If you support smacking, then you are in favour of beating children. If you are against smacking, then you support the right of the state to overrule the parents when it comes to what is best for their child. Clearly, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but this debate has never happened.

At one point, a National MP tried to introduce an amendment which defined what reasonable force meant, which he defined as trifling and transitory discomfort. But for some reason this was hardly debated, let alone considered.

a paradigm of public offensiveness

A couple of days ago I popped in to Whitcoulls bookstore. All I need was to grab some glue, and I knew exactly where it was, so we’re talking a 2 minute trip at the most. During this mere 2 minutes, my intellectual, visual and olfactory senses were all assaulted:

1. open entering the store I am greeted by a middle aged man with his finger buried knuckle-deep in his nose, going for serious gold
2. someone had dropped a heinous smell by the self-help-book section
3. a young man was asking for help finding a biography of Che Guevara (first fail: get off the pop culture band wagon), but the sales assistant had never heard of him (second fail: get some general knowledge). Unfortunately neither of them knew how to spell “Che Guevara” so they had some trouble finding any titles (third fail).

That was more than enough for me, and I was out of there.

Thank's!

Someone at the office has thoughtfully left out a bowl of free "lemon's" for people to take home with them.

Free fruit and free punctuation. Thank's