2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Stolen from Writing english

2. When paying for a taxi, don’t look at your wallet as you take out a note. Just grab one out at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.

3. Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise moment it’s aired.

4. Creepy music (or satanic chanting) coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.

5. Any lock can be picked with a credit card or paperclip in seconds. UNLESS it’s the door to a burning building with a child inside.

6. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

7. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red digital displays so you know exactly when they are going to explode.

8. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to learn to speak German. Simply speaking English with a German accent will do. Similarly, when they are alone, all German soldiers prefer to speak English to each other.

9. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off. Even while scuba diving.

10. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.

11. Any police officer about to retire from the force will more often than not die on their last day (especially if their family have planned a party). (Caveat: Detectives can only solve a case after they have been suspended from duty).

12. Getaway cars never start first go. But all cop cars do. (They will also slide to a dramatic stop in the midst of a crime scene).

13. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises wearing their most revealing underwear.

14. On a police stake-out, the action will only ever take place when food is being consumed and scalding hot coffees are perched precariously on the dashboard.

15. All grocery shopping involves the purchase of French loaves which will be placed in open brown paper bags (Caveat: when said bags break, only fruit will spill out).

16. Cars never need fuel (unless they’re involved in a pursuit).

17. If you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts, your opponents will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around you in a threatening manner until you have defeated their predecessor.

18. If a microphone is turned on it will immediately feedback.

19. Guns are like disposable razors. If you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. you will always find another one.

20. All single women have a cat.

21. Cars will explode instantly when struck by a single bullet.

22. No matter how savagely a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.

23. If being chased through a city you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade – at any time of the year.

24. The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. Nobody will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building undetected.

25. You will survive any battle in any war UNLESS you show someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.

26. Prostitutes always look like Julia Roberts or Jamie Lee Curtis. They have expensive clothes and nice apartments but no pimps. They are friendly with the shopkeepers in their neighbourhood who don’t mind at all what the girl does for a living.

27. A single match is usually sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

28. It is not necessary to say “Hello” or “Goodbye” when beginning a telephone conversation. A disconnected call can always be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying “Hello? Hello?” repeatedly.

29. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at once (this is known as Stallone’s Law).

30. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in you room will still be visible, just slightly bluish.

31. Plain or even ugly girls can become movie star pretty simply by removing their glasses and rearranging their hair.

32. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their enemies with complicated devices incorporating fuses, pulleys, deadly gases, lasers and man-eating sharks.

33. All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.

34. Anyone can land a 747 as long as there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.

35. During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.

36. You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.

37. Most musical instruments (especially wind instruments and accordions) can be played without moving your fingers.

38. In Middle America, all gas station attendants have red handkerchiefs hanging out of their back pockets.

39. All teen house parties have one of every stereotypical subculture present (even people who aren’t liked and would never get invited to parties).

40. Trucks use their horns at random (no hang on, that happens in real life too!).

Sadly I’m not sure where this list is actually from. If you are the writer and want me to link to you directly, just make a comment here.

2. A wormhole caused a reality vacuum in an unknown galaxy with address 177.232.555.121.424.555. We are still researching the effects of an error like this.

3. Universe violation! Unable to install new universe. You need to uninstall existing universe before installing a new or at least create a new dimension – there can only be one Big Bang in this dimension.

4. The file A4G6TT_7.cmt collided with Earth.plt. The Universe detected life on that planet. Data lost. Please reinstall life or delete planet.

5. The Universe detected that you are trying to install the same planet in two different orbits or at two different places. Things can only exist in one place at the time in this dimension. Please use the function “One dimension up” and retry.

6. The Universe is temporally unavailable as it is currently being crushed into a singularity. This will happen approx. every 20 billionth year. Please make a note of it.

7. Warning! T=0: Time equals zero! You cannot set a time zone before you execute bigbang.exe.

8. Sorry. 10 in -43 of a second is the smallest amount of time supported by the Universe at this point. Please choose a less accurate time for your calendar appointment.

9. Warning! To reach critical destiny you have to increase gravity or the Universe will be torn apart. Data may be lost.

10. Do you want to save Earth.plt before you exit?

I got this idea back in 2000 and wrote it down. I just found the document yesterday. Hope you enjoyed it.

The good things

- Great location, just next to Ponsonby Road.
- Nice garden in the summertime.
- Nice tenants at the time we where there, which was the only reason we stayed for two months.
- Pretty cheap rent. Weekly 170 NZD for a single and 220 NZD for two people.

The bad things

Bathrooms:
- 13-16 people sharing two bathrooms. Do the math.
- Only hot water enough for the 3-4 first people in the shower in the mornings. One morning when the hot water tanks where completely empty the manager put up a note that told people they could not spend more than 10 minutes in the actual shower.
- We met several cockroaches in the bathrooms.
- No hand towels in the bathrooms. That means people ether dry their hands with toilet paper, don’t dry their hands and leave the light switch and door handle wet or people don’t wash their hands at all.
The kitchen
- No oven in the kitchen. When confronted with this the manager told me that an oven was a fire hazard, that people would steal the oven and that it simply would get too dirty. When I suggested they mentioned the lack of this pretty important cooking device too future tenants they refused with the words: “People have eyes!” The thing is: No they don’t! When you show a person an entire house in a minute and only mention the kitchen with the words: “This is the kitchen” you assume there’s an oven.
- Only two tea towels provided a day which is not enough so they end up soaked before the evening dishes. Also no places to hang the tea towels so they would be left on the kitchen table along with breadcrumbs and food scraps.
- The dishcloths were a joke. See picture.

- Half a shelf in a fridge is not nearly enough space. See picture.

- Ants invaded the kitchen from time to time. That meant we had to throw out our honey and jam because the ants where in them. When confronted with this problem the manager bought an ant-killer-spray in her lunch break and gave it to the tenant who complained. Then the tenant was welcome to solve the rest of the problem herself.
Our room
- It rained through our window. When confronted with this the manager said it would be fixed. When we left a month later – nothing had happened.
- We meet four cockroaches in our room in the two months and several in the bathrooms.
The managers
- The managers could swing in mood to the extremes. They would be chatting away, smiling and small talking and moments later they would snap at you because you didn’t close the front gate like it was made of glass and salt sticks.
- The managers were arrogant and treated us like children most of the time. Always communicating by notes they put up on the window in the kitchen. Somehow they got the idea that if something was very important writing it all in caps would get the message across more efficiently.
- When confronted with a problem they would often spend a lot of time talking about what earlier tenants did or did not do. When I requested an oven they said: “Well no one has requested an oven in the last six years so we are not going to get one now. Sorry!” Wow! What an argument! I rest my case! On top of this we know at least one other tenant who has requested an oven before us, so the statement from the managers was a downright lie.
- Richmond Lodge has an ad on trademe.co.nz where it says:

6 bedroom house with 3 bathrooms. [...] 8 existing flatmates.

Correction. Two bathrooms is available for the flatmates. Not Three. 8 flatmates? Try between 13-16.

In conclusion: If you are a backpacker and travelling in New Zealand and need a place to stay in Auckland, Richmond Lodge can be fine one or two nights. Never stay long term; it will suck the life power out of you until you become a zombie living on the rainwater from leaky windows and the food scraps you suck from filthy tea towels.

If any of the managers from Richmond Lodge are reading this and you find any of this information incorrect or fell I might have remembered some incidents wrong please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll gladly correct anything untrue in this text.

1. Don’t buy a car in a backpacker market. That’s to expensive. Wait till you are settled in somewhere and then look for a car auction such as HammerAuctions. Ask the local people for car auctions, they are everywhere. (Yeah car auctions as well as local people)

2. Check the auction programme before buying or even looking. Often the auction have different price classes for each day. Maybe Wednesdays are for cars under 5.000 NZD and Thursdays they sell cars under 3.000 NZD. Choose a day that suits your budget.

3. Look at the cars and look for the registration date; it’s on a sticker in the windshield. The registration of a car runs out in New Zealand. You may have to re-register the car. That’s pretty cheap – about 200 NZD for a year – but it may influence your budget. (When you need to renew the registration take the sticker in the windshield to a post office. You can renew in 3, 6 or 12 months.)

4. W.O.F. is a kind of check as far as I understand. If the car has W.O.F. it’s a good thing. If not you might want to get it checked if you can afford it. Someone in the auction staff can probably tell you how and where. Sometimes the auction even has a place to do it. We didn’t get a W.O.F. but got a mechanic to give it a routine check it.

5. If you buy a really old wreck you’ll probably want to contact AA (pronounced A-A not double A) and get a service agreement. They’ll come and pick up you and your car if the car breaks down. Ask the auction or some locals for the nearest AA center.

6. You’ll need insurance. AA can offer this as well but might not be the cheapest place. We used a place called National Auto Club. We paid 214 NZD for a year. The insurance can be sorted out over the phone in 5 min.

7. When you bought the car the auction will charge a fee about 150-200 NZD. Ask them. That way you know how much you need to add to the price of the car. (Don’t forget to add registration fee from point 3 if the cars registration runs out in a few months)

I can also mention that the public transportation in New Zealand is not as bad as everyone says. It works in the cities but I can’t see a way to explore the country without a car. It’ll save you time and probably money in the long run. Speaking off – we usually fill up the tank for about 50 NZD.

New Zealand summertime is from December-February although March is good for the beach as well. Now get out of here and start enjoying! If you’ve spotted anything wrong here please let me know.

So… you have one year less to live. Congratulations! Let this party remind you that you’re going to grow old and die. Let me tell you what will happen until the big day comes.

Now all we need is a song and then this could’ve been a Star Wars holyday special!

Han blev ikke engang sur. Tværtimod faktisk. Det er utroligt hvad man kan slippe afsted med.

About Batman… No spoilers here as usual. It was awesome! Great look, nicely balanced in color, mood and plot, Bale perfectly portrays Bruce Wayne with all his demons as well as the good sides. Brian was the Batman fan that dragged me to this movie (okay, not a lot of dragging was needed) seemed happy with it, all though he thought the mood would have been more like the Dark Knight series. I don’t know anything about Dark Knight so I didn’t miss anything on that front.

The music was delivered by two very experienced gentlemen; Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. It worked! Even without going down the “Batman theme” path, which Danny Elfman chose in 1989 in Tim Burtons Batman.

However my writer infested brain was a little annoyed by a plot hole at the end, but I guess they’re always there. Not happy about accepting it though.

I was entertained the whole time, and especially loved the first part of the movie, which really told the Batman begins story I came to see. The rest was just dessert. However there’s always room for jellow.

If you want to comment on the plot, please mark your comment with a spoiler warning.

This concludes my very first English blog entry. Was it a bad idea?