The bird, the people and the fruit

I am finally starting a new with a new address. I spent hours trying to figure out what to call this, and when I finally made a decision I found that my first 12 options were all unavailable. I am nothing if not unoriginal!

Still, I quite like this name. It came to me as I was driving last night to the X bar (this isn't quite as dodgy as it sounds) it is the expat club in Kapan. It is a western style bar opened by some entrepreneurial locals to attract to attract the expats to drink. Anyway I was driving on the rather icy roads and I had my first half decent skid - I went sideways around a round about. All was good, I corrected and at some point after this had my idea.

There is something funny about flying kiwi’s (after all the birds don’t fly). I like being a kiwi (New Zealander), however has anyone else noticed that we (New Zealanders) associate ourselves with a large, flightless bird which, if we are honest, is actually pretty stupid. I do have some evidence of this, as I am one of a very few people who has ever seen a kiwi in real life. I was walking the North West Circuit on Steward Island and we saw three kiwis over the 10 day walk. One of these happened to see us (after we had spotted it) and it promptly stuck his beak in a bush and stood really still. This is all very well, except the kiwi has a rather large behind (it really is just a big bum with a beak) and a large kiwi bum is not inconspicuous. The not-inconspicuous bird continued to stand with his head in the bush except for the occasional looks over his shoulder to see if we were still there. This standoff continued until we decided to leave the kiwi in peace. Now tell me that this behaviour isn’t rather stupid??

So, despite the dubious intelligence of our fat flightless birds we (New Zealanders) like to call ourselves after them. The only redeeming feature is that we don’t eat our national icon (like Australians do) although they have named a fruit the kiwi (this is in spite of the fact it comes from China).

Right, I do believe I have drivelled on enough to post my first new post.

Ciao for now, L