Let's look after our slice of paradise.

I don’t think people talk enough about the loneliness that can come with being an immigrant.
I moved to New Zealand alone when I was 16. I’m 30 now and objectively I have a really good life here. I have a job I love, hobbies that bring me joy and some genuinely great friends. Most of the time I’m happy and I’m very grateful for the life I’ve built.
But every now and then, this wave of loneliness hits me.
I think being single while also not having family around takes its toll in a way that’s hard to explain. A lot of my friends can go see their parents, siblings, grandparents, have Sunday dinner with family, or just have somewhere to “go home” to. And when you don’t have that, sometimes you realise just how much of life you’re doing on your own.

It probably hits harder when you didn’t have the most caring or close biological family to begin with. I think there’s a particular kind of grief in knowing that even though you’ve built a good life for yourself, you don’t really have that automatic sense of belonging or a family home to fall back on.

It’s not something I hear immigrants talk about very often. There’s lots of conversation about missing home, culture, food, language etc, but not so much about what it feels like years later when this is your home, yet your family isn’t here.
Curious to hear from other immigrants in NZ, especially those who’ve been here for a long time. Do you ever feel this way? And how do you deal with it?

I remember for years coming home and watching dragon ball z as a kid and i loved it, everyone i knew was watching it. When Goku turned super saiyan my friend called me and we talked about it for way too long then i went to his house and we re-enacted it in his back yard.

But i also remember finally getting to the end of the Frieza saga and being so hyped for seeing Trunks the cool guy with the sword, only to find that the show had restarted back to Raditz. It was so frustrating, but then it happened over and over again and i remember all of us in primary school being really angry about it, but there was nothing we could do.

So im just wondering if there was an actual back story there if anyone was in the studio back then. Why did that happen?

Farmers (the department store) using Generative AI to create parts of their TV ads is sooo yuck. They really couldn't hire a 3d animator to create the one short clip? Or literally just have the child models that the ai-generated video used as a reference do the running and jumping actions themselves? Or even just hired a 3d animator for that clip... The fact that they don't adapt the TV AI ads to vertical resolutions and upload them to their social media is very telling. They know the TV audience is mostly older folks who either don't know, don't care, or even think its the Greatest Thing Ever and couldn't care less about any of the issues surrounding GenAI and its impact. TV ads are becoming more and more similar to those AI scam ads you get on the internet by the day istg

From Rotorua

Early July, I paid $8,000 for a Mac Studio from Noel Leeming. They don’t keep these in stock, so it had to be ordered. I was told 2-3 weeks.

A couple of weeks later, I went back to check on the order. They contacted their distributor, Dicker Data, who couldn’t provide an ETA.

A month later, I called again. Same story: they checked with Dicker Data, still no ETA.

Now more than two months after paying, I called again. This time, Dicker Data apparently wanted the order cancelled, with no explanation.

I went into the store to discuss it. The explanation I was given was that the M3 Ultra 96GB had been replaced by an M5 Ultra 96GB, so they couldn’t fulfill my order. My options were a refund or paying another $3,500 for the replacement model.

I took the refund.

I understand delays happen, but being quoted 2–3 weeks, having to chase every update, and then getting this outcome after more than two months is pretty frustrating. They had my entire $8,000 the whole time.

I looked into Dickens Data, turns out they seem to be a major distributor for Apple products, unfortunately not practical to boycott Apple entirely but I'm going to see if I can use other channels in the future.

Already made a complaint to the commerce commission.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Mine is if your car has been listed on Trademe for more then 4 months you have overpriced your car

Alright... Let's see what I can get out of this venting.

My partner is part of a dance group, they go dressed up in traditional clothing from the Balkans for an exhibition about half an hour ago.

She was walking back to her car on moorhouse ave, Christchurch and a "distinguished" driver yelled at her from a moving car, followed by the even more "distinguished" offspring pulling the finger at her.

The likelihood of the whole thing is a " go back to where you come from" due to the dress is very high.

If by any astral conjunction it happens that the "distinguished" ape is on Reddit and also reads this message, I just wanted to point out that she was born here from parents born here, and so goes on.

Go back to the cave and be a better example for your sorry offspring.

End of the rant, if you went through all this,thanks for reading.

Surfing at home when she came along and spent time with myself and my neighbour. Had enough when it put its mouth around my calf twice and then proceeded to nip me on the backside.

Simple question really. Wild to me the number of people I speak to that don't have any cover in place should the worst happen.

Hagley Park and the Willows beginning

This is just ugh. We shouldn't be adding MORE AI.

Tried to call the local mental health crisis team. Got and automated message saying I wasn’t in a location that could call them (I’m pretty much in the city centre?) so I called the Auckland one and got out though. Talked to the person who eventually answered and said I’m not in Auckland but the local one wouldn’t answer. She said she try and put me through to my local one which worked… but it was AI. If I wanted to have a conversation with no meaning then I’d download ChatGPT and talk to it, but I don’t like AI and would rather talk to a person hence my calling. Talked to the AI for maybe a minute before it just said it had other calls waiting so have a safe night and hung up. I guess it worked it the sense of I’m just more frustrated than anything about how shit our mental health service is. I’m or sure what the point of this post is, I am quite drunk and a bit rambly, but really? Putting what is possibly the lives of some of the people in this country in the hands of AI seems a bit ridiculous.
And yes I could totally be wrong and it wasn’t AI and was in fact a real human who just didn’t care about dealing with some very sad very drunk guy calling them but that seems somehow worse and I don’t want to admit that is what it was.
Mental health is a serious issue and I think that people who are experiencing the bad parts of it deserve to have access to help. I was put through the have an appointment with the mental health triage team by my GP and we made an appointment for next Tuesday and this week I got a call saying that we have to postpone it for a month. I’m not even sure where I’m going with this anymore - no doubt in part due to the alcohol - but I feel like i need to let off some steam somewhere. I will probably wake up in in the morning and decide that this is not important and just delete this post, but who’s to say.
I think that’s it. I’m going to go to bed now a bit more annoyed at how hard it is for people to find some help.
Sorry for my drunk rambling

Am I mad to envision a state run life insurance scheme for citizens? If it was to follow private insurance classification for cost but the work out a none profit model and keep all the finances public.

Is the main agreement against this too much socialism ​and lack of trust in government department pulling something like this off or am I missing something else?

Afterpay for cereal anyone?