John Banks - my part in his campaign

Today I attended a Tourism Auckland 'Industry Update' meeting at the Auckland Museum's new functions venue. It's very impressive - from the ground floor atrium, it looks like a huge wooden egg plonked in the centre of the museum building. Downstairs they have the Kai to Pie exhibition of NZ food, but the 3rd floor has a vast functions centre, with sweeping 360 views of the city. Pretty fab on a fine day - tho I did exit the lift into blinding natural light pouring in from the wall-to-wall windows. Having slightly over-imbibed last night, it was something I'd rather be prepared for with my sunnies on, to be honest. I groped my way blindly to the name tag table, knocking over vases and small council workers.

It was one of those things where there's swags of people, but you don't know anyone, and you scan the crowd for a familiar face but have no luck - so I went to the Gents, circled the room again, looked out the window, had a coffee and finally sat down three rows from the front about ten minutes before kick-off time.



And golly gosh, who was right up the front talking to his mates, but our incumbent Mayor John Banks. Himself. I have seen him before, but not up close. He is quite short - even sitting down, and doesn't quite look in rude good health. His hands are very pale and he has that grey complexion of a deskbound bureaucrat who never sees the sun. Shoulders slightly hunched form endless committee meetings stuck in an ‘executive’ chair. But he was nattily dressed and spoke well in his slightly hectoring school principal manner. He spoke convincingly - and was funny. I may even vote for him.



Then my mind wandered a bit and I got to thinking about blogging and servers. I figure that Blogger Inc. and Google, and Facebook and other big Internet thingies must each need to have a HUGE storage device that stores all my blogs and those of millions of others. Or a USB flash drive the size of a Unbelievably Stupendous Big … thing. I have a conspiracy theory that Auckland’s Sky Tower revolving restaurant is really a monumental disc drive on a stick.

So where is all our stuff being stored? What happens if the cleaner pulls the plug out by mistake? Eeee-ooops! All my Twitbook utterances lost. My expensive website reduced to a blue screen of death. Gahhh. All those highly organised zeroes and ones flatlining in a dead storage device.



Now I need a drink.