There is a wonderful publication out today with the DomPost, called “Wellington Success – Meet the Movers and Shakers”. Despite the fact that we all seem to be moving and shaking a little these days, it has some very good one-page articles advertisements extolling the virtues of those who deserve recognition have paid the advertising fee. I am amused / bemused / just generally mused over the deliberate? grammatical error on pg 12. Under an article titled “Archaus are grand designers”, it quotes Dennis Burns as saying “We believe in giving back to the community” and then the article notes that:
“The same is true of the architectural community, in particular Victoria University School of Archaus employs its students and graduates, and many of the the company’s associates have lectured at the school.”

I’m really not quite sure what they are trying to say here – I had no idea that Victoria had renamed it’s architecture school the “School of Archaus”, nor that the School employs graduates from Archaus university. Most puzzling: I am clearly quite out of date. The article also notes that Archaus is “one of Wellington’s biggest and most successful practices” which also surprised me, as apparently they have 18 staff shared between both Auckland and Wellington, which really doesn’t seem like a lot. Needless to say there are no other architects in the publication, and so it must be right – clearly they are leaders in their field.

Other companies and organisations in this esteemed publication include Mobil Oil, Kadima Furniture, Southward’s Car Museum, Fronde, Kimberleys, and Victoria University itself, which curiously does not mention the new School of Archaus. Clearly someone needs to tell them as well.

But other adverts in this publication are also stretching the truth. The last page belongs to Te Papa, and has a large photo of the new chief executive, because – well, he is the exhibit we all want to see, really, isn’t he? He (Mike Houlihan) says that the collection spans over six floors – which, again, surprised me, as clearly Mike has found a couple of entirely new floors previously undiscovered in the building. I thought that the collection started on level 2, continued on level 4, with a pitifully small amount of display on level 5. That makes three floors only. If you count the 2 pots and an old broom on display at level 6, then that brings it up to four. At a stretch, there is a cannon and a dead possum on the landing of the level 3 which could take it up to five floors, but I’m still unsure where that elusive sixth floor is. Perhaps it is the Te Papa cafe or the Shop on level 1 ? Or, just perhaps, he means the basement exhibit which stretches a total of about 10 steps down, to look at a single seismic base isolator at level -1?

A word to you Mike: we don’t really like people who exaggerate things in NZ, so I think you should be proud of the 2.5 floors that you do have, and get to work creating the other 3.5 still to come!

But there is more! There’s an advert for local / international land agents Colliers, which I will gloss over, as they mainly seem to be crowing over leasing a major office space in Tory St for ANZ – the biggest deal in Wellington, apparently. Instead, there is a thinly veiled attack on Wellington City Council’s proposal to crack down on the serious drinking / drunken idiot problem we have, with “Hospitality New Zealand” (ie several local pubs) footing the bill for that one. In there, they curiously note that “More specifically, 87 per cent of respondents said the hospitality and entertainment scene was currently open hours they liked” and then go on to quote local venerated senior Council figurehead, John Morrison, who notes: the great cities in countries such as Italy and France don’t tend to have bureaucracies setting their rules: “The etiquette is unwritten, the understanding is inter-generational and leaders in society indicate what’s right and proper.” Yeah, right…

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