OnPoint by Keith Ng

Steak break

Deadline nights are kinda like slumber parties. By myself. With work. But apart from that, it's just like a slumber party. I drink can after can of Red Bull and eat chocolate biscuits. I get to stay up all night in my jammies and listen to Queen.

I've been triple-stacked with deadlines, this is my second night without sleep, my house is so cold that penniless Ukrainian pensioners wouldn't live here. My will to live is sustained only by that $7 piece of scotch fillet soaking in garlic and pepper downstairs. Ah - the 02:30 steak, you've brought me back from the abyss so many times.

Before my taurine-addled mind forgets, I have a public service announcement for Wellingtonians: An Oxford Union-style debate on New Zealand's international aid contributions (or the lack thereof), entitled "I can smell the stingyness on your breath", will be taking place tonight at 18:00 at Rutherford House, by the Railway Station.

On the pro-handouts side will be Marian Hobbs and Matt Robson; on the anti-poor people side will be John Hayes and Matthew Hooton. Filling out the ranks, I understand, will be Vic's finest, Gareth Richards and Green machine Holly Walker. The debate will be chaired by Cameron Bennett.

That is all.

It's been a long, long week. Not only have I spent most of it in Auckland, but I've spent most of it in South Auckland. On public transport. Yes, that's right Aucklanders, I came to your city and I used your public transport. A rookie mistake, obviously. I spent four hours on the bus on Friday. And here I was thinking that you Aucklanders just liked to have something to whinge about...

And while I'm whinging, what the hell is wrong with your Air Bus?

It wastes half an hour before it even gets out of the CBD, taxiing around 24 (!!!) hotels where nobody gets on. None of the stops have a timetable, so you have to turn up 20 minutes earlier and hope that one will eventually turn up. Online, they provide a timetable with street names, only to have different stops along the route that pass through the same street at presumably different times. A pox on your city, that service is.

Still, the trip wasn't all bad. I got to see Fresher Food's chip factory, where they can produce three tons of pre-cooked/frozen chips every hour. The potatoes get flash steamed and flash cooled so their skins fall off, then shot through a tube of blades to be sliced up. In between, they run under giant spinning wheel of blades, which hang menacingly above the potatoes. If the image recognition system finds a black spot on the potatoes, one of the blade on the wheel snaps out and gouges out the spot.

Mmm. Chips. Mmm. Steak...

And this week's NGA:

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