vilakins: (loose cannon)
10. Did your parents live in another country before you were born?
No

11. What's something you've experienced that very few others have?
Everything unusual has still been experienced by many others. Let me think... I know: I was a steely-eyed missile woman!

12. Do you have to wear an identification badge in your job?
No. I started working from home 6 or 7 years ago, but even before I convinced them to let me, I didn't. Mind you, there were only 8 of us in the company. On an aside, my productivity went way up without all the phone calls, noise, and the extremely irritating marketing person.

However I did once have a job in the Health Department that required ID swipe cards on lanyards to get through doors, it being very secure due to the privacy laws. They had our photos against coloured backgrounds: yellow for general office staff, blue for IT (like me) and red for access to the server room. A colleague once had to go to the Beehive (our parliament building) in Wellington for a meeting and told their reception that instead of them having to make up a card for him, he'd just wear his own. He was surprised that people were very deferential as he walked around, only finding out before he left that the red background down there meant access to the PM.

On a tangent, we also had two guards on the front door. At one time several of us in IT were playing a computer war game, our object - as opposed to that of the game - being to destroy as many cities we'd been to as possible. I printed out a list of enemy nuclear missile sites for the team (hey, missiles seem to be the theme of this post!) and happened to leave it in the staff canteen. The next day we were called in by irate management and told a guard had found it, put it in their safe, and was refusing to give it up - and that he was certain that the department was in fact the SIS (Secret Intelligence Service). He refused ever to believe otherwise; whatever we said was, of course, a coverup It must have made that guard's whole year.
vilakins: (liberator)

Last night at Apollo 13 - Mission Control was absolutely wonderful--better even than I'd hoped!

First we went to the Middle East Cafe which has been there for ever (well, since 1980 according to their sign) and still makes the best falafels in town. It's a tiny place you have to go to early to get a table, but it's worth it: absolutely delicious falafel and salads. And lots of camels; the owner has been collecting them since the place opened, and they had carved ones, plushies, crockery, puzzles, two large Rinconada ones, jade ones, huge ones on their on shelves, tiny ones--and a biplane. Of course: it was a Sopwith Camel. :-D We even had camel-shaped biscuits with our coffee.

Apollo 13 - Mission Control )



On to some photos (all pretty small).

See me on the moon! See my console! See what I made! )

vilakins: (planet)

W00t! We have "console" seats for Apollo 13 - Mission Control on 15 August, which means we'll be flicking switches and saying lines. The consoles look like this (flash, a few seconds to load). I'm taking a camera. :-D

I forgot to mention one of the items in the 40-year-old moon-landing newspapers was a Giles cartoon. It showed the Giles father standing at the door saying "Earth man is home and wants his dinner" to the family gathered round the TV set. I hope the grandmother jammed a fish bowl over his head and told him he was on the wrong planet.

vilakins: (girl from space)

Greg braved the big storage cupboard under the eaves to find the family heirloom moon landing newspapers I mentioned to some people. I thought it was just the NZ Herald from 21 July going by the size--newspapers being so thick now with all the specialist sections--but it turned be five papers: the Herald and the now defunct Auckland Star for 21 and 22 July (landing and lift-off), and the Star for their return on the 25th.

Random things which caught my eye:

  • 20 South Africans flew to London to watch the landing on TV there because SA didn't have TV back then.
  • A Scottish woman who gave birth just after the launch called her son Neil Edwin Michael.
  • A Tanzanian politician tried to reserve a seat on the first commercial flight to the moon with PanAm and was told that fares were not yet resolved. I wish.
  • A photo of Andrew Aldrin (11) looking at reports of his father on the moon: "That's Dad!"
  • A quote from Buzz's praying wife (who didn't rate a name of her own in those days, it seems): "God can rest now."
Actually the reports are pretty good, even telling how they overshot their planned landing place. I'm very impressed with how many photos and how much information the papers provided. If anyone's interested in photos, I'll take some. They're too big to fit on the scanner.

Also, I'm going to book for Apollo 13 - Mission Control, an interactive play which is on here next month. You can be press gallery (no interaction) or part of Mission Control and help launch or build the CO2 filters etc--so much more fun! :-D I'm going for that option. I want to say, "Go for launch!"

Speaking of that, anyone who has Apollo 13 on DVD should listen to the commentary track by Jim and Marilyn Lovell, as we did last night. It's fascinating, and those two know how to do a commentary. :-)

Other things found in the scary cupboard included:
  • Two old traditional rugs from Bangladesh which I put away when Claudia and Tessa pulled the tassels off one; it needs proper re-edging.
  • All my artwork from Form 3 (Year 9) which had a lot of illos I did for the novel I wrote that year (three whole exercise books), set in a boarding school strangely like mine. I see that the new teacher looks just like my science teacher, complete with perm, double chin, knitted jersey, and tartan skirt. I was not subtle.
  • Old newspaper pages giving national exam results including mine (the highest School Certificate mark for my school up till then). Ah, how far I've fallen. :-(

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