Massive Magazine Volume 02 Issue 05

INTERNET PRIVACY JUDY BAILEY SHAPESHIFTER STOLEN GIRLFRIENDS CLUB

WE’RE A SOCIAL LOT CONNECT WITH US! FACEBOOK.COM/MASSEYUNIVERSITY TWITTER.COM/MASSEY_UNI

WWW.MASSEY.AC.NZ

FEATURES 04 Privacy: An Obituary

20 Job Interviews – The Final Hurdle

22 Anna’s Story: An Abusive Relationship

24 You Know I Can’t Eat Your Ghost Chips

26 Why Move?

31 Photographic Feature: The Indians

36 Stolen Girlfriends Club: Adrogynous Niche

40 Lola

44 Bailey On Brainwave & Broadcasting

46 Living with Cancer

51 Shapeshifter: Discussing Delta

54 The Adventures of Dick Hardy

REgulars

The Back

Letters

03

Columns

58

In Short

05

Reviews

62

Local Notices

08

Geofff Deathigan

64

2

EDITOR

Morgan Browne editor@massivemagazine.org.nz 0800 MASSEY ext. 62136 ART DIRECTION & DESIGN

Sean Walker seanvictorwalker@gmail.com 0800 MASSEY ext. 62064 ADVERTISING & SPONSORSHIP

Jacob Webb advertising@massivemagazine.org.nz 027 894 8000 WEB MANAGEMENT

Adam Dodd adam@massivemagazine.org.nz LOCAL CAMPUS REPORTERS

Albany – Tasmin Wheeler tasmin@massivemagazine.org.nz Manawatu/Extramural – Yvette Morrissey yvette@massivemagazine.org.nz CONTRIBUTORS

Yvette Morrissey, Tasmin Wheeler, Charlie Mitchell, Josh Berry, Claydan Krivan-Mutu, Emma Jane Simpson, Max Bell, Jessica Frank, Kate Davis, Amie Broxton, Rachel Purdie, Georgia Forrester, Ruth Chan, Paul Berrington, Callum O’Neill, Jordan Gowan, Max D, Annabel Hawkins, Adam Dodd, Brigitte Masters, Dick Hardy ILLUSTRATORS & PHOTOGRAPHERS

Huei Yin, Brodie Nel, Ash Nel, Sean Walker Publisher

massivemagazine.org.nz ISSN 2253-5918 (Print) ISSN 2253-5926 (Online)

Disclaimer: The views, beliefs and opinions reflected in the pages in MASSIVE magazine do not necessarily represent those of Massey University, its staff, Albany Students’ Association (ASA), Massey University Students’ Association (MUSA), Massey at Wellington Students’ Association (MAWSA), Extramural Students’ Society (EXMSS) or the MASSIVE editor.

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2013, FIFTH ISSUE. IT IS E d i to r i a l

Welcome back, For those of you that have just picked up this bundle of paper for the first time – greetings. We are MASSIVE magazine, a diverse and eclectic collection of articles and images that are compiled together each month (hence the bundle). Well, I’m a person, made up of little atoms by “two parents that loved each other very much”, but you know what I mean.

Over the winter break, it seemed all of my Facebook friends were either lying around a pool on an island somewhere or backpacking around Europe – lucky for some! On behalf of the team here, we hope you had a wicked holiday, wherever in the world you spent it. If your holiday wasn’t so much of a holiday, at least there seems to be some cool things happening around the first week or two of semester.

Find us on Facebook to stay updated with what’s going on, and to be in to win some sweet giveaways.

With sadness, I wish to formally farewell our reporter, Yvette Morrissey. Yvette is MASSIVE’S

longest standing staff member to date, and we would like to thank her for all of her passion and commitment to the magazine. We wish her well on her travels around the world. With change also comes happiness, and I am pleased to announce that our new Manawatu and Extramural reporter is Rachel Purdie. We also welcome Sasha Borissenko and Brigitte Masters into new staff roles in Wellington. I’m sure Rachel, Sasha, and Brigitte will be great assets to the team. If you want to write for us, just flick me an email - my contact deets are in the side bar on this page. Writing for our 35,000 readers is fun, great for your CV, and we pay writers for stories too.

This issue, MASSIVE investigates internet privacy, parkour, job interviews, and drink driving.

MASSIVE also chats to Mega CEO Vikram Kumar, ‘Mother of the Nation’ Judy Bailey, Shapeshifter, and the guys behind the Stolen Girlfriends Club label.

Keep sane (just a little) and stay classy.

Morgan Browne, Editor

MASSIVE LOVES GIVEAWAYS Thanks to Sony Playstation® and to celebrate the release of the highly anticipated new game, The Last of Us, we have two The Last of Us prize packs to give away! Each prize pack includes a The Last of Us game, cap and sweater! To enter, email editor@ massivemagazine.org.nz with LAST OF US in the subject heading, and your name and contact details in the text by July 21 to be in the draw.

Remember Jimmy Eat World? They have just released a new album called Damage. Thanks to Sony Music, we have two copies to give away! To

enter, email editor@massivemagazine.org.nz with JIMMY EAT WORLD in the subject heading, and your name and contact details in the text by August 1 to be in the draw.

Win a crate of Red Bull! At MASSIVE, we always have your free wings at the ready. To enter, email editor@massivemagazine.org.nz with RED BULL GIVEAWAY in the subject heading, and your name and contact details in the text by August 1 to be in the draw.

Come get some Free stuff facebook.com/MASSIVE.magazine Twitter: @massivemagnz

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LETTERS

FUTURE OF DIGITAL FABRICATION NOT PRIORITY FOR JAPANESE STUMPS

Hello, Every month I pick up a copy of your magazine to read before my Women’s Studies class, and I must say, I am continually disappointed by the narrow range of issues you choose to represent in your publication. You should probably just rename your magazine “The Patriarchy”, because I only feel oppressed when I read it. The issues faced by people like me and the rest of the womyn in my social justice tumblr group are simply not represented.

I am a trans-ethnic, demi-sexual otherkin, and my headmate is a post-gendered, trans-vegan deku scrub. We face persecution every day of the week due to our lack of privilege: if I were to tell a potential employer that I self-identify as a wooden stump from an obscure Japanese manga it is unlikely I would be hired, and neither would my headmate.

University magazines are supposed to represent fringe issues, give a voice to those of us born without the privilege of being able bodied cisgendered white men. When I see topics like dog ownership, base jumping, and 3D printing in your magazine, which are all classic tools of the patriarchy used to oppress womyn, we can only shake our head in disbelief.

Why don’t you 3D print yourself a clue and start writing about issues that actually matter.

WE LOVE YOUR FACEBOOK TOO

Dear MASSIVE I love your Facebook and website. I always make sure to check the website for the latest article, read the blogs, and check for giveaways on Facebook.

Thanks for all the cool stuff ! Stoked that you’re my student magazine =) From Hannah MASSIVE IS AWESOME

Whaddup MASSIVE, Just want to say I’m loving the magazine this year!

I’ve never really read it before, but this year it’s just awesome! Also, loving the illustrations. Kudos to whoever is doing them! Keep bringing us those fantastic articles, so entertaining! Loving it.

Cha, Krissi Smith x

ROSIE NOT SO RIVETED BY MATERNITY

MASSIVE CONFIRMED STILL AWESOME

Dear MASSIVE A thought that has often crossed my mind is balancing children with a career. After countless times of being forgotten to be picked up from school, brownies and sports practises, and always being the child with the disgusting school lunches, I am worried for the fate of my own unborn children.

When asked today by a boy in class, who is onto his fifth year of a four year degree, if I would leave work in five years to have babies, I nearly hit him. All I could think to ask was whether his mum was a stayat-home mum. I have no qualms with women that choose to stay at home, make babies, and have a nice life of going to the gym, drinking coffee and walking their poodles. Can these women help their children with their homework? No. Can they understand what their child’s year 11 chemistry teacher is talking about when an atom gets mentioned in a parent interview? No. Can they relate to their husbands working lives? No. What kind of example would I be setting my own children if I was to leave my career after five years?

That it’s ok to give up? How can a stay at home mother even expect her own daughter to have a great career and really contribute to sociality, when the example that she has been given is exactly the opposite? Greatness breeds greatness.

Despite opening my lunch box and feeling hard done by every day at primary school, my own mum has been awesome. Not only does she work more than 40 hours a week, she is the one who I always ask for advice and help. Whether it’s career advice, what to do about my pesky wisdom teeth, or how much butter to add to that amazing chocolate cake! She is a true example of a woman that has it all.

When people ask me if I am going to leave the work force and stop pursuing my dreams to have children, not only do I find it personally disrespectful, I find it disrespectful to all the women before us, who have enabled us to be where we are today. Yes, despite all the obstacles that are in my way, I am determined to have it all. It is a goal I strive towards.

I am at university to not only rack up a student loan and drink away my liver, I am at university so boys who believe girls can’t, do not get the jobs which girls who can, deserve.

Sincerely, Woman Power

Dear MASSIVE, Thank you so much for an amazing weekend in Ohakune, that my husband won. We even managed to get to the slopes as well. Was so much fun - I want to go back :) Thank you so much!

Hayley Richards MASSIVE STORY DAWG

Dear Editor, The article about dog control [from issue 04] is nothing short of brilliant, probably the best on the subject I’ve ever seen for balance and accuracy.

I’ll blog the link so that New Zealand Kennel Club members can see it as well.

Well done.

Owen Dance, President, New Zealand Kennel Club

EVERY LETTER WINS

MASSIVE welcomes letters of all shapes and sizes. They should be preferably emailed to editor@massivemagazine.org.nz although they can be dropped into any students’ association office. The editor reserves the right to edit, abridge or just plain bastardise them and can refuse any that are in bad taste or defamatory.

EVERY LETTER WINS! All letters receive a prize courtesy of MASSIVE magazine. This month, it is a Peoples’ Coffee and Red Bull prize pack. Email the editor to arrange collection of your prize.

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IF You ARE InTERESTED In joInIng TEAM AlBAnY PlEASE conTAcT: SARAH WyMER S.WyMER@MASSEy.Ac.Nz 0800 TEAM ALBANy FoR MoRE InFo on ThIS EvEnT:

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MASSIVE IN SHORT THE BIGGEST TOPICS, SMALL.

HOUSING IN NEW ZEALAND: STUDENT AFFORDABILITY Brigitte Masters

Despite New Zealand becoming a larger and wealthier population, building rates have dropped since the 1960s and 1970s.

As a result, New Zealand’s new house building is lagging, with a shortfall of at least 10,000 new houses annually – a shortfall that is continuing to grow.

The failure to build sufficient new houses to meet the market’s demand over the last 35 years can only be solved by a rapid increase in new house building over a period of at least 10 years.

Many young people, especially in the main cities, are thinking about getting their first step on the housing ladder. But evidence shows this is not a good time to be buying, and it is because of the shortfall of houses and rising interest rates.

Most young people know they can’t afford something too grand for their first home. But inadequate numbers of houses built over the last 35 years have meant a lack of supply, so price rises have been most noticeable for those in the “first home” category.

Historian and former Local Government Minister Michael Bassett, who last month released a report Priced Out with The New Zealand Initiative on housing affordability, says the main problem in big cities is that the land for a new house has become expensive because of regulations such as those setting metropolitan urban limits.

“Builders can’t bring themselves to put a relatively cheap house on such an expensive section,” Dr Bassett says.

“The sorts of smaller, three bedroom houses with one bathroom that our parents bought cheaply for their first homes, aren’t built on sections costing $300,000 these days. What we desperately need is an end to metropolitan urban limits and some cheaper land on the edges of the main cities that can take modest first homes.”

This would require local and central government to coordinate their thinking, with careful local authority planning for adequate jobs in the new areas, and adequate motorway connections made available.

“Being able to buy one’s home is seen as part of a Kiwi’s birthright and one’s house, for many people, is the single biggest asset they acquire in their lives,” Dr Bassett says.

“So that option of a house at an affordable price should always be an option for a young couple who are probably renting as we speak.

“For myself, I would not in the present economic climate saddle myself with too high a mortgage because interest rates will climb within the next year.

That means renting and saving for some time yet.

Michael is right: buying a house now could be bad timing.

Since May 8, 2013, there has been a dramatic rise in NZ Swap rates, a benchmark interest rate used in New Zealand. The increases in Swap rates have yet to be fully reflected in current mortgage rates and banks will be passing these costs through to borrowers in the near-to-medium term to maintain current net interest margins (difference between what banks pay depositors and receive from borrowers) of approximately 2.2 per cent.

The increases in Swap rates for an array of standard mortgage terms since May 8 are as follows:

1 Year 2 Years 3 Years 4 Years 5 Years 0.19%

0.43%

0.56%

0.65%

0.69%

This is a guide only and should not be taken as gospel. As with all things, there are other factors, like demand and competition that will affect mortgage rates. If we see a continuation of this upward trend in Swap rates, the ability to finance your first new home at record high prices becomes that much more of a dream.

On the land side of things, to help make houses more affordable, investment in land and construction is desperately needed. That flows through to cranking up apprenticeship courses, because there is a shortage of skills, and the purchase of much more land for subdivision.

The government might need to step in and purchase some land itself and even, for a time, to adopt a tough line with local authorities that drag the chain. Until house prices level off, or fall back, we will continue to have too big a sum of precious investment money going into houses.

“As we say in our report, individuals can prosper from the present shortage; the country can’t prosper when too much investment is tied up in housing instead of more productive goals,” Dr Bassett says.

The report also says current policy quagmire has created a situation where the interests of those who are lucky enough to own property are often opposed to the interests of non-owners or younger people.

An example of how young buyers should be purchasing their first home can be taken is Massey University student, James Collings.

James, an accounting student, bought his first home four years ago with his partner and two children.

When he stepped onto the housing ladder he was working full-time, but is now a full-time student with a part-time role at MAWSA, and with a student allowance to help pay for his $350 weekly mortgage.

He bought the house in Lower Hutt: it has three bedrooms and one bathroom. James says he was realistic when he bought it, deciding to go in for the cheap.

“I paid $192,000, it was a fixer-upper. It had nothing. We put plumbing in, carpet, vinyl, curtains, kitchen, and painted it.

“We spent about $25-30,000 doing it up, but had lots of friends and family help us get it livable. We didn’t move in for two weeks. Everyone was there helping, we got the main area sorted, painted the outside, and got it livable,” he says James, whose home now has an RV of $240,000, says he will later buy a flasher home, but he had just wanted to get his foot in the property door, and had aimed for a house under $200,000.

“I think people need to be realistic about where they can afford to live. If you can’t afford to live in a home, you have to accept you have to live in a not-asnice neighborhood, or not-as-nice home.”

At the end of the day, today’s young generation should be able to realistically aspire to own their own homes without being burdened by huge mortgages.

Those who are looking at buying need to watch and see which set of council candidates, in the coming local body elections in October, has policies that look like they will quickly open up new supplies of land by removing the regulations and excessive levies applied to new developments at present.

And at the government level, people need to watch and decide which party or candidate seems determined to work towards the goal of affordable new houses.

Massive IN SHORT

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RED BULL GIVES YOU WHINGE MORGAN BROWNE

A letter of concern about energy drink Red Bull being given free to students on campus has been filed

by Massey Wellington’s Health and Counselling Campus staff with Registrar Deanna Riach.

The Health and Counselling centre is managed by the Student Services Trust, which also manages the university café, Tussock.

SST director Hazel Purre confirms Tussock sells Red Bull to students. But she says, though everyone appreciates that the Health and counselling team “has an issue” in this instance, she herself doesn’t have a stand on whether the drink should be sold on campus.

The letter expresses concern that Massey Wellington Students’ Association allowed distribution of 2000 cans in a May 14 air drop on campus. The Health and Counselling staff say the amount of cans given per person was not regulated.

Health and Counselling nurse Linda LindsayKent says she saw the cans being distributed from early morning.

“I arrived at 8.30 and myself and a couple of others saw students walking past [the crate] and taking more than one at a time. And there was no education about it there.

“We see energy drinks being promoted and we get cases of anxiety resulting out of it. These people don’t know that Red Bull is making it worse. There’s recorded deaths offshore from similar substances.”

Red Bull spokesperson Opal Mackinnon says the drink is safe.

“Red Bull is available in more than 165 counties around the world because health authorities have concluded that the product is safe. Since being launched more than 25 years ago, more than 35 billion cans have been consumed.”

MAWSA communications manager Mike Ross points out that Red Bull cans say clearly that no-one should drink more than two per day, and also which people in which conditions shouldn’t use them.

“Essentially, as a students’ association, we like to think the best of our students and respect them in our trust that they are capable of reading those labels and responding as the intelligent young adults that they are.”

Lindsay-Kent, however, says MAWSA does not have students’ best interests at heart.

“Our students are being marketed to. I know MAWSA needs money and I know that’s what happens.

“There is a reciprocal thing for MAWSA. MAWSA is cash-strapped and needs to have events that look good. I think that an insidious thing happens to our youth.”

Massivemagazine.org.nz

But when asked, she says she is “absolutely” for freedom of choice.

Ross says Red Bull is very generous in their giving.

“They also lend us production gear for both on and off-campus activities. Yet we have no contract, nor do we take money from Red Bull.”

Nursing student and residential assistant of [Massey student accommodation] The Cube, Jimmy Jansen, who supports and helped write the complaints, says the letters also reflected the “oversaturation of Red Bull on campus.”

Jansen, previously education vice-president at Massey Wellington Students’ Association, added: “There were students wandering off with five or six cans in their bags. Thank God that Red Bull is handed out around exam time, because we need the caffeine then – but not to this excess.”

Ross contests the claim of oversaturation. “There have been about 12 times over the year when Red Bull has been available for free, with a focus on orientation and exam periods when people are particularly keen on having an energy kick.”

Massey Health and Counselling also took the complaint directly to Riach rather than discussing the matter with MAWSA first, he says.

Lindsay-Kent: “We have been told in the past that it was being monitored, but we didn’t see that. We saw that in the morning [at the air drop] then Mary [Health and Counselling manager] went to talk to Mike Ross.”

Ross: “We have always assisted in promoting health initiatives that Student Health has driven.

We have done this via various advertising channels.

That’s why, when the complaint was made directly to the campus registrar, without any conversation with us, it was unhelpful.

“We’ve always considered ourselves to have a constructive relationship with them.”

On this, Jansen agrees. “I do think that Student Health going straight to registrar was disrespectful.

They should have talked to each other about this, but they didn’t.”

Jansen says he is concerned about the promotion of health on the campus and had complained that Red Bull being given away at health events in the past “really upset” Student Health, with the latest air drop being the last straw.

“MAWSA hasn’t been respectful of Student Health’s requests and suggestions, which they should, because they’re health professionals. MAWSA are a bunch of students, and should take professionals seriously.

“Young people, including myself, have got short horizon planning and short forecasting abilities.

That’s in terms of daily life as well.

“They drink it all at once, and don’t think of the later implications. Yes, we’re adults but we don’t choose wisely. If the choice isn’t there, then we won’t make a bad decision.”

Nursing students Lauren Parmenter and Katie Young admit to giving away Red Bull at a Men’s Health event at Massey earlier this year. Parmenter says the Red Bull was provided by MAWSA clubs as giveaways for the prize pack.

Both Parmenter and Young say that, although they gave away the energy drink, they were also given a “healthy meat pack” by MAWSA to use as a student prize.

“There was one can in each bag and one person got one bag each,” Parmenter says.

Young says, “I don’t see the issue. Students are living in flats alone without parents, and are obviously old enough to make their own decisions in that regard.

“We also supplied healthy food on the night. It’s all about teaching moderation. They can choose whether or not they want to drink it.”

Parmenter agrees. “It’s clearly labelled on the can [that you should only drink two cans daily]. If people are silly enough to drink it in excess then they have to suffer the consequences – you can die from drinking too much water, but are you stupid enough to do it?”

Other students spoken to share similar sentiments.

Asked what they thought about free Red Bull on campus, Health Science student Tessa McPherson says, “I think it’s great! You make decisions about drinking [alcohol] at 18, why not Red Bull?

Health Science Student Rachel Palmer agrees.

“It’s not like they’re giving you four cans a day or forcing you to drink it. If someone can’t make a good decision, that’s their fault.”

Campus registrar Deanna Riach says of the complaint: “I feel that everything has its place. Yes, there were legitimate concerns by Student Health, but it’s about everything in moderation.

“Red Bull have a policy around how many cans they will provide so, when I looked into that, we were quite happy that they were only allowed two per student.”

The students’ association was really great in dealing with the matter, she says.

“Staff drink a lot of Red Bull too. Coffee, to me, is not much different. It is freedom of choice, but we have a responsibility to our students - without dictating - providing them with opportunities to make informed decisions.

“I’d like to see Health and Counselling include information around these types of products in

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REVIEW IT A DA M D O D D

Review It is an online course survey designed to allow students to independently respond to their recent learning experiences at Massey University and make their comments available to prospective students deciding which elective papers to take.

STUDENT-TO-STUDENT ADVICE

orientation bags. It’s about students’ understanding.”

Red Bull’s Mackinnon says, just as with many food and beverage products, energy drinks should be consumed responsibly.

“Red Bull contains an advisory statement of two cans per day. In terms of caffeine, a single 250mL can of Red Bull contains 80mg of caffeine. This is equivalent to a cup of instant coffee.

“By comparison, a long black coffee contains around 253mg of caffeine per cup while a cappuccino has around 160mg.”

Riach says: “I am hoping to see a suite of more information health sessions [from Health and Counselling].

“I’m glad they’re concerned about student health, but this is a legal substance we are also selling over the counter. Their role is to provide opportunities of information. They have funding to give out information, and opportunities [to do so], whether it be on sexual health, drinking, smoking etc. Red Bull is another element in that info loop.”

Ross agrees. “If there are issues with energy drinks on campus, it needs to be treated as part of a broader policy on campus, rather than singling out one company. If they’d approached us and asked us to post up a health warning on their behalf with the giveaway, they’d have received a much more favourable response from us and would do a far better job at getting their message across to students.

“Everybody likes to be respected as an intelligent person.”

Riach: “I’m heartened that they’re [Student Health] engaged, but their view was very strong which didn’t really mirror the views of the student body.”

For those wondering whether Red Bull will still be given away on campus, Riach says that’s up to the students.

“Our young people are university students – our future. We have to allow them to make their own decisions, but try and role model better decisions.

There’s a difference between informing someone and dictating.

“It is about freedom of choice. It hasn’t stopped, and it didn’t stop.”

The survey has been developed by the Massey University Extramural Students’ Society (EXMSS) to satisfy the need for free flowing peer-to-peer advice and open testimony on the nature of particular courses. To ensure the freedom for students to share their opinions, each survey is conducted independently of Massey University and maintains the anonymity of participating students.

SHAPING EXPECTATIONS AND LOBBYING THE UNIVERSITY

The information collected from Review It is used to help students to be able to better shape their expectations of the papers they intend to take. Massey Paper Co-ordinators are also invited to include advice for students alongside the Survey results reports. In addition, EXMSS uses the survey to monitor problematic trends and lobby Massey

University to address long-running issues with certain papers.

BETTER... SMARTER... FRIENDLIER.

Review It is open to all students studying with Massey University, and to date 14,000 students have voiced their experiences. It’s important that as many people as possible fill out the Review It survey each year, and to that end EXMSS has been working over the last six months to update Review It, asking more pertinent questions, improving the layout and design, and providing more intuitive reporting.

The new survey (for Semester 1, 2013) went live on July 17.

You can check Review It out at http://www. reviewit.net.nz/ All those who complete a Review It survey will go into a draw to receive one of four iPod shuffles.

Winners are notified by email and announced here at MASSIVE. The Winners for the Semester 3, 2012, prize draw are Vincent Lee, Aaron Mikkelsen, Kaiya Watson and Michael Lambden. If that’s you and you haven’t heard from Review It yet, get in touch with Adam Dodd on freephone 0508 4EXMSS ext.

81217 or email adam@exmss.org.nz.

CONDOM SNORTING, THE LATEST CRAZE TA S M I N W H E E L E R

It has been termed “remarkably stupid”, yet the craze known as “The Condom Challenge” is spreading like wild fire across the Web. The vile and deadly internet fad is a dare game involving inserting a condom into your nostril and snorting it back through your mouth for you either to cough, pull or gag it out.

Teens in America and Britain can be found in multiple clips on YouTube snorting condoms. Will the land of the sheep be the next country to take on this ridiculous fad?

The craze gained attention in April this year when a video was uploaded onto YouTube by teenage girl Amber-Lynn Strong.

The video went viral gaining over 2.2 million views before being removed by the middle of the month.

Strong’s video was highly discussed on Huffington Post, Gawker, Buzzfeed and The Sun. Teens across the globe began participating in the challenge, uploading their successes or failures and

gaining thousands of hits while leaving the rest of the mature world thinking, “what the fuck”.

Medical experts around the world are pleading with youth not to partake in this challenge. Although there are yet to be any fatal incidents, the challenge can cause infections, coughing fits, and vomiting.

Some hospitals have seen the arrival of teens with condoms stuck in the back of their throat, leaving them helpless and needing assistance to remove the condoms.

Doctors have no doubt that taking on the “challenge” when intoxicated involves high risks, which could result in fatal outcomes.

The trend has caught the attention of celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, who has implored kids to stop snorting condoms for attention and YouTube hits.

The Condom Challenge has to be the dumbest craze started thus far and is certainly the antithesis of what Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee had in mind!

Massive IN SHORT

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ALBANY LO C A L N OT I C E S

Haere mai and welcome to semester two.

Hopefully some of you had a nice wee break and were able to rest those precious brain cells, and are now ready for round two! For the other 300-plus new students that have joined our campus, we hope you will enjoy it here with us.

This is your student magazine, and anything you would like to know, issues you would like to voice or random facts you would like to share, we would love to hear from you. We hope MASSIVE makes your time at Massey that little bit more special and we hope to warm your hearts.

Your Albany Reporter, Tasmin Wheeler. tasmin@massivemagazine.org.nz President Resigns

Stephan Van Heerden, president of the Albany Students’ Association, resigned on July 1 after a year-and-a-half serving students. His resignation takes effect on July 15. Van Heerden has seen the association through its hardest times and was there at the birth of MASSIVE. MASSIVE would also like to acknowledge a fact that most of you won’t know: Van Heerden is the only Massey University Students’ Association president unpaid for his hours. Vice-president Arlene Frost will be acting president position until elections determine one for 2014. On behalf of the university staff and students, MASSIVE would like to thank Van Heerden for his service to students.

Re-Orientation on Campus

First week back to school always includes a little bit of fun and guaranteed free food somewhere. If you are new, be sure to get your orientation bag from the Albany Students’ Association.

Student Life and the ASA have put together activities for the first week back. Starting the week of Monday 15 July with “gaming day” - you’ll find a variety of games that anyone can play - the ASA will be hosting a series of eating competitions, with free pancakes, candy floss, and popcorn.

Tuesday 16 is “collective art day”. There will be free hot dogs and, if you fancy a little after-school fun,

The Ferguson bar will be hosting Massey Idol. So head down to the pub after class for a beer.

Wednesday 17 is “clubs’ day”. This is the busiest day of the week, when students can find out and sign up to different clubs. A sausage sizzle will be provided and Who Dares Wins will be a challenge set out to anyone who dares in taking the chance to win some prizes. The evening down at the Fergs will include a Gee Whiz Quiz, followed by a Onesie party.

Thursday 18 is all about wellbeing. There will be boot-camp sessions, health and fitness testing to see how healthy and fit you are. There will be free fruit supplied and corn fritters. Mental health organisation CASPER will be on campus talking to students. From 2-3pm in the Atrium lounge, a Muslim Information session will be run where all students are welcome to come and learn about the Muslim culture. Thursday evening is guaranteed to be a chilly one with the “FROSTBITE” party hosted

by Ferg once again.

An ASA spokesperson said it wouldn’t be an orientation week without a loud night party.

“This is it: a party night for young students and their mates to dress up in their nicest dresses. This night is for the clubbers who get a taste of the city on campus.” The night has a complement of Auckland’s biggest DJ’s playing a selection of music that will please a crowd loving a bit of a boogie.

Back to Business

On July 30, you will have the opportunity to find out what the people who run the economy are thinking. Business student groups and the School of Economics and Finance will be hosting a panel of experts on monetary policy, shedding light on the New Zealand economy by bringing their knowledge and perspectives to you.

The panel includes former Reserve Bank governor Don Brash, AMP New Zealand chief economist Bevan Graham, and Massey’s Centre for Banking Studies director David Tripe. With many years of experience also in the banking sector, David will provide academic feedback.

For an evening of discussion and information about economic questions and challenges facing New Zealand, from housing and banking to

exchange rates and asset sales, come along to the Sir Neil Waters lecture theatres from 4:30-6:30 pm.

RSVP to e.m.stewart@massey.ac.nz to reserve your seat.

GO Competition

The Business Students Group is running a business idea competition called GO. The challenge is to submit a great idea and see if you have what it takes to become a true entrepreneur. If you are keen to get involved you can find more details on the Massey website and go along with your idea on July 16, 6pm–8pm, at the Sir Neil Waters Theatre.

Writers Read

If you are a first year English student or are interested in writing or reading we have an Albany Writers Series where guest speakers read from their work and talk about challenges they have faced. The series offers engagement with talented writers. Manukau Institute of Technology’s Creative Writing School head Robert Sullivan, one of New Zealand’s most vibrant and accomplished writers, will be speaking on August 1 at 12pm in the Atrium. Everyone is welcome and there will be tea, coffee and biscuits.

Tertiary Challenge

For sports’ lovers, Massey University and Unitec are co-hosting the Northern Tertiary Challenge on September 20 at Waitakere Trust Stadium. Team Albany is looking to recruit a large team to win the Tertiary Challenge shield off Unitec who have held the shield for the last three years. This year there are prizes for individual codes as well as player of the tournament.

All sports are mixed, with the focus is on “social but competitive”. They will include netball, basketball, hockey, football, ultimate, volleyball and touch.

There is space for you in Team Albany no matter what your level of ability. Contact Sarah Wymer at s.wymer@massey.ac.nz for further information.

Tasmin Wheeler

Massive Local notices

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MANAWATU LO C A L N OT I C E S

Unity and Diversity

August, the month of cultural celebration in Palmerston North, is fast approaching.

Organisers of the annual Unity and Diversity and the International Food Festival have gone all out to plan even bigger and brighter events than in previous years.

Held on August 17, U&D, is a celebration of Massey University’s diverse range of cultures through performances such as music, skits, and dance.

This year, U&D will show up to 15 acts including performances from Manawatahi, Pacific Island (PI), the VIVA choir, Fire, and Papa New Guinea Massey clubs.

The performers will be predominantly Massey students, and include a multitude of students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

The event was previously run by the Massey University Student’s Association, but this year Massey Club Development Officer, Gemma Lindegren, has stepped up to organise the event.

Lindegren said last year’s event wasn’t very successful, incurring a loss; however she hopes to turn things around.

“This year we have started organising early and have a committee that has several Massey departments represented.

“We also are trying new initiatives so that the student groups feel more like this is their event.”

These included having an opportunity to be on the organising committee, prizes for the groups that sold the most tickets, and opportunities to promote the group in the foyer during the show.”

One of the highlights of last year’s event was a song by a Chinese student, accompanied by an American student, Lindegren said.

“They sang a mixture of Chinese and English, and it just showed what U&D is about. It was beautiful.”

Aviation student and member of the Fiji club, Joeli Nagera, is excited about taking part in the event.

“This is going to be my second year performing, so I’m looking forward to another thrilling year of unique performances that I’ve never encountered before.”

Unity and Diversity, held at the Speirs Centre, will feature two performances, at 4pm and 7.30pm.

Massivemagazine.org.nz

The International Food Festival will be held on August 14 on concourse, during the common break.

It will give students a chance to share their culture through food from their country of origin.

“Hopefully there will be heaps of yummy options for students and staff to sample,” Lindegren said.

August also brings cultural celebrations for Ramadan, for the 30 days from July 9, and Pakistani Independence, on July 14.

Yvette Morrissey Alcohol: A Palmy Problem

Many of us have experienced a night or five out on the so-called “town” in Palmerston North.

Most of these nights, if not all, include the excessive consumption of alcohol to help bring out the daring dance moves. But though alcohol does loosen up the inhibitions, it also can impair judgement, especially when it comes to getting back home safely.

Steven Christodolou, a former security guard on the Massey late night bus service, has seen first-hand the effects of alcohol on the youth of the town. He says it “makes people think they are 10ft tall” and that it is okay to walk home.

However, even with the presence of security guards and the police in the city centre, he believes the “town is full of weirdos” and is not safe.

Of late, there have been a number of drunken incidents and assaults throughout Palmerston North, with a reported 24 people taken home or to detox, and 53 offences of disorder, both in the month of April alone.

Of course, many other incidents also go unreported or undiscovered by the Police. This is not just a recent problem. In August last year, two young soldiers engaged in a violent brawl outside of a bar, and a sex attack occurred at the start of this year, involving a woman walking home alone in the early hours.

The majority of youth are like Francesca, a 19 year old Massey student who frequents town. She says she “doesn’t feel safe around town at all“, and has been approached by drunken men on more than one occasion. She says she often has no option but to walk home alone, because she doesn’t have money for a taxi and has been separated from her friends.

This situation of having no choice is something Safety Advisory Board and Palmerston North City Council are attempting to overcome.

The council has introduced and planned numerous initiatives to make the community a safer place - to protect the people of Palmerston North and ensure their safety.

Maria Bennett, former City Safety Coordinator for the Safety Advisory Board for the local council said these included a current campaign of ”Look After Your Mates”. Introduced in April, it involves the setting up of a safe station in the targeted Main St area, monitored by trained crowd controllers.

This will allow people to organise and wait for transport, with the knowledge they are safe, and help is nearby if needed.

However, there seems to be little awareness amongst the target age group of 17-25 year-olds, the youthful demographic of the region’s population.

With a greater awareness, this dire issue of drunken assaults and disorderly conduct might improve – as Maria says, there is a need for “education for the young girls and the young guys” so that they can make informed decisions about the course of action to take in dangerous situations.

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Massive Local notices

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WELLINGTON LO C A L N OT I C E S

NZSM presents Il Corsaro

Te Kōkī the New Zealand School of Music describes it as a tale of pirates and plunder, flame and blood, true love and impatient passion, in a true operatic tradition where all does not end well…

This July, the school presents a four-performance season of Verdi’s Il Corsaro. Il Corsaro follows the tragic tale of a noble and heroic pirate captain, Corrado, who is forced to leave his true love in order to battle the Turkish Pasha Seid and attempt to rescue the harem of slaves.

Performed for the first time in New Zealand and sung in its traditional Italian form, the three act opera celebrating the 200th anniversary of Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, stars some of New Zealand’s emerging opera stars.

Christian Thurston, a 22-year-old who in his 3rd year at the school. is playing a lead role as the villainous Pasha Seid.

Christian says he initially never had any intention of pursuing a career in opera, but decided that music would be an interesting subject to study.

“I thought I’d give it a go and haven’t looked back since,” he says.

Il Corsaro is directed by well-known director, Sara Brodie, and conducted by Kenneth Young.

It is the second time Christian has worked with conductor Young, a man he finds “incredibly easy to work with and extremely helpful”.

Brodie too is great to work with - “an amazing director who pays a great attention to the smaller detail”.

Isabella Moore, a 22-year-old recent graduate playing her first prima donna role as Gulnara, Pasha Seid’s favourite slave girl, says she discovered her passion for opera almost by mistake”.

“I missed the application date for the University of Auckland ELAM School of Fine Arts and my parents convinced me to audition for The School of Music instead.

“I now have no doubt in my mind that I am meant

Massivemagazine.org.nz

to sing opera,” the emerging Kiwi soprano says before adding enthusiastically: “I can’t wait to perform the role of Gulnara!”

While Gulnara is her first major performing role, Isabella has had plenty of experience in classical singing. Her career highlight so far is a toss-up between winning the 2013 Becroft Grand Opera aria and receiving the Iosefa Enari Memorial Award at the Creative NZ Arts Pasifika award ceremony in 2012.

“I have a feeling that after the opera in July, if you asked me what would the highlight of my career so far, being able to sing the role of Gulnara in Il Corsaro would be at the top of the list,” she says.

Isabella advises aspiring student musicians to “go for it. No doubts and no regrets”.

Many of the cast and young opera stars hope to one day sing on an international stage. Isabella’s dream is to sing at the Metropolitan opera.

“It’s a big dream, but I know if I put in the hard work and stay focused I could get there one day,” she says.

There is no doubt these young Kiwi stars have long and bright futures ahead of them and, although their journeys may be long ones, they are singing their way to stardom - one note at a time.

Il Coraro will be performed between Friday July 26-Tuesday July 30 at The Opera House in Wellington.

Tickets can be purchased from Ticketek.

For more information on the performance visit http://www.nzsm.ac.nz/events Georgia Forrester

The Wellington BC One open workshop took place at Toi Whakaari on 20th July. The international breakdancing superstar, Roxrite, showed off some of his moves and taught his technique to other Wellington breakdancers.

As semester two commences, we understand that transition back into study can be difficult so we’ll make sure there’s plenty of wings for you guys on campus. Stay posted on the MAWSA and MASSIVE Facebook pages for event updates and free giveaways.

For those who haven’t heard, Trolley Grand Prix is coming to New Zealand this year, which is going to be huge. We’re going all-out this year by choosing fewer teams and giving them the total star treatment including visits from television crews. Make sure you check out the details online and enter to hold a place in the competition. As the creative campus that we are, I think we could definitely take out the winning title!

Goodluck for the start of semester two and stay posted for the next wiiings update!

Ruth Chan Food for Thorpe

MASSIVE would like to acknowledge the final day of Massey Wellington Students’ Association president Ben Thorpe’s last day in office. On June 28, a bunch of university staff went to MAWSA for some drinks and nibbles to farewell Ben before he left the office for the last time. On behalf of the university staff and students, we would like to thank him for his service to students. Charlotte Webb is taking on an actingpresidency position until elections in September establish a new president for 2014.

Wiiings update

On May 31, the ONLY NZ Red Bull Collective Art Gallery was held here on our turf, at Massey, in the CoCA block. The gallery showcased all 19 NZ submissions and nine segments taken from the 1.9km long digital artwork. Checkout www.redbull. co.nz for photos of the gallery.

A MASSIVE Addition (or two)

MASSIVE welcomes two new staff members to the Wellington pages. Sasha Borissenko and Brigitte Masters will be your new reporters/blog managers down here in the windy capital.

Morgan Browne

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Massive Local notices

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PRIVACY: AN OBITUARY What is actually on the internet? A lot of deep, dark things, it seems.

In light of recent privacy invasion allegations, are we safe in the online domain? Charlie Mitchell investigates.

Mysteries are abundant in the field of astrophysics, which is understandable for a discipline that literally spans the entirety of the universe.

But one mystery in particular remains frustratingly opaque, still puzzling scientists to this day. In the 1950s, stargazers directed their attention to faraway galaxies in the hope they would illuminate the complex variables that make up our own galaxy.

In the process, they discovered something unexpected: the galaxies they analysed contained far more mass than previously thought. The “observable universe”, what we can personally see, appeared to be only a fraction of the material making up the actual universe.

A hypothetical substance called “dark matter”,that does not reflect light and is therefore unobservable, constitutes the missing mass. Though it has never been directly detected, dark matter may constitute over a quarter of the content of the universe, and its exact properties remain ambiguous The sprawling leviathan that is the internet shares a number of similarities to the universe.

Every day brings us closer to the inevitable Tronlike digital reality, where our mortal bodies are cast aside for a virtual, cerebral existence in a constructed universe that improves on our actual one.

But, much like the physical universe, our perception of the internet is limited to what you can directly see – or, in most cases, what you can search for on Google. There is a massive amount of content hidden below the surface of the web that is ‘unlisted’ - not indexed by search engines - and can only be accessed if you know the address.

This is the first layer of “the deep web”, and it’s mostly innocuous. But the second layer of the deep web, which holds content that can only be accessed through specialised anonymising software, exists Massivemagazine.org.nz

like the dark matter of the internet, hidden and unobservable to most people.

This network has, and will continue to have, enormous implications for the future of cyber security in an era of unprecedented government surveillance.

It also has assassins.

Web billionaires and Cyber pervs

When we’re on the internet, we open ourselves up to invasions of privacy on a daily basis.

As far as methods of communication go, the internet is perhaps the least secure: the recently revealed PRISM scheme, of which exact details remain unclear, apparently allows the US government to collect and monitor the communications of nonUS citizens on websites like Facebook and Google.

Similar powers exist for our own GCSB, who used private communications (later ruled as illegal) to justify the raid on Kim Dotcom.

Facebook itself makes no secret of the fact that its business model is intrinsically linked to selling the privacy of its users to advertisers*; similar practices are associated with most online services that are free to use.

This is a process that has become increasingly normalised - by using a service, particularly one that involves personal information, you consent to your details being handed to anyone willing to pay for it.

Practices like this have led to the creation of sites like Mega.co.nz, which go to great lengths to secure the data given to it by its users.

As described by Mega CEO Vikram Kumar, this is quickly becoming a practice that worries consumers. “Not only is there concern about ubiquitous government surveillance, there is also an increasing number of people who are looking for

an alternative to the “free services in exchange for targeted advertising and tracking” business model that underlies most of the free online services today.”

The sheer extent of this monitoring makes it difficult to conduct your business in private, particularly if that business is of potential interest to a spying government.

Surveillance is even possible on a person to person basis: it’s easy to accidentally install a RAT (Remote Administration Tool) on your computer, which allows a malicious user complete access to your personal files, your system files, and even allows them to watch you through your webcam.

There are entire communities where people of questionable morals mess around with their “slaves” (people who have inadvertently installed a RAT), by seizing control of their computer as the “slave” watches on in confusion.* The internet has become a way to exert control on both an individual and a collective level. Fortunately, an underground exists, where people can conduct themselves away from prying eyes. * A model which led its founder, a young Mark Zuckerberg, to say (in regards to early users of Facebook), “They trust me — dumb fucks”. Probably just a youthful indiscretion, but it doesn’t exactly inspire faith in the person who holds the information of more than a billion people. Incidentally, it is this sort of mentality that led Julian Assange to call Facebook “the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented”. * To expand on this - if the webcam light on your computer flashes on unexpectedly, someone could be using it to watch you. It’s worth covering the webcam with tape when you’re not using it. Or, alternatively, shout threats of legal action at your computer every so often, just in case.

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MASSIVE FEATURE

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The Deep Web

The “deep web” (in the interest of simplicity, I’m using this term to exclusively refer to content that can only be accessed through a particular way; the actual term is much broader, but there’s no point getting lost in specifics), for the law-abiding citizens of the first world, has historically been a curio for those who want a glimpse at the internet equivalent of “the wrong side of town”. It’s fairly easy to access: a piece of software named Tor will allow you to connect to the Tor network, concealing your IP address in the process.

It can be tricky to navigate for the uninitiated.

Web addresses on the Tor network are a projectile vomit of random letters and numbers, in no way indicating what sort of content the site holds. There is no search engine. You need the exact address of any site you want to go to, making access to many sites highly exclusive.

The most popular place on the deep web is “The Silk Road”, which is a virtual marketplace for drugs, pornography, and fake documentation. Through the virtual currency Bitcoin, you can buy heroin, meth, cocaine, cannabis, hallucinogens, and prescription drugs with complete anonymity, which will then be delivered to your door.

Much like Trademe, traders have a feedback system which separates the scammers from the legitimate dealers. By all accounts, it is a largely foolproof way to obtain illicit substances: an analysis of 180,000 transactions found that 98 per cent of feedback placed was positive.

The Silk Road’s sister site, “The Armory”, offers a similar marketplace for guns and ammunition.

Another site offers fake US citizenship for $10,000.

Groups with names like “C’thulu” and “White Wolves Professionals” offer to assassinate a person of your choosing*.

“The Human Experiment” appears to chronicle a series of experiments performed on human subjects who have been kidnapped. A professional pickpocket will steal anything you want from a list of pre-approved stores. “Hard Candy” is a wiki for pedophiles, which collects links to discussion forums about how to seduce, molest, and even kidnap children, alongside links to actual child pornography. * Prices range from $10,000 to $15,000,000, depending on how important the assassinee is.

Of course, a lot of these things will send a properly calibrated bullshit detector into overdrive. There is very little to prevent someone from creating a site with an outlandish premise, hoping to join the cult of infamy that is the deep web’s most controversial websites.

Massivemagazine.org.nz

But there is no doubt the relative anonymity of the Tor network is conducive to illegal activity, offfering lawbreakers a platform to operate in secrecy*. * It is extremely difficult to find people using the Tor network because of the way it is configured. The internet is a series of tubes: when you access something on a website, your computer sends a request through the tube connected to your router. The request reaches the server where this information is held, and sends it back through the tube. With Tor, this is far more complicated. When you file a request, it passes through several other computers connected to the network before it reaches its destination. At filing, your data is encrypted a number of times, hiding contents such as your location, what you requested, etc. Each computer your data passes through partially decrypts the request, until it makes it to the server.

Just a bunch of internet jerks?

When millions of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran in 2009, they probably weren’t aware of the precedent they were establishing. Iran is no stranger to the threat of revolution: it has formed a major force in Iranian society, and it has inspired a radical upending of the status quo more than once. But this time was different.

As incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad celebrated another commanding victory in the general election, despite a suspicious lack of public approval for his re-election, an enraged populace fought the brazen corruption in a way that hadn’t been seen in the Islamic Republic for decades.

Battles raged on the streets for weeks, continuing in private for much longer, as many protesters were taken from their homes and imprisoned for ambiguous crimes.

This outbreak of public defiance, which had been simmering for years under an increasingly oppressive regime, became a real-world usage case for the Tor network. It had been previously utilised by journalists and whistleblowers as a way to transfer covert documents, but these cases were hardly mainstream.

Tor now has a compelling defense for its existence: it is a way to subvert regimes that extensively filter and surveil the internet for any content that contravenes the range of ideas that is permitted by the government*. *In Iran, this is virtually everything. For years there has been discussion of a “Halal internet”, where Iranians would only be able to access pre-approved sites hosted on Iranian servers. Similarly progressive nations like Myanmar, North Korea, and Cuba also employ

such a system. This is, of course, completely insane which is why Reporters without Borders list Iran as one of their “12 enemies of the internet”.

Even if nothing fundamentally changed in Iran, there was still a revolution of sorts: the internet, particularly social media, became a virtual town square for demonstrations against the government.

The protests predicted a trend that was later fulfilled by the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt and Libya, where the populace could organise and share ideas effectively through the internet.

The power of this is difficult to overstate. Since, several Middle Eastern governments have gone to extreme measures to actively disrupt internet communications in an attempt to contain protests.

Just days after the initial uprising in Egypt, internet traffic from the country disappeared completely: the Egyptian government, barely clinging to life and desperate to shake the unwavering beast that is social media, launched a cyber attack against its own citizens.

The blackout became widely regarded as the first instance in which a modern, technologically advanced country was completely disconnected from the internet.

More recently, in a breathtakingly audacious statement of intent, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said, “There is a problem called Twitter right now and you can find every kind of lie there ... the thing that is called social media is the biggest trouble for society right now”.

This is the human being who holds ultimate control over the infrastructure of Turkey, and can filter and control the population’s access to the internet. When governments live in such abject fear of their people that they’ll imprison people for using twitter - which has also recently happened in Kuwait - the anonymity of Tor, which bypasses the filters and firewalls put up by regressive governments, is a tempting proposition.

“Because Twitter and other websites were blocked, people in Egypt actually used Tor as a proxy for their web browser,” says Tor project spokesman Jacob Applebaum. “They knew that they could install Tor and they would be able to get past the Internet censorship in their country, which was their primary concern.”

Tor isn’t just a dingy basement that harbours illegal content: while using the Tor browser, you can access any site you want, with virtually complete anonymity. It offers people a way to engage with the world outside of the beady eye of their government, an invaluable commodity in a region where leaders are hostile to democratic platforms.

17

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MASSIVE FEATURE

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If the most damning things in your search history are a couple of Taylor Swift videos you drunkenly watched, then what is there to worry about?

Here is a rather bizarre paradox. The network that has enraptured the public imagination with tales of hitmen and drug dealing, known as the dimly lit, hangout for thieves and paedophiles and arms dealers, is now perhaps the most powerful force for democratic revolution in the developing world.

The Eye of Sauron

It’s easy to feel separated from these issues in New Zealand. But we are certainly not exempt from them, and it’s worth being aware of how they can affect us.

Edward Snowden, whistleblower turned Jason Bourne impersonator, recently revealed the extent to which the global population were being monitored*.

The NSA (US), GCHQ (UK), and various other intelligent arms of nations around the world (including our own GCSB) are actively trading information and monitoring the communications of other countries. *Snowden has since been labelled a “spy” by the US government, and faces charges of espionage... all for revealing details of the government’s own spying programme. Whether the earth-shattering irony of this has permeated the White House remains unclear.

To most of us, this may not seem a big deal: if the most damning things in your search history are a couple of Taylor Swift music videos you drunkenly watched, then what is there to worry about?

Hank Wolfe, an associate professor at the University of Otago who specialises in computer security, describes it like this: “Well, people when constantly surveilled are adversely affected. Ubiquitous surveillance changes peoples’ behaviour: what they plan, what they say, what they do, and who they do it with... The East German [secret service] Stasi were masters of surveillance – so much so as to make East German citizens afraid of what they said amongst friends and family lest they be turned in or identified by the watchers to be subversive.”

This is one of the fundamental problems with any form of nation-wide surveillance. Even if the intent of the surveillance is to impede terrorist activities, the sheer breadth of power afforded the state can cast doubt in the minds of ordinary people.

What happens when a government redefines the word “terrorist” to mean anyone who opposes the regime? This is what has happened in several

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countries in the Middle East, and it seems like an inevitable byproduct of unregulated power.

But if you’ve nothing to hide, what’s the problem?

Wolfe: “Proponents of this sort of activity often use the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” assertion implying that privacy is somehow tainted by being subversive or criminal... let’s not be intimidated by those who would steal our freedoms and who would use the “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” trick to achieve their objectives.”

In other words, guilt is assumed until innocence is proven: attempting to retain one’s moral right to privacy can be seen as an assertion of wrongdoing.

This is a sentiment echoed by Mega CEO Vikram Kumar: “People should therefore assume that every action they take online- from the specific websites they visit to whom they email to the contents of their emails - are all tracked, stored or read.

That should be of concern to people. The “I’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide/fear” argument in favour of a surveillance state is simply wrong and naive.

No-one is exempt from the repercussions of this issue - individuals, families, and businesses all stand to lose from these practices.

TUANZ CEO Paul Brislen, says, “I think a lot of companies will question whether storing important company documents in the cloud is a sensible idea given this level of intrusion – we could end up stifling the growth of a really useful business tool if we’re not careful.”

These practices may change the way people engage with an entire medium. If every action you or your business performs on the internet requires you to pause to consider whether the government at the time may have a problem with it, then we’ve ceded a staggering amount of liberty in the interest of the ambiguous comfort of “safety”.

John Robb, author and military analyst, explains the global shift towards surveillance like this. When the military is required to handle dangerous objects like nuclear weapons, standard forms of control and protection aren’t sufficient.

They require what is called “positive control”, a system where the dangerous object undergoes constant surveillance, monitoring, and testing.

When the systems used to monitor the dangerous object fail to give a response, that’s when people start

to panic. The danger comes when the constant flow of information stops, which is when the system takes action.

Societies are run under a system of “negative control”, which is the exact reverse of “positive control”. These systems do not constantly receive data; they are focused on detecting exceptions, like criminal activity. Good behaviour is the norm.

When the system becomes aware of an exception, it takes action.

What we may be seeing is a reversal of these systems. Positive control, which is typically applied to dangerous objects, is gradually being applied to entire populations.

If everyone is a potential enemy of the state, then everyone requires constant monitoring: our location, the sites we visit, and our phone communications, are all forms of data that can be monitored. When someone tries to hide from this surveillance, it can be seen as a dangerous act - in the attempt to hide, they reveal that they have something that needs hiding.

This is where the Tor network becomes important.

The sheer amount of data collected by security agencies can be used in any way the state sees fit.

We’ve already seen the crippling effect this sort of monitoring has had in the Middle East, with mass restrictions on the range of ideas permitted to be discussed. That’s not to say the same thing will happen here.: we can’t entirely commit to parallels when we consider the sharp difference in cultural attitudes.

But what we are heading towards is a future where the moral comfort of privacy is non-existent, where information is criminal, and where guilt is assumed until innocence is proven becomes the standard.

“If Kiwis continue to be apathetic and allow their elected representatives to give the authority to carry out ubiquitous surveillance then a surveillance society (aka totalitarian society) is inevitable in New Zealand, and within the not too distant future”, Wolfe concedes.

Tor, with its arms dealers and child pornographers, may be the best hope we’ve got.

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JOB INTERVIEWS – THE FINAL HURDLE Ever wondered why you didn’t get that job you applied for? Could it have been the way you performed in the interview? Morgan Lee sets out to find the right advice on how to master the art of interviews.

We often hear horror stories of job interviews that have gone wrong. As students, we study for long periods, and when the time comes we are finally able to apply for our dream jobs. Interviews aren’t easy to master, but with time, candidates improve.

The importance of job interviews cannot be stressed enough. They are, in most cases, the determining factor in obtaining that dream job. They are a way for employees to judge our appearance, our body language, and analyse the way we communicate accordingly.

Picture this: You sent your resume to an organisation last week. The Executive Manager rings you – they want to interview you for the available position. You quickly hang up and rush over to your closet to find the outfit you will wear. You think to yourself ‘they’re quite a laid-back firm so this peplum dress will look perfect, plus my ass always looks great in this’.

Interview day arrives and you think you’re ready.

You’ve covered yourself in your favourite perfume, and even though your hair is a tad messy, you think your dazzling smile will outweigh your obvious flaws.

A panel of three interviewers welcome you into the room. As soon as you sit down you realise they are dressed very professionally, quite the opposite of yourself. They begin asking questions that you don’t have a clue of how to answer.

Interviewer: “What is the name of our Chief Executive Officer?”

Interviewee: “Um…to be honest I wouldn’t have a clue…Donald Trump?”

Interviewer: “Are you familiar with our company’s mission statement?”

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Interviewee: (awkward silence).

Interviewer: “Okay, well thank-you. We should be in touch soon.”

You leave the room as quickly as you can. You tell yourself that the interviewers must have been in a foul mood, that’s why it didn’t go according to plan. A week later you hear through a friend that another person got the job. You still believe it was the interviewers’ fault and not yours.

As soon as you step foot into an interview, the employees are taking notes of how you appear.

First impressions often stick with a person, so it’s important that you represent yourself in a way that is accurate and worthy.

Trish Fleetwood, Careers Adviser, Massey University Albany, reinforces the idea that “projecting a confident and professional image is essential” to giving good first impressions.

It may seem quite shallow or materialistic, but interviewees are instinctively judged by the way they present themselves.

Rob Milne from GradConnection New Zealand believes that students should dress to reflect the nature of the organisation.

“Make sure you dress suitably for the job interview.

If they are likely to be wearing a suit, then dress up.

If the organisation is casual, then dress accordingly.

However, always make sure you are presentable.”

Ryan Willoughby, President of the Massey Association of Communication Group (MACS), applied for a job at a local McDonald’s restaurant when he was younger. He didn’t get it, but he says it was because they were worried that he was already over-committed. He also admits that his outfit wasn’t

suitable. “I wore a tie to the interview - probably not the best decision I’ve made”.

Dean Jervis, Sales and Marketing Manager of Student Job Search New Zealand, agrees that selfpresentation for interviews is imperative to ensure applicants don’t make typical interview mistakes.

“Some are just plain sloppy and do not present themselves well”. He uses a metaphor in conjunction with the topic of self-presentation, by comparing students to houses: a nicely presented and tidy house as opposed to an unclean house. Which would you prefer to live in/be?

He says common mistakes students make while being interviewed are when they “talk themselves up but fail to make the link of how that will add value to the business employing them”.

Massey student Caitlin, 20, says she experienced a terrible job interview at an Auckland retail store, where the interviewer asked her very personal and inappropriate questions. The interviewer even asked her what she would do if she were employed and fell pregnant.

“I was 18 at the time and I was pretty mortified.

I just thought it was completely irrelevant.” She says the interview lasted just over 20 minutes, and she admits that once the interviewer offended her, her attitude changed.

“My phone rang in the last five minutes and usually I would be embarrassed to answer a call in an interview, but I couldn’t have felt more relieved.”

Nevertheless, it’s not just students who sometimes experience bad job interviews. Anybody can end up feeling tongue-tied in an interview that has gone pear-shaped, and sometimes it is simply out of the interviewee’s control.

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When she sat down, the top twisted to the side and her breast popped out. The manager and myself had a very difficult time interviewing as we couldn’t stop giggling.

Here are a few examples of job interviews that turned for the worse. These examples are from international websites and are not in any way related to people interviewed in this article: “We had a girl apply for the position of a nurse in a nursing home. She presented very casually in a loose white singlet top. When she sat down the top twisted to the side and her breast (no bra) popped out through the armhole. The manager and myself had a very difficult time interviewing as we couldn’t stop giggling. No, sadly, she didn’t get the position.”

“One recent grad I was interviewing tried to show me how dedicated she was by looking me dead in the eye and saying, ‘I’m so good, I guarantee I’ll have your job in a year.’ Since I didn’t want to be on unemployment this time next year, I didn’t call her for a second interview.”

“I had set up an interview with a young guy, who arrived with a backpack in tow. As soon as he sat down and I began explaining the position, he pulled

out a sandwich and started chowing down! He then opened a bottle of water and proceeded to drink and eat right there on the other side of my desk. When I asked him what he was doing, he replied, ‘I haven’t eaten yet.”

When a job interview begins, both the interviewee and the interviewer have an obligation to act professionally according to their roles.

Massey student Gemma McLean says she endured a horrible interview. “The two people interviewing me were flirting with each other. There was a lot of giggling. I just sat there feeling very awkward.”

It seems that in some instances it isn’t just the interviewee who contributes to a ‘bad’ interview – the interviewer can potentially spoil your chances, too.

To ensure you are well prepared for future interviews, Dr Elizabeth Gray, Senior Lecturer at Massey Wellington says you should be organised and prepared beforehand.

“Often, students don’t do enough homework about a company.” By researching the organisation, applicants will show they are taking the job interview and the position they applying for seriously.

Dr Gray says that feeling nervous for an interview is perfectly normal. “If I shake an interviewee’s hand and see that they are nervous and they are trying hard, I think good on them”.

She also stresses the fact that students should always depict themselves in a truthful way. “Don’t

try and over-sell yourself in order to get the position”. If students act as if they are capable of anything, employers will expect such things, and if expectations aren’t met then students will look somewhat deceptive.

Many of us will go through numerous interviews in a lifetime. Although our interview skills may improve, we will never fully be able to predict the outcome.

Here are some important tips, which will help students avoid bad interviews: Thoroughly research the position and the organisation you are applying for.

Make sure you are aware of what questions could pop up in the interview.

Rehearse what you intend to tell the interviewers.

Be prepared to ask questions, to show that you are interested.

Take pride in your appearance. This includes personal hygiene (use deodorant).

Tone down make-up, accessories, and perfume/ cologne (the interviewer may find the fragrances offensive).

Show that you have a positive attitude and you are willing to learn.

Always take your CV. Act professionally, but make sure you are still being yourself.

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ANNA’S STORY: AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP As told to Yvette Morrissey.

I met Daniel (name changed) through mutual friends. He was charming, attractive, and one of the funniest guys I’d ever met.

We took things slowly at first because I had just got out of a serious relationship, but he was so kind and sweet I found myself falling for him quickly.

Daniel was extremely popular among our group of friends; he was the life of the party, literally.

I didn’t realise it at first, because I thought he was just drunk, but he always had a supply of cocaine, speed, party pills and ecstasy for himself and his friends.

When I found out he was doing drugs, I got really angry, but he told me, “I just do it every now and again, it’s no big deal. The media make drugs sound way worse than they actually are.”

He told me if I took the correct amount every time, I couldn’t overdose, and it wouldn’t do any harm to my body. I believed him, and I had my first hit of cocaine at a party he was hosting.

He only gave me a little bit, but later on he started having a reaction to the drug. I took him outside, away from the party, and he threw up several times on the footpath. I knew then I needed to get him off the drugs.

He cried, telling me he needed me to help him. I promised I would try my hardest. I encouraged him to go to a counsellor, which he said he would. It never happened and things started to get worse.

He told me he was weaning himself off “the hard stuff ” and instead took party pills. He assured me they were the legal kind, but the following day when

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I Googled them, I found out they were banned from sale in New Zealand.

To this day I don’t know why I swallowed the pills, but I guess it was a combination of wanting to fit in and not be known as the fun sponge. I started to feel faint after a while; my whole body felt as though it were shimmering. I couldn’t move.

Daniel was inside the pub playing on the pokies.

When his mates told him he needed to take me home, he told them to wait until he was finished.

I sat in the corner of the room barely able to hold myself up.

When he did take me back to his place about half an hour later, I threw up more times than I can remember, and couldn’t get out of bed until 5pm the next day. When I first got up, I fainted twice.

Daniel had given me four pills, when the recommended dosage was one pill per 60kg body weight. At that time I weighed less than that. Anyone could have taken advantage of me, I realised, and I gave Daniel an ultimatum: he needed to get away from the whole party scene, or I would leave him.

He cried again, told me he was trying, and that he was getting better. Stupidly, I believed him, and gave him another chance.

It wasn’t too long until he was back on the drugs.

The first time he told me he loved me was when I he was snorting speed through a fifty dollar note. I realised I loved him too. It didn’t occur to me why he carried around so much cash - he only worked part time and didn’t earn a hell of a lot.

I soon learned he was taking a cut of the money from his dealer, who would give him pills which he

would pass on to his friends.

We had a huge argument. I told him that was it, I was leaving him. He started crying again, and I told him he was a pathetic drug dealer. He grabbed me by the throat and choked me, squeezing my neck so hard that I couldn’t breathe.

I remember batting at him with my hands, pleading with my eyes for him to stop. He had this creepy smile on his face, as though it was turning him on. When he let go, I told him never to touch me like that again. He told me we were just “play-fighting”.

I guess I was in denial at that time; I blamed his behaviour on the fact he was coming off the drugs.

He convinced me he wasn’t really a drug dealer, that if his friends were going to do drugs, he didn’t want them to buy direct from his dealer, who could get vicious when angered.

That was the first time he physically attacked me.

He choked me three more times after that, as well as punching me in the breast and pushing me so hard I fell over on the ground after I got angry when he told me he didn’t like what I was wearing.

He slapped me when he saw me talking to my guy friend in town one night, and told me he would kill him if I ever talked to him again. He said he would slit my throat if I ever cheated on him.

Over the uni break, my cousin asked me to come and live with her in Auckland. She was a single mum needing someone to baby sit her kids while she was at work. It worked out well for me because she let me live there for free, and fed me as well. I arranged a part-time job myself, and prepared to tell Daniel I was moving to Auckland for a few months.

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Surprisingly, he was understanding. Things were getting a bit intense with us, and I needed some space. The night before I was due to leave, we made a picnic dinner and ate it at a park close by my flat.

We were chatting normally, when all of a sudden he started screaming at me. He called me a “fucking evil bitch”, and told me how rude and disrespectful I was to everyone. He told me all my friends hated me, and that he should leave me because I was such a bitch.

I started crying and stormed off. I was packing my things to go and stay at a friend’s place when he turned up, angry I had left him at the park.

He told me he needed me in his life to change, and that he had booked an appointment with a counsellor. I offered to drive him home, seeing as he didn’t have a car. When we were almost at his flat, he told me if I dropped him off and didn’t get out with him, that was me ending it. I told him I would still be there for him and, after he had seen a counsellor, we could talk.

He said, if I didn’t go inside with him, there was never a chance for us. I followed him inside.

I’m sure you’re thinking how I could have been so stupid to stay with Daniel. Looking back, I think the same thing, but I truly believed I could help him.

I was naive thinking I could change him. I learned that you can never change a person; it’s up to them to change themselves.

Moving to Auckland was the best thing for me.

Getting away from the situation enabled me to look at it from the outside, and I realised I was happier on my own. I ended things with Daniel over the phone,

and got the same sob story. This time I didn’t listen, boldly telling him we were never going to get back together.

The advice I have for other girls and guys in my situation, is to look out for the signs. It started out with some name calling, but progressively got worse.

I lost 10 kilos in only a few months from the stress of the relationship. A man - or a woman - should never, under any circumstances, hurt you on purpose.

Remove yourself from the situation: take a holiday, move town, just get away.

I’m happy to say that now I’m engaged to a fantastic man, and last year gave birth to our first daughter. I haven’t seen Daniel since, but I have heard from friends that he has a new girlfriend. I only hope he doesn’t do to her what he did to me.

Look out for the signs Palmerston North Women’s Refuge manager Ang Jury says many abusive relationships start out similar to Anna’s (name changed) story, but to look out for signs.

“If your partner wants to be with you 24/7, wants to know where you are all time and is acting possessive, something sinister is probably going on.

They may also try to isolate you socially from friends and family.

“The key thing young women need to remember is, if something feels wrong, it probably is.”

Many women trying to leave abusive partners are subject to emotional manipulation, Dr Jury says “It’s common for an abusive partner to threaten suicide or self-harm: ‘If you leave me, I’ll kill myself ’.”

This year Women’s Refuge was involved in

launching SHERO, a programme aimed at educating young people to look out for signs their friends are in violent relationships. It is a contraction of “she” and “hero”.

“A SHERO is someone who stands up for female rights. In order to become a SHERO, one must want to do something to help the women’s cause,” Dr Jury says.

Asked what women in abusive relationships should do, she adds: “Ring us and talk about your concerns. If you’re not comfortable doing that, visit our website.”

Some people feel they are setting off something they can’t control, or putting a label on their relationship if they contact Women’s Refuge, but they shouldn’t be afraid, she says.

“We don’t tell them to do anything: we listen, offer support and, should they need it, we offer safe houses all over the country if someone feels their life is in danger.”

On July 19, Woman’s Refuge will be raising awareness on the Palmerston North campus about domestic abuse, collecting donations and answering any questions students may have.

If you suspect that you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, call Women’s Refuge on 0800 REFUGE (0800 733 843), or visit their website: www.womensrefuge.org.nz To find out how to become a SHERO, visit the Women’s Refuge website.

MASSIVE FEATURE

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YOU KNOW I CAN’T EAT YOUR GHOST CHIPS Drink Driving is a huge issue. As the future leaders of this floating land mass of ours, it’s important we think about the impact of what having a few bevies before we head home actually means. Amie Broxton explains.

In simple terms, if you drink then drive, you’re a bloody idiot. But it’s not really that simple. The people of New Zealand have started to play a potentially lethal game of chicken by trying to work out how many drinks they can consume in the time frame they plan to be out.

The age-old mantra might be “eating’s cheating”, but many today consider eating is a legitimate way to attempt to get around the limits. And with the New Zealand Herald advertising the fact you can actually have four-and-a-half drinks over a three-hour period before you fall over the limit (based on a woman, 70kg, 1.65m tall), it’s no surprise people are now questioning what else might affect how much you can legally have before driving.

Recently there was a post on Facebook from a friend saying, “By the way I’m feeling this morning, I don’t think I should have driven home last night, LOL”. I was shocked, but not surprised.

I was shocked because of the blasé way in which this friend had laughed off the fact she had driven drunk, but not surprised, because this particular friend is a repeat offender.

Before you judge me for not having stopped her and being a Bloody Legend, I would like to point out that our group of friends has tried on multiple occasions, with a variety of methods, to try and stop her while she is drunk. We have even sat her down and talked it out while she’s sober. She appeared to understand and stopped for a while, but then it just started up again.

I don’t, nor will I ever understand, why people who drink-drive take these risks. I went to a high school where kids dropped off like flies in my forms 6 and 7 and the years after because of drunk driving.

Not always because they were the ones in the wrong.

A couple were in the car with someone driving under the influence, others were on the wrong stretch of road at the wrong time. Each and every single one of them, gone, just like that.

Why? Because someone made the poor decision to get behind the wheel of a car.

So the question is, have you ever had a few drinks, felt a bit off, but decided to drive anyway?

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The reality is, even if you’re not over the legal limit, you might be over your own personal limit, and you’re just as dangerous on the road. I’ve asked others if they have ever driven when they knew they shouldn’t have, some said yes, and all but one of them were ashamed and embarrassed by their choice to do so.

Those directly affected by the poor choices of a drink driver will tell you, it’s just not worth it. The loss of a loved one, or the end to your own life, is not worth that $7 rum and coke. As Constable Zak Exler of the Waitakere Police station says, “Just don’t do it, simple as that.”

He’s seen the mess at the other end of drink driving car crashes, and knows firsthand, it isn’t pretty.

Without even looking at the stats, we know drink driving is a huge issue, and that the government is doing it’s very best to convince people it’s a bad idea.

I can count four different ads that have been played on TV in recent months, all aimed at different demographics.

Some take the funny track, while others take the more visually horrific. At the moment, the humorous approach is being used, with shock ads taking the back seat. Whether one approach is better than the other, it’s hard to say. Statistics take time to be collated and reviewed to make the best sense of them.

But as is obvious by the ghost chips’ ad, the worst offenders by far are the blokes. Fifteen–24 year old men in 2011 accounted for more than 9000 drinkdriving offences. To put that into perspective, blokes from 25 to 44 cover the same number of offences over twice the number of years.

But not to forget the ladies out there. The same 15-24 year group for women had more than 3000 drink driving offences. Add that up: 12,000 drink driving offences in New Zealand by the under 24’s in 2011.

You might be waving your hand saying this won’t happen to me. Well here’s just a little bit of insight for you: if you’re lucky enough not to end up dead while driving drunk, what happens if you get caught?

As first time offenders, you will lose your licence for six months or more, you might end up in prison for

up to three months and a whooping great fine of up to $4500. For those under 20 caught drunk driving, the penalty is loss of licence for three months or more, prison for up to three months, and a fine of up to $2250.

And that’s just if you’re in the lower reaches of being over the limit. The big thing is, what if you kill someone else while you’re driving drunk: up to 10 years in prison, loss of licence for a year or more and a fine of up to $20,000.

Not to mention the psychological trauma involved. The sleepless nights and vivid nightmares, the snapshots of death that will haunt you. And it will haunt you.

Now bear in mind that all of this is just the stuff that will happen to you in the short-term. The longterm stuff, like being rejected for jobs because of a prior history of criminal conviction, is going to affect the rest of your life in a much bigger way. After all, what is the point of getting that lovely shiny degree done and dusted if you can’t put it to use because no one wants to employ you?

So driving drunk, it’s a bit bigger than just having a few beers and jumping in the car to head home.

Think about your future and what it means.

Personally, I’m an advocate for having cars that will only turn on if you’re under the limit. That way no one has the chance to drive under the influence.

But the roll-out of this technology is most likely still a little while off being available for all vehicles.

So plan ahead. I know it’s cheesy, and it’s most likely what you get from your mum, but believe it or not, she’s right. All it takes is making sure you have your ass covered.

Or if it’s a spur of the moment thing, make sure you have enough cash to pay for a taxi or, if you’re broke, maybe the bus. My point is, if you’re headed for a big night out or maybe just a few “beersies” with your mates, sort out the transport thing before you start.

That way there is no confusion. And if your designated driver ends up pissed anyway, make them pay for the taxi. End of.

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WHY MOVE? What is parkour? Some would say it involves running around, jumping off bridges, and flipping off walls. Max Bell explains what this sport is, and why we need to move.

Comparable to skateboarding in its emergence from the street into the mainstream, parkour also took off from humble beginnings of kids just playing around.

Skateboarding took roughly 30 years from its invention to the time it become well recognised, but this street activity gained mainstream recognition in as little as 10. Labeled as the first “internet age sport”, it took the web 2.0 age by storm.

Its growth can be attributed to the coinciding rise of video sharing and social media sites. The easy sharing of media that these avenues made possible allowed people to share its mind-blowing feats.

On the internet, people leapt tall buildings in a single bound and took impacts that would shatter spines. Big media soon picked up on the style, and stunts inspired by its jumps were showcased in movies and video games.

Today, parkour is practiced all over the world, even in places far from its birthplace of a small suburb in France, even in New Zealand.

On a rainy Sunday, myself and some friends met up with two photographers and head to a spot we’ve nicknamed “mini-Russia” after its run-down, urban-decayed style of architecture, characteristic of scenery from the high-skill-level videos out of Russia. It’s a country where every child is required to take gymnastics in school and military service is compulsory for males aged 18-27 – and thus breeds strong parkour practitioners and mind-blowing videos.

Mini-Russia is a hidden spot, right in the middle of the CBD, but a spot few people would know exists. It is a rooftop – dark, decayed, and jumbled with railings, exposed pipes, and suspended metal walkways.

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On one side is a ravine formed of concrete you could dump a body down. Building on a hill without concern for the gaps created between the oddly placed buildings has created a mess of ravines and narrow tunnels.

On another side is what possibly was once a sought-after rooftop apartmen, is now empty.

Looking through its windows reveals prime office space in the central city, if only it were not in the midst of urban-sprawl.

We’ve often toyed with the idea of renting it out and opening a parkour gym – condition of entry into the beginner class is that you can get to the gym’s front door.

The entire rooftop is private property, but it’s so forgotten that not even taggers have ruined its surfaces. It’s a perfect hideaway to train alone, undisturbed. We dump our bags and begin.

Amidst the rain, Louis runs up the top and jumps over a five-storey drop between two driveways. The distance is small, the drop is big, and it suits the photographer’s cameras perfectly.

We practise climbing among the exposed girders and vaulting over a low wall. Flips, gainers, corks, kongs, precisions, and so on, are our vocabulary – both physically and verbally.

Outside of this world of ours, the rain continues to fall over the city. In the apartments nearby, people are relaxing on their couches and worrying about the work-week ahead; in our world, the callouses on our hands hurt, the fresh air in our lungs chills, and our momentary escape from the rat-race is empowering.

So what is parkour? Founder of parkour David Belle says in his autobiography about his creation, “I had no other choice than to go on top of those

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tall apartment buildings. This way, I just erased this block of concrete blocking my view. …

“This is how I overcame the suffocating feeling of suburban districts. As if I had mountains for a landscape and found myself on top of them.”

This culture of freedom and rebellion and pushing limits that underlies the practice of parkour makes defining the activity in words a difficult task, like trying to herd human-cats who just want to explore and climb around the room.

But to give it a definition, the New Zealand Parkour Association defines it as “a training method of overcoming physical obstacles efficiently and effectively”.

The idea of “efficiently” is paramount, as parkour’s history originates from firefighting and military service.

These are paths where being able to move is part of the job-description and part of the tool-box required in order help others and stay alive. When Belle founded parkour in the 80’s and 90’s, he brought this sense of needing to move and perform in an emergency into his jaw-dropping practice.

However, alongside this sense of moving in an emergency, there also exists in parkour a sense of selfexpression through movement and showmanship.

So parkour has brought in movements borrowed from acrobatics and similar activities.

To set this influence and style apart from the more practical, only use in-case-of-emergency style, some have labelled it as “freerunning” – a word that was originally an English translation of the French derivative word “parkour”, from the phrase “parcours du combattant”, the obstacle-course used in military training.

Despite the convoluted history, bottomline is that it is characterised by its focus on movement interacting freely with the environment without equipment. Parkour establishes a new way of fitness in that it has no rules, no equipment, and no barriers (quite literally) – just movement for the joy of it.

Parkour has taken me on trips across New Zealand, to a tropical island off the coast of Australia, into TV ads and photoshoots, and to forming a business which runs fitness classes.

I was 19 when I started parkour; I’m now 26. It has been great for me. To continue my fitness career, I’m studying it at Massey. But as I continue to get into fitness, a problem plagues me...

Why exercise? Why even move?

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This has to be asked, because exercise is hard work.

So why bother? It makes you sweat. My ancestors worked hard, sweating their asses off doing hard labour, walking to school in the snow uphill (both ways!), so that their children could have access to a better life.

I think that life is here, because most of us have access to air-conditioning and heating and Xboxes and wide-screen TVs. Luxury.

So why purposely make things harder in our lives by exercising? Why not sit back and enjoy what our ancestors earned us with their hard physical work?

Who’s seen Wall-E? The cute robot thing?

Remember the part where all humans no longer do any physical activity, beyond lifting food to their mouths? And because of that, they’re all confined to hovering chairs, unable to do much at all, unable to truly live.

How far is that world from reality? Movement has become optional.

So why move? But for a moment let’s forget about some of the images often associated with movement and fitness. Forget about elite athletic performance, and forget about six-packs or toned thighs or looking good naked, and all of that – because there exists, in our biology, a base level of physical activity that is required for a base level of health.

This base level of fitness, and its knock-on into the base level of health, is essential to life. Don’t achieve it and there will be consequences in the form of illnesses.

This base level of physical activity is outlined in the Ministry of Health’s Physical Activity Guidelines.

They recommend that all New Zealand adults should “be active every day in as many ways as possible” and also do “at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on most if not all days of the week”.

Re-read that again. It’s not that much to ask. That “30 minutes” can be spread throughout the whole day. So it can include all the walking, getting up and down from the couch, carrying shopping to your car, etc that you do in an entire average day.

Unfortunately, if you take into account people’s desk jobs, transport choices, TV habits and so on, many people don’t even reach this minimum base level. The future of Wall-E is striking a bit too soon.

So we find ourselves in our current world where 9 per cent of all premature deaths worldwide are attributed to physical inactivity, in a country where one in three New Zealand adults are overweight or

obese, and thus at a higher risk for the associated health complications associated, and where the estimated cost to our economy from physical inactivity is $1.3 billion per year in health-care costs, premature deaths and lost productivity.

Much of all of that can be avoided if people only moved more.

Movement has also been linked to many beneficial outcomes one wouldn’t expect. As an example, studies have shown children’s grades in school are higher when they’re also physically active during the day. This is because when we move, our bodies secrete a special neurotropin named “brain-derived neurotropic factor”, which contributes towards strengthening neural connections.

In spite of the media stereotype of the dumb-jock, movement actually makes us smarter. Movement is also a great de-stressor, and a great activity that can be used to interact with others and socialise.

Studying isn’t the only thing you should be doing to pass your papers - getting up from the desk and unhunching your back from looking at a textbook for hours is also essential.

Why move? Because it is an essential element of health, and the more you move, the more health benefits you will gain.

How can you move more? The good news is you don’t need to pay for a gym membership, you don’t need to live in an area where a sports club exists and, most of all, you don’t need to have the latest sports clothes, shoes, headphones, and other useless crap just to step outside and go for a simple jog – all you have to do is merely move.

Movement can be separated from fitness and gyms, and it can also be separated from sport.

Just walk, run, use the stairs, stand more often, lift random things, hug random people, take breaks to stretch.

The only real equipment you need to exercise, is your body and, lucky for us, we all own that piece of equipment. There are even alternative options for movement out there - such as parkour.

A degree is pretty worthless without health.

After all, “When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself,” one of the founders of the scientific method is credited as saying. “Art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”

If universities invest in your knowledge, then movement goes towards investing in the underlying health required to use that knowledge.

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STOLEN GIRLFRIENDS CLUB: ADROGYNOUS NICHE New Zealand’s boutique fashion label “Stolen Girlfriends Club” has in a decade created a niche of its own, spiralling the brand into global stardom. Josh Berry catches up with Marc Moore and Dan Gosling, two of the directors behind its creative vision.

There is an aura of creative nous as I approach the address of 31 Crummer Road, Ponsonby. Vibrant street art adorns the slanted walls of a neglected construction site, and the bitter tinge of barista brewed coffee lingers below the grey clouds of a dully-lit weekday morning.

At the front entrance sits a sleek new Mini Paceman. With a second-glance, I register the oriental-orchid and hand-grenade print embellishing the vehicle’s exterior as the latest designer print released by the label, a tradition incorporated with the release of each new seasonal line.

The rustic bi-fold doors adorning the facade of the building exude an ounce of cheek, much like the underlying tone of the brand’s rules, which encompass youthful rebellion spirit, a healthy sense of humour and the ability to entertain and empower.

I squeeze through the narrow doorway entering a showroom filled with garments. A large rectangular mirror occupies the centre of the room, amplifying the room’s bareness, and my thought’s also, as I reassure myself I have turned up on the right day. My nerves are relieved as a staff member appears out of a doorway to my right.

She guides me through the doorway, leaving behind the rustic interior brick walls of the sterile show room and into the vibrantly lit creative hub of the club headquarters.

The workspace and its adjacent rooms buzz with life, a stark contrast from the still showroom. Staff scurry about pressing garments while a sound system beside a café-sized espresso machine fills the air with hip-hop flavoured melodies.

Seated at a shared desk behind glaring computer screens two-thirds of the creative genius behind the brand sit attentively.

In a red-checked tartan shirt matched with black pants and heavy boots, Marc Moore greets me. His face lights up when I agree to try one of his flat whites, a skill attained from a spell as a professional barista. I hold him to his word as he ducks behind the espresso machine, his long black locks and beard occasionally popping up to produce cheeky banter.

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“You’re gonna have to write about this coffee, Josh – It’s pretty fucking good,” he says amid flumes of steam.

In contrary fashion, a weary-eyed Dan Gosling offers a gentle handshake as we take a seat in a room brandishing the creative beginnings of next summer’s line. Donned in black, he sits down steadily. It turns out he has returned from the USA the night before, his presence in the office reflective of the tireless work ethic required with a manic form of drudgery.

The club’s third and final director, Luke Harwood, has been based in New York City for the last few years. However, his absence is made up for through the efforts of a tight-knit team working around the clock.

Stolen Girlfriends Club, the brainchild of the three friends, has become somewhat of a household name since its inception in 2005. With no formal training, they set out to fill a void in the clothing market.

Their bustling personalities and presence about town soon boosted them into the limelight; with their ability to throw a ripping party and/or fashion show, they were an instant hit.

Moore and Gosling hold humble regard, however, for the brand that has transformed their lives from laidback surfers and athletes to high-end fashion designers.

“At the time we kind of wanted to start our own clothing label purely just to make things that we couldn’t find out in the market,” Moore says.

“Just that typical cliché thing, you know, the reason that most designers start a label.”

With no real sense of where they were heading, the trio began producing printed t-shirts, a trend that was beginning to blow-up internationally.

“That’s why we started and we didn’t have any goal from the get go – it was just at that point in time wanting to do something creative and, secondly, to create something we really wanted to wear and were really proud of,” Moore says.

“It just so happened to be a bunch of t-shirts, shitty jeans and a few jewellery pieces which we still

have in the range today.”

Humour is heavily incorporated into the labels ethos. And it is easy to see why. Moore and Gosling are skilled in the art of being interviewed, taking advantage of any chance to contribute a laugh - a characteristic from their days as innocent, ambitious, free-spirited kids.

“We’ve always had a bit of humour in the brand,” Gosling says.

“We don’t take ourselves too seriously – we’re not pretending that we are the amazing pattern makers you know, we’re creating stuff that we wanna wear.”

But creating a mid-to high end clothing label from the ground up doesn’t happen overnight, contrasting pathways taken by Moore and Gosling a clear indicator of their disparate youth.

Moore grew up in the sleepy seaside town of Raglan. Situated on the North Island’s West Coast, around 40 minutes drive from Hamilton, the area is renowned for its world-class surfing point breaks: Manu Bay, Whale Bay and Indicators.

Raised by a solo mum, he never had the luxury of developing a relationship with his father, the late Marc Hunter, former singer of rock band Dragon.

Instead, he embraced the small-town vibe and flourished in the riches of surfing the quality waves Raglan had on offer.

“It keeps you humble when you grow up in a small town - I think that’s a really good thing and I like that about the small towns,” Moore says.

“The minute you think you might be better than someone you’ll get knocked down pretty quickly – even in the surfing days, if you were doing really well, you’d still be super humble about it.”

Moore took to surfing from a young age, with aspirations to become a pro-surfer. However, one obstacle stood in his way.

“I hated school. I was a bastard at school, it was horrible, I just didn’t want to be there,” he says of his days spent at Raglan Area School.

“I used to wag all the time and go surfing - I always hung out with the wrong people too, hung out with the hood-rats, which was not good.”

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Despite this he put in enough work to pass fifth form, which was enough for him to move onto something new.

“I had fun though! I just passed School C [School Certificate] in fifth form, like, got pretty much 50’s for everything,” he says.

“But in sixth form I fell off, and then just went to work in surfboard factories and surf as much as possible.”

From here Moore leapt at opportunities given to him as new doors opened within the surf scene. His surfing taking him to new heights as sponsors took him onboard.

“I always wanted to be a pro-surfer. That was my dream growing up in Raglan, I wanted to make money out of surfing,” he says.

The realisation of how small New Zealand’s surfing scene was became apparent to Moore early on.

“I saw a lot of the older guys who have had heaps Massivemagazine.org.nz

of success in their careers who were like best in New Zealand or whatever, and they were just driving shitbox cars and renting houses,” Moore says.

“As I got a bit older I was like ‘hey maybe that’s not what I want, you know’ – I wanted to be comfortable when I was older and have a good lifestyle.

“I always knew there was probably something else out there for me and I wasn’t afraid of a nine-to-five job ,but I knew it sort of had to be something semicreative.”

With this turning point, Moore began exploring his creative side through painting. He also took on sales-marketing and design input with “Town & Country” before taking on a brand manager role for “Insight”.

By contrast, Gosling was raised in the suburb of Devonport in Auckland. Here he was surrounded by tight-knit family and friends, allowing him the freedom to develop as an all-rounder in both school

and sport.

“My parents encouraged me and, not only that, they let me do everything,” he says.

“I would be outside all of the time with the ball you know, just doing something – no computers in those days maaate,” he says cheekily.

Gosling thrived in the school-yard environment, his passion for taking on opportunities leading him, post-school, into a distribution job.

“I loved school, I loved sports and I had good grades, plus a good group of friends, so I enjoyed it,” he says.

“I was friends with a guy called Dave England. He had a snowboard company and asked if I wanted to come do [distribution] and I’d just finished school so was like, ‘yeah why not give this a whirl’.”

“That’s how it started - I had no idea what I was doing, just kind of jumped into it.”

This allowed him to further his education at

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Auckland University where he attained a doubledegree in marketing and international business.

He also tackled business opportunities abroad. But becoming a “suit” wasn’t his idea of a fulfilling career.

“I went to London and lived there and worked there wearing, like, a three-piece suit and stuff to work (he erupts with laughter) then came back to NZ and my parents were, like, you need to get a proper job,” he says.

“But that was what I didn’t want to do, and I knew that ,so I stumbled onto something that I wanted to do.”

Through their joint passion of surfing Moore, Gosling and Harwood came together embracing the relaxed atmosphere and pleasures that surfing offered.

“Surfing’s what brought Luke and I together, we surfed contests together year after year and travelled around New Zealand doing the circuit and stuff and became really good friends,” Moore says.

“We grew up on opposite coasts which was always quite fun, just taking the piss out of each other - East is least, West is best!”

Harwood grew up in Whangamata, a small town on the East Coast of the Coromandel. Here he developed a friendship with Gosling, whose family had a bach on the beach. The three met through each other and summers spent surfing the “Whanga bar” and Coromandel beaches.

This was the catalyst for things to come.

The Stolen Girlfriends Club name came about through an art exhibition Moore produced for his first solo-exhibition. It was the title and theme for the art-show which included a collection of 12 works all painted under the same theme – Stolen Girlfriends Club.

“I had this idea of a gang that would steal (rescue) girls out of shitty relationships, quite romantic…..or perhaps idealistic,” Moore says.

“People really loved the name of the art-show so, when we started creating clothes, it seemed the perfect name for the brand.”

When the three got together to start the clothing line, the name fitted well with the themes and ideals they wished to portray.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The success of the “Stolen” trio can largely be put down to their contrasting personalities. The characteristics, traits and talents they each possess complement their individual creative instincts.

Moore’s creative vibes, Gosling’s business nous, and Harwood’s background in client relationship, sales and marketing, meant all the boxes were ticked for the start-up.

And things are looking bright for the future.

They’ve just previewed their Spring 2013 line at a catwalk show. Titled “Nasty Goreng”, the line features oriental designs merged with military themes, as well as the creation of a “Death Moth” print.

“We always have, like, two opposing themes in our collection – we hope that both of them in the middle somewhere will create juxtaposition, something a little new,” Moore says.

“So for this line we’ve gone oriental and military; originally it was Asian hooker, but don’t tell anyone, ha.”

They have also stepped up a worldwide presence with an androgynous diffusion line released through Urban Outfitters titled “The Fates”. The name was taken from the first ever collection released by the club in 2005. The threat of cannibalising their mainline is a worry, but the decision to go ahead evolved primarily out of experimentation.

“We just want to build it up to the point where it’s running itself,” Gosling says.

“We want to see how big we can get it, aye – I can’t imagine myself doing anything else, I’ve thought about,” Moore says.

“Even if I was doing nothing and retired, I reckon I’d get bored; even if I was going surfing everyday and it was perfect everyday, I’d need something more.”

Diversification is also something being taken on board with the guys forming side-projects to keep busy.

“Yeah, Dan’s doing a bit of weed dealing on the side ha (jokes),” Moore remarks with a grin.

Gosling has four businesses, which keep him busy with fashion and surfing distribution, to name a few. He also has a young family to add to the hectic lifestyle.

“You gotta keep on moving,” he says.

“You want something done, you ask a busy person to do it,” Moore asserts.

Moore, along with pal Steve Dunstan, has formed a DJing duo called “People of Paris”, although it has been a hobby more than anything else.

“The late nights don’t work well with working all day,” he says.

“But that’s more of a release though, it’s kind of fun – we do Rhythm and Vines and that sort of stuff.”

Harwood has taken advantage of New Zealand’s reputable coffee culture by setting up a coffee shop in New York City. Named the “Happy Bones Café”, he had noticed a trend of over-priced coffee in The Big Apple, which also lacked quality. He went to great lengths looking for a decent barista, before headhunting the barista from his favourite Ponsonby Road cafe.

It seems hard work does pay off in the frantic world of fashion design. This is more than true in the circumstances of Stolen Girlfriends Club. However, it is the creative minds and instinct behind the brand that have brought it to where it is today.

“We were so naive – and I think that’s probably what helped us at the start,” Moore says.

“We had no expectations – no expectations and no limitations, it’s amazing what you can create from nothing when you’re thinking like that.”

It is this kind of talent and thinking that is influencing future generations of New Zealanders. In a world saturated with expectations, pressure to excel and to conform, the guys at Stolen Girlfriends Club have paved the way for alternate and contemporary thinking.

“I think there is a lot of pressure on young people these days to get out there and get a job,” Moore says.

“But you can actually just go through the motions and try your hand at a few different things and, if it doesn’t work out it’s all good – just keep working out what you don’t want to do and it will be bring you closer to realise what you do want to do.”

“I don’t sit in the design room pinning garments on a mannequin and getting on the sewing machine whipping it up.

“I couldn’t sew to save my life you know!”

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LOLA Massey student Kate Davis presents her creative non-fiction piece inspired by her time working as a brothel manager.

The situation was not of my making, it’s true, but I am responsible for how I chose to handle it. I just wanted to let you know that she was there when I arrived on shift. I did the best I could, and I don’t know what I could have done differently. Not even now.

This incident occurred maybe twenty years ago, but I still wish there had been another option, and that there would be a better option now. If that was the best I could do, was it, and is it still, really good enough? What would you do in the same situation?

The industry was a little more condensed back then: there were the parlours as we called brothels, a few escort services, and some private workers. I was the night shift manager, in what was considered one of the more up-market parlours. There were around half a dozen parlours that fitted into that category, and it was common for the working girls to have worked at several of them. They were scattered around the periphery of the city, all operating in a similar way. They charged about the same, they had receptionists on the door, security lights and emergency buzzers in the rooms, rostered shifts, and regular hours. If they sent out escorts they employed a driver. There was certain professionalism and a set of standards around the way they operated.

Then there was Fort St. Downtown, down market, and we looked down on the girls. That was when Fort Street had around a dozen parlours and half a dozen strip clubs, a cinema, peep shows and bars. It was a proper little red light district.

The Fort Street parlours were perceived as less professional all around. Occasionally a Fort Street working girl would trade up, but not often.

Occasionally you would hear of one of our girls “ending up” down on Fort Street. But that usually only happened if they had been fired from all the ‘good’ brothels, or had a problem.

The Fort Street parlours were rumoured to charge less, you could come and go as you pleased. There was no receptionist and either the girls themselves,

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or even worse, a male manager/bouncer would do the desk and answer the phone.

It was rumoured they sent escorts out in taxis!

Even to private homes. Working Fort Street was viewed as a step down. A big step down.

The parlour I worked in didn’t really have any contact with Fort St; we were further uptown and a world away. But when it came to the managers and the owners, we all either knew each other, or knew of each other. The only time we all came together was if there was a police raid, vice was checking the police book, or immigration was doing the rounds.

Then phone calls would be made, giving the others the heads up.

Then there was Karangahape Road. A couple of really dodgy parlours, a strip club, and the street workers. Parlours where you could rent rooms for an hour and they didn’t even have showers. I didn’t know anyone who worked on the street; I would never have mentioned it, if she hadn’t.

There was also a great divide between the sex workers and the strippers, and there still is. A strange almost political polarity, where the dancers looked down on the sex workers and the sex workers looked down on the dancers.

I had often heard sex workers talk about the strippers, and how they could never do that. They considered it degrading, being on stage, being ogled by anyone who walked in, for a measly shift allowance and tips. At least in the parlour there was a camera on the stairs and they could view the clients on a monitor and hide if necessary. It was one-onone, and the sex workers on the whole considered stripping, exploitation.

It was before the industry was decriminalised, but I don’t know if that would have had made any difference to this situation, or prevented it from arising again. People say that the bosses are far more professional now, but still, if faced with her, would they really react differently? Could they? Have things really changed?

It was a Saturday night, which is the second busiest night of the week. 6.30pm was change-over, the day girls were leaving, the night shift was arriving, and everyone was busy changing from work clothes to casual clothes, or casual clothes to work clothes.

Hair was being done, makeup being applied, or removed, all cramped around a tiny mirror. All chatting about the day that had been, or the events of the night prior. Dresses and shoes were being tried on, swapped and borrowed, and the atmosphere was similar to that of a group of woman anywhere getting ready for a big night out.

The day receptionist had already cashed up her till and was waiting to handover the shift, quickly filling me in with the day’s gossip.

“It’s been flat out all day, the phone didn’t stop so tonight should be good, and you have 15 girls rostered on”.

As she spoke, she put on her coat, picked up her handbag, and headed for the security door that separated the parlour from the reception area. Just as she went through the door she turned and said, “Oh, and there’s a new girl. She’s worked the day shift but is keen to do a double. The boss hired her. I haven’t done her paper work; he said you could sort it. No ID but I told her she would have to bring it before her next shift.”

I sighed, and asked, “Has she worked before?” The day receptionist nodded yes.

I exhaled, somewhat relieved. New girls that had worked before were a far easier proposition than those who were totally new to the game.

“What’s her name?” I asked. But the day receptionist was already out the front door.

I looked at the roster seeing how the staff line-up was looking for the night ahead. Receptionists, or managers, as we were called, were paid an hourly rate, but what made the job worthwhile was the cash incentive.

Managing a parlour involves a multitude of talents, not in the least the ability to herd cats but, at the end

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She was beautiful. Just so beautiful. With her thick, long golden blonde hair, tiny heart shaped face, and widely spaced blue eyes... SHE, WAS LOLA.

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There was the code, that unspoken code amongst those that live just a little beyond the law. Never nark. of the day, you were really working in sales. Telesales on the several different phone lines, helping write print advertisements and hard copy for the girls, and talking the clients through the door when they came upstairs.

There was even the option to up-sell: book an extra girl, have two, or another hour, take her back to your hotel, keep her for the night. There were set sales targets and, once achieved, bonuses were paid.

To achieve the sales, you really need the stock: who was rostered on, directly affected how efficiently you could sell. I studied the roster intently, idly wandering what the new girl looked like as I noticed I had only two blondes.

Charlotte popped her head around the door looking into the office and asked if I had a minute.

Charlotte had worked at the parlour for years, and was a popular and professional worker. I always had time for Charlotte. Some of the girls thought she was stuck-up, but in reality she was just a private person, and normally, kept herself to herself.

I beckoned her into the little back office, off the reception area. She seemed a little hesitant when she asked if I had met the new girl yet.

“No, why?”

Looking at Charlottes face, framed with concern, I knew there was a problem.

“She’s young,” she said.

“Oh shit. How young?” I asked.

“Way too young” she replied.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. The boss had brought her in this morning. She had already done four clients. I asked Charlotte what she knew. Charlotte said she was beautiful. She wasn’t out of it and seemed happy.

In fact when Charlotte looked at me and talked about her, you could see that there was no malice or jealousy, but some affection. Charlotte had come in early to see a regular, and then got to chatting with her in the kitchen.

“She said eighteen but she’s lying,” Charlotte told me. “By a lot.”

The law was clear then, as it is now. Eighteen, with ID. One thing sure to bring the police down on you was hiring underage girls. But it wasn’t just the law that kept the underage workers away from the clubs.

It was the working girls themselves. This wasn’t a job for children. This might not suit the tastes of the clients, but let’s face it; women have been known to lie about their age.

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Charlotte was sitting in the office behind the reception desk, filling me in, when we heard movement coming up the hall. Murmurs, laughing, and a client walked out through the door and past the reception desk on his way out. He glanced up at me and said goodnight with a cheery wave as he departed.

She had her back to me and was skipping down the hall. I called her name, but she didn’t respond, so I repeated it, louder. She stopped, turned and walked back towards me.

She was beautiful. Just so beautiful. With her thick, long golden blonde hair, tiny heart shaped face, and widely spaced blue eyes. A smattering of faint freckles across a tiny nose and flawless creamy skin. She was small and slender, and she walked in the way young girls do. That easy carefree gait, unaffected and without style. The way they walk before they reach the age when they walk as though as everyone is staring at them, because everyone is.

I will just say it then. She walked like a child. She had the body of a child.

She, was Lola.

Charlotte brought in a glass of juice and a slice of pizza for her, and asked me if she should look after the phone. I nodded gratefully, and turned my attention to Lola. It was surprisingly easy to get her chatting.

Charlotte had gone some way to convincing her that she should trust me, and it was probably best just to tell me the truth. She looked a little nervous initially then she gradually became more confident.

No, not confident, more comfortable and chatty.

Last night, she had been working on one of the back streets off Karangahape Road. The boss had pulled up and asked her what she was doing. He then said, if she wanted to work inside, to come and see him this morning, and he had handed her a card.

He said she was far too pretty for the street.

She smiled and blushed when she told me this. As if she couldn’t believe the compliment. I smiled encouragingly, but internally, I was seething. Angry he had brought her here, even angrier he had left her on the street last night.

What did I expect him to do, he would ask me later?

It wasn’t her first night on the street. She had done it a couple of times before when she had run away.

She needed the money. She had nowhere to stay.

Then she asked if she could sleep in one of the rooms here when we closed. I avoided answering, smiling back at her, trying to show no shock.

I was shocked. The street. This beautiful girl, working on the street. I glanced at Charlotte, who looked back at me, shaking her head, sadly.

I asked her how old she was, and she replied “eighteen”. I laughed softly, and shook my head.

“How old are you Lola?” and then I remained silent until the pause became too long and she had to respond. She spoke so quietly I had to lean forward to catch what she had said.

“Thirteen”, she whispered, “are you going to call the police?”

Calling the police hadn’t entered my mind.

When working in an illicit industry, the instinct is never to call in the authorities that want to bust you. Especially not about an underage worker who has just worked a shift in your brothel. An underage worker who has just fucked four clients.

There were other reasons for not calling the police as well. At that time every licensed massage parlour had to have a register or what we called a police book. There we recorded the details of every woman working at the establishment. The book had columns for the working name, real name, what form of ID they had provided and the details of the ID, and the signature of the woman.

It was in the way of a declaration stating that they were of age and had no convictions. It was illegal to employ anyone in a parlour who had a criminal conviction for either drugs or soliciting.

Self preservation was also a consideration. If I called the cops, and on the off chance the police ignored the fact we had employed an underage girl with no ID, my boss wouldn’t.

If I called the police I would get the sack. If I called the police, at least half the women on the shift would run out the back door because they had minor convictions or used false ID. Even if you had no convictions, a lot of the woman used false ID, just so their real name wasn’t on some police record somewhere.

Then there was the code, that unspoken code amongst those that live just a little beyond the law.

Never nark.

Finally, the reason not to call the police was simply this. Her story. I had no way of knowing if what she told me was true, but even if it wasn’t, she was

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running from something. The police were obligated to call Child Youth and Family (CYFS), and CYFS were obligated to call her family. I assured her I wouldn’t call anyone, and gradually pieced together her story.

Home was intolerable, her mother and she were constantly fighting, and Lola had accused the stepfather of sexual abuse. She had not been believed, due to her history of unreliable behaviour, and false claims of previous transgressions. There had been counsellors and health professionals. There was a CYFS case worker and a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. She kept leaving. They kept returning her to her home, which was in a leafy suburb where she attended a school zoned posh.

Her parents were professionals.

As she told her story, she started to cry. By the time she finished, she was unable to continue speaking.

Charlotte was holding her while she convulsed with loud hiccupping sobs. Tears and snot streaming down her face, she cried loudly, unable to exercise any restraint until, stopping to gulp in air, she cried herself out of breath. She is probably even younger, I remember thinking, she is probably only twelve. She cried and she cried. She bawled like a child.

A cup of tea was fetched, word had spread, and some of the other women had gently offered assistance, in tissues, hugs, and offering me support in the form of concerned glances. As Lola pulled herself together, bouncing back to the happy girl of half an hour ago, the door bell went. I told Lola to stay where she was in the office behind the reception area.

The client standing at reception was a regular; he offered payment for an hour. He asked if there were any new girls working and I realised his gaze had travelled over my shoulder to the office beyond.

He was staring transfixed, his mouth slack. I looked behind me.

Lola, had wheeled her chair forward, and positioned herself in the doorway. Her posture was slumped, and untidy. One hand was raised to her mouth, as though biting her nails, her head was slightly tilted forward and she was looking up at him from beneath her lowered lashes, with a look both knowing and wanton. Her legs had fallen open.

With her other hand she was touching herself.

I dispatched the client to the care of the women in the lounge and Lola to the kitchen, and then acted

decisively. I had no choice. I had to get her out of here. I called Bert, who owned a strip club on Fort St. It wasn’t one of the big, better strip clubs where the dances were choreographed and the girls were lithe athletes with the club supplying costumes, tailor made for pole dancing. Like the massage parlours they ran tighter rules and wouldn’t risk an underage runaway.

No, this was the type of the club where girls gyrated to taped music, and dancing skill was secondary to full exposure. This was strip, without the tease.

He also ran a peep show. He had a reputation for being fiercely protective of his girls, to the point of controlling.

His girls didn’t have sex for money, he liked to point out. They weren’t whores, nor would he ever call them strippers. His girls were dancers. True he had been known to sleep with some of them, and so had some of his selected friends; he had also been known to marry them.

I filled him in with only the essential detail.

A pretty young girl, who couldn’t stay here, who needed I.D, and a safe place to stay. He was eager to help.

I asked Charlotte to drive her down and I told Lola to gather her things. She wanted to stay here, she told me. She wanted to talk to the boss; she became loud and started to shout. I remained calm and told her she couldn’t. She started to plead, she would work hard, the clients liked her, no-one had complained, had they? Where was I sending her she wanted to know? Where could she go?

I remained silent and resolute, until finally she lapsed into a sulking silence. I looked at her for the last time, marvelling again at how beautiful she was.

Though perhaps not quite as beautiful as she had been an hour ago, when I first saw her. I smiled at her and asked, “Lola, do you like to dance?”

She smiled back, nodding enthusiastically. Of course she did.

Didn’t all girls her age?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Davis, a Massey University student studying English and politics has had a life many couldn’t even begin to dream of. Coming from a middle class family, she became a prostitute not for the reasons many women end up in that work, but because she wanted excitement. She stayed in the sex industry for many years, going on to marry an ex-Hells Angel. Motivated by her life, she began writing her experiences into a series of short stories. All stories written by her draw on real life events. Lola, the story featured in this issue of MASSIVE, is about a 13-year-old girl who becomes a prostitute. As Davis talks about Lola, she is saddened by the memory “It just sticks with me because I always think to myself, could I have done more, but then I think, that is the point to this story – could we all do better?” The sad thing about this story is there are hundreds of “Lola’s” out there that most of us are unaware of. Her stories give the reader something to think about, and leave the reader wanting to find out more. Her colloquial style of writing makes it easy for the reader to engage. Davis hopes to one day turn her stories into a book.

Tasmin Wheeler

Massive ENTERTAINMENT FEATURE

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BAILEY ON BRAINWAVE AND BROADCASTING ONE News’ former television presenter Judy Bailey, famously and affectionately known as “Mother of the Nation”, is a graduate of the old Graduate Diploma of Journalism, the predecessor of Massey’s Post-Graduate Diploma of Journalism (before Massey bought out Wellington Polytechnic). Claydan Krivan-Mutu chats to her about what she’s been up to since leaving television, advice for young journalists, and Brainwave Trust, an organisation making huge contributions to New Zealand families.

Hi there Judy, what you have been up to since leaving the news in 2005?

Well I’ve been doing all sort of things really; I do a bit of travelling, writing, a bit of promotional stuff, a bit of broadcasting, and I’m very involved in the Brainwave Trust.

What is Brainwave?

Brainwave is an organisation that brings the latest research in neuroscience to people who work with children and young families. We present this latest research in words of one syllable so people like you and I can understand it. We teach all sorts of people, including social workers, the police, midwives and early childhood teachers, and we have a programme in schools that educate the parents of the future. We also work in prisons.

The intention of Brainwave, how I perceive it, is you are helping children who are suffering from violence?

It’s broader than that. We offer scientific information to how the brain grows. So what we now know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that our experiences of nurture are more important than we could have ever perceived possible. They actually build the brain so they can change the physiology of the brain. The brain is very plastic when you are born, and provides an amazing opportunity in order to get things right.

The brain is designed to adapt to the environment it encounters. So you get the brain you need for the environment that you grow up in. If you grow up in a chaotic, hurtful, hateful and aggressive environment, then your brain is likely to become wired for the fight or flight response. You may become hyper vigilant.

There is a continuum where some people dissociate with everything around them and retreat into their

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own worlds, and girls tend to do that, whereas boys tend to become more aggressive, disruptive, hyper-alert, and difficult to handle. They are often misdiagnosed with ADHD. There is a broad range of people in the middle that exhibit signs from both sides of the spectrum. Very young children generally dissociate from what’s going on around them.

In comparison to other counties, does New Zealand have a problem with nurturing their children?

We most certainly do. We are languishing down there at the bottom of the OECD table for child safety. We have a real problem with violence, and a real problem with neglect. We also have a real problem with middle class neglect. Where kids have a lot of money, and every material thing they might require, but they don’t get the love and attention they need to grow into healthy and contributing adults.

Is Brainwave helping to change this?

Yes. This is basically why I am involved in it. I felt like, when I was reading the news, that I was delivering a chronicle of disaster day in and day out, and I wondered what caused the perpetrators of this violence to act in the way they did.

When you look into the backgrounds of these people, they have grown up in hurtful hateful environments themselves. Their brains have been wired to suit their environments very well. They are constantly on alert, they see aggression and danger in things that you and I would ignore, and it causes them to react in unexplained ways.

This is very important information to get out to people, so that people really understand how important those early years are. The time frame is so short for getting things right, from conception to

around about three, but the first year of life is critical.

This is when the pathways are laid down to allow a child to trust the world; to understand consequence, to feel remorse, to feel empathy, and to understand peopland form stable social relationships.

These things all happen in the first years of life, and it is triggered by nurture and loving relationships.

The very first relationship a baby forms with his primary caregiver, usually his mother, that we have, is pc talk … [it’s] a kind of template for all future relationships down the track. So we want to get it right. It is really important to support families. There are some families out there that are really struggling.

Does Brainwave go to those services and advise them of this research to help this problem?

Yes, absolutely. We are not service providers at all, we have the science that should inform the practice of people who are already working at the rock face.

For instance, we do a lot of presentations with CYFs and early childhood centres. We see our role as delivering this vital information of neuroscience.

We’re the first generation to have this information at our fingertips. We’ve always known it was important to care for children, but now we know that how you’re nurtured actually changes the shape of your brain.

What is your role at Brainwave?

I’m a presenter for them, and a trustee. I work a bit behind the scenes as well. We are developing a major programme for schools that we have funding for from the private sector to deliver into secondary schools in the Wanganui-Manawatu area. We piloted it in Auckland.

It’s three one-hour sections and it is amazing, the results we are having from these kids - their understanding of how the brain grows and what

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helps it, and what hinders it. One of the key messages that we bring to people is that seeing violence is just as bad as being part of it. It’s a powerful message.

Do you feel that your television career aided in the success of Brainwave?

I suppose in the way that it has given me a profile.

It means that people might possibly just listen. Once they begin to hear this stuff, it’s just so powerful. I’ve been working for Brainwave a long time before I left telly – ‘98 we started.

It’s been a long road, but people are really beginning to get it now. People over a broad spectrum of disciplines are saying the same thing - geneticists, psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists - they are all saying the same thing: that our relationships are more important than we ever believe possible in the building of the brain. We also deliver in prisons, when you see this kind of dawning coming across the faces of people who have been long term prisoners who have come from generations of long term abuse and violence. When you see them understand why they feel angry, sad and disenfranchised, it’s a real motivation for change, for them to want something better for their children. It’s free and it’s not rocket science.

More into your journalism career now. Do you miss presenting the news?

Being out front? Not a bit!

Why’s that?

You know, I never really wanted to be out front.

Yes, you attended the wrong class didn’t you?

I did! I always knew I wanted to write. When I went to journalism school there was this amazing magazine out called Thursday edited by Marcia Russell. She was a brilliant journalist. It was a thinking woman’s magazine, and I wanted to write about issues. I wanted to change the world [laughs].

But I did, I ended up in the wrong journalism prefab and instead of magazine journalism I ended up in news. But I just thought the people in there were really interesting, opinionated, stroppy people.

I thought it would be quite a fun year. So that’s how I ended up in news. My first love is reporting, writing and researching stories, and I only really started presenting when I had children to have a part time job, instead of being available 24/7. So that’s how I came to be a presenter really.

It wasn’t as easy as it used to be in getting into the industry - how do you get into the industry now?

I think you have to want it very badly. You have to be prepared and go in there, make a nuisance of yourself, and be prepared to earn diddly-squat… just be passionate – which is such an overworked word to have a calling for it. It is a wonderful, wonderful job, journalism, but it’s hard - it is very hard when you’re up front. A lot of people ask me how to be

a presenter. Actually presenting is not all beer and skittles – you’re very exposed. Once you have lost your privacy that is the end of it. Anonymity is a very precious thing and, once it’s gone, it’s gone. I would say, approach it with caution.

Do you miss the industry?

I am doing a little writing still, which is great, and I love it to bits. I do a bit of broadcasting, Anzac Day, and so on. Do I miss the news though? No. Not one bit.

You wouldn’t consider getting back into the industry?

No I don’t think so. I miss the team thing. When you freelance you are very alone. I did the travel series in Australia that I just adored, that was fun being with a team again, you know, you’re part of the crew, a tight unit. But no, I definitely don’t miss the whole news thing one bit. It’s changed so much.

You’re very exposed when you’re out front, with blogs, Facebook and Twitter, and God knows what anybody can say stuff about you. It can be very harsh.

The industry has changed a lot - you don’t think it’s a positive change?

Some things are better - we are now able to cover stories immediately. [But] I think a lot of the depth is missing. I do feel that I am a bit old fashioned. I love my current affairs. I like a bit of meat.

So hegemonic ideologies are being enforced?

Hegemonic ideology? Explain what you mean!

[Laughs] Those in power enforcing their ideas into society.

Do you think this is what is happening nowadays?

Goodness, this is a very weighty question. I suppose there always has to be one person who decides what goes in the bulletin. I don’t know! I’m a bit of an idealist, I kind of hope that news - it’s a bit of vain hope isn’t it - that news stands outside that a bit, that it has a bit of integrity.

The celebrification of journalists now - you’re a good example - many people may see you as a celebrity. Is that a good thing?

It depends on how you look at it. It depends on what you do with it. You can use it very powerfully, or you can fritter it. The thing about celebrity is that it is a perceived thing, not a real thing, and television has been responsible for it. You are in people’s living rooms night after night after night, and they think they know you. The television companies actually work that, and insist in you doing more and more women’s magazines so the audience know you better.

Before you know it you are a celebrity; it’s just the way things are, I guess.

What news story has stuck with you forever, and why?

That’s very tricky. Looking back over the whole time in news, when the world was changing, I think

the symbol of that was the Berlin Wall. That was the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the new world order. It was very exciting to be there for that talking to our correspondent live as he was sitting on the wall as Berliners were chipping away at it. That was pretty spine tingling. I remember Bastion Point as a water shed in race relations for us here.

What’s the biggest thing you have learnt from being a journalist?

There are always two sides to a story, and often things are not what they seem. It’s always good to seek more deeply and to question.

Who’s your favourite person?

What comes to mind right now is Nelson Mandela, because of his courage.

Do you enjoy politics in New Zealand?

Oh yes! [Laughs] Politicians….not so much!

Best place in the world?

Flaxmill Bay (New Zealand).

Favourite journalist?

Oh gosh, this is very tricky! I really enjoyed reading Richard Long’s political work on the Dominion Post. I enjoy Fran O’Sullivan’s business journalism.

I really enjoyed Paul Holmes as well. I found him to be incredibly human in his approach and he was a brilliant writer! He had the common touch.

What is some advice for future journalists out there?

Remember it’s about the story. Be yourself and remember the story.

Last night I watched your final news broadcast.

Not going to lie, Judy, I shed a tear. ​[Laughs] Oh did you? What a fabulous bloke you are! I wish it would go away! [Laughs]

BRAINWAVE TRUST

Brainwave’ Trust Aotearoa’s vision is that all children in Aotearoa New Zealand are valued and nurtured so they can reach their full potential. They aim to raise awareness about new findings in brain research and to educate everyone who has an impact on the early life of children about the important implications this has on children’s physical, social, intellectual and emotional development.

To learn more visit www.brainwave.org.nz or join them on Facebook. If you would like to fundraise for them, start your own fundraising campaign today on www.everydayhero.co.nz.

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LIVING WITH CANCER A TRUE STORY BY JESSICA FRANK

At the beginning of December 2010, I was diagnosed with Classical Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

I had just finished year eleven at High school and I was sixteen. In quick succession of my diagnosis, I was set on a treatment path that put me through six rounds of ABVD - Adriamycin, Bleomycin, Vinblastine and Dacarbazine - chemotherapy that followed by ten doses of radiotherapy.

Despite the fact I had a great chance of being cured, and my treatment was on the lesser side of horrible, I reacted to it in a way that still affects me today. I experienced the accounted-for nausea and tiredness, the hair and weight loss, crippling nerve pain and shortness of breath, as well as the not-so-accountedfor depression and anxiety that has followed me into remission.

Apart from briefly providing a bit of context, I don’t really fancy getting into the nitty gritty details of my recovery, but I do want to share a couple of things that I have taken from the experience.

Throughout my treatment, I remember having a distinct feeling of anger and disappointment.

These emotions were not stirred by the illness itself, but by the absence of some great realisation that seemed to accompany others’ stories of tribulation and survival. I remember feeling utterly ripped off because I had waited for a marvellous epiphany to waltz on through my door and plant itself on my lap.

At the time, I believed such an occurrence would immediately transform my outlook on the world and give way to some sort of bullshit “rebirthing”. This.

Never. Happened.

For the most part I felt that becoming a newer, better person was the responsibility of someone who battled something like cancer. This of course, made me feel pretty damn bad about spending so much time in bed watching movies.

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It wasn’t until after I was forced back into the real world that I knew I was naïve for expecting some sort of reward for staying alive, because pulling through should be great enough.

Alongside this, I wish I had cut myself some slack when it came down to how I was feeling. When we’re feeling down we’re often told we need to find a way to pick ourselves up or to simply see the good in life.

During my treatment, in an effort to keep up a strong front, I tried to ignore the situation in front of me and often clung to false hopes. During the chemotherapy and radiotherapy, trying to force positivity on myself pt unneeded pressure on me. It was positively exhausting!

If I had a time machine - preferably a TARDIS with a handsome Timelord piloting it - I would want to know that no one would think it strange if I had a bit of a breakdown every now and then, and that the tough-guy image was only going to backfire on me later on.

Although I am still learning this lesson today, I am forever glad that I know that it is perfectly okay to feel things when they are there, and that trying to be overly positive can sometimes hinder rather than help.

When I was initially diagnosed I was terrible at managing my expectations.

All I could think about was getting through my treatment as breezily as possible and I believed that, despite the horror stories, I was going to be able to carry on as normal.

This belief was fuelled by the equally-high expectations of my doctors who thought that thanks to my good prognosis, I was going to be relatively unaffected by my treatment. Therefore, from the getgo, images of me hunched over a designated vomit bowl and clumps of hair falling to the ground were far from my mind.

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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

– Oscar Wilde – I quickly learned that high expectation often lead to great disappointment in the world of vicious illnesses.

Throughout my treatment, I dealt with the severities of all the known side effects, plus some that my doctors had not even seen in other patients on the same regime. After two rounds of chemotherapy the veins in my hands had burned out and, after I was fitted with a pic line in my arm, I wound up spending nights in hospital with a nasty infection.

During this time, I was unable to attend school because of a measles outbreak in Auckland and my immune system was not functioning well enough to cope. Life definitely did not carry on as normal.

From this I learned that, in any situation where the outcome isn’t certain, having far-flung and grandiose hopes, is sometimes more damaging than not, and that the skill of being able to manage expectations, is very underrated.

Something else I am only just starting to grasp is that shit happens.

Besides my cancer, I have been dealt my fair share of crappy hands over the past couple of years and, for much of this time, I have stressed over the littlest of shortcomings. Realising my cancer was, and probably always will be the biggest hurdle, and overcoming it, is the biggest achievement I will ever know.

When something like cancer knocks you down, and despite the odds you begin to build yourself back up again, you realise all the nagging things are not worth the attention they receive.

My illness has slowly taught me it is alright for things to go wrong and that failure isn’t always the bad guy. Getting one bad mark in a paper isn’t going

to be something you remember in your ripe old age and, just because a plan doesn’t work out, doesn’t have to mean that all is lost.

Because of my cancer I have fallen down many times, but I have also gotten up many more.

I have learned that it is perfectly okay to be who you want to be. As a result of my unstable condition I spent a lot of time by myself watching TV shows I love and reading stories that inspired me. My cancer has had a way of clearing out the insignificant things in life and showing me what I needed.

Because of this, I spend my days beside the people who care about me, I study what I love, and I do what makes me happy. I don’t get embarrassed by how excited I am when a new episode of Doctor Who or Game of Thrones is playing. I don’t feel bothered by spending a day playing video games, and I don’t feel pressured to account for who I am for the sake of others.

I wish it hadn’t taken such an experience for me to grow into who I am, and this shouldn’t be the case for anyone. If you are to take anything from this, I would hope it is that giving too many fucks about what people think is an utter waste of time.

Lastly, there is nothing quite like a dose of mortality to get someone on the move.

Once I completed my treatment, I went back to school and finished up my year 12 year in five short months and gained early entry into Massey University. I work as a technical writer, a MASSIVE contributor, and have just started co-running a DIY blog as well as aspiring to write novels one day.

Long-term I am at risk of secondary cancer and heart disease and, because of this, I can’t help but feel life is short, no matter how cliché that sounds. I do not think that, without going through what I did, I

would be where I am today. And I believe it was the cancer that made me get off my ass and go for what I wanted.

As a result of my encounter with Hodgkin’s, I am now faced with the trying task of finding a way to a way to end this article without it sounding as awkward as it feels to write. But in all seriousness, if there is one, summed-up point I could make about my experience and the way it has shaped me as a person, I probably wouldn’t be the person to articulate it.

If anything, I would say, “Don’t be a dick” and, “Worry about what makes you happy”.

Yet, as this advice seems terribly watered-down, I have typed “inspirational quotes about life” into the ol’ google search bar and found some goodies for you to live your life by: “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

– Robert Frost “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

– Oscar Wilde “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

– Allen Saunders “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

– Douglas Adams “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” – Dr. Seuss

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THE SKY’S THE LIMIT WHERE COULD AN OFFICER CAREER LEAD YOU?

I catch up with Squadron Leader Tim Costley at Ohakea Air Force Base, where he is putting some young flying cadets through their paces. He greets me with a casual, “Just call me Tim, mate”. Only in his early 30’s, I’m struck by how young he is to be in charge of pilot training, so I ask him about it. “We’ve got 25 year olds flying around the world on a 757.

That’s the way the military works, that’s the training they give you,” says Tim. I’m here at Ohakea to find out why someone would decide to become an Officer in the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF). And seeing as all Pilots are also Officers, Tim was a natural person to talk to.

“I always wanted to be in the Air Force I think.

That’s what I’d seen at the air shows and I remember dad talking about grandpa being in the Air Force during World War Two. I wanted to be an Air Force Pilot as long as I can remember, “ explains Tim. With such a firm vision of what he wanted out of life, it wasn’t long before Tim made his way into the Air Force. “I studied Maths and Science but I applied to the Air Force during the last year of my degree and was accepted from there,” answers Tim. What’s it like being in the Air Force? Like a lot of people, the only experience I have of any military life is through TV shows and movies like Top Gun. So I’m really surprised by my time at Ohakea. Everyone on base just seems to get on with it, dispensing with some of the excessive formalities I was expecting.

Or as Tim put it, “It was a bit more civilised than I thought it was going to be. You didn’t get shouted at from day one.”

After 6 months training, Tim was ready to fly solo for the first time. What’s that like? “It was cool, I remember taking off for the first time and thinking, sweeeet, but now I have to land this. It’s a cool feeling getting the keys for the day,” answers Tim. After training, Tim was posted to 3 Squadron at Ohakea where he flew Huey’s, the backbone of our Air Force. “I was involved in a couple of search

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and rescues. One time we found the guy alive after a few days. It’s pretty cool to be helping someone you found, right?”

The one thing about being an Officer, is that you have a lot of responsibility placed on your shoulders at a young age. “I was involved with the response to Pike River mine disaster, the Christchurch earthquake. I was also sent to run the air operation when the Rena ran aground.”

At one stage Tim was responsible for coordinating all helicopter missions in NZ. “I was responsible for coordinating support to military, search and rescue, fire, police… they all need helicopter support and my job was to coordinate which helicopters went where, when and did what.”

Needless to say, travel is a big part of the job. “I got to travel to America, UK, Papua New Guinea, Australia, East Timor, Solomon Islands and Afghanistan. It’s been really cool to be a part of that,” Says Tim. He goes on to explain, “In Afghanistan I was working in support of NZ ground forces, embedded in a large American HQ. My role was coordinating air assets and ground forces.

But it’s not all hard work either. Tim is a keen musician and has written a song about being a Pilot.

He’s also part of the Musicians Club at Ohakea which holds regular concerts and a Battle of the Bands competition.

On top of that, Tim is a dedicated family guy. He’s happily married with a third child on the way. So what does the future hold for Squadron Leader Tim Costley? Well, clearly he has his hands full, but as an Officer, the one thing we know is that he will be able to handle it.

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SHAPESHIFTER: DISCUSSING DELTA In light of their upcoming New Zealand tour, Emma Jane Simpson has a chat to Shapeshifter’s Nick Robinson about the tour, their “five way marriage”, and plans for the future.

Congratulations on the success of your fifth studio album, Delta. In this album, there is a real electronic 80’s feel with the saxophone, as well as the powerful drum and bass you’re renowned for.

What exactly was your inspiration in creating this album?

We’ve always had times where you go to make an album and you know what you want it to be like, but at the same time there’s that same little beat.

It’s always been influenced from the time we spent in Berlin. We spent about six months of studio time there. At the same time, it’s also influenced from a lifetime of listening to music as 80’s kids.

Do you derive inspiration from artists you listen to yourself ?

We’ve tried to be ourselves, but sometimes – not so much in music idea but in concerts – we would say “hey, yeah that was cool, let’s try that.” We’ve really tried to interpret things we love into music of our own. Playing live, we’d definitely copy other music and people we love, just to have fun.

In a music industry that is so rapidly changing, do you find it difficult to stay true to your original style?

I guess so, but we try not to take pressure from what we think the masses all want though, because it would just drive you nuts. And then we wouldn’t enjoy it. We did have all this inspiration, and we did want people to like our music, but once you get into the studio, you have to say to yourself “that’s it; we don’t care what anyone thinks.” We just have to write this album as it’s going to be, even if it’s going to be a failure – at least we know that it is the way it was going to always be. We do go into it with a not-reallycaring-what-people-think attitude – it’s the only way to be, because otherwise it’s not real.

You are kicking off the new album with a national tour. What are your plans after that?

We are heading over to Australia where we’ll do a small tour just around the main areas there. After that, there’s a smaller DJ style tour which is in Australia as well. It’ll probably be gearing towards summer time when we’ll start rehearsing again and getting stuff together for summer.

Tell us about your favourite performances.

Where is your favourite place to perform?

There are so many things that can make your gig awesome. The last Homegrown gig [ Jim Beam, Wellington] was one we found hard in the past – nothing to do with the crowd or anything, but the way that the sound stages were set up. But this time it was off the hook. We came off and we were just like “that was mint.” Proper rock star business! We’ve played a lot of really cool gigs overseas as well. In the UK, we played some that were really special – Glastonbury and the Big Chill. We were so excited to be there, because it’s more of a struggle to make it there. Hometown wise, it’s really hard to put apart the different cities of New Zealand! It sounds cheesy but they’re all awesome [laughs].

Do you enjoy live concerts the most?

Yeah - it’s a little different. The studio is more cruising in with your tracksuit pants. We can just take our time and there’s not so much pressure, whereas the live shows are quite a lot of pressure, and quite tiring – a whole different ball game really.

They’re really different and we love both for different reasons. In live shows, we get out there and play to people that like and buy our music, and that’s one of the biggest buzzes.

You’ve been together since 1999. That is a very long time.

It is, oh my God! [laughs] What is it that’s kept you together?

We’re all really good friends; we were all friends before we started the band. Time has gone really

fast! One thing we all said when we were getting together was the one way to succeed in a band, no matter how much or little we succeed, is to not quit the band. So that’s our underlying philosophy – stay in the band. If you’re not happy, you work it out in a five way kind of marriage [laughs]. You have to be flexible and admire each other, and we all do. We all respect each other. It’s sometimes conflicting but we’re all willing to stretch.

Your new drummer Darren joined Shapeshifter recently. How’s that going?

We had one guy leave, but that was after ten years. That was Redford, our old drummer. We got Darren, who has played quite a few gigs now, but it seems like he’s been in the band for ages. He just fits in so beautifully. He’s our third drummer. We were worried about the divide but he fits in really well.

He’s famous as! [laughs] How do you create your songs? Is it from jamming together, or does one person come up with an idea?

There are usually a couple of us that sit down and make it bit by bit. If we think it’s good for Shapeshifter, we take it to the studio and see what the other guys think. From there, it will change a lot so we pretty much write everything together. One of us might come up with something, but then we mould and change them together and see how they work.

Some things work and some things don’t. We create a beat, then lyrics.

What is the biggest change and development that has taken place in your music since the beginning?

It’s been so gradual. Gradually over time, from when we first started, it was harder to make ends meet financially. Even though it’s not a well-paid job, the band’s grown a bit more and it’s made it a bit easier for us to be here recently. In some ways it’s the

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same – just keeping on touring and trying to do good concerts; good shows with good lights and good sound. We just keep going to the studio and making music, and it doesn’t seem like that long. It’s gone really fast and the years just fly by. Time flies when you’re having fun! [laughs] What is your ultimate goal for Shapeshifter’s success?

It’s fun to watch the band grow and see new fans. Growing as a band is always the fun part. We would be happy if we ended up playing in Wembley or something. At the same time, the grind is fun, so we’re just seeing how we go. In 2002, we all moved to Melbourne. At that stage, everyone (all bands) was moving to Auckland. We didn’t want to move to Auckland, so we tried the Aussie market. We lived there for five years and then Sam and I moved up north of Byron Bay. We wrote some music there. We were there for a couple of years, and now I’m back in Christchurch. It was sunnier there! I really did like living in Aussie.

Your latest album was mixed by the Upbeats - is that correct?

Not so much mixed, but co-produced. We spent time in the studio and then took it to the Upbeats.

They chucked it through their machines and gave what they thought it needed. We had never worked with them before, but we had seen them at lots of gigs and we know them quite well. They are the most down to earth, nicest guys you’ll ever meet.

We love them. Mixing is the really gruelling part of the album, and those guys are really quick and slick.

We’d definitely work in some way with them again.

How long did Delta take?

We did it in bits – we did writing sessions but we hadn’t really started the album. That was probably about two years ago. A lot of that time was spent touring. We were playing heaps of new songs off the album in Europe. We had quite a few we tried over there first.

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What was your favourite song to make?

Monarch was a good one to make; it had a good feeling about it. Some of them were a bit of a grind – Gravity was a bit of a grind but it got there in the end. Some were a real struggle. We thought that some weren’t sounding good, but knew that we could make it sound better. Some come together really quickly though.

What’s the biggest challenge?

For me, probably travelling. At the airport, then the hotel. When you’re on tour, It’s all airports and hotels. Getting to the concert is the fun part. The extra work is the best part. The waiting around and being away from family part isn’t so fun. I shouldn’t moan at all really, even waiting around isn’t too bad.

It’s all of our lives and we’re incredibly blessed that we were lucky enough to come across other like-minded dudes, who were lucky enough to stay together. A lot of guys and girls out there have all the talent, but haven’t been lucky enough sometimes to find people to make a band with.

When you’re not touring/making music, what do you do? Is this your full-time job?

Yeah, it is. I play bass guitar on the side sometimes, but not so much anymore. That’s more for fun.

Overall, our focus is Shapeshifter. We do take breaks but yeah, this is our full-time job. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. Hopefully it lasts a bit longer!

Who were your biggest inspirations in New Zealand?

Salmonella Dub – back in the day. Back in the day, they were definitely an inspiration and we have a lot of respect for them. The Shihad boys – so much admiration for those guys. The last time I saw them was Coromandel Gold and they just killed it. They’ve been around for ages, but they still all look young! [laughs] Internationally, bands like TOOL. We did a tour with them once; they’re so professional and so inspirational. James Blake is another – trying out new things. We really admire them as performers as

well as enjoying their music too.

What do you do in situations when the crowd isn’t getting into it?

It can be really hard. We just have to put our all into it. There are people that don’t look like they like it. It’s tough. People still come to see us. I sometimes stand at the back of a gig if I don’t feel like getting right into it. I’ll still be loving it, but I won’t be going nuts. So I always think that at least they’re watching.

Is it harder getting big crowds in Europe?

Definitely. We get decent crowds in Holland and the Czech Republic, because we’ve played there a couple of times before.

Do they party harder than we do?

Probably about the same! [laughs] They’re awesome, they came and knew all the words to our songs, but couldn’t speak any English afterwards.

We did some gigs with Netsky, we did a few hospital gigs with some cool line-ups such as High Contrast.

We have done heaps of gigs with big DJ names in England. We do stuff that we dreamed about doing when we were kids, so it has definitely exceeded what we thought. Some of the chances we’ve had have been amazing. It’s not worldwide fame, but to play with some of these bands is so incredible, we’ve been so star struck by some of them.

Is everyone still loving it?

Yeah definitely. You do have your moments when you take stuff for granted, but then you finish those moments and then you snap out of it. I think everyone is pretty stoked, real happy, and ready to go!

Shapeshifter’s New Zealand wide tour kicked off in Christchurch on July 11 and finishes on July 27 in Wellington. For ticket purchases and tour information, visit eventfinda.co.nz.

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“That’s our underlying philosophy – stay in the band. If you’re not happy, you work it out like a five way kind of marriage”

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Dick Hardy: Night With a Naughty Nurse After the Game of Thrones inspired role-play from his last sexcapade, Dick plays patient in his latest erotic encounter.

It was a blustering and windy night and I was sick as a dog.

I had recently finished my last exam for the semester and subsequently had succumbed to the stress and poor diet that exams ensure. There I was, tucked into bed, a chill gripping me even beneath the covers and a blocked nose which clouded my thoughts. On a cold Saturday night.

I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed on my laptop, despairing at the photos and statuses of friends who were preparing for, or already enjoying, their Saturday nights. I was ready to log out when a chat box popped up. Plans for tonight? X, it read.

It was my role-playing friend from my earlier escapades (check out the previous edition of MASSIVE). I had enjoyed many erotic dreams about our last encounter and I was excited to hear from her.

Hey you. Would love to see you, but I’m dying, sick in bed. Can’t say I would be much fun tonight sorry.

Waiting for her reply, despite my throbbing head, my loins ached in remembrance of her sultry affections. During the exam period I had neglected my more primal needs and I realised I would sorely enjoy a bit of her attention tonight.

Aw poor thing, sick? Maybe I should come over and look after you? I thought about this for a moment.

The way she had said it gave me no idea if she meant to come and bring me soup in bed or if she meant to look after me in another way entirely.

I decided that a little bit of TLC in any form would be appreciated and I told her as much. I’ll be over soon, she promised.

I pulled my achy body from the bed and tried to disguise my bin which was overflowing with tissues.

I slipped in and out of a hot shower and doused myself with shower gel and nice smelling things to try and rejuvenate myself.

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Alas, I was back in bed, albeit a bit fresher and chirpier when I heard my front door being quietly opened. I put my laptop on the floor and waited for her to come to me. The door to my room opened slowly and she crept in with a cheeky grin on her face.

She was wearing a large, black coat which went past her knees with only socks covering her feet. Her hair fell loosely around her heart shaped face and I couldn’t help but grin at the mischievous gleam in her eye. She sat on the bed cross-legged beside me and it took all my self-control not to chance a look beneath her coat.

She laid one hand on my chest and looked at me sympathetically. “How ya doing babe?” she asked quietly as her fingers trickled over my pecs and nipples.

“I’ve felt worse. But better now you’re here,” I told her. She leaned toward me and almost kissed me on the lips before thinking better of it. She turned her head and kissed under my chin.

“Well that’s good. I’ve got something for you, if you think you’re up to it,” she told me. She dropped a piece of white fabric onto my face. I reached up to look at it, confused. It was some kind of hat. It had a red circle on it with a white cross in the middle and with my foggy mind, I couldn’t register what it was.

“Here,” she said, offering her head, and I put it on her. She stood up and realisation hit me, it was a nurse hat. With a confident smile she let the large cloak fall from her shoulders to the floor and my mouth fell open in admiration.

Beneath, she was wearing an extremely tightfitting and revealing nurse outfit. It hung loosely around her curvaceous legs, tantalisingly high. The upper bodice hugged her tightly and accentuated her generous bosom.

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In full nudity, her gaze lingered between my legs, and I felt my member harden beneath her scrutiny.

After gorging my eyes on her sexy figure I looked back to her face which was now serious, with only the barest hint of a smirk tugging at her lips.

“Now sir, I heard you’re not feeling very well. Well I want you to know you’re in great hands. I’m very experienced at making people feel better.”

Her character playing never faltered once she had begun and, rather than find it off-putting, it wildly turned me on. I followed her lead.

“Yes miss. I feel terrible to be honest. You’ll have to come closer so I can examine you properly,” she said.

She motioned me toward the edge of the bed closest to her and I shuffled over to be checked out.

She pulled back the covers to reveal my attire: only a pair of jockeys. She pressed her ear to my chest and at the same time, her fingers trailed lightly down my stomach to rest just above my jockeys. I felt my cock twitch in anticipation.

“Hmm, your heart rate seems to have spiked,” she informed me. Then she leaned forward and took my nipple between her teeth and lightly nibbled it. “I’m going to have to ask you to relax,” she murmured.

I took a deep breath through my mouth, my nose still blocked, to try and calm myself. The cold of having the duvet pulled away now brought goose bumps to my skin and I heard her tut against my nipple. “You’re cold. We’ll have to do something about that.”

She stood and turned to th” bag she had brought with her. Reaching inside, she pulled out a red bottle.

“This should do the trick, warming massage oil,” she said with a satisfied smile.

She poured a line of the liquid down my stomach, stopping at my underwear. “Hmm. We’re going to have to remove these, sorry, it’s policy,” she assured me. Deftly, she pulled my underwear from under me and stripped them off my legs. In full nudity, her gaze lingered between my legs and I felt my member harden beneath her scrutiny.

“It looks like we have a problem down here,” she said and, for a moment, I felt self-conscious under

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her examination. “There seems to be quite a bit of swelling but don’t worry, I know of a few ways to reduce that.

“We’ll take care of that next,” she said in full seriousness and I couldn’t help but to smile with a little relief.

“Yes miss, you’re the expert,” I told her. She continued with her pouring until I had a line of the fluid down my legs, then she finished with a few drops on my balls, although she avoided my rigid member. Then with experienced hands she began to massage the oil into my skin and, with them, followed a strange warmth from the gel.

Her hands pressed into my chest, they followed the ripples of my abs, kneaded my legs, and I was glad that my muscles hadn’t receded too drastically over the exam period. My manhood was standing at attention like an excited school boy, yet she refused to touch it.

As her hands worked my body I stared at her breasts which were struggling against the tight fabric.

I reached out and grabbed them but she took my hand and looked at me disapprovingly.

“Tut tut,” she said. “You can’t just go grabbing whatever you like, sir. Here, I will need to do an examination on your fingers now.” Then she moved my hand to the smooth of her leg and slowly moved it higher. “If you could lie still and show me if your fingers are still working please.”

Her acting was sometimes laughable but exciting nonetheless. She aided my hand to the heat between her legs and I was pleased to feel how wet she had become. She was wearing thin underwear and I pressed my fingers firmly into her soft mound.

She rose slightly onto the front of her feet and closed her eyes briefly. “Mm, very good,” she sighed as she began to continue her massage. I tugged at her underwear until it was halfway down her thigh.

I reached beneath the nurse skirt again and plunged my fingers into the warm depths to the satisfying gasp of my attender. She spread her legs to allow me better access and I worked my fingers against her G-spot. She moaned and simultaneously

her hand found my sack which she began to caress.

I felt my nose clearing in all of the excitement and I thought what a wonderful job my nurse was doing.

Her hand moved rhythmically and I remembered another time when I had told her to treat them the same as she might treat her own breast. I became even more aroused at the thought.

“Now about this swelling,” she said. She took my swollen penis in her hand and began tugging up and down. I groaned in pleasure. I reached up and pulled at the top of her outfit to let her breasts fall free.

She leaned down and let me take one in my mouth. With my fingers busy between her thighs and her breasts in my face, my cock was pulsing and I began to hump into her hand. “How’s my treatment sir?” she asked breathlessly. “Are you starting to feel better?”

I gave her my answer by lifting her powerfully across my stomach, my fingers still inside her and pumping her furiously. She moaned her enjoyment and her wrist action became frenzied and rapid.

I realized I wasn’t able to hold out any longer.

“Nurse, I think I’m ready for you to take some samples now,” I breathed quickly. Taking my hint she locked her lips to the head of my penis and I exploded just as her tongue felt its way to my tip.

“Uuuaaaaaahhhhhhhnnnngggh!” I told her as I released what must have been an impressive load. Her legs squeezed together tightly around my fingers and she moaned with me as I filled her mouth. Finally, after teasing my penis into sensitivity, she gulped and looked up at me with a proud smile.

I stared at her, gobsmacked by how lucky I was.

Surprisingly, I felt much better after her visit and my cold went away soon after. So there came an end to my exams and there comes an end to my encounter.

I hope all of you did well in your own exams and stayed healthy or, if not, then I hope you were as lucky as I was in getting better! Until next time, DH dickhardy@massivemagazine.org.nz

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ASK A GURU

S E N S UA L A DV I C E – G U R U C L AY DA N

Guru, my life is becoming very PG-rated and it’s time for something magical to happen. I have a few guy friends I wouldn’t mind getting frisky with, but most of them just see me as an innocent princess and are too afraid to overstep the boundaries. How do I tell one, or more, of them that I wouldn’t mind taking a ride on the roller coaster? If you know what I mean ;) Yours Truly, Ridin’ Dirty Girl, that’s good that you want get down, but remember, be safe, and grind only on clean willies.

Firstly, why have you been going through a dry spell? Have you just exited a relationship? Remember, if you’re emotionally distraught, having sex with as many people as possible doesn’t fix the situation. It’d be good if it did though!

If you were PG because you couldn’t be bothered with the D, let me give you some tips to get back on it.

Firstly, since you’ve been in a drought you need to clean up down there, this means making it smell nice and if you trim, shave or style, do that. Maybe go a bit wild and let it grow and make your fanny fro stylish.

Secondly, stop being innocent, but don’t be a slut, unless you want to. This means if you’re sitting on a couch next to a boy you fancy, don’t cross your legs, keep them open, and seductively rub your inner thighs, laying down the subtle suggestion that you want this boy to have what you hope to be amazing sex. Stop listening to Taylor Swift, start listening to the new Miley Cyrus, get your twerk on and grind on just about anything. You see a stool, grind on it. Your cooking dinner, grind on it. You hug your mum, grind on her. Grind on anything, soon your innocence will no longer exist.

Next, find the boy, or boys, you like. If you’re really keen, and don’t want to beat around the bush of hooking up in town, then the following week a cheeky ball grab and fanny tingle on the dance floor, tell them you’re keen on the D, nine times out of 10 the boy will jump at the opportunity. Honesty is the best policy. The only risk you face is a potentially never seeing that boy the same way you once did.

Finally, let nature take its course. The world wants you to go through a dry spell and live a PG life at the moment. Your vagina will tell you when it’s ready.

It’ll be like, “hey, I’m ready to be prodded by a willy now” and you’ll be like, “cool, go find me a willy”, and

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she’ll find one for you. Listen to your fanny, don’t be uncanny.

I’m an independent woman, I really am. But there’s this guy and I real like him and we text even when it’s not Saturday night. How do I be a sophisticated, New Age woman and fall in love at the same time?

Thanks Single-and-not-sure-if-I’m-ready-to-mingle You’re fucked. But it’s a good kind of fucked. I understand how you might be scared of losing your independence, but you don’t have to worry, Guru will tell you how to maintain your independence and fall in love at the same time.

Firstly, what is it that makes you independent? Are you an African American woman who don’t need no man? Or do you wear pant suits? Do you wear Doc Martens? Or listen to Bon Iver?

You need to find out what makes your independent, and then continue to do that. Pretty simple, but finding what makes you independent can be hard.

It requires quiet time, time to think and reflect.

When Guru wants quiet time he plays with himself.

Masturbation is healthy and puts your mind at ease.

Everyone should do it, even if you do have a partner.

Masturbate and think about your individuality, it’ll eventually cum to you.

Once you have found your independence trait, hold on to it, and allow you heart, mind, soul, nipples and vagina fall in love with your guy. Make your heart a place where his heart can live. Cute huh? And make your vagina a place where his willy can hang out.

First of all, LOVE your column. It’s the first thing I turn to every month in MASSIVE. So, I have a slight problem, one which most girls would be envious of. My boyfriend has a HUGE dick.

We’re talking porn-star big. I can’t stop telling all my friends because it’s just so MASSIVE. But the problem is, I can only handle one bonk a night because it freakin’ hurts. But he’s a nympho and wants it all the time. What should I do? I want to keep my man and his huge penis happy!

Sincerely, Broken-By-Bonk That’s good to hear! Guru faces the same problem.

My girlfriend can’t handle all of me. Hehehe I kid.

Guru is normal.

Firstly, what a lucky bastard, he must be very cocky.

Fuck I’m full of puns and wit. Guru recommends the following: Suggest he focus on foreplay ... To achieve orgasm through penetration alone is something that only pornstars can fake, and something that only 30 per cent of the female population can achieve. Foreplay works wonders and its the only way you can quiver.

Small and soft motions rather than hard and deep thrusts. Since you haven’t given me measurements, I’m assuming his penis is over six and a bit inches, if its porn-star big, I’d assume 8 inches up. The vagina is 4 inches deep, after that it gently expands; the average penis is over 5 inches, so make him put in 4 inches first, which isn’t all that much, then ease in the rest, gently moving from six inches, which is what you would be used to.

Lube. Lube that shit up. His slippery sausage will slide in with ease. Relax and take it slow. You need to tell him it hurts, don’t worry, this’ll make him feel like a king.And this question obviously proves that size isn’t everything: tell him not to be a prick, and be gentle with his dick.

Quick Fire:

I have a crush on someone! What do I do?

Thrust your hips in their direction and talk to them. Easy peasy.

I wank all the time. I’m bored though, I want to spice up my jerking sessions... Any tips?

Use lube. It is a different sensation and feels good! Instead of the standard jerk, flip you fist upside down and do the back grip. Use two hands. Use your non-dominant hand. Get pins and needles in your hand and tug. All of these techniques require just your hand(s) and some decent dirty thoughts or movies. Or have a shank, a shit and a wank. Apparently it’s rather relieving. Stop being cranky, and have a wanky.

She farted on my face. I liked it!

Nothing wrong with a little bit of dirty stuff happening in the bedroom. Be careful though, the fart could turn into shart, and you could also get pink eye.

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BALI (INDONESIA) T ravel – Y V E T T E M O R R I S S E Y

Bali is a small Indonesian island, roughly 5500km.

Myself and my friend Libby flew 11 hours to this delightful island in June. It cost me $1800NZ for plane tickets and four-star accommodation, which is doable on a student budget.

Kuta is the main tourist zone. However Legian is only five minutes away and slightly quieter and safer.

We stayed in The Legian 101- a hotel perfect for students as, most nights, they have pool parties with buy-one get-one-free cocktails and live DJ’s.

The 101 is also on the main street in Legian, so shopping, spas and restaurants are at your doorstep.

Bali’s currency is the Indonesian Rupiah, and the exchange rate for New Zealanders is very good. For example, dinner at a nice restaurant in Legian costs - from my experience - around $15, which includes a starter, main, dessert and a couple of cocktails.

Bali has everything you could want for a study break- shopping, beautiful beaches, exquisite cuisine, and rich cultural experiences. You can go there to party, or simply relax poolside, beachside, or at one of the luxurious spas.

WHAT TO PACK

If your aim is to shop till you drop, don’t pack much.

Seriously. Take a few pairs of undies, and one set of clothing suited to hot weather. June is the best time to visit Bali: it is summer, and the temperatures average in the mid-thirties. Everything in Bali is ridiculously cheap - I took only NZ$500, which covered me for shopping, gift-buying, and meals at restaurants.

STAY HYDRATED

When we arrived, two people fainted in the customs’ line. Shifting from nine degree tempuratures to the mid-thirties can sometimes have a negative effect on

those with low blood pressure, so make sure you stay hydrated on the plane.

Do not drink the tap water in Bali as it can cause the dreaded “Bali Belly”. Always carry a bottle of water with you. Your hotel should provide bottled water for you to brush your teeth with.

WHAT TO DO

Waterbom Park is an absolute must! There are 20 hydroslides, including “The Climax”, featuring a trap door under your feet which releases and sends you plummeting down at a 2.5 G-force speed. Waterbom also has restaurants, a poolside bar, and a day spa. Get your feet exfoliated by skin sucking fish, or tan by the pool. It is the perfect way to start your Bali adventure.

Next on the must-do list is snorkelling. This was definitely the highlight of my trip, being a snorkelling newbie. I felt as though I were in Finding Nemo.

Angel fish, dolphin fish, zebra fish and many others swam peacefully beneath me, coming up to nibble at the bread we were provided with to feed them.

This experience was part of a three-island rafting cruise, which took us to Bali’s “sister” islands: Lembongan, Ceningan and Penida.

If you aren’t too squeamish when it comes to animal parks, then I suggest the Elephant Safari Park in Taro, Ubud. Ride, feed and cuddle one of God’s most gentle giants. The elephants at this safari park are breath-taking; there is currently a baby elephant there who is too cute for words. The restaurant buffet lets you sample many of the traditional Balinese dishes, and you can sit and watch some of the elephants perform tricks.

If you are keen to party, make sure you head to Bounty Bar and Sky Garden Lounge, the two most popular clubs in Kuta.

Make sure you dip your toes into the culture of Bali. Visit the Mother Temple of Besakih, the largest and holiest temple in Bali. It is comprised of 22 individual temples, and offers an amazing view of Bali’s highest mountain point, Mount Agung.

I also recommend you spend a day getting pampered. For NZ$20 I got a one-hour massage, pedicure and manicure. This is one of the reasons students should go to Bali! Knots caused by late night study were carefully kneaded out of my back and I left, two hours later, feeling like a goddess.

BE AWARE

People will attempt to sell magic mushrooms to you, especially near the two main drinking holes: Bounty Bar and Sky Garden Lounge. Under no circumstances should you take them.

Never put your cell phone or wallet in your pockets - unless they are deep - because you could be pickpocketed. Embrace the convenience of a fanny pack, or a bag with a short shoulder strap you can carry close to your body.

Good travel insurance is a must if you go to Bali.

We ran into some tourists who had their money or possessions stolen. However, don’t let this put you off going to Bali, the people there are very friendly, and we didn’t have any problems during our stay.

Also- don’t drink arak (rice wine). If arak isn’t distilled properly, it can contain methanol which can cause brain damage, blindness and death. A New Zealander died in 2011 after drinking this at his hotel, so it is important to drink only bottled alcohol. If you feel strange after eating or drinking anything, visit a doctor.

If you use your common sense and do your research, you will have an amazing time in Bali!

Massive Columns

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A NEW MAN IN TIGHTS, CELEB APOCALYPSE AND NZIFF ANNOUNCEMENTS F I L M C O LU M N – PAU L B E R R I N GTO N

It’s that time of the year when the weather turns nasty, exams are stressful, that cold just won’t go away, and all you feel like doing is hibernating.

Thankfully it’s a great time of year for movies with some big blockbusters around, if that is your thing, and the New Zealand International Film Festival just around the corner.

Over the next few months you can expect some of the most expensive films of all time, with the blockbuster season starting to take full effect. They don’t come much bigger than the extravagance that is Man of Steel, the latest attempt at making Superman as successful at the box office as his DC Comics cohort Batman.

Watchmen director Zack Snyder is partnered with David S. Goyer, the writer behind The Dark Knight and Blade, while Christopher Nolan, himself a director of mega-movies such as the ridiculous Inception, produces.

Clearly the intention is to darken the character of the caped crusader, the man in tights, and all-round good guy super hero. Critics have been split over the film, with some raising questions about such a radical

change in representation, while others have noted the sheer audacity of the production.

Either way it looks a lot better than World War Z. Zombies have become increasingly mainstream of late, and this Brad Pitt vehicle is another one of those films that went so far over budget that 10 other, possibly better films could have been made.

Paul Bradshaw at Total Film says the film chooses “quantity over quality, intensity over tension and big-screen thrills over low-fi shocks - this is probably what the zombie apocalypse will actually look like”, suggesting, though this is no masterpiece, it could be best viewed on the biggest screen possible.

Seth Rogen looks like he is having a bit of fun with his own blockbuster, satirical apocalyptic comedy, This Is the End, in which a group of actors play themselves during the last moments on earth, while hanging out at James Franco’s place. Audiences have reacted better than critics to the film, and it could easily be a surprise hit this month.

The first announcement of films and events has been released by the folks at NZIFF and, as usual, there seems to be a little something for everyone, as well as

an increasingly strong focus on local output.

Master director Alfred Hitchcock has two films showing, with Dial M for Murder and North by Northwest given the 3D treatment. Anyone who remembers the plane crash scene from the latter knows what I’m saying when I suggest that the audience may just run for cover.

Alison Maclean, who made her directional debut with the classic Kitchen Sink, will select the best of New Zealand’s short films, always one of the most interesting parts of the programme and a launchpad for many talented directors.

Horror masterpiece Suspiria, a film whose memorable tagline, “the only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92”, belies the surrealist brilliance the set design and music convey, will screen with legendary prog-rock group Goblin playing their original soundtrack live.

Stay up with further announcements over at the NZIFF website, and don’t forget that they are always looking for volunteers to help with the festival, which is a great chance to see a whole range of films on a limited budget.

that doesn’t exist. If you want to multitask while watching TV, you use your phone, or your tablet, or one of a myriad of other devices that can access WiFi. Why bother waving your hands all over the place to bring up Twitter?

It thankfully wasn’t all television: there were eventually a few games. An Australian dude from EA Sports came up and used a bunch of buzzwords to describe how the Xbox One will revolutionise the way we play Fifa, but didn’t actually show any games. Remedy’s new game was announced, with a confusing teaser featuring a boat crashing into a bridge and an incredibly generic title, Quantum Break. The next Forza game was also announced: they showed a “gameplay” trailer. Cars were driving, they looked like cars.

The trouble with showing car games on a new console is that cars in games have looked amazing

since 2005’s Gran Turismo 4; I haven’t been impressed by a single screenshot of a car since.

Lastly there was about five minutes of talk about the new Call of Duty. It would have been ignorable if not for the motion-captured dog. Seeing that dog in his little red motion-capture suit was the highlight of my morning.

The actual game is going to suck, but it has a motion-captured dog so it can’t be all bad.

All in all, it was a really average reveal. Reps from Microsoft have said they will be actually showing games at E3, so maybe I’ll be a bit more excited after that.

I’m still not keen on the name though. People are eventually going to refer to it as, “The One”. C’mon Microsoft, how egotistical can you get? I suggest using the name the internet has lovingly dubbed it with, The Xbone.

MICROSOFT’S NEXTBOX G A M I N G C O LU M N – C A L LU M O ’ N E I L L

“I woke up at 4:50am for that?” That is what I was thinking immediately after Microsoft’s wholly disappointing hour-long reveal of their latest Sky TV decoder, the Xbox One. Do you guys remember television? Not the thing you plug your consoles into, but real television, with the 1:3 ratio of ads to programming, and things that came out in the States months ago. That seemed to be Microsoft’s focus for this gaming console reveal and, as a gamer who abandoned TV for the convenience of the internet years ago, I was kind of offended.

Using the “power” of the new Kinnect that will come with the Xbox One, you can now bring up a twitter feed while you are watching television with a wave of your hands. Wow, good job Microsoft. I can now do something I’ve been able to do with my iPhone for nearly five years.

They seem to be going after a market of multitaskers

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student thursday Every Thursday at Light House Cinema students can enjoy $11 2D and $13.50 3D films plus a free coffee with ticket purchase.

seeing stars

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$10 entry for students with student ID every Tuesday night.

Valid student ID must be presented.

Light House Cuba 29 Wigan Street (across from Havana Bar)

CARTER OBSERVATORY www.carterobservatory.org

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The PLACE BEYOND THE PINES PAU L B E R R I N GTO N

Constantly mesmerising and highly accomplished, The Place Beyond the Pines confirms director Derek Cianfrance as a new maverick, delivering a sprawling tale of family, love and guilt, all within the framework of the classic American crime drama.

Although at first there are some connecting features in his character, this is a far different setting, positioning this increasingly adaptable star in a restrained and contemplative crime drama.

In the first act, Luke Glanton (Gosling), a local stunt rider, learns that a fling with good-time girl Romina (Eva Mendes) has resulted in a baby boy. He decides to stay in town, tries to get work, and win the love of his son and Romina, but it isn’t that easy, and soon he is robbing banks to provide what his normal life cannot.

Inevitably things go wrong and we enter a second act, focusing on Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) and his attempts to re-enter the police force following an injury, while resisting the advances of corrupt Detective Deluca (Ray Liotta). Fifteen years later and Cross, now running for District Attorney, watches as his own son, and Glanton’s, enter a relationship he knows is destined for tragedy.

Of course there is much more detail to the story than that, and Cianfrance and co-writer Ben Coccio manage to string the elaborate plot together in a complex narrative. In many ways, the film stands as an indie ode to the likes of Goodfellas or Heat, replacing big budget action with a more contemplative and lyrical perspective on crime within the family dynamic, in similar ways to David Michod’s Animal Kingdom.

Both leads deliver natural performances, with Cooper in particular surprisingly effective as Cross, a character whose guilt has crippled him, yet whose ambition is unstoppable.

Small roles for accomplished character actors provide depth and intensity, with Ben Mendelsohn outstanding as a smalltown mechanic, and Bruce Greenwood typically effective as an investigating officer.

If anything, the female characters are a little underwritten, with both Mendes, and Rose Byrne, who stars as Avery’s wife, not given quite enough screen time, despite doing well with what they’re given.

Cianfrance sets a subdued tone, letting the weight of his story unfold in a muted and mesmerising style, never attempting to push emotional buttons for simple provocation. The haunting score from Mike Patton helps to sustain this method, as does a soundtrack featuring Bruce Springsteen and other blue collar favourites.

Sean Bobbitt’s (Shame, The Killer Inside Me) cinematography captures upstate New York in beautiful clarity, framing the characters in the hopelessness of their surroundings, and the tragedy of their outcomes.

Don’t go into this expecting a fast-paced crime thriller in the new Hollywood tradition, this film harks back to the sort of films Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill used to make, lyrical character studies about men and their methods, boldly poetic, yet tough as nails.

UPSTREAM THE PLACE BEYOND COLOUR (2013) 4/5 PINES (2012) THE Director Shane Caruth 4/5

Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Derek Cianfrance Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes. Rose Byrne, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta and Bruce Greenwood.

Starring Director Starring

WARHOL IMMORTAL: LIFE BEYOND WORK A N N A B E L H AW K I N S

Jackie O, Edie Sedgwick, Marilyn Munroe. The power woman of the 60s, the icons, the influencers.

I met them all. In one room. All at once. It took my breath away.

Warhol’s exhibition at Te Papa has been described as one of the museum’s biggest exhibitions yet, alongside the likes of Monet and Pompeii. On loan from the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, the production-line style exhibit spans Warhol’s artistic endeavours, from his early line drawings and lithography to his iconic silkscreens and famously banal silent films.

One of the most prolific and influential artists of the 20th century, Warhol’s transformative love affair with Hollywood and fame, people and portraiture comes alive on the walls within the space, forming wallpaper, interactive installations and sentimental imagery from the silver era where amphetamine and

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mass production went had-in-hand.

There is something quite magical about seeing such illustrious art in the flesh. You see it for more than a Google image, a picture in a textbook, a magazine, because you can see the brushstrokes, where the ink bled in the paper, the way the paint forms three-dimensionally beneath the frame.

Warhol’s work was intentionally formulaic in attempting to remove any traditional artistic value from his work, yet I found what I experienced was quite the opposite. The assault of colour on pattern on colour, the conviction behind each mark made, it was really quite remarkable and somewhat personal.

This exhibit osculates around Warhol’s revival of portraiture; the kind of things only old and dead masters did, by peering back and playing up the bright layers of pop culture. In doing so, he had done away with tradition and challenged the very face of it.

Will Warhol’s pop art ever become out-dated, unironically kitsch? (We have the bastardisation of the Four Square man for that). In musing about mortality, Warhol once said, “I never think that people die. They just go to department stores”.

As I exit via the gift shop, I cannot help but imagine Warhol laughing - and loving - the fact that his name is now a brand, a brand emblazoned on everything from coffee mugs to skate boards. I walked away wondering what Warhol would say about the hypertagging, photo posting culture of today.

Just as when the Rolling Stones came to New Zealand, you’ll regret this if you miss it.

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OBLIVION (2013) J o r da n G o wa n

There’s been a score of post-apocalyptic movies hitting the screens recently, each with their own take on the typical “it’s the end of the world but humanity survives”-styled plot. However while it’s all starting to sound a bit familiar, somehow Oblivion’s attention to detail, acting and constant plot twists make it stand out from the all-too crowded genre.

Its 2077 (keep in mind that’s only 64 years away, guys) and Earth is largely deserted. Only one man, Jake Harper (Cruise) remains. Before you start to think it’s just a remake of 2007’s I Am Legend, the film explains that Earth has been attacked by an alien species known as Scavs and, although the humans won, the planet is basically ruined.

While the rest of humanity gapped it to live on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, Harper and his partner Victoria Olsen (Riseborough), have been left as the clean-up crew to look after a whole pile of power stations.

Although the first half of the movie mostly seems to comprise Tom Cruise flying around and fixing drones, there’s enough tension from Harper’s dreams of his mysterious past and friction with Olsen to keep the ball rolling and the audience guessing. Finally, it starts to pick up when he encounters a ragtag group

of humans led by Malcom Beech (Freeman) that reveals that the giant space station (the Tet) orbiting Earth is hiding a few secrets of its own.

Oh, and a spaceship full of survivors including Harpers wife (Kurylenko) crash-lands near Harper’s tower, and that’s when things start to get really confusing.

Without giving too much away, director Joseph Kosinski spends a lot of time setting up the plot only to take it in an entirely different direction. Along the way we get to see Morgan Freeman sporting the most bad-ass leather outfit since Mad Max, some of the coolest CGI landscapes out (I could’ve watched this movie for the background – no joke!), and Tom Cruise deliver the best one-liner of his entire career.

Plus there’s an incredible soundtrack composed

by Daft Punk, M83 and Joseph Trapanese which further complements the haunting post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

Despite the occasional plot hole and the film taking a while to get to the action, Oblivion is one of those action films that you find hard to get out of your head. This is one film definitely worth checking out – even if it is the last post-apocalyptic movie you can handle.

UPSTREAM OBLIVION (2013) COLOUR (2013) 4/5 Shane Caruth Joeseph Kosenski Tom Cruise, Amy Seimetz,Morgan Shane Carruth, Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough Director Starring

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: LIKE CLOCKWORK MAX D

Following the release of Era Vulgaris back in ‘07, QOTSA kind of went away. With the exception of some reissues and a few mini-tours it was pretty much a hiatus. Band helmsman Josh Homme stayed busy, teaming up with various artists to make albums and to make babies.

While he was probably awesome at both, the QOTSA fans grew impatient. After six long years the Palm Desert rockers emerged from the studio, signed to a new label, and grasping a new album. It’s fucking good.

The opening track “Keep your Eyes Peeled” immediately sets a spooky tone that is dark and spectral, even for QOTSA. Mr Homme describes the creative process for this album as a therapeutic one. It would appear that the band had a lot of pent up dark, eerie, surly, crunchy, sexy, moody, rocking-the-fuck-out, to deal with.

It’s not all gloom and swoon though. Breaks in the clouds like “I Sat by the Ocean” and “If I had a Tail” provide a balancing dose of feel good rock. Sir Elton John even lends some rainbow to “Fairweather Friends”, but you could be forgiven for not spotting him as the guitars dominate the mixing desk.

Other guest artists include Josh Homme’s wife Brody Dalle (Distillers), Jon Theodore (The Mars

Volta) and Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys). The return of Dave Grohl to drums and Nick Oliveri on bass would suggest something more similar to “Songs for the Deaf ”, but the end product is more sophisticated and focussed. Punk-style riff driven songs have given way to piano backing and slowly built up ballads.

The classic traits are still prevalent: big bass, thick toneful gain, analog synth, crunchy anthemic choruses and fake endings a-plenty. “Smooth sailing” is relentlessly funky, spouting lyrics like “I blow my load over the status quo”, while the drum-charged “My God is the Sun” is quintessentially Queens.

The lack of mosh pit-inducing tracks may disappoint some fans, but there will be plenty of room on the live setlist for throwbacks. With only 10 tracks making the cut it almost feels like the ride ends too soon.

Like Clockwork is meticulously crafted and adds another dimension to an epic back catalogue. It’s a bloody-lipped Transylvanian seduction with just the right mix of howls and bites.

Clockwork is hopefully not a swan song from these maturing dads of stoner rock but, if it is, it’s a swan song sung so well. I’m going to hold back half a star, just because I think they would prefer it.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: LIKE CLOCKWORK (2013) 4.5/5 Label

Matador Records.

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