Reporter’s diary

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Still Boeing strong SOOTHING news for people who get nervous about taking their feet off the ground. A Rolls Royce jet engine has just flown the equivalent of 14 return trips to the moon and was still throbbing strong until it was removed for planned servicing last week. The engine has logged 12,545 hours of service on an Air New Zealand Boeing 747, and is only a few hours short of the best time achieved world-wide. The engine was fitted on March 3, 1987, and spent most of its life cruising at 800km/h to 1100 km/h. School's... LIAISON officer at the University of Canterbury, Terry McLisky, is resigned to being frequently misspelled as a "liason”

officer. The latest variant spelling of liaison was a lush-sounding liasion. What’s more, it was found no less than five times, in a supplement to the “Education Gazette” on "Tomorrow’s Schools.” Terry says: "So much for tomorrow’s schools. I prefer yesterday’s.”

... out STILL in fields educational, yesterday a colleague was . slightly overwhelmed by the cascade of mail from the Association of University Teachers of New Zealand. An' exuberant computer had delighted in addressing, and posting to her, five identical copies of the association’s newsletter, “Bulletin.” It must have been an urge to indulge in academic freedom that sent the machine haywire. Or someone goofed.

Ideal THE “Financial Times” writes of a stallholder in a market who displayed a book in a sealed wrapper labelled: “What Every Small Man Longs For.” Asked what was inside, the stallholder said it was a copy of “Little Women.” Boys in all sorts? TRENDY new colours of police cars in Christchurch did not impress a rural visitor when she saw one for the first time. “It looks like an imported sweat-shirt,” she snorted. Some total THE Christchurch City Council agenda carried an item about tenders for the City Mall stage 2 developments. It mentioned that in all three tenders received, the prices had to be corrected to rectify arithmetical errors in the

addition. Only minor errors, the agenda noted. Tenders ranged from $609,825 to $721,583. But what’s a dollar between friends? Fax muddled SENDING a fax to Tunisia would be straightforward, thought staff of one Telecom office last week. For two nights the operator tried to get through but each time the person answered with a franglaised “’ello?” and then hung up. Finally an interpreter was called in and the problem was solved. The fax machine in Tunisia had not been turned on. That's the trouble BUMPER sticker seen in Worcester Street: “Don’t panic — there’s always welfare.”

—Jenny Setchell