Read about the Elephant in NZ's Economic Room

Hi all,
Tony Smale from Forte Management has just written up a very cohesive piece on why New Zealand is falling behind economically. Read all about it at http://www.forte-management.co.nz/resources/100-Forte_Enterprise_Digest_June_2012_print_friendly.pdf.ashx

Sam

Flipbooks

Hi all,
There are two links on the right-hand side of this post - one is the Rotary NI Trip Flipbook, the other is the story of bulding our house. Please try using them and let me know what you think!


Sam

News from Nelson, May 2012

Hi all,
It has been a while since I wrote up our news – I don’t know where the last two months have gone. Staggering really; you turn around and it is suddenly a week away from winter!

Jan’s grandmother, Oma Lieselotte, is still slowly recovering in Germany. We have planned a fortnight’s trip to Ulm in June. While we hoped to catch up with everyone, unfortunately it looks as though we will miss Oli & Katrin as they are heading to France for two and a half weeks at the same time :-(

However, our plans at the moment are:

-          Sunday 10 June: 18.00 into Frankfurt, pick up the rental car & overnight with Simone & Michael in Langen.

-          Monday 11: drive to Ulm, to Uta & Omi Lieselotte. 

-          Tuesday 12 - Sunday 17:  Ulm, catching up with as many people who can make it there to see us.

-          Sunday 17: drive to Treysa, to Omi Friedel, staying with Anne & Herbert.

-          Monday 18: Treysa: catching up with as many people who can make it there to see us.

-          Tuesday 19 - Friday 22: Edersee.

-          Friday 22: drive to Frankfurt (possibly via Polheim), leave at 19.45 for NZ.

John F has headed off overseas for the winter, so Bonnie is still with us. She is such a happy dog! Magda will be looking after things at this end, and, with a bit of luck, while we are in Germany, we will catch up with John in Ulm. Funny how small the world is these days.

Brigitte’s birthday celebration went well. We caught up with Melissa, Jörg and Tanja who all came especially. Jörg had a bit of a relapse afterward, but seems to be right again now.

I have been up to Wellington a couple of times for CDANZ Exec meetings, but get to miss the next one as I will be in Europe. I will be up again in August though, so perhaps I can catch up with some of the Welly crowd then (August 24-26).

Justine came to Kiwiland for a holiday, and came over to Nelson. We did lots of shopping, eating and talking… what a surprise! Had a lovely catch up, and hopefully we will be able to catch up again in Germany in a couple of weeks time; we will see how Justine’s time works out.

Mike & Donna’s engagement party went off well – and I spent some time catching up with various family members. I am hoping to get some photos from my sister of the three of us.

Jan has an NSO concert on this weekend, with guest conductor Luke Di Somma. They are playing Mozart, Fauré and Elgar, which will be interesting to experience. This week Jan has practice tonight, tomorrow night, Friday night and Saturday. The performance is Saturday night, so by Sunday he will be ready for a very quiet day.

The Rotary North Island trip was a blast (see the post a couple down for some photos). We had eleven girls with us from nine nations, so were quite a mixture. Both Jan & I have said we would do it again, and I am currently preparing a photobook of the trip to send to all the girls. The girls also gave us a New Zealand flag as a memento of the trip, which we have had framed. It will go on the office wall.

A couple of the girls – Anna from Germany and Camila from Brazil – have come to stay for a weekend, having a king hit on watching the entire Director’s Cut of the Lord of the Rings… all eleven hours of it. We had a lovely time then too!

We have briefly caught up with Kathleen & Frits, who have been in Europe for a huge holiday, but are looking forward to a much more in-depth discussion of where they went and what they did soon.

Uncle Norman has had a fall, and has been in hospital for a week. He is more-or-less OK now, and was allowed home today.

Happy birthdays to my Father, my Aunt Diana, John D, Adrian C, and Megan A over the next month.

All the best - hope to hear from you all soon!

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young

Skinnymalinks vs skilligimink

Hi all,
Having just spent some time thinking about words, I was reminded of the phrase "sky-blue pink with a finny haddy border". I think I heard that phrase from either my mother or my grandmother, so assumed that it was a London phrase. So I trotted off across Google, detouring to wwwords (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sky1.htm), and found that in actual fact it was an American phrase that started off as just "sky-blue pink". Trust the Brits to embellish it in the 1930s :-)

But what I was struck by was a line from Howard Garis, the 1910 author of a children's book containing sky-blue pink "He splashed around and scattered the skilligimink color all over the kitchen, and when his mamma and Susie fished him out, if he wasn’t dyed the most beautiful sky-blue-pink you ever saw!". What struck me was that "skilligimink" seemed awfully close to skinnymalinks, an old Scots word referring to someone who was very, very thin (perhaps with faint modern overtones in these days of anorexics of being only as good as they should be).

World Wide Words Michael Quinion hadn't made the connection between  skinnymalinks and skilligimink, I think: "Don’t ask me about skilligimink, by the way: Garis seems to have been the only person ever to use the word, and where it comes from is unknown". The two words seem too similar for skilligimink not to have been an eggcorn (a mis-heard or mispronounced word).

Sam

An Arm and a Leg

Hi all,
I read in an email recently "In George Washington's days, there were no cameras. One's image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George Washington showed him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others showed both legs and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Arms and legs are 'limbs,' therefore painting them would cost the buyer more. Hence the expression, 'Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg.' (Artists know hands and arms are more difficult to paint)"
It sounded like a total piece of bollocks to me, so I went and did a 2 minute search on the web. I found several items:

1. From PhraseFinder (http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/13/messages/1197.html):
   An arm and a leg - "A large sum of money; as if worth two of one's four limbs." From "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" revised by Adrian Room (HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 1999, Sixteenth Edition). No origin is given.
   There's another Brewer's entry that sounds like it might have a connection: Chance one's arm - "To run a risk in the hope of succeeding and obtaining a profit or advantage. The.phrase is of army origin. A non-commissioned officer who offends against service regulations risks demotion and the loss of a stripe from his sleeve."
2. From PhraseFinder (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/arm-and-a-leg.html): an American phrase, coined sometime after WWII. The earliest citation I can find is from The Long Beach Independent, December 1949 "Food Editor Beulah Karney has more than 10 ideas for the homemaker who wants to say "Merry Christmas" and not have it cost her an arm and a leg."
   'Arm' and 'leg' are used as examples of items that no one would consider selling other than at an enormous price. It is a grim reality that, around that time, there are many US newspaper reports of servicemen who lost an arm and a leg in the recent war. It is quite likely, although difficult to prove conclusively at this remove, that the phrase originated in reference to the high cost paid by those who suffered such amputations.
3. From Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/lesson.asp):
   "If it takes a leg" (used to express desperate determination) dates to 1872. Similarly, print sightings for "I'd give my right arm" (to be able to do something especially desired) go back as far as 1616.
4. From Word-Wizard (http://www.word-detective.com/032404.html) says it was popularised in print in 1956 and is nothing to do with painting.
5. Surprisingly, our man from WorldWideWords (http://www.worldwidewords.org/wordsearch.htm) is silent on this one. This guy is usually, etymologically-speaking, sound as.

So where does all this leave us? Possibly the phrase has sprung from a mixture. It will cost you an arm, based on 'chancing your arm' or giving your right arm; to which someone has inflated the value with 'and a leg'. It sounds much more logical to me :-)

Sam