Payback time Auckland drivers - it's the buses' revenge! Troy came across this scene on Sunday in central Auckland. "The road was closed but the driver didn't realise this until he was halfway down the street - cue a 45 point u-turn just off Fort St!"
Make mates while you're young
A story in the New York Times, Friends of a Certain Age, looks at how the college years are America's prime friendship-making time. Why? "Because as we get older and external conditions change (like work, coupledom and children) and the need for friendship diminishes, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists consider crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other. With work friendships often it is difficult to say where networking ends and real friendship begins, the article says. And professional hierarchy and income also have an impact. Once people start coupling up, the challenges only increase - four people have to like each other - and when parent friends develop a bond, the resulting friendships can be fleeting and subject to the whims of the children themselves." (Via Metafilter)
A hard line to toe
Fat toes are going under the knife as "toe-besity" is on the rise, according to the Daily Mail. New York-based Dr Oliver Zong says a growing number of people are beginning to obsess over their toes. One patient said he hid his fat right big toe for years, before deciding to have surgery and his second toe was a hammertoe, which was ugly. A number of female patients wanted to have their pinky toes removed in order to fit into smaller shoes.
Parking atrocity
A reader writes: "This photo was taken at Te Kouma Bay boat haul out area in Coromandel. There was a fishing contest on and this keen participant blocked half of the road for a good half-day or more. Possibly he won the prize for being the biggest prawn? Or maybe the biggest prat?"
That's blown it
The story about the person who failed their restricted licence test because of a just-blown bulb reminded this reader of what happened to a friend. "He also arrived to sit his [full licence] test with a brake light out. He asked if he could go to the service station across the road to buy a new one, and was told no, he would be failed. What really got him was that he was 10 minutes early - he actually would have been back, with a working brake light, before the scheduled test time. He is still driving around on his restricted licence on principle."