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How To Get A Carpark Without Driving Around For Ages

How many times have you zipped around the block again and again in the vain hope that someone will miraculously give up that park right infront of you?

Good news: You don’t have to any more because I will tell you my secret

The secret to getting a park is… to chill.

Here’s how it works:

Say you’ve come up on a block of parks with 30 minute maximums. There are 15 parks, they are all taken.

Do you:

  • A: Keep driving, one might be just around the corner…
  • B: Pull over as far as you can and wait

The correct answer is B.

Its all maths.

If there are 15 cars and the limit is 30 minutes that means someone is likely to pull out in just 2 minutes!

All you have to do is try and make it clear to the cars zipping past you that you somehow knew ahead of time that a car is about to pull out of their park.

If its a 2 hour area and there are 40 parks, how long do you have to wait? 10 minutes? 5? Nope. Just 3. (2hours x 60 minutes per hour = 120mins divided by 40 parks = 3 minutes).

Good luck! (Not that you’ll need it, just patience!)

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I Paid 3 Times As Much For My Socks Than For My Shoes

This one time, I needed a new pair of cross trainers. Nothing flash, just some casual shoes to muck around in. The Warehouse is the place to go for bargains of course. I steer clear of the shit “Active Intent” brand, I go for the well known brands – Aasics, Slazenger.

Anyway, I found a pair that were just perfect, and even better – they were “reduced to clear” – only $34.95! Stoked!

Grabbed some socks on the way out – $15 for a pack of 5. Paid at the counter, and checked my receipt on the way out. The total bill had come out a bit cheaper than I was expecting. The shoes had scanned at $4.98!

I thought maybe the barcodes got mixed up somehow, but no, it looked legit.

I knew there was one more pair on the shelf, and at $4.98 it was quite a deal. Sure enough I grabbed the other pair and used the instore scanner to check the price. Confirmed: $4.98. Great!

The only bummer is that it made me feel like my socks were a rip off since they cost me three times as much as my shoes…

Side note about the Active Intent brand

Look closer at the brand name. Active Intent. “Sportswear designed for those who intend to be active but don’t get around to it.” That’s why its shit quality.

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Does Hair Grow Back Thicker When You Cut It?

No.

A few quick facts about hair

  • Hair grows at a rate of about 1.25cm per month.
  • Hair follicles grow hairs in cycles.
  • Example 1: Eyelash hairs have a short cycle. They grow for about 8 weeks and then fall out.
  • Example 2: Hair on your head has a much longer cycle. A single hair can grow for months (or even years) before it falls out
  • At the begginning of the growth cycle the hair is very fine and may be slightly white.
  • The hair becomes thicker as it grows.
  • Men and woman have about 100,000 hairs on their body

If you cut a hair in the middle of it’s growth cycle at skin level, within a few days it would have grown enough to be clearly visible again.

Because it is in the middle of it’s growth cycle, it is at it’s thickest, so it appears that it has grown back thicker.

Not so.

The hair is not aware that it has been cut. It is inert. It has not “grown back” it has merely continued its growth cycle unaware that it has been cut.

I’m glad I could clear that up for you. Now, go, get on with your life.

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Anti-bacterial Hand Sanitiser, Good Or Bad?

Do you use hand sanitiser? You are killing your bodies natural defence system!

Next time you reach for your bottle of Purell hand sanitiser, think twice. Here’s what is going to happen:

  1. You apply the hand sanitiser to your skin, and all the bacteria on the surface on your skin dies. You may be thinking “great, that’s what I intended!”, but wait…
  2. Within a few hours, you touch a door knob or toilet seat, or the sugar bowl in a restaurant, or a bowl of peanuts in a bar, and you pick up evil bacteria
  3. The evil bacteria has a huge party on your hand and multiply exponentially because the slate is clean – there are no good/healthy bacteria to slow their growth
  4. You get sick. Very sick.

In summary:

  • There is good bacteria and there is bad bacteria. But most of the time they exist in a natural balance on your skin and in your body.
  • Not all bacteria are evil, many of them have important jobs to do!
  • If you use a hand sanitiser such as Purell you are killing the bad bacteria, sure, but you are killing the good bacteria too.
  • Starting from a clean slate, it is a race between good and evil to dominate. If the bad bacteria grows faster, you could get very sick.

What can you do?

  • Don’t use hand sanitiser, but take sensible precautions such as washing your hands with plain old soap and water after the toilet etc.
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Top 10 Reasons Why I Love Cats

  1. They are so darn cute!
  2. You can’t teach them to obey you, they will do things if they choose to. I respect that independance
  3. They don’t love you just because you feed them, you have to woo them before they will show you affection
  4. It feels nice to pat them. Being unselfish and making a lovely little animal happy makes us happy too
  5. Once they are house trained you never have to see their faeces again!
  6. They get on with their lives when you are short on free time to give to them. They will patiently and quietly wait

Well, those first 6 are so good I don’t really need the rest of the list!

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How To Maximise Efficiency When Heating Your Home

Reportedly the most efficient form of heating for a household is with a heat pump. I don’t really understand how they work. I mean, how do they take cold air from outside and extract the heat from it and pump that into your house? And they are spose to be 150% efficient. I just don’t get it.

Anyway, what I do get is how to use a thermostat properly. I’m stunned that so many people have no idea how to use one! And what results is high running costs and a big electricity bill at the end of the month.

The most common reaction is “hey, its cold, lets turn on the heater!” and they crank it to the highest setting to heat the room the fastest. This is a false. The room won’t heat any quicker! The maximum power output does not change, the thermostat controls what temperature at which the element is turned off.

For example, if you set your heater to 10, it may never turn off because that temperature may be 40 degrees. The thing is, you don’t notice anything until you are too hot. At this point you take off a couple of layers and turn the heater off. You have wasted power, it should have been turned off 30 minutes ago!

The trick is to find the precise setting on the heater which heats the room to a comfortable point. For my tiny oil filled column heater that mark is 3/10. I resist the temptation to crank it to 10 when it is cold, I leave it at 3 and a comfortable and energy efficient evening results.

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I Filled Up A Notebook With The Numbers On Trains Passing By

This one time, I was staying with my uncle in Paikakariki and I was dead bored. It is a tiny town with nothing to do. The only feature is a set of rail way tracks down the road. So I used to sit on the roof of the garage in a fold-away chair with a 3B1 notebook and write down the numbers of the train engines as they went back and forth, for hours at a time. Occasionally I would think a number sounded familiar and would look back in the notebook to see if I had seen that one before.

That’s it.

But, I was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you! To find out 15 years later that what I had been doing has a name: “Trainspotting”! Shocked because I thought I had invented it. And to find out that other people had done what I was doing… What a bunch of losers we were.