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| 2012 - No. 2 www.malecek.com | |||
| SONGS of LIFE |  |
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Certain songs bring back strong memories. The earliest one is at farm and whenever "Goodbye Jimmy Goodbye" played from 1957 onwards, my Grandmother would sing along changing it to "Johnny" “Rock Around the Clock” which in 1955 finds me in our Richfield kitchen listening to the radio on our kitchen bench. There I was in 1957 at a school sock hop doing “The Stroll” with Sandy MacAndrews. The first record I bought was “Rocking Robin” in 1958 and there I am standing in front of our living room mirror singing along to it. “Over and Over” was the flip-side of Bobby Day’s record. Friday nights in 1959 found me in my room listening to WDGY’s Bill Deihl read my request for “Dream Lover” to be played for Sandy. I was in our basement workroom in Bloomington an evening in December 1963 when I first heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and my world changed. July 1st, 1966 and I had just picked up Terri and Vicky to go to Spring Lake and on the radio was “The Pied Piper”. One September evening in 1969 and I was bringing the gorgeous Gail to my apartment and on the car radio was “Sugar Sugar”, which became “our song”. “Viva Bobby Joe” puts me in my QVS home in 1971 preparing lesson plans while listening to “Listeners’ Favorites”. December 1996 and I am blown away by The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” video and song on our TV at Beach Road in Papakura. Aug 1997 and I impressed my cousin's teenage daughter by identifying Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life". Once again Gail and I are in a car in September, this time it is 1997 driving from Arizona to Utah and I heard “Barbie Girl” for the first time. Stopped at the next city and bought the CD. In 1999 I fell in love with "The Sopranos theme song, "Woke Up This Morning". Sometime in the early 2000's I had to get the Trivial team to trust me that "Tha Crossroads" was done by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
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 SOUTH ISLAND -
New Zealand’s lower island (clever name, eh?) which is more mountainous (Southern Alps) and a lot colder than the North Island. In the old days it was populated with 70 million sheep but nowadays the fields are filled with cows. We spent a couple weeks traversing the whole island in January 1974.
 In January 2003 we explored Dunedin and hit the main tourist area, Queenstown on Lake Wakatipu. Another main attraction is Fiordland and the Milford Track. Gail wants to go a third time to see the whales off of Kaikoura. | |
 StPAUL Cos - In 1980 this company trained me to be a COBOL programmer. I ended up in a high stress unit handling the medical insurance area. I was on the ground floor for a new system and spent 3 years creating it. Since we had a high staff turnover I ended up being the “expert” for a couple systems. We had decided in 1983 to return to New Zealand, but couldn’t sell our house. That turned out to be lucky for me as I was given the task to create an agriculture system on an IBM PC. I had to teach myself and what I learned would help land me a good job in New Zealand | |
| SANDSPIT ROAD SCHOOL - Gail taught at the Waiuku primary for 11 years. And I was the computer support person for three years. I would try to do most of the work outside school hours but once in awhile I was in classrooms with the little children and enjoyed their curiosity and banter with me. We made a few good friends over the years, especially Bob (Kiwi) and Elaine (Canadian). Bob built his own race car named "Stinger”". When he died Elaine returned to Vancouver. | |
 SPECIAL FRIENDS - Chuck and Inez (Gail’s university roommate) STREASICK,
SIGNE Pagel and STEVE Newstrom (childhood friends),  SMITHERS family (David, my first Kiwi friend from Rosehill College days),
 SANDERS family (Our first Kiwi friends who we often camped with in the early years. Shared more than a few bottles/casks of wine. Mike is gone but Kathy continues the tradition.
Amazingly, Kathy worked with Gail when we arrived in NZ and more than 20 years later she also worked with me at my school).
 Jan and Rollie SCHWITTERS (our neighbours in Cottage Grove, Minnesota 1980-5),
 Bob and Lynna SCHAUER (knew them from StPaul Cos but only became good friends when they visited us in 1990)
SIMON Breeze (taught together in Fiji and NZ - visited him in Brunei in1997).  SUSI White (my Fijian "sister" and favorite bridge and wine drinking partner) and
 STEPHANIE my French "daughter", an excellent artist, who lived with us for 5 years.  SENAD - energetic fellow from Europe, who I met at Rosehill as teenager now working on his PhD | |
| "Sherry" Supremes Satisfaction Suva "Shiela" Shane "Sugar Shack" | |
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This masterpiece never fails to make me laugh with its sending up of Star Wars, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi movies. Who could forget the wise old Yoghurt, the villain boss, Pizza the Hut or the self-conscience short Dark Helmut.
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Malley Muses Street Names |
| I wonder if town planners are coming up with up-to-date names for new roads. A quick check finds: I Street and I Avenue exist—but no iStreet (where every building is white) yet. There is Google Drive, Twitter Court, Yahoo Road, eBay Drive and Dotcom Drive. How about Facebook Place or YouTube Boulevard? | ||
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At the pump: 
