me and competing

Yeah, I relish it! Outside of guitar, I was a good goalkeeper in soccer, and did gymnastics. Canterbury rep as a goalie, but I was too short. I'm an enthusiastic cricket fan, but my abilities were very limited. Two years in Italy meant I didn't pick up much until I was 11. Two years in Italy playing calcio put me well ahead of most of the Christchurch kids. My swimming wasn't competitively good, but my breath control comes from two years where I played underwater hockey as well as trombone. But I'm not perfect, so I've also felt how it feels to lose. Choosing the best guitarist from people being pitted against each other as though it's Mortal Kombat is one way to go, but my style is more like who can change the vibe the most. - Even now, the suggestion that I might pick up serious guitar has people that have been planning to win the competition this year a bit freaked. I'm not competing, as my best performances aren't usually for judges. Honestly, I thought it was next year... - I think competing is healthy as long as it's self-motivating, but it's easy for it to become a goal unto itself. 'Playing to win' ... that's how Parliament feels to me. I prefer to use the corporate term benchmarking. I benchmark myself using my competitors, rivals, allies as a method of comparison, but it's only politics where I put much effort into reading the posts of the MPs on my team. It's more of a private thing. I celebrate things like meeting their benchmark, and that's something where I feel the AMPP hīkoi film impressed the right audience. - As the younger generation, it's interesting how fixed the vibes are when the old guys criticise each other. Gary thinks the museum is stupid, Chris reckons that the way to build a community is to get people picking up their prescriptions. In Wellington, I think people are reconsidering a Daktory approach where we say that it should be legal and demonstrate the reasons why, but a full-on club is something that I doubt any city leader would endorse. My view is that the safe consumption centre is the easiest idea to implement, and one that ignores the cannabis issue for the wider issue of drug harm. It can be as nice as the hemp store or Whakamana. The photos I saw of the ones in Scotland were very encouraging. This is the egghead view of drug reform, though, which typically faces some resistance from the whānau. People in Wellington need a place to safely consume drugs. Let's build one.