Surfing the Crime Wave.

What's worse than having your car stolen?



Having your house burgled 10 days later.



What's worse than having a car stolen and house burgled within the space of 11 days?



Having your house tagged 3 days after that.



Forget "Student City", Palmerston North will always be "Hell's Kitchen" to me

Prior to moving in and not trusting the marketing hyperbole (Location Location Location! If we don't like the pulling power of the location you're in, we'll stretch the concept of artistic licence, along with the boundaries of desirable locales, and fling you into a chic location across town), I had researched the area that I was to move into with my students (only in very general terms; it is well known amongst insiders in the Education field that once a student knows where you live, it's witness protection time again). I wanted to find out once and for all what suburb it was in. See I couldn't get a straight answer from a real estate agent. (I know - that was redundant).

The conversation went something like this ..

"If I lived in a house near ________ Street, what suburb is that?"

"What bit of ___________Street Miss?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe at the intersection of ________ Crescent and ________ Drive?"

"What about it?"

"Well, like I said - what suburb would I be in?"

"Huh?"

"Suburbs. Smaller sections of Palmerston North City that have specific area names. Terrace End. Awapuni. Hokowhitu. Milson. Suburbs".

"Ohhhhh."

"So...................? What suburb would I be in if I lived near the intersection of ________Crescent and _________Drive?"

"That's not a suburb Miss, that's just The Hood."

If only I had had this lesson from the Universtiy of (low)Life before signing the papers. But I remind myself regularly (each time I fall asleep to the sonic boom of boy racers accelerating past both my house and the speed of sound) that like "Fitty" someone has to come from the mean streets.

Keepin' it real in the Roslyn massive.

'Sup.