I just got back from a 3am cycle through the streets of Auckland and while I was out there were a few things that caught my attention. To my surprise and intrigue, I saw a work crew raking leaves in a small grassy area adjacent to O’Rorke Hall (my dorm.) As I continued south on Symonds Street thinking how interesting it was that a city would find that kind of service desirable (after all, they’re just leaves), I saw something even more foreign to me. I saw another work crew cleaning a bus stop by hand. Yes, the city actually pays someone to clean the bus stops at three in the morning. I find these things interesting because that kind of public service is a far cry from the kind of public service that I became used to in Cincinnati. For example, one afternoon I found myself in an every-man-for-himself situation while driving down a main artery of town and finding that someone in the city who had no common sense at all decided that the road needed to be torn up and repaved during rush hour all while not putting up any type of signage and without any traffic control at all. I had to drive through a maze of construction machines and I also drove over pavement that was only laid five minutes prior. That kind of situation is obviously undesirable anywhere, but I don’t want to be judgmental in comparing the examples from each city. Auckland isn’t a better place simply because it provides those services. Although the services Auckland provides are nice to have and certainly help, it could easily be argued that the benefits of them do not surpass the costs.

Something else that has caught my attention while cycling around Auckland is how the streets are in really good condition almost everywhere. More importantly though, there is no distinct trend for the location of roads that are slightly less than ideal. That’s more than can be said about the roadways in Cincinnati. In Cincinnati, the privilege of being able to drive, or in my case cycle, on smooth roads is reserved mostly for the people who live in areas that are generally more affluent, vote more regularly, and therefore have the attention of the local politicians. I thought about that every time I went for a cycle in Cincinnati and it would just piss me off that a situation like that could exist. The sad thing about it though is that the population (which I was certainly a part of) was just as much to blame as the politicians; it’s one big catch-22.

I never really pursued any type of activism in Cincinnati for, well, anything, because I never saw myself as having a long-term future there. I thought that might change once coming to New Zealand, but it hasn’t really. There isn’t any place that I see a long-term future for myself at the moment, so I don’t have much motivation for trying to make any dramatic changes in my environment. I know that might sound selfish, but it’s honest and I’d bet 95% of the people reading this think the same way. However, my definition of dramatic is probably larger than most peoples’. I have been pursuing some small changes in my immediate environment such as trying to get a change machine installed in my dorm. (The laundry machines only take dollar coins so people hoard them lake crazy or stress about finding them before they wash their clothes.) I also have a few other ideas if the change machine is successful, but they’re not as developed and I don’t want to raise the expectations by talking them up now.

When I started writing this, I thought I would stick to the public services topic, but once I start writing it’s not easy to stop. I should do it more often, I know, but I just dont have enough thoughts, or maybe just energy, to do this every day.