"Sorry ma'am, that's not covered by your policy"

These days, insurance is available for just about everything.  Houses, cars, lives, travel, pets and apparently even alien abduction.  Insurance deals in financial reimbursement for misfortune (or not as the case may usually be - they have a plethora of excuses as to why the floodwaters seeping into your shag pile are an exception to the insurance terms and in violation of clause 18, paragraph 33 (in size 6 font of course)).

But what are we risking?  The most dangerous Monday-Friday activity is driving to work and back, or carrying two extra-hot cappuccinos down the stairs at the office.  And how do they decide what the value of a life or limb is?  We rely on insurance for our financial wellbeing in a situation we didn't foresee, however you only have to talk to a resident of East Christchurch to realise how optimistic we are in thinking that everything will be fine as long as we pay our premiums.


The word 'risk' always reminds me of the strategic board game of the same name, and a work trip I made to Perth last year.  I had a couple of friends living there who invited me for dinner one night; another pal of theirs were also in town and had brought a board game that day that he was keen to try out on us.  


I still have nightmares about Axis and Allies.  Based heavily on the rules of Risk, the instruction book alone gives War & Peace a run for its money.  None of us had ever played the game before (or since), so we drank a few glasses of wine and set about preparing the board.

Every bit as confusing as it looks, and more.  There is overwhelming scientific evidence to support the negative correlation between the level of understanding of the rules of Axis & Allies, and the annual number of times you get laid...




Two hours later, we sat around a table littered with plastic battleships; no closer to even starting the game.  According to the box, one game took upward of 4 hours so it was going to be a long night.  As well as military transportation, the game abounds in tokens and credits that we could make neither head nor tail of.  After skimming the instruction novel and realising that despite our best efforts none of us even knew how to start the game, we gave up and played Pictionary instead.  My conclusion from the evening was that it is probably easier to actually start a world war, than to simulate one using cardboard tokens and figurines of cannons.


On a completely unrelated and very sombre note:


Last night, I was procrastinating going to sleep (a common occurrence when I am home alone as I have no respect for my body clock or my rest requirements; it's currently 12.22 am) and reading my favourite New Zealand news site (www.stuff.co.nz).  Prominently displayed in the headlines was an article about a daycare centre in the North Island that had expelled a four-year-old boy who was HIV positive (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/6891611/Boy-with-HIV-expelled-from-childcare.)  The poor kid contracted HIV from his mother during birth, but is thankfully on treatments that will certainly not cure his illness but lower the levels of infection in his blood to the point where it is barely detectable.


The decision received an outraged backlash from a significant percentage of the community, including myself.  However, I trawled through the comments section of the article and was appalled to see how many people agreed with the decision to ban the child from the care facility.  Worse still, a proportion of those commenting also said that they would remove their own child from the daycare if they found out another attendee was HIV-positive.  Many people displayed complete ignorance about the transmission of HIV, while others took the coward's approach of "I feel sorry for him, BUT..."


I have read hundreds, and probably thousands of emotive articles, however I don't remember ever being as disgusted with the attitudes of humans toward each other as I was reading the comments of this piece.  The word discrimination does not even come close to what this little boy has been subjected to at an age far too young to be dealing with such a concept.


As part of a much wider plan to get out and see a bit more of this big wide world, my fella and I have been looking into options to volunteer in parts of South America, Africa or Asia.  There are literally millions of people that could use a hand and between us we have four spare.  The article I read last night really affected my mindset, and has given me determination not to be the kind of person who discriminates against those less fortunate, even in the name of being a 'good mother' (oh yes, there were plenty of commenters standing by the excuse of being a 'responsible parent' - never mind the fact that you're simultaneously teaching your offspring how to be an egotistical bigot).  There is a lot of assistance we can provide in areas of the world where a big problem is not that you've been waiting 7 minutes in a supermarket queue.  I want to be able to tell kids with HIV through no fault of their own, that they are real people with real voices and as much chance at a normal life as you or I.  Let's stop this madness.


Blue skies,


-E