71 Search results for stories/10/doce ut disceas.
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1928 - 2013 Pat Dale passed away aged 84 at Auckland City Hospital on Wednesday 14th February. Much loved husband, father, grandfather, brother, colleague and friend. He will be sorely missed by the m
Doce ut Disceas
I’ve been reading Prof Bill Oliver’s autobiography, “Looking for the Phoenix”. He offers the opinion that one of the main functions of a university is to provide an environment
Sound an Alarm
I don’t seem to have any stories about Judy. Perhaps by the time Malcolm had got serious about her, I had gone off to the Pacific to unwind. Nor does Malcolm, at the time I shared a flat with hi
Dad
My father features so largely in my life that many of the stories of my past are really his stories or make some reference to him. However the early part of his life needs to be written up, just to co
Tagged with: dale family |
Lord Onslow
This is actually a story of my Uncle Murray's. He was born in 1882, so grew up during Seddon's time as a politician, and as he worked for the Post Office in Westport when Dick was MP for Westland, I g
Tagged with: new zealand |
Blue Pacific
It was the rhinoceros beetle that took me to the Pacific, though chance and kind friends played their part. As a topic form my MSc thesis, I had hoped to get something that might help me to find gainf
Morrie Roche
He had nothing to carry him along but a sharp mind, and unbounded enthusiasm. His mother must have died when he was very young and his father put him into a catholic orphanage at Silverstream, where h
Terry
These things I have tried to learn from Terry; that it is possible to be effective without being aggressive, and to be kind without being a wimp. He was a beautiful child. There’s no getting awa
Tagged with: dale family |
Alan
It seems strange doesn’t it, that there should be people in your own family that you grew up with but never really got to know. Alan was seven years older than me, and though that doesn’t
Tagged with: dale family |
Mr Khan
Mr Khan was the CEO of the Agriculture Department and our main contact with the Department during our visit. He was a bright eyed little fellow with snow white hair and a pretty smart demeanour. He to
Tall Pansies
There can be something pathetic about inheritors of great wealth. Doug Meyers plaintively trying to bring us to an appreciation of the awesome responsibilities that beset the billionaire; Ollie Newlan
Houses
We’ve lived in eight houses since we were married in 1955, and it is possible we may yet shift again before we are returned to our maker. Five of them were rented, three of which went with the j
Rob
I should have known better. He was a good lad - keen, cheerful, confident, - but he had a prominent and bony nose, and that should have told me something, for the nose, according to Hazlitt, is the ru
Taking Counsel
In the elections of 1986 the Mount Albert Labour Party elected me to the Mount Albert City Council. This was a totally new experience for me, and I approached the task with a certain trepidation. My L
Bangladesh
Seeing Bangladesh from the air, you could be forgiven for believing the country was awash. Neither the Bay of Bengal, nor the many branches of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra appear to have any actual
Tagged with: bangladesh |
Murphy's Law
These United nation jobs were pretty lucrative. We were paid in American dollars, at rates that would match the sort of pay that an American scientist would expect, and it was not taxable. Furthermore
Frederik Christian Dale: A Brush with History
I wouldn't want to make too much of this, but Richard John Seddon has impinged on my life more than chance should have allowed. I've already told you Uncle Murray's story about King Dick's trip down t
Tagged with: dale family | new zealand |
Fancy Dress
You never know, as the Public Trust will assure you, what life will throw at you. An entomological friend of ours was ill advised enough to take his wife with him on an insect collecting trip to Rarot
Plant Protection
The rhinoceros beetle that brought me to Samoa is a serious pest of coconuts because the adult chews its way into the crown of the coconut palm, feeding on the sweet juice, and if it doesn't actually
Tagged with: samoa |
Hilary
Our generation of Dales was almost devoid of females. My cousins were Jack and Jim and Tom, and Terry and Doug, and my brothers were Alan, Barry and Dion. We have done better in the next generation wi
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Ruby
Auntie Ruby, (actually Annabella Stuart Dale) died in Palmerston North in 1928, after a "tragically brief illness" according to her obituary, but the cause of her death remains a bit of a my
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Abel's Tomb
On another occasion we had been inspecting an orchard in the general vicinity of the Lebanese border in connection with some scale insect problem on apples. The visit started in style with a magnifice
Tagged with: syria |
Cyprus
It was a matter of chance that we got to Cyprus at all.. I was due to make my second trip to Syria, and I had phoned Ed Feliu in Rome to see if he could arrange it so that the Syria trip could follow
Tagged with: cyprus | united nations |
Prof Percival
My tertiary education has been a slow and tedious process, spanning in all some 44 years. It was slow because for the first four years I didn’t understand what learning was all about, and becaus
Grand Pacific
I recently saw again the Grand Pacific Hotel, languishing after ten years of neglect, with green algae growing up its once immaculate walls, and bidding fair to meet up with the streaks of black mould
The Scientist
Scientists are just people, with all the variety and idiosyncrasy that you would find in any other group of people. The “mad professor” image that the silly children in the media insist on
Miss Trimble's Magpie
In the 1930’s before the advent of Playstation 2 and the like, we children turned to Nature for our entertainment. From time to time we would find a young magpie which had fallen from its nest,
A Road to Damascus Experience
The road north from Damascus runs parallel to a long line of dry cliffs where the Antilebanon drops down from the Lebanese plateau to the Syrian plain, which must once have been the bed of an inland s
Tagged with: syria |
Stitches
You will have heard about the poor fellow who got separated from his companion in the middle of the Sahara, and was set upon by wandering Tuaregs or whatever. When his friend found him again he had ha
Chooks
Chooks are stupid, - really stupid. They may gaze at you with one bright eye, and you may imagine that you detect in it some glint of mingled wonderment and curiosity, but in fact any glimmer of light
Help of the Helpless
Somewhere a light must have flashed in the control tower. The big jet roared and shuddered and flung itself down the runway, pressing me against the seat back. The motors rose in pitch from howl to sc
Moscow
The young fellow who came to us in the morning to ask if we would like a tour of the city was tall and blond, and smartly dressed in a well cut suit, whose jacket had however been designed without col
Jack van der Zyp
Jack was a Dutch immigrant, short and blond and amazingly fit. Like most of his kind he was prepared to have a go at anything, which I suppose is the reason they have been such successful settlers her
War in the Desert
They must have gathered him up off the battlefield with a rake and a sugarbag. He was scarred pretty well everywhere, either from the seams where they’d sewed him together or from the skin they&
Commercial Experience
My experiences with commercial enterprises, whether large or small, have not always been the most cordial. In fact I have sometimes thought that if ever I were to lose the use of my eyes and a couple
Pen and Ink
Primary education up till the 1960’s was largely concerned with mastery of the pen and ink, and we made some monumental messes. When I first went to school in 1934 (delayed by a year because Coa
Albert
Uncle Albert was a British Israelite, whatever that may mean. I think it had to do with measuring the galleries in the pyramids using a mystical measure called a “pyramid inch”, and on the
Skip
The houses that the more prosperous settlers built for themselves were modelled after the English country mansion style with two storeys, dormer windows and steep gables. In England the steepness was
Turn of the Worm
I can't remember who said that statistics will prove anything you want them to prove, but perhaps he was on to something. Whatever problem you happen to be working on, if you let a statistician near i
Pheasants
In the days before colour TV there was a fairly limited range of amusements for dairy farmers. Tied to the two milking times each day for most of the year, they were lucky if they could participate in
THE POLICEMAN AND THE PROSTITUTE
I had come to Suva on business. The town had much changed but I found a park for my car and headed down the street. I hadn’t gone far when a very deep voice behind me said, “Mrs Livingston
Tokelau Islands
The people of the Tokelaus provide a tidy example of how mankind can exist in perpetuity within a minimal environment. They exist on three atolls about 500 kms north of Samoa, and a few degrees south
Tagged with: pacific |
Picnics
Picnics as I think of them are a kids’ thing and mainly a family thing, though of course there are school picnics, and Sunday school picnics, and staff picnics. I suppose young lovers, and old l
Car Wash
The Brahmaputra, where it flows through Bangladesh is more like a lake than a river. Well over a mile wide, its muddy waters stretch like an ocean of warm milky tea as far as the eye can see, and its
Tagged with: bangladesh |
Staff Training
Sometimes you get lucky. At one time they offered to send me to Uganda to train the local staff in the mysteries of “plant protection”. Plant protection is the art of diagnosing the illnes
Mignon
Grandma had a red headed sister called Maggie, who married Samuel Barr, - he who was said to have died in the DT’s. Be that as it may, between them they produced seven children. Their misfortune
The Simple Life
I built a little hut on my bit of land and made it as comfortable as I could. It had a pair of bunks, (salvaged from the bach), at one end; a bench with sink, (salvaged from a refurbished entomology l
Cars
I suppose I can claim to be born into the motoring age. At least my father was always pretty keen on cars, owning his first car, a Model T Ford in 1925, and having a succession of cars, mostly Fords,
Tagged with: new zealand |
Encounter
Forty years on and she was still just as beautiful. Older of course, but remarkably unchanged by the years, and not a fraction less beautiful. The same wavy blonde hair containing that perfect oval fa
Teaching
I never did want to be a teacher, but after two years as a mechanic in Wellington automatic telephone exchanges it was obvious I was making no progress there. My father asked me why I didn’t go
Aircraft Disinsection
Though life has brought me close to several of the world's great catastrophes it has so far spared me involvement in any of them. We had left Czechoslovakia in 1967 a good month before the Soviet tank
Tagged with: maf | work | world health organisation |
Murray
Jerome K Jerome, whom most people older than me will remember as the author of “Three Men in a Boat”, also wrote an essay on shyness, and in it dwelt on the burden that shyness can be to t
Tagged with: dale family |
Daniel Ferris
The family legend has it that he was born in Ireland, perhaps somewhere near Belfast, and that as a rebellious teenager, he came home late one night to find the door locked. There is no mention of alc
Tagged with: dale family | new zealand |
World Food Programme
One wonders whether the World Food Programme isn't run by a group of half-witted shopkeepers. When they learn that some of the poorest countries are short of grain, their immediate reaction is to buy
Tagged with: uganda | united nations |
Schooldays
Conventional wisdom used to have it that your schooldays were the best days of your life. I can't say that my schooldays were especially dismal, but I feel deeply sorry for those that stumbled through
Jury Service
I can understand the reluctance of the legal profession to tinker with Magna Carta. After all it is a significant document. But after 782 years it could be time to take a fresh look at it. Technology
Bollards
I finally passed Maths I in 1949 at the fourth attempt. I don’t know why I kept on at it for I was never very fond of maths. I suppose that after each failed attempt I felt I had more to lose by
Sheep
I once bought a truck load of lambs, - refugees from a Hawkes Bay drought. I don’t think they had seen green grass before in their short lives, and it was a pleasure to see the expressions of mi
My Cars
The first car I owned was a 1931 Singer that i bought for L25 from John Fowraker the Botany professor's son. It had had some fairly advanced features in its day: - a four speed gearbox, an aluminium b
Work Experience
My first job when I left home in 1946 was as a technician (technically called a “junior mechanician”) in an automatic telephone exchange at Kelburn in Wellington. The exchange was a sort o
Seychelles
Perhaps it is as well that we never know how any one piece of experience will impact on future experiences. Life would set up some impossible choices if we could see all the consequences of every acti
Korea
Perhaps I had it luckier than most. Koreans offer a lot to the aged, and since I was already sixty when I first went there and my face was already thoroughly lined they could easily see that the white
Tagged with: korea | united nations |
The Cow
For the first twenty years of my life, my father kept a cow. Not the same cow of course, but a succession of cows, one at a time. This must have taken a good deal of persistence, to milk the beast twi
Cast the First Stone
Most kids were a lot better at throwing stones than me. When they threw a stone it went hard and straight and pretty much to where they wanted it to. They could hit the cups on telephone poles, (insul
Pearl
Gentleness and eccentricity, - that's how I remember Auntie Pearl. Actually she had a bad start in life. Her mother wanted this, her first born, to be named Margaret Frances, but her father, who happe
Tagged with: dale family |
Samuel Barr
He's not directly related to me, but he married my great Grandmother's sister Maggie, and he lived at Boatman's and was a very active citizen there, and his path crossed with that of my ancestors and
Tagged with: new zealand |
Primers
Political considerations delayed the start of my formal education. Mr Forbes, I understand, was having trouble balancing the budget in 1933, on account of the Depression. Apparently it was believed to