I'm going on holiday. The weather's turned cold and it's been too long so I'm off to sunny Singapore.

It has been a long time. I rarely go on holiday – since I generally view life as one long holiday with occasional brief interruptions – so this'll be fun. Good to be somewhere different.
Though Tauranga these days is so different from how it was when I first started writing these columns that I barely recognise it any more. In fact, sometimes I literally don't recognise it, or at least bits of it.
Take the intersection in Brookfield, next to the shops. I have occasion to drive through this hotbed of activity frequently, to pick up DVDs from the good folk at Video Ezy Brookfield. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the intersection. If you once were, and haven't been there recently, you won't be any more.
Once upon a time (in a distant time called 2008) the Brookfield intersection consisted of one small roundabout and a minor T-Junction. No traffic lights. It got quite busy for a couple of half hours each day. It never struck me as too bad, but obviously I hadn't fully comprehended the enormity of the problem.
The intersection has now gone. In its place is what looks like a very long, thin, squashed 'roundabout”, and a few sets of traffic lights. Quite a few…
And how many sets of traffic lights do you think it takes to replace this minor roundabout? A dozen? Twenty? Surely not. Thirty? Does that seem a lot?
Well the answer – because I went out this afternoon and counted the damn things - is forty (40). That's forty full sets of three lights each, 120 lights in all. So to get round the (still quite small, if very weirdly-shaped) 'roundabout” you are also likely to go through four or five sets of lights, sometimes little more than a car-length apart. The world has clearly gone mad.
On the other hand, it is an impressively strange spectacle, what with all those lights and forty yellow poles in such a small area. Perhaps tourists will come visit. And the bright side of driving each day through the extensive road works created was that the road crew – who were there for many many weeks – were unfailingly polite and friendly towards drivers, smiling, waving and doing what they could to make things easier. I hope they all got bonuses - they deserve them.
But back to business. Let me update you on a story that cropped up in the column back in February.
Swedish downloading website The Pirate Bay – taken to court for gazillions by the major record/film companies – has been found guilty of whatever the convoluted final charge was (something like 'Giving assistance to help people download illegal content”). The court handed down a sentence of twelve months in jail and a fine of around NZ$5 million. As a result… nothing has happened.
The four defendants have appealed (a process that will take two to three years) and under Swedish law the website will remain running until the appeal. It is currently more popular than ever, attracting some 22 million users. The prosecuting parties would probably not count this as a huge success.
Meanwhile a new blog on the pirates' website says:
'We have seen that some people that we don't know have started collecting donations for us, so we can pay those silly fines. We firmly ask you NOT to do this. Do not gather or send any money. We do NOT want them since we will not pay any fines!”
In a rather endearing way they then list how you can help:
'Seed those torrents a little bit more than you usually do!
Buy a t-shirt and show the world where your sympathy is.
Continue to build the internets! Start more bit-torrent sites, blog more, start your own lobby group, create, remix, mash up and continue to grow more heads on this amazing hydra that we know as the internets!
Do not be afraid of using the network. Invite your friends to this and other file sharing systems. Calm people down if they're upset. We need to stay united.
And say it loud say it proud! We are all The Pirate Bay!