To Roadworkers on Wakefield Street

Dear Roadworkers,

I appreciate the good work that you do for our country. If it weren't for you, our roads would fall into disrepair, and though drivers often curse roadworkers for making them late or slow, we all understand the necessity for roadworks. I can also understand that Wakefield Street is a busy road, and that you may want to do your repair work on it during an off-peak time, when there are not many cars on it with drivers that will become angry and frustrated that you are holding them up. It is sensible, logical and laudable that you are making this effort to preserve what little sanity the drivers of Auckland still have.

However, midnight is not that time, nor are the hours immediately following it. Wakefield Street passes between multiple apartment buildings, and a university hall of residence. In fact, I'm pretty sure O'Rorke Hall is the biggest hall of residence at the University of Auckland, which is the biggest university in the city, nay, the country. It is the middle of summer, and on the tenth floor - and most other floors - it gets pretty hot and stuffy if windows are not left open. We students appreciate our freedom to sleep with our windows open, secure in the knowledge that we may indulge in our desire for fresh air and a comfortable sleeping environment without disturbances from the outside world (such as drunken International House students, who would climb in our windows if they could, but they can't).

Imagine for a moment, roadworkers, that you are a university student. You are heading off to bed early - say, eleven thirty - because you have a lecture tomorrow morning. An early lecture. In fact, you have Statistics 101 at 8am, not leaving very much time for breakfast. So you want to just go to bed and sleep and get your *cough* eight hours. Now, roadworkers, how would you feel if trucks were going BAAAP BAAAP BAAAP outside your window at twelve thirty? Would you not feel a little disgruntled? Would you not maybe feel like throwing your steel-toed roadworkers' boots (or in my case, tramping boots) off your balcony, ten storeys down to bounce off the hard-hatted heads of the roadworkers and hopefully leave sizeable dents?

Now, I understand that you, roadworkers, are not the decision-makers in matters of roadworking. You probably have bosses who answer to more bosses and it goes up to the council or something. And those councilmen are probably the true villains in this drama. But they don't know (or care) that there are university students trying to sleep here with their windows open and trucks going BAAAP BAAAP BAAAP. You may say "just sleep with your windows shut." Well, roadworkers, last night I did that. And it SUCKED. I could not fall asleep for a long time because of the heat, and now this morning I am more tired than I should be. All thanks to you, roadworkers.

I could go into even more detail about the smell of hot tar, and how it wafts its way up to our windows, but I realise that the smell of hot tar is something you have no control over, and that roadworks are necessary. All I ask is that you refrain from making loud noises with your trucks after a reasonable time of night - say ten thirty? I think that that is a suitable compromise.

Yours sincerely,

A Disgruntled University Student.

To Rail Commuters

Dear Rail Commuters,

When you get up in the morning and get ready to go out and catch your train - to work, school, or wherever it is that you are going, dressed like that - you may like to consider having a shower and putting on deodorant. Just possibly. On days like today, with a packed carriage and temperatures shooting past twenty-five degrees (and well on the way to thirty), it might just make the journey more pleasant for your fellow passengers. You're going to get hot and sweaty on a train in late summer anyway, but you might as well start off clean and pleasant-smelling to delay the process of pickling and putrefaction that happens in trains like these, on days like these.

If you are aware of your body odour (and if yours is anything like that of the people I shared the train with today, it would be difficult to be unaware of it), your fellow passengers would most appreciate it if you hung back a little when the train reaches its final destination, so as to make sure you are at the back of the crowd that surges out of the train when the doors open. This way, the other commuters will not have to walk in the maladorous fog that trails in your wake, all the way through the station.

Yours sincerely,

A Fellow Passenger.