Waiting For You

Rārangi upoko 3 'Wine and Pizza' (EDITED)

Rārangi upoko 3: 'Wine and Pizza'

At five o'clock Anne powered down her computer and headed out, feeling somewhat victorious having rescued that poorly written article. She looked forward to a quiet evening at home with her fur babies. Gandalf and Lady would probably gaze at her disapprovingly as sat on the couch with her glass of wine.

She inched her way through the slow rush hour traffic of the Auckland Motorway. The rain blurring her vision before the window wiper would quickly rush past in a screech, wiping the window screen clean before it repeated itself. Blur, screech, clean. Blur, screech, clean. According to the rain forecast, it should have been sunny and no hint of rain to be seen until Thursday. Not that she had watched the weather or the news this week. She had been avoiding the interview she had given last week. Probably quite cringeworthy, she thought. It had been played or discussed each news segment since then.

The traffic slowly made progress south on Highway 1 towards 'Mount Wellington'. Her thoughts just as slowly shifted over to what she would have for dinner. Could order an Uber Takeout, she definitely didn't feel up to cooking anything and just wanted to sink onto the couch in front of the TV. But what should she order?

Forty minutes later, she had ordered a pizza from Domino's, said hi to Lady, fed her and made it through to the lounge before collapsing on the couch. Gandalf was nowhere to be seen, probably at the neighbour's place living it up a little, faithless cat. The tv clicked on and she flicked through the channels, searching for something that looked interesting.

"Correct, you win £40,000, do you continue or-"

"Scored, yes! What an amazi-"

"You don't want to be too rash with the butter, only just lightly oil the pan."

"How you doin?"

"You are after the crust of the loaf to be slightly crunchy"

"And what do you suppose it would achieve if we pulled out if the Power Nuclear deal?" Chris Chang asked as he leaned over his papers on his desk.

A middle-aged man with roughly brushed-back hair and a greying beard responded. "The future of nuclear is not a safe option, look at what happened when Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster happened in 2011, it just isn't safe, and then they go and dump a lot of that nuclear waste into the ocean in 2020 because they didn't know what else to do with it." The man seemed to laugh at his own words as if he had just said something funny.

"Yeah, I agree that it isn't safe, but what other option do we have? With the growing number of electric cars on the road by the year and carbon taxes are through the roof, what else is there then to go Nuclear." Chris asked.

"Bio coal." The man said bluntly.

Anne turned the sound up so as not to miss anything that was said. She thought it odd that she had just spent the day working on an article about bio-coal and here was an interview done by 1 News.

"Bio coal, what is that?"

"I won't elaborate too much, but basically its torrefied or backed and carbonized wood pellets."

"Like the pellet BBQ thing?"

"That kind of idea, but far better. We can't rely on typical sources of renewable energy like solar and wind to fill in the gap that fossil fuels leave behind. It's just not possible. BioCoal, on the other hand, is something that should and could replace coal it is renewable and makes use of a by-product that is often burned or left to rot after pine harvesting. BioCoal would be made from waste wood rather than actual trees. And the best thing is this process can be done on site, cutting back the carbon footprint associated with transporting the wood to factories around the country. "