Tea and apathy in Christchurch bomb scare

[brettdale]

Tea and apathy in Christchurch bomb scare

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3438143a11,00.html

New York goes on full terror alert...Christchurch keeps shopping. The American city last week hunkered down against an unspecified security risk, but New Zealand's southern capital spent its Saturday ignoring the alleged bomb in the rubbish bin.


"There's a bomb threat," says the man with the English accent, leaning on the counter of that most English of institutions, Ballantynes department store. "I've never felt so at home."

The excited women in their berets and cardies collect their purchases. "A bomb threat? I wish I'd brought my hair straighteners."

An elderly man cruises the police lines with a video camera. Cellphone cameras go snap. Nothing to see here, on the corner of City Mall, where the street is closed but in the upstairs food hall people queue for window seats.

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[MountainLaurel]

1. What a stable attitude

I'm going to Christchurch in three weeks, and this makes me want to stay permanently even more. In the U.S., you'd see thousands of people either running in panic (remember the "scare" a couple months ago when the Cessna flew too close to the White House) or gathering around to gawk.