What a month it has been.  For the first time ever I was able to open the shop full time.  I was still undecided about whether or not to call it The Pataka and then I watched the movie Pearl Harbour.  The name of a shop the main characters were standing in front of caught my attention- Kaikai Corner.  Yes you guessed right.  I decided then and there to call my shop Kaikai Kona and asked the blessings of my Polynesian relations for the right to use the name.  Except I changed the last word to Kona.  I even made the signs out of matting.  I painted the three words left the mats to dry and then painted over the lot with polyurethane to help weather them.  Then I asked Woka and Glen to staple them to the barge boards and lo I have a great sign for everyone to see.  I was working from 9 to 9 and in the end I had to stop doing it.  I was falling in and out of bed at home and then running myself ragged trying to do everything myself.  I had many offers to help yet those same people were wanting me to pay them.  Sadly they were on the dole even.  Anyway I was chief cook bottle washer you name it I did it.  I even caught some type of flu bug so bad that one night dear helpful cousin Ngahina or Blacky brought me some tea from his place.  I could hardly lift my head to eat it.  If there is one thing I might say is how grateful I am for the help of the few because the many did not believe in the hangi idea.  Doreen, Blacky, Olga who are always around and n the background Maria Brian Pia Jarod and Ngauira and Andrew.    BUT  even as I wax lyrical about the venture it is in dire need of customers.  And I did find out that the manager of the winz enterprise allowance grant did not grant me the fund saying the application was incomplete.  I completed it and cannot help feeling that my being Maori was a major reason for the decline- sorry delay because I have since  been told that they fund for two years and not for the short term once only $5k.  No one likes a clever Maori especially not a dumb pakeha who I believe needs to give Maori a chance.  I dearly would like to see some statistics on Maori applicants for that fund.  Then the outcomes comparing Maori Pakeha NZ and  Immigrant applicants for failures or successes utilising the grants given.  At a guess I would say that there would be lesser Maori applicants which would make the majority of the applicants failures rather than successes.  Otherwise we would never have heard the end of it.  Oops sorry yep there is Paula Bennet.  Now is she Maori or Pakeha NZ.  For statistics purposes lets call her the 1 Maori success item.