Cover Girls & Headliners

The Aucklander is a New Zealand Herald community publication that is distributed throughout the Auckland region. A stitched and trimmed free magazine that has 7 editions per week - North, West, City, Central, South, East and Counties - The Aucklander is my company's second newest product, two years old in the market I believe.

While the news and features of the paper are kept relevant and local to the respective suburbs, the front cover / cover story is the same for all editions.

The first week of July saw Cerise and I score that front cover, marking the debut of our modelling career... hehehe... nah, not quite. Permission to exaggerate and dwell on this milestone please. Come on, it's read by 400,000 people so allow me to make this a big deal.

So how did it all come to this?

Well, a mass email was sent by one of the Aucklander reporters (a common practice by reporters across our publications) asking for any mother who worked full time while sending her child to day care/kindergarten or anyone who knew such mother. I really didn't think much of it at the time and being a team player as I am, I replied to say I was such mother but that I also had a network of this sort of breed, specifically mentioning a friend who happened to fit one of the reporter's criteria.

Then, the phone rang. It was Sandra, the reporter, on the line. We immediately realised that I wasn't the "real deal" for her story because while I work full time, I actually don't take Cerise to kindy (Edwin does) and I don't pick her up either (Edwin does). Moving right along, I recommended another friend and got Sandra to touch base with that friend. Before hanging up though, Sandra noted that mine was in fact a very interesting story because of the way my partner and I have worked our schedules around our child and not the other way around... something she never really thought about but was now very keen at maybe highlighting this angle in her article. I should have seen the warning signs.

Another phone call from Sandra late in the afternoon and she was now taking more interest in my "life story". But now she had a more dramatic tale about how tight her deadline was and how two mums bailed out for one reason or another and that I pretty much would save her bacon if I agreed to be interviewed and photographed with Cerise. Now I do know what it's like to desperately meet a deadline (read previous post on "God Always Keeps the Light Burning"). And whether her tale was compelling or I'm simply too gullible and too kind even to strangers, is beside the point. Because the very next day, I had a one hour interview over coffee and Cerise with Daddy came to the office for the photo shoot.

We were all taken to a nearby park where they must have taken a hundred pictures of us. Poor Cerise had to keep smiling for the camera like it was the perfect day for such activity when in fact, it was windy, freezing cold and looked like it was going to rain. I now have a new appreciation of models shooting on location. Cerise did a very good job I must say. She was trembling the whole time yet she did what was expected of her. My dear husband, exhausted from the day's work, was dragged along in yet another of mummy's gimmicks. Sandra managed to interview him too.

Our story below. View full size to read.

Of course this story of ours is just a speck of the bigger subject matter which was "Auckland's Boom in Childcare". This line was written at the bottom of the front cover but I couldn't scan the entire page (A4 only). And yes, I can get pdf files of these from our archive but requesting for such files would reveal how huge this really is for me. So forget it. It's enough that I managed to sneak away at least 10 copies. Hahaha!

Anyway, the article talked about how childcare industry is growing, how the government plans to provide 20 hours free preschooling per week, and what parents should know etc. There were stories from other parents too.

You think that was that? But wait, there's more...

Upcoming post: "the aftermath"