A week in the life

Along with jargon, I try to eschew the various Facebook ‘challenges’ that clog up the newsfeed. Facebook has won the keep in touch effortlessly game, but there’s soooo much noise and crap to wade through. 

But somehow, the current thing caught me: one B&W photo per day, no people, no explanations. Since I’ve been traveling this week, all the better.  I didn’t spread the virus, but I would recommend it. 

Here are my pics, color restored, with all the narrative details I wanted to put in…

At the achingly quaint Parnell Village shops (shoppes?). I was killing time while Lee was in the eyeglass shop. 

These big agaves (this one’s maybe 4 ft across) are a popular landscape plant here. We have some smaller ones in the patio. I walk past this one en route to work. 

Lake Rotorua, on whose shores I’m staying this week for a conference. 

A pukeko, aka purple swamp hen, in the Government Gardens I walked through en route to the conference each day. 

Workshop day, woo-hoo! Of course I like my work, and of course I get to see a lot in the places I am privileged to go do it. But still, there’s that wistful moment where you leave the things that make each place unique and special and enter the hotel conference room that is exquisitely engineered to be just the same as everywhere else. 

But it’s just a moment. With sponsorship from the Microsoft hegemony, we had an AMAZING dinner outing, hanging out for hours with old and new work-friends. 

Māori carving and the Prince’s Gate and Archway, Rotorua. The local people were pretty cooperative with the English, being relatively content with their hot pools and abundant everything, not nearly as warlike as some other areas. And of course, colonization. Anyway, when the Duke and Duchess of York came to visit in 1901, everything was quite cordial. As with many colonized peoples, the Māori have gone on to serve with distinction in His and Her Majesty’s military, and as a group are about as pro-Monarchy as anyone. 

So, thank you Marcus for getting me in this. I enjoyed the challenge of posting a picture every day, the added interest of doing it in black and white, and seeing other friends’ efforts. Some have been unsurprisingly artful and evocative, but others’ photo skills were more of a pleasant revelation. So, Facebook, keep up the good work until you can be replaced by something better.