On top of Mt. Eden
We got out on the tandem on Anzac Day and rode up to the top of Mt. Eden. Actually we had to walk up the last part.
It was a gorgeous day, perfect for Prince William’s appearance at the big ceremony later. We rode by the venue, which was heavily guarded, at least by NZ standards, in the wake of the Christchurch attacks. Weird to see the relatively scruffy and usually friendly NZ police with rifles in a ready position. Probably even weirder for the cops.
Rebirth
On Easter weekend the Holy Trinity Cathedral added a French flag to show solidarity with Notre Dame. I suppose the world of cathedrals is small, but these are linked at least through Notre Dame organist Olivier Latry, whom I saw play here last year.
Play Misty For Me
A week after getting the landlord’s OK to have a cat, we met Misty on our second trip to the SPCA. Since Misty happens to be one of my clarinet tunes, it seemed like fate.
She’s about two but when she got home she acted like she was 12… friendly and cuddly but really listless.
Besides being stressed from all the upheavals in her life, it turned out she a cold or something. After 10 days and some antibiotics she has completely come around.
Yay!!!
HealthLink 25th Anniversary
I was selected to be the emcee for the big anniversary gala celebration we held a few weeks ago. My qualifications included my sexy American accent and the perception that I could hold my liquor responsibly enough to get all the speakers up and down in order and on time. Success, but I’m not giving up my day job. There are some professional photos and videos on the HealthLink LinkedIn page if you care to look.
Some of my team looking sharp. Our normal dress code is pretty relaxed so it was great to see them all dolled up. There are five countries represented in this shot, but if we had a tug of war, India would win.
The event was held in the grand lobby of the Auckland Museum, and every detail was planned by our marketing team… amazingly well done. We had a powhiri and haka done by the museum’s in-house Māori group.
The party was also a farewell for founder and former CEO Tom Bowden, who has become a great friend to us.
But it was also a coming-out party for new CEO Michelle Creighton, who was an inspired choice to lead the firm into a new era that will see greater competition and a need for lots of diplomacy.
Tom’s partner Isabella, his daughter Catherine, and Lee. It’s possible that one or two drinks had been served by this point, meaning that getting all three to focus on the camera was a challenge.
It was a great evening, I was proud to be part of it.
Rent
As we get ready to start our third year in Auckland, it’s time to think about whether we might want to move or not.
Buying is probably unwise at this time for various reasons, and besides we really couldn’t afford anything we’d want to live in. So, renters we remain.
Our place was an amazingly lucky find… it could be a little bigger, maybe on a quieter street, but it checks almost all the boxes for us. Of course, lower rent would be great… and we really miss our kitties and would love to have one here.
So when the landlord sent us the lease for next year, with “only” a $25 per week increase, we had a tough choice.
We looked at a lot of ads. Pet-friendly is the hard one… landlords can be picky on that front without it being considered illegal discrimination. We finally found a house that seemed like a real possibility, and got a nice walk-through, shown above. There were some quirks, but it seemed like a real possibility. The ad said “pets negotiable” but it turned out that meant “no pets”, so “no deal”.
So, back to our own landlord… we offered to stay another year if we could have a cat. He agreed!
Stay tuned…
Back home again
16 days, four countries and seven different sleeping places including a plane. Glad to be back. We saw a lot of cool stuff, ate and drank and shopped and massaged pretty much all we wanted. But the really good memories are the visits with Chuck and the Provs, both of whom we miss a lot.
Since there wasn’t anything in the fridge, we headed out for dinner. Good to know that things haven’t changed… people still dump their broken umbrellas on the street.
At Non Solo Pizza, one of our go-to places in the neighborhood, we had a lovely dinner under the watchful gaze of a light fixture that clearly descended from another planet.
We’re alive!
Last seen in Vietnam, our heroes suddenly stopped posting updates… whatever could have happened??
Nothing, actually… we finished our trip, came home and got sucked back into normal life.
We now resume our story already in progress…
New Zealand’s 9/11?
15/3/19.
As of now, 49 people lost their lives in the Christchurch shootings yesterday. The population of NZ is a bit under 5 million.
The population of the US in 2001 was about 285 million, and 2,996 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks (including the attackers).
In per-capita terms, expressing these tragedies only as a percentage of national population murdered by terrorists, the two events end up looking almost identical. How can New Zealand not be changed by this?
9/11 changed — is still changing — America, and because America takes up so much space in the world, those changes spilled out into the whole of human history. Events in NZ cast smaller ripples onto the world’s ocean of consciousness, but New Zealanders surely live in a darker place after 15/3 than before.
Why?
Just last week we were watching the latest 7 Days, in which one of the main themes was how tough it is to do topical comedy in NZ because nothing much actually happens, and certainly nothing bad.
But the metastatic diseases of gun violence and bigotry and whatever else have spread even here, and so today a (the?) mosque in Christchurch joins the global list of “those places.”
Dozens dead. Just trying to pray or hang out with family or learn cultural stuff or whatever you do at church.
Why?
Third time’s a charm
Last night I officially beat kitchen gadget expectations by using the pasta maker for the third time. And the noodles were my best effort so far.
Some years back, Lee and I both enjoyed a series of mystery / police procedural novels set in Venice. Inspector Brunetti’s wife is always whipping up fresh pasta for lunch. Even considering that it’s an old-school 2-hour Italian lunch break, there’s no way I would be even close. It’s more of an all afternoon thing for me.
Another storm…
… another dead umbrella.
Scoot!
For as much noise as they’ve caused, it’s a little surprising that I haven’t written more about the Lime scooter invasion.
Lime scooters are awesome electric scooters. You unlock them with an app on your phone and whiz along at up to about 16 mph. Totally fun. And they do solve the last mile problem for a lot of trips.
But Auckland seems to have been completely overwhelmed by Lime’s famously aggressive rollout team. Nobody figured out the details of how they have been introduced, where you can and can’t ride them (sidewalks, bike lanes, etc), who pays for the (many!) injury claims, who is responsible for maintenance lapses, and so on.
Or rather, Lime figured out all those details and Auckland failed to disagree. So the money goes to the VCs, and the costs stay here. The situation is particularly troubling in NZ, because of the national, tax-funded, no-fault insurance policy we all enjoy. When a private company introduces a dangerous product, their liability is mostly absorbed by the citizenry. That can be balanced by good product regulation, but government missed the mark on this one.
The City Council did take the scooters off the streets last week over safety concerns, but now they’re back. Still fun, but for me the bloom is off the rose, and I’ll be much less enthusiastic about Lime than I was at first.
And the agony of defeat
More of me than most of you wanted to see…
I lost traction on my bike Wednesday morning and now am sporting some new red accessories to go with my watch.
It’s been a while since I hit the deck while exercising, and while I don’t precisely remember how much it hurt last time, I think maybe I’m less elastic than in the old days.
The scrapes are not serious, and it’s not like I ended up tangled in barbed wire. But I’m headed to the doctor anyway to talk about physiotherapy… the exact motion of lowering a heavy mug onto the bar hurts quite a lot… and that’s a problem.
The window of our discontent
Having the Labour Party in charge of government has been associated with some workers voicing their frustrations more openly… nurses and teachers and bus drivers have all staged strikes.
This ambulance is advertising its driver’s (or at least some driver’s) opinions as it rolls along. If they’re really not getting any night /weekend pay I have to agree that’s no good… seems like everybody in healthcare gets something extra for the off-hours work they do.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 