These bushes… camellias I think… are ridiculously pink. The whole area seemed to glow.
I am not a quack
No matter what the sign says.
Winter is coming
On the way to work the other morning. The part of the day where you can be comfortable in shorts is getting really limited now.
Market to table
Salmon, mushroom, onion, courgette, and tomato all from our local farmers market. Only the parmesan was store-bought.
Leggo my LEGO
We saw the traveling exhibit of LEGO models at the Auckland Museum on its final day last weekend. Amazing details and craftsmanship.
The models all had explanatory cards: a few thousand pieces, a few hundred hours of work, tricky color or shape design puzzles to solve.
Most of the models were as expected… the ancient and modern wonders of the world, depicted LEGO-realistically, but there were some moments of levity… a little Indiana Jones vignette under the hanging gardens of Babylon, spies loitering around the onion domes of St. Basils. And this…
It was a photographic inspiration…
and hopefully inspired some young engineers at the same time.
Suited to a T
I saw this cover the other day and was puzzled… some kind of Hebrew foundry?
But no…
I still don’t know what foundry this is, but at least I will be able to find it in some directory!
One Shining Moment
One of the geekier athletic things a person can do is track their stats on the Concept2 rowing machine. But there are many thousands of geeks out there who do, myself included.
The company resets the statistics each year on May 1. And so, buoyed by the fact that I got a big time zone head start on May 1, my morning workout put me at #1 in the world (in my age/weight category for that distance) the other day. Woo-hoo!
By now, enough other people have logged in for the 2018-19 season that I’m back in the big anonymous blob of regular guys where I belong. But it was cool to be #1 for a little while…
If at first you don’t succeed, Latry, Latry again
I finally got to hear a recital on the big new organ at St. Stephens Cathedral. Olivier Latry, organist at Notre Dame de Paris, was the soloist. He’s about as close to being a celebrity as one can conveniently find in the world of church organists.
When he sat down to play… nothing happened. After some fussing with levers , somebody ran backstage and emerged triumphant. A pencil had gotten stuck somewhere, all better now.
M. Latry didn’t disappoint, but I admit that neither did he thrill me. It seemed like maybe he’d played all these pieces before. A few hundred times. I thought it was interesting that the only time he had music in front of him was for his improvisation at the very end. For his encore, he used only his feet, which was amazing, but again obviously something he’s done before.
The organ was gorgeous, and it was certainly nice to be in a full house for an organ recital. Hopefully Latry got a bit of sleep on the very long flight home and will now be in an even better position to teach his students how to keep the passion alive over the long career of a concert musician.
Artless artery
Damn you, auto-correct! This Artley clarinet did not sell, perhaps because who would pay $500 for an artless instrument?
Choko
The chayote, known around here as the choko, is our latest farmers market experiment. So far, however, we’re afraid to peel it.
Fall in Auckland
Lots of fall colour has been introduced by the Pakeha settlers, although I don’t think many native plants change prettily.
Dawn Parade 2018
We celebrated Anzac Day last week by getting up early to walk over the the War Memorial for the annual Dawn Parade. We didn’t know exactly what to expect, but when we walked out at ten after 5 in the morning, our street was full of people who had to park further away than our house.
We arrived to the sound of bagpipes, and the crowd was so large that we ended up watching the whole thing on the big screen. It was a very moving ceremony, about an hour long.
After the main event was over we went to the field of crosses marking all New Zealand’s WW 1 dead. On a per capita basis, the impact was enormous here… the total population was only about a million people at the time. Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was laying some additional wreaths, and we were able to essentially walk right up to her.
This was the big one, televised, etc., but these happen all over the country, with quite a lot of participation from young and old.
Many people pull out their old uniforms or even make historically accurate costumes. These nurses, both military veterans AND served in humanitarian efforts overseas, were 100% legit. And both still practicing.
And then the entire country goes out to brunch. This over-the-top French toast was the best ever.
Hmmm, I see an eagle. Or a donut.
Except that he’s looking the wrong way, this water blob is a pretty good Polish eagle.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 