This drilling rig has been making its way around the neighborhood for the last few weeks. Now it’s on our street.
The water company sent us a notice of upcoming exploratory works, and so I suppose this is that. They seem to work in one spot for a day or two and then move a few hundred meters and start over. Probably they’re sending cameras into the pipes as well as looking at soil structures so they know what needs replacing and how tricky it will be to make everything solid. As the recent sewer line failure across town reminded everyone, the ground moves!
It seems to take 3-4 people to do the actual drilling work and a whole bunch more to (rather languidly) manage the traffic. And also a couple guys to just sit in trucks with the engine running. And supervisors visit sometimes. And the orange cones, Auckland’s official flower, have to be set up and put back each day by a subcontractor.
Here’s me at Costco with a truckload of American cheese. I’m perfectly happy and sometimes even proud that America exports a lot of physical stuff and a lot of cultural stuff to the rest of the world.
But you can take world domination too far, and I would argue that while Costco itself is on the OK side of the line, this pasteurized processed product really isn’t.
This is the stump of a big ficus tree that was just up the road from us. It dominated, even overpowered, the front yard of its house. Those impressive roots must surely have played havoc with the drainage system.
The arborists work fast! By lunchtime this big old tree, including lots of its tentacular roots, was reduced to a pile of mulch. Sorta sad, but I bet the homeowner is relieved on some levels.
Never the kind of people to pass up free stuff, we grabbed various big bags and helped ourselves. We used the mulch in a bed by the side of the house that needed sprucing up. (Sorry about the weird angle on that photo… it’s taken from the balcony looking down and sideways.)
Our American friend Emily invited us to join her at the Popup Globe company’s Twelfth Night last weekend.
The Popup Globe started out as an actual popup… a full-scale replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre that could be assembled and taken down. They toured various festivals before settling semi-permanently and becoming Auckland’s resident Shakespeare company.
But then the pandemic.
This production of Twelfth Night is their first show since things have returned to normal. It was held in a real theatre, the Q, which was probably way better for us: indoors for one thing, and easier to see and hear the show compared to the Popup. Still, there was plenty of dialogue we missed due to accents, acoustics, and unfamiliar Elizabethan phraseology. In a nod to the troupe’s in-the-round roots, there were seats on either side of the stage, and that’s where we sat. Great to be so close, although a lot of times the actors had their backs to us.
We really liked the silliness, and the rowdiness, of the production, and we hope the Popup Globe company can continue to achieve greatness in the years ahead!
My third time fishing with ex-colleague Clifford, some other HealthLink staff, and Clifford’s preferred charter captain Nik.
The first time, we had rough weather and a particularly hard-riding boat. The second time was better. But this time, even though it was Friday the 13th, was best of all.
We set out from Gulf Harbour, 45 minutes north of Auckland, and motored north from there for less than an hour before dropping our lines. We caught a couple of small fish but decided to try another spot anyway. As we were getting ready to move, we saw the signs of a workup off in the distance … mainly a crowd of birds, including some gannets doing their amazing plunge dives.
As we got closer we could see it was a big one… a whole ball of little fish near the surface, being preyed on by birds from above, dolphins near the surface, and — we hoped — snapper from below.
Sure enough, we no sooner dropped our lines than the snapper started biting.
And there were some big ones this time. I ended up with two of the biggest, 67 and 68 cm, approximately 13-14 pounds.
We caught our limit of seven fish each in under an hour. Which was great… but also a bit anti-climactic. I mean, you pay for an all-day charter, and then you’re done by 9:00 am? We drove around for a bit, half-heartedly trawling for kingfish, but apparently it’s not the right time of year. No nibbles, so we shrugged, took the win, and headed in.
I learned my lesson the first time… don’t fillet these guys yourself. I went to my local fish shop, where they had told me last time that they would do it. But they said no, too busy. So I drove into town and got the nice chaps at Kai Ika to take care of me. Well worth it. I ended up with about 12 pounds of fish, at a cost roughly twice retail.
They say a bad day fishing beats a good day working, “they” in this case probably meaning people who I don’t normally hang around with. But in the afterglow of a trip like this, I definitely get what they mean.
Getting ready for an early swim the other morning, but the kayakers were even earlier. We’ve had a couple of great swimming weeks… calm weather and clear water.
On the other side of town, a big sewer line failed, pumping zillions of litres of poo into the bay for almost a month before they got a temporary fix in place. Supposedly the contamination had dispersed to “acceptable levels” by the time the water got to where I swim.
We’ve just had national elections, and it was mostly a tussle over cost of living issues. But in my view all the political parties ran away from infrastructure issues like sewers and roads which are urgently needing attention. And because they think it’s just too expensive to fix those things with tax revenue, I fear that the right-leaning National party who won will shrug its “business-friendly” and “low-tax” shoulders and start selling assets to the Chinese and the UAE.
But while all that plays out, it’s still very nice to go to the beach and watch the kayaks glide by as the sun comes up.
Fran and I were unstoppable at the 2023 Northcote Pétanque Club Doubles Championship on Sunday. It was a small field as several members are traveling, but even so we surprised ourselves by beating some people we usually don’t.
Our names will be engraved onto a little plaque which will be added to the 25 or so previous winners already on the trophy… good company to be in!
I’m really quite proud of winning this little contest, and that feeling of pride (given the exceptionally low stakes) makes me feel a bit silly. It makes me wonder: if I’d played more organized sports as a kid, maybe I would have worked all that out of my system. Or maybe not 🤷🏼♂️
My birthday celebrations were postponed a bit due to the meeting in Phoenix. But it was worth the wait…First off, I got to wear the birthday hat at lunch with the pétanque club…
Then a couple days later I got dinner at a favorite French restaurant complete with a flaming crêpe…
which was followed by a spectacular present: my very own orchestra!
Ok, not really. But I do look pretty smug in my balcony seat. In fact, we went to see a famous clarinetist Annelien Van Wauwe, who slayed Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. In the second half of the programme, the orchestra played a fascinating piece called Circulating Ocean by Toshio Hosokawa. I tried to imagine playing such a thing… it was mostly without discernible rhythm or melody. But somehow the conductor waved his arms at strategic moments and everyone played what they were supposed to and it was great!
This block of townhouses up the street from us is being gutted to address mold and rot in its timbers. Its an all-too-common problem here, thanks to an unholy alliance among the wet climate, lax building standards (for a period in the 1990s it was ok to use untreated pine in residential construction), and shoddy materials (especially some siding / stucco systems that were enormously popular around the same time it was ok to use untreated lumber). We have seen other projects start out like this and wind up switching to total demolition. Let’s see what happens with this one.
One of the first steps in many renovations here is to scaffold the entire structure and wrap it in plastic. That way, you can just keep working as the rain falls. It’s probably a thing that happens everywhere but I’ve noticed it a lot more here in NZ. If a project fails halfway through, you’re left with increasingly billowy sheets for months or years.
Because of the heat and my own laziness , I’ve spent less time outside than usual in my visit to downtown Phoenix. But what I’ve seen so far is hard to fall in love with.
The streets are too wide, making Salt Lake’s famous team-of-oxen standard seem puny. And empty… even at morning commute time everybody seems to be somewhere else. And the buildings are too big, giant concrete boxes that take up the whole block, often without street-facing shops and windows.
And did I mention it’s hot? Without watering, even the presumably desert-hardy plantings aren’t making it.
I think there are interesting manhole covers still to be found.
I think of the story of the phoenix mostly in terms of rising from the ashes. But I guess it first has to burst into flames and die.
With temperatures in the 40s next week, I will be unusually happy to be (mostly) stuck inside for the HL7 Working Group Meeting in Phoenix next week!
As an aside… I’ve never actually experienced 45 degree temperatures since I started speaking Celsius. But I know it’s really hot thanks to Midnight Oil. Who says all that time spent watching MTV was wasted??
Do you know that nursery rhyme? It was a favorite of my mom’s and she would often sing it. I always thought she wrote the tune (not quite the same as in that video), but from a quick Google search I can see that lots of others used the same melody I remember… so 🤷♂️ probably not!
Anyway… We had a couple of very foggy mornings last week. I picked up some sort of cold bug in my travels, so I traded my normal workouts for neighborhood walks.
Everything looked magical… I obviously live in the Shire.
Miles from anywhere? Nope, that’s the public toilets near the dog park at the bottom of our street, part of the Chelsea Heritage Park.
It looks more rural these days because the City Council has reduced the mowing frequency to save money. Driving through the actual countryside most pastures are cropped closer that that by sheep and cows.
And that new board fence around the kauri trees is to protect them a little bit from Kauri Dieback disease which is spread by dog feet and people’s shoes.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 