In which we find ourselves in another part of the world
There’s Lee at the public library volunteering for Digital Seniors, a non-profit dedicated to helping older folks with their gadgets.
We got connected to Digital Seniors through swim buddy Catherine who also volunteers with them. So far, as in this picture, there have been more coaches than customers, but it’s early days yet and the word is still getting out.
Finally it’s my turn.
So far no worse than a cold.
I realize that I’ve been feeling a bit smug and somehow morally superior to everyone else because I haven’t gotten it. It’s good to purge thoughts like that, although even better to do it through introspection rather than illness.
Fairly often in the afternoons lately we hear a lot of helicopter noise in the area. We’ve been able to just catch glimpses of them from our deck, so we knew it was some kind of construction thing.
Yesterday we walked down the road and got to see up close.
Turns out they’re restoring the parkland trails and bridges washed out in the January storms. The helicopter is hauling out debris and soil, while hauling in lumber etc.
The precision and confidence of the pilot and the ground crew were impressive. The chopper drops the canvas waste container onto a pile and then sort of bounces up and down (still flying of course) to release the harness catch somehow.
Then it flies that dangling line over to where the other guys have a load all strapped up and ready to go. We watched them put on a big pre-assembled footbridge section. Snik snak click, and away he goes.
It must be enormously expensive to hire a helicopter like that. But it would also be expensive to hike all material a mile into the bush, and take a heli of a lot longer. (See what I did there? Heli?🤣 When I’m 90 I hope I still think I’m hilarious)
It’s not all sunrises and rainbows here in Aotearoa. For a couple of years now there’s been an absolute plague of people stealing cars and ramming them into shops.
It seems to be partly about stealing stuff: jewelry, cigarettes and vapes, liquor are the primary targets. But it’s definitely also about vandalism and just destroying stuff. It’s often kids behind the wheel.
I saw this scene early Sunday morning and it was doubly heartbreaking because it’s the second time in only a few months for that jewelry store. The couple that own the shop are lovely and of a certain age. They must wonder if it makes sense to carry on.
Caught this surprisingly low-slung rainbow the other day whilst walking home from town.
Here’s Pat, one of the founders of the Northcote Petanque Club, on the occasion of her 90th birthday celebration down at the clubhouse (which is still in the process of being restored after January’s flooding). Her living situation these days frowns on her having a glass of wine, so we were happy to pour her one while her daughter obligingly looked the other way. Richard the club president gave a nice speech in her honour and several of the members who no longer play made the effort to join in the festivities.
She has many good stories to tell about her years sailing around the Pacific and raising her kids in Papua New Guinea. And she still throws a mean straight ball, although if it’s an especially long one she does struggle a bit.
And so… let’s all aspire to be like Pat, still going strong at 90.
Our local butcher shop closed down, the owners unable to find a suitable buyer. It’s always been hard to run any retail business. New Zealand’s constricted food supply chain is further hindered by a supermarket duopoly who work real hard to buy all the good stuff ahead of the local guys and can then sell it for less. Then there is a tier of smaller, mostly Asian, stores that also process a lot of meat. And with so many restaurants trying to stand out, it must be harder than ever for a butcher to differentiate themselves and find enough discerning home cooks to make the business attractive.
There’s the Sky Tower all lit up to celebrate the opening night of a touring company production of Wicked.
We attended, having gotten access to opening night seats because we bought tickets over a year ago for a date that was cancelled due to COVID. As a consolation they gave us early access to the rescheduled premiere.
Although several of the songs were at least a little familiar to me … they’ve made the leap from the stage to any number of other venues… we’d never seen the show. We did read the book way back when it came out.
With both the book Wicked and the original Wizard of Oz books, I remember feeling a real sense of strangeness. The Land of Oz is a profoundly weird place, and scary. And the Wizard of Oz movie preserves at least some of that strangeness, or at least that’s the impression I got watching it as a small child. I mean… little people!
But the Broadway show? It felt so rigidly conformant to the expectations of the teenage angst story that Lee in particular didn’t really enjoy it. I did enjoy the show more in the moment, fully caught up in the singing and dancing and flying. In retrospect, though, I too may be over the basic Broadway plot.
We snapped this shot going over the Harbour Bridge the other evening. It must have been club racing or something like that.
Auckland is nicknamed the City of Sails, and it’s always lovely to see the yachts out on the water (yacht in Kiwi = sailboat in American). But it sure still seems like most of the boats in the many marinas around town never go out at all. If they did it would be complete gridlock out there on a Saturday afternoon.
My morning swim a couple weeks ago featured an unusually spectacular sunrise and glassy water.
We were invited to the birthday dinner celebration for our friend Susana held at Kika’s West Brazilian BBQ across town in Henderson.
Just as we Americans pine for a decent taco, so Brazilians lament the lack of decent meat. It’s surprising since NZ has a robust BBQ tradition, but for the Brazilians it just ain’t the same.
And after eating this meal, I have to agree. We got the combo platter for two and wow. Melt in your mouth, spicy and delicious. Felt nearly comatose afterwards, and there was enough left for breakfast AND lunch the next day.
This silver birch has been sickly for years and our neighbors finally decided to take it down. They’d been holding off because a bunch of birds seem to enjoy perching in its bare branches, including morepork (owls) and kereru (wood pigeons).
On the day the arborist came, even with the chainsaw idling ominously, the kereru came by for one last look around.
We donated a little bit so we could attend the recent kickoff fundraiser for our local MP Shanan Halbert. We’ve appreciated his relentless community engagement, we agree with his Labour Party ideals, and we admire the path he takes being proudly Māori and proudly gay.
The event was billed as black tie but only a few people actually wore tuxes / gowns (including our neighbor Gordon who looked fabulous). The most (‘best’ being debatable) dressed for the occasion was the drag queen emcee, a particularly pleasing choice given all the anti-drag nonsense in the US at the moment. They did a great job, plenty of good fun and kept things moving along.
We stayed through drinks, speeches, auction, and dinner, seated with a member of the local district council and some other randoms like ourselves. Shanan came by every table and spent a few minutes chatting with us. I think the most surprising thing was him saying that his entire campaign fundraising target was $45,000. It seems like there might be contests for high school Secretary that cost more in the US. When the band kicked off with a too-perky “Big wheel keep on turnin’” we made for the exit.
It will be a close election this time, a contest mostly about whose priorities get addressed first… can well-off whit’ish people have all the things they want the government to provide without more government spending and the tax increases to back it up? And will they still want all those delicious government goodies and tax breaks if it means clawing even more out of the mouths of less well-off less-whit’ish people? Or will they be ready to accept whatever strings are attached to cash infusions from the global equity markets or sovereign investment from China and the Middle East?
From where we sit, a more egalitarian country that focuses on lifting the bottom 20% is preferable to one that focuses on further enriching the top 20%. Go Shanan!!
Autumn is here, time to refill and turn on the hot tub. Misty is ready.
That’s my buddy Nick a few hours into his recent swim across Lake Taupo’s 40.2 km. He almost beat his goal time, and did set the British record for the swim. In that video it looks like he’s barely exerting himself, just gliding along. In fact it’s a pace I can only hold for a couple minutes, if I’m concentrating hard and working harder. He looked somewhat different when he stumbled out of the water that evening, but even at his most fatigued he was pretty dang smooth. Despite practicing for years now, I literally don’t know how these fast swimmers do it and do it so elegantly.
I remember the day he first came to a Sunday swim a few years ago, wearing a scraggly surfing wetsuit and saying he hadn’t been in the water for a while. But then he easily kept up with our fastest group. We learned later that he had been competitive at the national level back home in the UK.
The video was taken by my other buddy Scott, who was on the pilot boat for 13+ hours. Of course that’s nowhere near as hard as doing the actual swim… but is plenty uncomfortable and impressive in its own way.
Since that first day with Bay2Bay Nick’s gotten way back into it… obviously! Kudos to Nick on his accomplishment and I’m eagerly waiting to see what challenge he takes on next.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 