Pub quiz is a thing here, and being American definitely helps… there are plenty of pop culture and current events type questions that are more obscure for a Kiwi than for us. My work team has a hard time getting enough people together, but last week we had a good turnout thanks to a couple of spouses and an ex-employee. We managed to come second, leading right up until the last round when another team nailed 12 out of 12 Māori place names. Sheesh. 

The whole phenomenon of NZ pub quiz got a big boost a few years ago thanks to a locally produced TV show called Nothing Trivial, a sort of Friends / Thirtysomething all set around a pub quiz team. We have binged our way through all three seasons, and were really sad to watch the final episode last night. 

We got a little break in the otherwise rainy weekend to start taming the jungle. I think I might fall a bit in love with container gardening and a no-freeze climate. 

And PS – that big silver planter in the middle is a reclaimed washing machine tub. We are actually the Beverly Hillbillies. 

Our patio was a blank canvas crying out for some decoration. Luckily, we’ve discovered the local equivalent of Craigslist, actually a hybrid of Craigslist and EBay, called TradeMe. 

After some nervous bidding, we won a mixed lot of pots and plants. Our little jungle was helpfully delivered by a guy called Ian, who luckily avails of a truck (a “ute” in the local dialect) and trailer.  He’s friends with the seller, who it turns out is moving back to Germany and so her plants needed a new home. 

We have many happy gardening weekends ahead….

I’ve now been to a few meetings at the Parnell community centre, which for most of its life was the NZ Institute for the Blind. 

The door handles in this room are still baffling. Short of being confined to a mechanic’s creeper, there’s just nobody who needs the doors this low, as demonstrated by my colleague Alex. 

I had a blast volunteering as a mentor and pitch coach at the Summer of Tech hackathon last weekend. 

About 50 students split into eight teams and spent the whole weekend building web or mobile apps. The rules were pretty simple… basically you could do anything as long as you used a New Zealand data set somehow. Coming as I do from a world of big server software that takes multiple years to build and a whole team to maintain, these little apps were all the more impressive, partly a testament to the kids’ skills, and partly a demonstration of how far the Internet ecosystem has matured. 

I showed up on Sunday afternoon to help them with the 5-minute speeches / demos they had to give to win the big prize. More importantly for me and my business, I got to meet some of the talent who will likely be applying for jobs with us in the near future. So, my volunteer effort wasn’t entirely altruistic. 

The kids were great, and I learned as much as I taught. I found myself channeling the Voice coaches…. I didn’t really try to tweak the bullets on the slides, but I did talk a lot about passion, connection, meaning. You’ve got five minutes, and you’re an engineering student… perhaps not a native English speaker. How can we make people love you and love your app?

Most of my advice was taken to heart, which was unexpectedly rewarding, and the best teams won, which was reassuring, and I got a nice bottle of wine and a T-shirt. 

People here seem more willing to decorate their cars for advertising than in the States, and no car is more often adorned than the Mini Cooper. 

This one from Department of Writing caught my eye, though it’s more subtle than some. 

Morning and afternoon light is extra special here for whatever reason. 

A vigorous 1hour lunchtime walk got me to the top of Mt. Eden, Auckland’s highest volcano, 196 metres. 

Yesterday I went to an event at Grid/AKL, a co-working space with all the eye-rolling hipsterisms you expect in a co-working space. Such as a cleverly capitalized and punctuated name. Sigh. 

But I did think this stairway is pretty cool. And then I thought about how the target tenant for Grid/AKL is, approximately, the grandchild of the original audience for Stairway to Heaven. In other words, if I like and understand this meme, has someone missed the mark?

Oooooooh, it makes me wonder…… is the song that timeless, or are building designers perhaps not quite as hip as they think they are?

The Tenacious is a specially outfitted sailing ship owned by the Jubilee Sailing Trust. Her mission is to bring the adventure of sailing to people of various abilities and disabilities, because how awesome is that. 

Quite a boat… wheelchair accessible, even the platforms on the mast, Braille signage, talking compasses, and so on. Very cool!