Vote early and twice

The election campaign is in full swing here, reaching what passes for a fever pitch in New Zealand. That means that there are signs like this one… It is not the same level of fever pitch that I am familiar with from the States.

But there has been some excitement… The woman in this photograph, who has been the co-leader of the Green party, had to resign this week from her post after she revealed dodgy welfare benefits she received many years ago. On the one hand, fairly minor offenses, but on the other, as leader of her Party she was held to a very high standard. We will never know whether that standard was even higher due to her being female and of Maori descent. But probably yes. 

Everyone gets two votes, one for their local member of Parliament, and another for their political party of choice. There is a system of proportional representation, and so if a party gets more votes than its individual candidates, they are awarded some party seats to make up the difference. Awesome in my opinion. 

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Retail Therapy 

We had a fun day last weekend, including a lot of shopping. Apples and cherry tomatoes from the farmers market, a super-nice mandoline from a fancy kitchen store, and – finally – a bottle of sriracha from the Asian grocery. 

Those, along with all our other things, beat up our good intentions, and we called an Uber to get home. 

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Blue Sky Ideas

Look at that beautiful blue sky! What’s that? Hard to see the sky behind the giant LED billboard that’s being installed? Oh well, there’s lots of other places with no billboards. 

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Attention to detail

These little wooden coffee stirrers seem to be the default here in NZ. 

Every morning at work, the little cup of stirrers is arranged in a perfect spiral. Some cleaning person has found a way to make their efforts visible, and it does give me a smile. 

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Kinda free, kinda wow, Charlie!

Walking back from the farmers market on Saturday we ran into Charlie sitting on the street. Lee recognized that he was all alone, and convinced me that we had to do something. And so we made a few calls, and finding nobody answering at his home number, took him home with us. 

Within an hour the Animal Welfare people showed up… a woman who could totally play an idealistic and highly motivated animal welfare officer on TV… and then just as we were going to turn Charlie over to her, Charlie’s owners showed up and he was very happily reunited with his real family. Yay!

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Epic

I was pretty excited, I imagine more than most people, to come across this manhole cover on Nuffield Street in Newmarket. 

The quote is from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, which I got to see during my awesome trip to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival as a Pasadena City College student more than 30 years ago. 

Haven’t googled enough yet to know what it means…

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Too Cute

Auckland’s car culture is well developed. In addition to the highest concentration of exotic-ish sports cars I’ve ever seen, there are plenty of Bentleys and Rolls rolling around. And the level just below is well populated: nice Jags, Teslas, Mercedes AMGs, like that. 

But our budget doesn’t really run that way at the moment. Luckily, we’re attracted to cuteness as well as luxury. And since our actual needs for a car are purely recreational, we would likely end up with a Miata or something if we decided to buy a car. 

Recently we’ve seen a couple unfamiliar models and thought, wow, how fun, we could get one of those! But no… read on. 

The Nissan Will VI was a production version of a concept car aimed at young people in the early 2000s. An interesting story, and a relatively rare car, not something that would work for us. 


The Smart Roadster? Same type of story… doesn’t matter if we like it or not, we won’t be buying one. 

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Walkway this way

After returning the car today, we took a walk down to the water, where the Hobson Bay Walkway meanders along for miles and miles. The bluff is steep, and they’ve built nice stairs to get you down there. 


Again, the jungly-ness is less impressive in the picture than in real life. 


At low tide, this is just one big mudflat, albeit the prettiest mudflat I’ve ever seen by a long stretch. Over the years, Auckland’s footprint has increased into a lot of land like this. Owners of multimillion dollar homes along this stretch would fight bitterly against any new developments here, I’m sure. 

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Save me a saveloy 

That is a grown woman. A professional, sophisticated person. She is here demonstrating a Kiwi tradition, the cheerio. These little sausages, which are technically called saveloys according to Wikipedia, are a great favorite, especially at kids parties, but not ignored by grown ups either. She served them at a party at her house the other night, a fun evening in a beautiful home. I admit to having a couple cheerios myself once I found out it was socially acceptable. Lee did not make it past the first bite. 

Sadly, the genericized term cheerio has recently been the subject of some trademark action. I don’t think either cocktail sausage or saveloy stands a chance, but who knows… we do tend to say facial tissue and cotton swab these days. 

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Piha to the rescue

Thanks to a generously loaned car, we made our first pilgrimage out of the city yesterday. We drove not quite an hour, much of it on a tiny little twisty toad, to Piha. 


It is a beautiful black sand beach, with a decent surf break, but lots of tough currents, resulting in lots of water rescue activity. In fact the Piha Surf Lifesaving Club was the subject of a reality show a few years back. 


We didn’t go near the water, because it was butt-ass cold, but we did need rescuing from the wind. Some people were in fact surfing, and some kids were frolicking a little, but Kiwis seem tough about the cold. 

Luckily, the PSLC (that’s what we locals call it) runs a cafe and bar, and you can buy a membership for $5… shades of old Utah! We found the beach to still be very pretty from the lounge area. 


The car was great, a Saab convertible. Unfortunately, one other memory this weekend was filling up the car to return it… $7+ per gallon, yikes. Still and all, it was really fun to get out and see such a beautiful place, and come summer… we’ll be back!

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Work hard, play hard

Newmarket is fairly posh these days, and getting posher all the time. But back in the day, not so much. In reading a little NZ history we have learned that 100 years ago the NZ government was about the most socialist in the world, and workers rights are still strongly protected here. 

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Divided by a common language 

Last evening, I had to prioritise pushing the wheelie bin out to the kerb. The rubbish is picked up every week, but the recycling is only collected fortnightly. I couldn’t remember which week this was, so I had to have a squiz at the neighbours‘ bins. Right then, all sorted!

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