bollard and flower pot
the bollards bow down to the might flower pot
public telephone cows only
typical, a sheep turns up to a telephone box and it’s cows only
inorganic waste collection
auckland has this very cool thing where once or twice a year your street will be nominated for an ‘inorganic waste’ collection. the weekend before the week you have to put all the rubbish that wouldn’t normally be allowed in the rubbish bin (the stuff you’d take to the refuse tip in the UK).
for a few days the streets look completely messy, except they are full of fantastic things. And there are rag and bone type people going round collecting anything which can be repaired or sold or melted down. so by the end of the weekend there really is very little left. it’s an excellent scheme.
they are also really clear that anything you put out will end up in a landfill (unless it get taken away by a passing opportunist) so people can think twice about what they put out.
i like the mixture of official and unofficial recycling that goes on. and the glorious mess that exists for a few days.
a rainy day
lots of rain here at the moment.
no pane no (bar)gain
no pane no (bar)gain
exit without warning
i always like to see warning signs which demonstrate the danger they warn against.
dangly fig tree
strange fig tree dangly airbourne roots. excellent.
these fish available here
this is the fish you can get in the fish ‘n’ chip shop in kiwiland. and mighty fine they are too.
christchurch
it’s been a week since the christchurch earthquake and the aftershocks are still going on.
we visited just a few weeks ago and had a great time. i’ve still got loads of pictures i haven’t posted of it, so here are a few.
we went to the cathedral where one of the vicars was dressed as an octopus. you’ve got to like that in a religious building
and all the buildings were lovely
it’s been interesting to watch the various online visualisations and map mashups over the last week. a quick google search for christchurch quake map shows you a few. crowd sourcing and machine mashups are all excellent, but the challenge becomes finding the definitive version.
This one set the bar for visualising the relentlessness of the aftershocks
the new role for authorities in times of crisis is defining the ‘official’ twitter hashtags and url for the master crowd source google map.
so to all chums, fellow countrymen/women, collagues, students, visitors and anyone else down in christchurch, we wish you all the best and hope things get back to normal as soon as
here are a couple of my faves:
earth quakes over the last 6 months in new zealand (shown over 1 minute)
visualisation of official and crowd sourced data (click up the top to enable the crowd source data)
and mapquake seems to be the official google maps one
how i survived swine flu
i went to the doctors today. i booked the appointment on wednesday afternoon when i felt particularly ill and was sick and tired of being ill for the last fortnight. of course i was feeling a lot better by the time i finally got to the doctors on friday afternoon, but i still thought i should go and find out what the score was.
turned out i probably had swine flu. but then so has everyone else round our way (it’s only just stopped being winter here) so i’m a bit of a copier.
but i was delighted by the precautions at the doctors. i didn’t know i was ill when i arrived so i avoided wearing a mask.
Great signage though. Shame you have to shave your head to wear the mask. fine for blokes, but not ideal for the ladies in the house
a nice night out
two friends took jane and i to see a concert by national superstar (world famous in new zealand) Dave Dobbyn. He was playing an acoustic gig in Auckland Cathedral with the Dukes. All excellent stuff.
table rules
what about other people’s safety ? and why just sitting, leaning, climbing being banned ?
