Small Skies

It's Monday night and I'm back home.  I've been staying at the holiday house (small sort of place that sleeps 19 - more if you put up some camp beds!) of croquet friends.  Of course I was with The Girls (Jayne, Colleen and Sandra) who take me away with them when they go off to tournaments.  Well, actually, on this occasion I drove them.  The house is in Mount Maunganui just off the seafront.  It was the perfect retreat for three generations of a family.  Yesterday morning I stood on the first floor balcony and looked out.  What struck me was the fact that I couldn't see the sky.  I'm used to skies.  But I'm also used to electricity.  In this case I think I'll forego the sky and make do with the electricity cables and poles.

Forget Your Troubles

What a Difference a Day Makes

It has rained solidly since daybreak.  We played 7 games of croquet in the pouring rain.  By the time we had finished we had had more than enough and were wet through.

Then life changed.  I went out to dinner then Eclectic Friend and I went to see The Kings Speech.  What a truly excellent film.  Now I can see what all the fuss and hype has been about.  Now I can see that Colin Firth has become a truly great actor.

I cannot say that I enjoyed the first 7 hours of the day.  But the rest of the day has been as good as it gets.

The Christchurch Earthquake: Revisited Again

Every day here in New Zealand the Christchurch earthquake is brought home to those of us who are not living in it and who are not directly affected by it.   Today Fiona from Four Paws and Whiskers who is my principal source of the real effect of the quake posted We have lost the city we once knew.

To me the Christchurch quake is very real because I know people who have been affected.  I know people who live there.  I know many people who have friends and relatives there.  It is a very 'near' thing to me.  And it is a major catastrophe.  But those in Christchurch and we in New Zealand will, eventually, get over it.  Christchurch will be rebuilt.  Those who survived will rebuild their lives.  The country will survive.

The last thing on this earth I would want to do or suggest is that this has not been a major disaster.  It has been.  But here's the rub.  Here's the dilemma.  I can feel and relate to the Christchurch disaster.

In camparison the 2010 Haiti earthquake approximately 25 km (16 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital occurred on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.  By 24 January, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded. An estimated three million people (equal to 3/4 of New Zealand's population) were affected by the quake.  The Haitian government reported that an estimated 316,000 people had died, 300,000 had been injured and 1,000,000 made homeless.  The government of Haiti also estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged.

 

I knew none of that until I wondered how our earthquake compared with that one and looked it up this evening.   It made me think.  Very hard.

An Apple Called Eve

MacBook Pro

Some while ago I bought an Apple MacBook Pro.  I was converted to Apple.  There are disadvantages to owning an Apple but there are also many (and overwhelming) advantages if you can afford one.    Anyway my laptop was sitting on the table this evening when Jayne commented to Coleen about Samantha (my Notebook) who seemed to have been deserted for the new machine.  Unfortunately that's quite true.  So Jayne asked the name of the addition to the family.  I replied that she didn't have a name as yet (6 months or so down the line).  Given that it's an Apple, Jayne immediately came up with the name Eve.  It's not a name I would have chosen for the laptop.  It's not a name that evokes  any feelings in me.  But I can't keep on calling it nothing for ever.  It's not in my nature.   So Eve it is.

Mount Maunganui

When I was in Tauranga a few weeks ago Eclectic Friend and I went for a walk around the Mount Maunganui.  Well actually we didn't go round as we had intended.  A few days previously the torrential rains had caused huge landslips on The Mount and consequentially large areas of the footpath around it  remained impassable.

The Mount Maunganui

One of the eleven large (and numerous small) landslips

Reminds me of Carmel in California

The end of the path

No mincing of words here then

Yes.  That's definitely a landslip

A very pleasant walk when not covered in rubble

Marine Parade from The Mount

OK.  It's a head..  I just had to show you

Thankful Thursday

I'm sitting on the deck of a friend's holiday home at Mount Maunganui  listening to the waves along the Marine Parade after a day playing croquet.   It's coming on for 11pm.  The weather today was warm and sunny and, frankly, pretty idyllic.   Yesterday I walked along the beach for an hour as it went dark.  The water was lovely and warm.  Tonight I did the same.  Wonderful.

Before I came away the weather forecast was for 4 days of rain and showers and so far we've been lucky and the playing conditions have been perfect.

My knee that will soon need replacing is giving me trouble but I am conscious that it is a minor inconvenience in my life compared with the trials and tribulations and injuries suffered both mental and physical by many Christchurch residents.

I am thankful for the luxury of good weather and companionship and for the fact that my injuries are so small and insignificant compared with those of so many people.

More Travelling, More Croquet

I'm just about to leave for Mount Maunganui near Tauranga and yet another croquet tournament.  Hopefully I'll get reception there and be able to continue blogging.  Oddly last night I was trying to complete a post on a walk at (we couldn't get round because of landslips) we did at The Mount when I was staying up in Tauranga.  Go well, whoever you are and wherever you are and I'll see you soon (so to speak).

Books And Bookshops Revisited

After my post a few days ago on the loss of bookstores there were quite a few comments which raised issues which have prompted me to another post.  Books are such an essential part of our lives that this is one subject that affects almost all of us one way or another.

One of the points was the ability to collect books.  CJ (aka Scriptor Senex for anyone new reading this blog) is a collector of many things from beer mats in his Uni days to photos of  postboxes.  I remarked  to him a few years ago that I couldn't recall ever having an interest in collecting anything.  He looked at me and said something like "So that wall case of well over a thousand CDs and that wall of book case and the shelves in the loft don't merit being called a collection?"  That made me think.  I had never regarded CDs or books as collections.  They are just an integral part of my life.  However why do I keep all the CDs when all my music is on computer and although the entire collection is nearly 200Gb  most of the music I listen to and carry with me to New Zealand (where I have no CDs) can be stored on  the 120Gb of one little iPod.  Likewise my entire collection of books (leastways the ones that are in print) can be stored on computer and a reader like the iPad, Kindle or iRiver (which I'd not heard of until Yvonne mentioned it).

With CDs I like to look at them and choose what I want to play.  The other thing about them is that the quality of the sound using a CD and my hifi system is better than the sound straight from the computer or iPod even when fed into the hifi system.

With books the one common thing upon which we all seem to be agreed is that there is just 'something about' a book that one doesn't get in a Kindle.  Many of my books are reference books. A Kindle can be both useful and useless for reference books.  The basic ones which I use for birds and insects, for example, do not appear to be available on Kindle.  Even if they were then browsing through photographs for identification would, I imagine, be quite hard on a Kindle unless one knew the name one was looking for and used the search facility.   And a book of paintings  or photographs in large format will never be quite surpassed for browsing by a computer screen. - will it?  There is a discussion on the book versus Kindle topic at Beatties Book Blog.

I was in town this afternoon and popped into Beattie and Forbes:

It's pretty much like any other bookshop and it does have one huge advantage over Amazon which I think we all recognise too:  you can browse and find books you didn't know had been written on topics you may never have given a thought to.  I found one such book.

As I mentioned we also have a wonderful second-hand bookshop The Little Bookstore about which I've blogged and a Book Exchange which I passed today:

At the end of the day it's what we are happy with but I'll leave you with the words of Yvonne (la mujer libre) "What is it I like about my favourite books? Surely it's the words that the books contain - words that are ordered in a way that affects me. It's not the cover, nor the number of pages and etc..."

Random Cyclings of an Art Deco Sunday