Firstly, a big happy birthday to Leila for yesterday! After a long string of unfortunate events on her birthday over the years, including a remarkable run of random illnesses, I think she managed to get through a reasonably pleasant day, and also remain healthy for once! I guess it was fairly low key, with more crazy parties to come in the next while, but a fun time was had, we went out to dinner with Amber and had some particularly yummy pizza and so forth.

It had seemed as though my aptitude at remembering dreams had been disappearing recently. As I've said in the past, this is actually bloody annoying as I find my dreams fascinating to recall, write about, think about and even learn from, as they offer an insight into my subconscious that I think often gets overwhelmed by my conscious mind trying to impose what I "should" be thinking or feeling about a particular event. With our trip to Europe less than two months away now, I guess it's not surprising that "holiday dreams" are going to become more than more common, but I've had a couple of interesting ones lately that I at least recall parts of, and are worth sharing.

The first was a few nights back, some time over the long Easter weekend I think. It's always beneficial for my chances of remembering a dream that I'm able to lie in bed for a while after I've woken up and think about it immediately. That way it seems to shift from a "night-memory", which I'm pretty good at remembering while asleep but not when I'm awake, to a "day memory", more in line with everything else in life. But anyway, I had the opportunity to recall my dream, which was rather stressful at the time, but in a way really weird and interesting.

But anyway, the earliest bit I remember (I know that it had been going for a while before that..) involved Leila and I for some reason being in Nelson, and needing to catch a plane back to Auckland. I know even in reality Nelson is a little out in the sticks as far as New Zealand towns go, but it has a reasonably airport (I've flown in and out quite a few times in the last couple of years). However, in my dream the airport was totally different, and the runway was truly bizarre. For some reason it was covered in cars, well at least a lot of the runway was. cars that were parked at all sorts of random angles, like many many people were going to some event and had run out of parking spaces so decided to randomly park all over the runway. In any case, the pilot (who for some reason I could easily talk to) was a little worried about all this, but figured he would be able to manoeuvre around all the cars and take off anyway. The plane was pretty weird too, as it seemed "open top" as I was able to look all around me in a way that wouldn't have been possible in a normal plane. It also seemed pretty damn small.

So, the pilot made his big attempt to take off, but he just couldn't build up enough speed to get up in the air. The runway by the point seemed to have become something even more bizarre, complete with ups and downs. He got to the far end of the runway, which was at the end of an "up" part, and turned the plane around to try again. We had a bit more hope this time, as the plane began on a downslope, so there was more hope that we'd get up the required speed. However, for a variety of reasons this didn't happen, and we realised that we'd have to wait until all these damn cars moved so that we'd be able to take off properly.

It was at this point that the dream changed a little. As if it hadn't occurred to me before, I suddenly realised that we needed to catch this plane to Auckland so that we'd be able to catch our flight to Singapore and on to London. Not being able to catch this flight was going to mess up the entire trip. Stress. Then I realised that we hadn't even packed for the holiday, we were just terribly disorganised and it was quickly turning into a disaster. More stress. Not long after that I think I woke up, fairly happy that it had just been a dream in the end. I guess it's a way of my subconscious reminding me that many things can go wrong when it comes to catching planes, and I need to be damn careful about organising everything so it runs smoothly. It's probably also reminding me that I still need to finish off organising all the flights and accommodation within Europe, so that I feel more relaxed about the holiday in general.

The other dream was just last night, and also involved a holiday of sorts. We were still going to Europe, but somehow we had ended up in Japan on our way, and not just at Tokyo airport or anything, but at the northern tip of Honshu Island. I was quite excited about this, as we were about to board a train that would take us through the longest underwater tunnel in the world, from Honshu to Hokkaido. However, before we could get on the train I woke up - damn typical I tell you. I guess that dream largely popped up because of my renewed interest in big long tunnels and bridges in recent months, thanks to the Skyscraper City forums. It was interesting how excited I was about being in Japan though. Perhaps I need to travel there some day.

Gah another big long gap between entries. Perhaps I should stop talking about the gaps between my blog entries, as it's just an absolute obvious fact that there's going to be an enormous long gap between entries these days.

It's been easter holidays for the last couple of days (when I say holidays I really mean that I get a whole 2 extra days off work, which actually feels like a lot). Being a 4 day weekend, easter is particularly awesome when it comes to long weekends. Often in the past I've really felt like the normal 2 day weekend feels so utterly inadequate for what the purposes of my weekend should be. On full Amalia weekends I find myself feeling more exhausted on Sunday night than I did on the Friday night, while on shorter weekends the single day I have Amalia for seems truly inadequate, that she's gone again almost as soon as she got here.

So yesterday I went to the easter show with Amalia, Leila and Bernice. It was really full on - in hind-sight pretty fun, but also really tiring and quite stressful at times. I've taken Amalia to the easter show the last couple of years, so it's a bit of a tradition now I suppose. Anyhow, we had planned originally to go there by bus, but time dragged on and that coupled with the typically pathetic public holiday bus timetable meant that we eventually ended up driving there. It was crowded, really crowded, which rather did my head in after a while - but once we'd got our bearings and realised that the farm animals weren't where they were last year, it was quite fun. Amalia had a good stroke of the sheep, goats and other random animals that were sitting within the farmyard for petting. The animals were so tame and tolerant of kids poking and pulling on them that I'm sure they had to have been drugged up to their eyeballs.

We went to the Shrek 3 stage show, which was a typical noisy mess of terrible acting in big costumes. Amalia liked it for a while, especially the songs (why do kids always love cheesy songs sung terribly loudly and totally out of tune by people pretending to have Scottish and American accentts?) However, after a while even she became bored of it, and we eventually headed outside to the sun and the crowds, to battle our way over to the rides. The "Carnival" area at the easter show always freaks me out a little - it has this somewhat unsavoury feeling where it times like everyone's out there to rip you off as much as they can possibly get away with, that every ride is one little loose screw away from falling apart, and it's just so bloody noisy and crowded. I did have fun with Amalia on the dodgem cars though, and then Leila went on a little dragon roller-coaster with her. But probably her favourite ride was a simple merry-go-round, where she became instant best friends with the girl riding on the horse next to her. It always seems so damn unfair how easy kids make friends with other kids, although I guess at the same time it must be frustrating for them to have to leave all these people that they seem to have just met and instantly got along with. Or perhaps it's something so normal that Amalia's not really bothered by that anymore, and in fact she enjoys meeting new people and making new friends all the time. I guess it's a question I can ask her in a few more years time.

Then today we've managed to have generally a really really nice day. After getting woken up by a familiar knock on the bedroom door a bit earlier than ideal, Amalia and I ended up having a nice cuddle and read in bed. We had watched a little bit of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie at Leila's parents last night after dinner, and we had a chat about that. I was a little worried that she'd get a bit freaked out by some of the scarier parts of the movie, but she seemed to think for some reason that Ratatouille was a much scarier movie. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of my favourite books when I was a kid: I remember my mum reading it to me little by little the first time I got to know the story, and then I remember it being the absolute first "big long" book that I read to myself - possibly when I was 6 or 7. I was so damn proud of myself being able to read something that long, and I managed to polish off most of it within one afternoon and evening. At the end of it my eyes were very sore - I definitely remember that! After we got up I took Leila to work and then went to do a good supermarket shop with Amalia, who ended up being surprisingly helpful at putting things into the trolley, and at other times enjoyed riding off the edge of the trolley like I always did as a kid. After the shopping, which was a pleasant if rather expensive exercise - although nothing compared to the guy in front of us who spent something like $800 on groceries (what is it with people buying huge amounts of groceries around easter, the shops are only shut for 2 days!) - we headed home for a few more chores and fun & games. Then back to pick up Leila from work, home for a little, out to the playgrond, home again for dinner.... yikes no wonder I'm feeling a little tired now.

I always do seem to enjoy these Saturday evenings, on full weekends with Amalia when I don't have to stress about getting her back home by a certain time haven't actually just picked her up. It's like we've all just been hanging around here for the day just as things should normally be. We had a nice roast chicken for dinner, played a few fun games after that, before she went to bed, just like things feel like they should normally be. Hmmmm... what am I trying to say here? I guess my point is that not having the stesses of having to keep half an eye on the time, or feeling really tired after going all the way over Auckland to pick up Amalia really makes this one Saturday night per fortnight feel like it's normal for Amalia to be here, normal for her to be MY child, I guess an insight into how life might be if she was with me all the time.

It'll be fun tomorrow morning with lots of easter eggs to go around everyone. I need to make sure that I don't eat too much chocolate. Yikes what a hard task I have ahead of me!

Hmmm... fairly typical day today. Got started on another mini-job at work, which I guess has the potential to be interesting. However, it's something that I haven't really done before (being a regional council consent instead of a district council consent) so it's a little confusing. Not because it's overly complicated or anything, but strangely enough probably the opposite - there just don't seem to be the 10 million rules, development controls, assessment criteria and the like that I'm used to when putting together normal resource consent applications. It's like "hmmm... what am I missing here? Surely I must be missing something!" When I think about it, I probably am missing something, as it is NEVER easier and more simple than you thought it would be.

Speaking of regional councils, district councils and all that mess, I finally got around to making a submission to the royal commission on Auckland's local government, the other night. A chance for me to have my say on how and why Auckland's governance system should be reorganised. I feel a bit mixed about the whole thing actually, as a simplification is logically exactly what is needed, but it is the complexity of the current system and the inefficiency of it that makes planning such a good profession. I keep thinking to myself that all the information for this report I'm writing is just sitting out there on the internet, heck anyone could actually put it together if they thought about it hard enough. Except for the fact that councils really don't know how to write a District Plan in a way that makes any sense (I still often feel like a n00b) and there are 7 different plans in the Auckland region alone. If it was simple people could probably do it themselves!

But yeah, I made a submission anyway. Based on about five questions that were asked. I include it below:

(1) What kind of local government arrangements will help Auckland become a successful world-class city?

Less conflict between local governments is essential for Auckland to become a world class city. Having different local councils with different aims (which are often contradictory) makes it very difficult for Auckland to project a `united front? to the rest of the world. With councils such as Manukau, North Shore and Waitakere marketing themselves as being separate to `Auckland?, the Auckland `brand? appears weakened.

In my opinion, for Auckland to truly become a world class city it needs a single council for its urban area. Councils such as the Greater London Council have ended up with global recognition, and have allowed important and potentially difficult decisions such as the introduction of congestion charging. Having a single unitary council definitely appears the best way to present Auckland as a united city to the rest of the world, to allow regional decisions to be made in a way that best suits the region, and are not compromised by local parochialism.

Obviously there are still problematic issues that will need to be resolved. Should the unitary council cover the entire Auckland region, or should it just cover the urban area? I would think that the rural parts of the Auckland region still form an important part of how the city operates and should not be split off to form part of Northland and Waikato regions. Locations such as Piha or Whitford have important historical links to the respective cities that they are part of, while at the same time are intrinsically linked to the urban area.

Perhaps the best way to solve this problem would be to create two Local Councils within the Auckland region: an Urban Auckland (which would cover the area inside the metropolitan urban limits) and a Rural Auckland (which would cover the area outside the MUL but within the existing Auckland Region. This solution would make sense as many of the issues facing rural Manukau City are similar to those facing rural Rodney District, but are very different to the issues facing the urban parts of both TLAs. This would also solve the problematic situation of Franklin District, which is divided across two regional councils, as the part which falls within the Auckland region would become part of `Rural Auckland?, while the rest would either stay as either Franklin District or would become part of another District in the area. Combating urban sprawl is one of the biggest challenges facing Auckland, and having a council dedicated to the area surrounding the city would enable that council to specialize in that task.

(2) What decisions should be made and implemented at a regional level? By what body or bodies or processes should these decisions be made?

While Auckland is split into a variety of councils, it is clear that the city operates as a single entity. Therefore, in my opinion as many decisions as possible should be made by a regional authority, or one that is at least representative of the entire urban area. Having a council that responds to particular urban issues and another that responds to issues in the rural area surrounding the city would provide a good way for decisions to be made. The clearest distinction between areas in the Auckland region is definitely between urban and rural, so the logical distinction between the governing bodies should be urban and rural.

With such a large population in the ?Urban Auckland? council there are obvious worries that the link between the people and the local government will become strained. Perhaps an enhanced role for community boards might be necessary to overcome this.

I would see the regional council retaining much of its existing role regarding environmental affairs and having ultimate responsibility for the state of the natural environment within the region. I would see the `Urban Auckland? council taking over responsibility for public transport, as most routes would be within the boundaries of that city. In areas outside the council?s boundaries the Rural Auckland council would have responsibility.

(3) What decisions should be made and implemented at a local level? By what body or bodies or processes should these decisions be made?

The two new councils would cover existing decisions that are made by district and city councils. Because there would be fewer Councils, it may be necessary for Community Boards to play an increased role linking the population with the council and to ensure that there is good local representation. Perhaps Community Boards could play a role in forming specific objectives, policies and rules for planning in each ward, to ensure the local community has a role in determining the future of their area.

(4) To what extent should individual local councils follow consistent practices? How do we ensure that decisions made at national, regional, and local government levels are consistent with each other, and that they lead in the same direction?

It is obvious that local councils should be as consistent with each other as possible. However, given that they are only responsible to their local electorate and not the wider region, it is very difficult for councils to make decisions that are anything other than parochial. The problems that have led to the Regional Amenities Funding Bill clearly show that while councils pay a lot of lip service to consistency among councils, in the end they are forced to act in a way that doesn?t benefit the region as a whole. Therefore, in order to achieve proper consistency among local councils the only solution is to create a united urban council, and a united rural council.

A united Auckland council would have a lot more `clout? when it comes to negotiating with the national government. It would represent about one in four New Zealanders, whereas the current largest council only represents about one in ten. This would help ensure that Auckland is properly represented at the national level.

(5) How do we ensure that whatever form of local government is adopted remains properly accountable to the people of Auckland?

With a significantly enlarged council there is obviously a worry that the link between the people of Auckland and the local government would be weakened. However, through having empowered Community Boards that accountability would not necessarily be lost. Furthermore, through having a combined ?Urban Auckland? council, everyone living with the urban part of the city would feel that they have a say in how the city operates. At the moment, someone who lives in one part of the city but works, studies or spends a large part of their life in another, has no say in the governance of the rest of the city.

I would definitely think that a council would be much more accountable to the people of Auckland if it was elected by the entire city. The same is true for a council elected by the rural area of the region. Therefore, a local governance structure as outlined above would potentially enhance the accountability of the city to the people of Auckland.

You can make your own submission at www.royalcommission.govt.nz if you like.

Hmmm... what is it with me adding "-ality" to all my blog entry titles at the moment? And what's up with my irregular entries anyway. I guess I get sidetracked at work, which has often traditionally been where I've updated, so I just haven't got around to it. You know how it is, out of the habit etc. etc.

So what's been going on in the last week for me. I guess at first glance it's been a fairly normal time I guess. Advanced the planning for our holiday a little, had Amalia on Saturday, went out with Leila to Mission Bay on Saturday night, had a nicely relaxing Sunday, went to Aston's first birthday. Well, I guess it wasn't quite such a normal and uneventful last week after all - and that was just the weekend. Oh, and New Zealand actually managed to win a cricket test, quite some achievement for them really!

On Saturday I took Amalia over to Ella & Pete's place so that I could look after Joseph for a little while to give Ella the opportunity to have a driving lesson with Pete. It was good to have the opportunity to have him without a whole pile of other people around for the first time, although Amalia was keen at every opportunity to play cricket with me in the backyard instead (not quite sure how you're supposed to play cricket whilst carrying a baby around, but I'm sure it's possible - a front-pack would probably help things in that respect I imagine. In any case, it went fairly well after Ella finally managed to feed him enough to stop him from screaming his lungs out. Eventually he got a bit grumpy so I took him and Amalia down to the park, which is about two minutes walk from their place. Amalia had fun helping me push Joseph on the swing, and he seemed to greatly enjoy it too, and also was smart enough to actually hang on to the chains on either side! After a while Ella and Pete showed up, obviously having headed home and noticed that we weren't everywhere put things together and realised that we'd be at the park.

Although I guess it wasn't that long that I had just Joseph and Amalia to myself, it was really nice to have that time with him. I guess I do feel like I missed out a bit with him, having not seen him until he was about three months old, and then on just about every occasion that I saw him when they first got back to NZ, having heaps and heaps of people around all the time. It's nice to make a little bit of that time back, although in some other ways I probably didn't miss particularly much as babies aren't generally that much fun until they're at least a few months old. Before that they just scream, eat and poo. Repeat.

On Sunday Leila and I went to Aston's first birthday party. It was his actual birthday on Thursday. Pretty crazy to think that he is now a year old, although in some ways it most definitely does feel like a long time ago that everything of that time went on. It was a pretty fun party really, with heaps and heaps of shockingly cute little kids running all over the place. Yes defnitely enough to turn the most unclucky person ever clucky. Amalia seemed to enjoy herself immensely too, I guess that it probably felt in some ways as much her party as it did Aston's. She definitely enjoyed "helping" open Aston's presents. Leila and I got him a couple of cute little "touch and feel" type books, that he should enjoy over the next year, and should be hardy enough for him to hopefully not destroy over that time.

After that we headed off to the Albany Westfield for a good read in the Borders bookshop there. I found a couple of really fascinating urban planning books that I hope to get one day Borders have their 50% special again (perhaps around Xmas time?) It's a shame that good urban planning books always cost between $80 and $120. After a nice relaxing read, in which Leila actually managed to read an entire book whilst I wandered around the mall trying to find out whether New Zealand had beaten England in the cricket yet (we had). We then enjoyed a little time at Takapuna Beach before heading home.

So far it's been a fairly normal week I guess. 2nd cricket test starts tomorrow so it'll be interesting to see whether we can keep up the good momentum built up in the first match.

Life does feel rather typical at the moment. I want to write in my blog regularly, but when I think about it there isn't really particularly much exciting stuff to write about. Each day is reasonably similar to the last, the weekend will eventually roll around and that will be nicely different, but then after that it will be Monday again... cue repeat. I suppose that this isn't really a bad thing at all, especially when May17th draws closer and closer, and I realise that it's only just over a couple of months until Leila's and my big holiday to Europe. Argh, must get on with booking the rest of the accommodation and travel!

It does feel extremely surreal that I will be heading to Europe in a couple of months. A few weeks back it had finally begun to sunk in that it was indeed going to happen, largely because we spent ages and ages sorting out the Paris accommodation, but since then a combination of general stuff happening along with forgetfulness has meant that we haven't really progressed further. Sorting out accommodation in Barcelona, and then throughout Italy (along with the necessary trains) is the next step in the process, and it should once again "bring it to life" a bit more. I remember last time I went overseas, which isn't much less than three years ago now, it felt extremely surreal that this was actually happening until almost the very day that I left. In that situation it wasn't really that surprising though, as my life at the time seemed a bit less connected with the holiday than it will this time around, and I didn't really do any of the organising myself. I remember when we finally headed out to the airport it began to feel real at last, then sitting on the plane as it taxied along the runway the excitement truly started to kick in. I really can't wait for that feeling of excitement again.

I think ever since I came back from my end of year holiday one thing or another has been able to shorten almost every working week. Public holidays, trips to Nelson, trips to the Coromandel and so forth has made it seem (in a very pleasant way) that reality hadn't really returned. The kind of reality that makes every week between June and October seem exactly the same. I think the summery weather had helped too, creating a really nice sense of un-normality that I found myself enjoying immensely.

While it would be an over-simplification to say that last week was reality biting hard, it certainly felt like the unusualness of the previous couple of months was coming to a close. It felt colder, I found myself with a typically frustrating cold early in the week - one where it's actually only really a cold for a day or so, but one which lingers around in the form of a snuffly nose or a nasty cough for a good while longer than that. I can still pull out a pretty damn impressively nasty cough once in a while! In other ways it seemed like many issues with general life that had been manageable all of a sudden, for no real apparent reason, morphed themselves into something that seemed unmanageable. I guess in some ways it wasn't that surprising, having things that you felt like you were really only holding back with half-hearted sticky-plaster finally overwhelm that, forcing you to look at ways that will actually fix the problem rather than just blustering through attempting to patch things up all the time in a fairly ineffectual manner. Of course - to carry the weird metaphor through - figuring out how to reconstruct a faulty dam is much more difficult than just patching it up and takes a lot more thought, planning, time and expertise. Yet in the long run it is essential. Hmmmm.... tricky.

On the bright side, my work life looks like it's moving into a more interesting phase in the next while. Recently there have been so many jobs that have found themselves stuck at one place or another along the resource consent process that it's been difficult to really sink my teeth into something big (that hasn't really actually been possible since Christmas), but have rather had to to a little bit here and there, sending emails and following up on phone calls more than actually writing out reports. Having a new job that I can really get done from start to finish will be really interesting, while there are a couple more potential jobs in the future that could end up being particularly fascinating, and a little bit different.

Hmmmm.... sometimes writing on this blog is a pretty weird task. I can't really talk too much about more personal issues because of those people involved. I can't really talk much about work for obvious reasons such as client confidentiality. I can moan about things in general, or about particularly non-offensive issues - but often that's not really what I particularly feel like doing. Anyway I guess it's better than nothing, and my whole experiment of incorporating my blog into facebook has (so far) seemed to assist me in blogging more frequently, and that has to be a good thing.

I guess that it's tricky for me to move on and blog about anything else until I've completed my blog update about the holiday. But the holiday was now more than a week ago and is (slowly) fading into my medium-long term memory. Oh well, let's have a go at things anyway. I really do have more recent stuff to write about, so let's get this done with!

Where did I leave things? Ah yes I think we were up to Wednesday! On Wednesday we left Whitianga to head southwards. After doing a big loops around Whitianga harbour we found ourselves at Hahei. Hahei is probably most famous for being the place where you walk to Cathederal Cove from, and we would have gone there except the weather was really threatening at that point and I so didn't want to end up 45 minutes from the car with it totally pissing down. Instead we wandered along the beach, I played silly buggers with a rope that was hanging from the tree (which was fun actually),we ummed and arrred about whether we should walk to Cathederal Cove after all, before deciding not to and heading on to Hot Water Beach.

Hot Water Beach is something special really. With a hot spring underneath the sand, at low tide you can dig out pools and bathe away in really nice warm (or hot!) water. It wasn't hard to find out where the hot spring was once we arrived at the beach, as there were many many people crowded around a small spot attempting to dig themselves pools that would immediately get washed away by the still-high tide, before trying again, or just standing there digging their toes into the sand and enjoying the warmth. After a while longer the tide was going far enough out for some of the pools to not get totally smashed up by the waves, and everyone got digging. It was pretty funny seeing all these adults basically building this giant sand-castle system. The springs were fairly localised, so in the space of a couple of metres you could go from having really hot water, to there being absolutely nothing. It was pretty damn crowded too, with reasonably polite staking out of areas taking place. Eventually Leila and I found a spot that had hot water coming out, although after a while it actually became a little too hot and everyone abandoned the central area, warning others walking through that they were about to roast their feet. It was pretty fun really, although slowly the tide eventually came back in and starting destroying most of the lower pools. We found a spot in one of the higher pools further up the beach, and dug it out a little more until it too became a bit too hot before eventually being destroyed by the sea. In any case it was a really fun and nice way to spend a few hours, even if it felt really strange for the beach to be that crowded.

After leaving Hot Water Beach we headed on through Tairua to Onemana. It was interesting to visit this place, as for many years when my parents were looking to buy their beach house we all thought this was the most likely place where we'd end up having it. It is a pretty cute little settlement, with an interesting beach that Leila and I ended up swimming at. Due to the slope of the beach the waves crash pretty close to the shore, and it was fun playing games where we'd either try to avoid their power or try to make it so they crashed on us in the largest possible way. Towards the end we got enormously dumped twice, which was a little scary, but it was fun to get some proper swimming in for the first time on the holiday. After Onemana we drove to Whangamata for our motel, and I got to watche the exciting finale to the tied NZ v England cricket match that was taking place that day.

Thursday was coming home day, but as there wasn't really any hurry to get home we tried to make the most of the day. Firstly we headed out to Opoutere, which is a really really nice beach, if slightly annoying that you have to walk for about 15 minutes from the carpark to get there. The weather wasn't quite as warm as the day before, but I had a good read on the beach and built a pretty impressive looking sand-castle (see the pictures at www.jarbury.net ) and all up it was really fun there. After that we drove up to Pauanui, which is pretty close to the road back to Auckland. The weather was getting a bit colder and windier once again, but I finished my book as we read on the beach for a while, before we eventually decided that it was time to start heading back to Auckland. On the way we stopped at the Ngatea gemstone shop, which was quite interesting as I haven't been there for years and remember being amazed by all the awesome looking quartz crystals. The drive back was pretty fun really, although damn I was tired at the end of it, especially when I realise it had been over 800 km of driving in the previous 5 days. Was definitely a good holiday though!

Well I guess I should continue my reporting on our Coromandel holiday fairly soon, before it disappears out of my memory.

After visiting the Square Kauri we headed off further north, to Coromandel township. This involved further awesome driving along the coast before cutting inland about 15 minutes before we reached Coromandel. It does seem pretty random that there's a town named the same as the whole peninsula, yet it isn't nearly the biggest town on the peninsula. I guess at some stage it might have been though, as the place has many old buildings and is actually quite cute and quaint.

But anyway, the main purpose of our visit was to go on the Driving Creek Railway. This attraction is surely one of the more amazing things that you can do in this part of the country. The owner of the Railway, Barry Brickle, has - since about the 1970s - slowly built himself a narrow gauge railway line further and further up the hill behind the pottery factory that he originally established on the site. Apparently the railway line was initially built to transport clay from the hills down to his pottery area, but he became so fascinated by the process of building the railway track that he just kept on extending it over the years. Now it runs about 3 km up the hill, rising about 150 m throughout that course - which is pretty damn steep for a railway line. There are bridges and tunnels, switchbacks and viaducts, and all sorts of other amazing features on this railway. Eventually we reached the top of the line and could climb up a nice wooden tower (known as the Eyefull Tower) to get a great view over the whole aea. The fact that this one guy, along with some fairly low-key local contractors and just a few helpers, has managed to build what is there is simply amazing. Amalia would have really loved the train ride, and I look forward to taking her on it in the future.

Photos from the train and at the top of the hill in Coromandel

After the train took us back down the hill again, and we had checked out some glass-blowing at the bottom of the line (really amazing stuff to watch), we headed off on our way again. We crossed over the Coromandel Ranges on the "309 Road", a fairly remote unsealed route that I don't think I've been on before. About halfway up there was a short walk to the best stand of mature Kauri trees on the whole peninsula, which were simply breath-taking. There is something about a huge Kauri tree that totally blows you away, the height and sheer size of them is really humbling, while the thought of the whole peninsula being covered in them a hundred or so years ago before they were logged really really gets me hacked off that these amazing trees used to be so plentiful but now are not. After we had made our way over the ranges we found our motel in Whitianga, and settled down there for the evening. After fish & chips for dinner by the beach it was nice to get some sleep after a pretty long and full-on day.

The next day, Tuesday, dawned with changeable looking weather, which wasn't exactly ideal. Initially it didn't really seem too bad, although the wind was blowing like crazy which would make it difficult to spend too long at any of the beaches we were heading to that day. We headed off north, on a reasonably short drive up to Kuaotunu (supposedly pronounced Koo-too-noo). Then we headed over the "Blackjack" a pretty short but really windy and steep gravel road that was pretty freaky to drive over. Especially on the way down from its summit it was quite a challenge to make sure I didn't end up skidding anywhere. Gravel roads are certainly a good way to improve your driving skills, as they really make sure you control your speed, the angle that you take corners and how much you brake. After driving a gravel road when I got back on sealed bits it felt like there was this amazing glue sticking my tires to the road, a glue that just wasn't there when driving on unsealed bits.

Once we had made it over the "Blackjack", we reached Otama Beach. This has always been one of my favourite beaches in the country, particularly on the Coromandel Peninsula. For some reason the sand on this beach is a particularly striking shade of white, while the area behind the beach is a reserve, which means it really does feel isolated from the world. Leila and I found a sheltered part of the beach (it was pretty damn windy) behind a sand-dune and sat down to read for a while. After returning to the car we headed off further down the road to Opito Beach. There was a bit of a larger settlement here, and it was interesting to note that the sand had a noticeably different colour even though it was in close proximity to Otama. There wasn't really anywhere much to shelter from the wind here, so we headed back to the car and drove back to Kuaotunu.

From there we continued on to Matarangi, which is one of the growing settlements on this part of the Coromandel. It's frustrating that the more recent an area has developed, the more stupid the houses seem to look. I guess these days those able to afford a beach-house altogether are probably likely to be pretty damn rich, and can therefore afford to splash out on a wanky monstrosity complete with stupid pillars. Unfortunately for Matarangi, a lot of its development has taken place pretty recently, so there's an awful lot of wank there. On the plus side, the beach there is unbelievably awesome, and stretched off in both directions from where we went down to it. Furthermore, fortunately there is a pretty big setback from the beach to the first lot of houses, so when you're actually on the beach it is quite tricky to see any houses at all.

At Matarangi the wind was really blowing like crazy, so once again after getting a few pictures we headed off on the next stage of our journey. Not too far along the road was Whangapoua, which in addition to a pretty cute little harbour-side town had yet another amazing surf-beach. We considered walking around the corner to New Chums Beach, which is apparently THE most amazing beach on the Coromandel Peninsula, but by then the weather was really starting to deteriorate. I hadn't really planned to visit any other places in this area, but as we'd been unable to really linger at any of the beaches we'd visited so far for particularly long, it wasn't actually that long through the day. So Leila and I decided that we'd do a little more exploring, drove back over another road that crosses the Coromandel Ranges, and then went off on a pretty long unsealed route up to Kennedy's Bay and Waikawau Bay - two very isolated spots way up near the very top of the Peninsula. Although this extension to our trip did involve a lot of driving, and eventually we ended up back in the Coromandel township which felt strange as we'd been there the day before, it was fun exploring different areas. Near Waikawau Bay we found a cute little beach with just about nobody else on it. There were two Pohutukawa Trees right on the beach that made for excellent climbing trees, and we hung out there for a while as the weather improved marginally. After that it was a fairly long trip back to Whitianga, and a damn good sleep that night!

Little Bay - Near Waikawau Bay

The groovy road back over the Ranges

(to be continued... shortly!)

Wow it feels like forever since I was in Auckland! Facebook has gone nuts and I get the feeling I;ll never really catch up with everything that's gone on. Oh well, my life doesn't revolve around the internet, honestly! Well actually I didn't find myself missing the internet too much while Leila and I were away, only on the occasion where I really wanted to check on the cricket score! But anyway, about 800 km later I look back and it's been quite a trip really! I think we saw just about every beach on the Coromandel Peninsula, quite some feat!

So yeah, Leila and I set off on Sunday night, after we'd dropped Amalia home. We headed down the Southern Motorway, as we ventured further and further south it was interesting to see how the motorway became increasingly unfamiliar. Up to about Mt Wellington the motorway is incredibly familiar to me, as for one reason or another I probably drive that bit every week or two. After Mt Wellington, and up to Manukau City it's still familiar - but not quite as much. I think I probably go along this bit once every month or so, usually for something to do with work at Manukau City Council, or on our way out east for another site visit. But once we were past Manukau, the motorway was much less familiar. I'm not sure the last time I was on it even, perhaps on the way back from a site visit to Pukekohe at the beginning of last yeard, perhaps more recently, I'm not totally sure. We had dinner at the lay-by near Drury and then headed off further south still. Once again, as we continued onwards the roads became increasingly rare of use for me. However, as my childhood involved a hell of a lot of trips to Thames, the road is hardly unfamiliar to me.

I noticed the Mangatawhiri deviation just past the turn off to SH2. A fairly significant project to bypass one of the most dangerous bits of road in the country. After that fairly boring stretch of road (I can¿t quite believe that it's one of the most dangerous stretches of roads as it seems so normal) we headed onto SH25, which was a little more exciting for me as it is THE ROAD TO THAMES for me, and brought back many memories of going there as a kid. It was really nice to go to Thames for the first time since 1999 for a reason other than a funeral, to see the little town that formed a big part of my life as a kid. I had been a little worried that I wouldn't be able to find my way to my Auntie¿s place, who had kindly let us stay there for the night. It was nice catching up with her as I haven't really had the chance for a long time. We also had a great place to sleep for the night.

In the morning we headed off on our journey. First task was to have a little drive around Thames for some reminiscing. It was great to see my Grandmother's old house (although it looked quite different) again, to see the Arbury's clothing shop, to drive down Pollen Street (the main street) and so on. We stocked up at the supermarket, and then headed off up the coast. The road north of Thames is pretty awesome, and literally hugs the coast for ages, one little settlement after the next, stuck between the sea and the mountains it is really really nice. At Tapu, about half an hour north of Thames, we headed inland to check out the impressive Square Kauri, one of the biggest remaining Kauri trees on the Coromandel Peninsula. To get there we had to go along a gravel road for some of the way, which was interesting as I haven't driven on a gravel road for quite a few months (perhaps not since last year's holiday up north). The Kauri was amazing, we took some nice pictures and then headed back on the road.

(to be continued...)

I felt comfortable in my assertion that perhaps the great performance of the Black Caps on Saturday night was a once off. After all, haven't we lost most of the experience in our team over the last year or so? Isn't our coach a weird nut-job that seems intent on alienating every damn decent player we've got? Isn't our best bowler, and the number one ranked ODI bowler in the world, currently playing for the Canterbury team because of some stupid tension in India between two different cricket leagues that for some reason bars him from playing a game for New Zealand in New Zealand? Well I certainly still stand by these observations, but somehow the New Zealand team has suddenly, miraculously, turned brilliant. Or the England team, which looked pretty professional in their two Twenty20 games, has totally gone to crap.

It's one or the other. In any case, watching New Zealand totally hammer the crap out of England on Tuesday night was very satisfying. Some of the batting was truly amazing, an absolute joy to watch. I really do hope that we can keep it going, and that all the issues that I outlined above at least take a while longer before they truly start to hurt us. As a semi-boycott of Eden Park (due to their crapness last week) and also because it'd be a bloody mission anyway due to the stupidity of playing on a Friday, I'm not going to be going to the next ODI. If we can win that, we¿ll have the series wrapped up already. That'd be awesome!

To change topics completely, today happens to be Valentine's Day. Cue sickly, generic, commercialised ways of showing the person who means most to you how much you love them. Ugh, not for me! Fortunately I did manage to achieve that in a non-sickly, generic and commercialised manner, which I'm pretty proud of. This time last year Leila were at Cape Reinga' so I've managed it twice in 2 years.

Ooohh.. Cape Reinga, holiday, that reminds me about my this year¿s holiday, which Leila and I are heading off on, next week! I'll detail that further tomorrow, if I remember!

Mondays should be the best day for blogging. Often I don't find the time to update during the weekend, so therefore a lot is left for Monday, while the mere fact that a weekend has passed also means that there's likely to be much more to write about the next Monday. I've tried to get away from 'so this is what I got up to on the weekend', but in the end it's just such an easy topic that it is hard to avoid the temptation.

This was a strange weekend actually. In some ways it felt like it disappeared away really quickly, as it wasn't like I got up to an awfully large amount of stuff, but in other ways it seemed insanely long, almost like a long weekend because by the end of it, the beginning did feel like ages ago. A lot of stuff seemed to get sorted out, a bit personal and probably boring for others to read about, but which has seemed to finally make sense out of many issues that had popped up again and again. It is quite funny when the answer to so many questions has actually been sitting right in front of your face for so long, but for various weird reasons you've been strangely fighting it for ages, not because that battle seemed to make things better, but oddly because you felt like it was something that you should be doing, regardless of whether or not it was actually working and whether or not it was the right solution for you.

OK well I shall stop talking in gibberish now, as 98% of people reading this will have absolutely no idea what I'm on about, and most others will probably have the wrong idea of what I'm talking about. I guess I just wanted to make a record of it for myself, so I can look back in the future and go "ah.... so that's when that happened!" 

Looking back first, at the title of this post suggests, it was a bloody weird weekend for sports - and by sports I mean cricket of course. After playing miserably in their two Twenty20 matches, the New Zealand team managed to absolutely hammer England in the first one-day international, showing the English team to actually appear worse than how we played during those previous matches - a task that I would have thought to be rather damn difficult. And then in the Australia v India game last night, India managed to achieve something fairly similar to NZ, and really hammer Australia - always a particularly satisfying result! Two rather unexpected results have both spiced up what had previously threatened to be two pretty damn boring series¿. I guess cricket always throws up some interesting results once in a while!

I have more to write about, particularly regarding what's coming up in the next couple of weeks. But I need some material for updates during the rest of the week so I think I'll leave it at that for now!

I guess that most people will probably read my blog updates on facebook first, but I definitely want to keep this one updated.

Well as readers of my normal blog ( http://www.jarbury.net ) will know, this isn't really the start of a blog, but is hopefully a way for me to provide myself with the inspriation to update more frequently. Throughout the past 6 months of http://www.jarbury.net (I think it's more properly called Realistic Surreality¿ but anyway) my frequency of posts (could one term that 'postage'?) has dropped away far too significantly. I think perhaps the idea that not many people actually read it has contributed to that fact, so this is my response!

Ha ha! With facebook it seems that everyone on my friends list gets notified as soon as I make an update. Whilst you¿re not forced to read my dribble, perhaps it might help me knowing that you're more likely to. I shall try to merge this with my regular blog in as many ways as possible (it seems like that is the easiest way to show photos etc.), as it would be rather tragic to just give up on something that I've been writing for 7 years now. In fact, what I really hope is that somehow the two can be interlinked as much as possible - although more realistically I think that every once in a while I'll copy across my blog updates from here to my regular place.

I had been kinda wishing that facebook had a blog application. It really seemed like the kind of place that needed that, so you could actually get an idea about what you¿re friends are up to rather than just get notified that their vampire/zombie/werewolf attacked some other person's!

Oh yes as the title indicates I have yet again got behind in my blog updating. Nothing too unusual there, although with a little help from facebook, hopefully in the future I may not find myself in this kind of situation again - or at least quite as frequently. With so many different things to "keep updated" and moan to on the internet, I think that some sort of connection between them may help things a little. But anyway, that's to be revealed shortly!

So, what have I been up to in the last week or so?

- Enjoyed having Ella, Pete and Joseph back in the country. Had them around for dinner on one night which was great. It really feels like our whole friends group is getting back towards being complete.

- Went to Nelson for one day, at the end of last week, for a work meet-up. Was pretty fun, although I did miss people in Auckland. The plane flights were cool though, and I took some nice photos that I'll hopefully remember to post on here at some stage.

- Went to Twenty20 cricket match at Eden Park. Got annoyed at the stupidity of the place that caused us to wait 45 minutes to get into the ground. Idiots couldn't organise a piss-up at a brewery, don't know how they'll run a World Cup!

Well Ella, Pete and Joseph did finally make it back to NZ last Monday. Thanks to the plethora of public holidays at the moment, I managed to have that day off work and could therefore head out to the airport to see them come in. Frustratingly, this turned into a process that took way longer than we originally anticipated, as their flights got totally muddled. Originally they were meant to fly from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, and then from KL to Auckland (not sure exactly why, I guess it must have been the cheapest and/or most convenient way to do it. However, their plane that was meant to do the first flight had mechanical issues, they got themselves onto a plane to Brisbane instead, and then had to wait until they could find another plane from Brisbane to Auckland. So after picking Amalia up, and being just about ready to get on the motorway out to the airport (we were literally 50 m away from turning onto it), we found out that they wouldn't be arriving for another 5 hours. Frustrating yes, although I guess after waiting for 14 months I guess a few more hours wouldn't be the end of the world.

Eventually the time did roll around, and we headed off to the airport properly this time. I was relived to find out that their plane had landed on time (this time), so after having a look around the observation deck we headed off to the arrivals area to wait for them to come through. I guess they didn't really take too long to get through customs and come out for us to see, but it certainly did feel like forever. Wondering each time a person came through whether this would be them is always really emotionally draining, as you feel almost duty bound to be the first one to "spot them" and announce it to everyone else. As my mum said, it's always when you're not paying attention that they finally come through and it seemed that way to me when they did finally come out. We took a few photos, although the best ones are still on my mum's digital camera (and will hopefully eventually get uploaded to here).

We all then headed back to my parents' place for dinner, which was really nice. It just felt so awesome to have them all back, and to give my little nephew Joseph the big cuddles that I'd been wanting to give him for ages and ages. Amalia also loved playing around with her cousin, and got some lovely smiles out of him!

It's really awesome just having everyone back in NZ. And they've found a place to live that's not too far away from where we live so it's all good!

Now's my chance to write a good post about cricket. All you people who don't find yourself interested in the game (gah... how is that possible?) may not wish to read further. That was your warning!

Yes I do realise that one of the main reasons I probably enjoy summer as much as I do (apart from the nice ability to not feel cold for at least a couple of months a year), is that it's the cricket season. In years past (quite a long time ago actually) that meant Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, or commonly both morning and afternoon cricket on Saturdays. Often I'd play solidly from about 9.15am until 6.00 pm, with just an hour and a bit in the middle to get from one game to the other (not good when you were playing your morning game in Henderson and your afternoon one in Howick). It was fun though, and often these days I do find myself really missing playing cricket. Perhaps one day it'll fit better into my lifestyle.

But anyway, these days I managed to placate myself over the summer months by watching, listening or simply following (thanks to the marvels of Cricinfo) international cricket as much as I possibly can. A couple of weeks back I was truly spoilt on one afternoon at Leila's parents with New Zealand playing Bangladesh on one channel and Australia playing India on another. In typical fashion, whilst I felt like I 'ought to' watch the New Zealand game, the Australia/India match was proving to be the far more interesting one. That particular match ended in heartbreak for India (and myself really, as an ardent supporter of anyone playing against Australia in cricket), with Australia managing to win right at the end, against all predictions. The controversies following that match I'll ignore, as in my opinion they ended up being a huge media beatup.

Fortunately, a couple of weeks later India managed to play almost the perfect game and beat Australia at Perth, probably the one ground in the world where India seemed least likely to win a match. I found myself tremendously excited by this, avidly following the match as it swung this way and that, a true classic in my opinion. But then I wondered whether it was strange for me to get more into Australia losing, than I had been about New Zealand winning its last couple of test matches (which had actually been really boring one-sided affairs with quite little to get excited about). Do I dislike the Australian cricket team more than I like the New Zealand team? An interesting question really, as it reminded me of another time, two and a half years ago when Australia were playing England at the same time as New Zealand were playing Zimbabwe. The NZ v Zim game was another one-sided bore-fest, added to the fact that morally we probably shouldn't have even been there in the first place, kind of sucked its interest out of me. Meanwhile, England were playing Australia in probably the best cricket series ever. One which they actually ended up winning (believe it or not). Both New Zealand and England were bowling in their respective matches, and I was most certainly more excited by the prospect of England getting a wicket in their closely fought match, than I was in New Zealand polishing off a team of average club-cricketers.

But on reflection, I think that this is probably a good thing, and a sign that in the end I am a true cricketing fan. Whilst it's hard to admire an amazing innings or bowling performance against New Zealand (particularly by an Australian), in the end what I really want to see is a truly competitive global game. Over the past 10-15 years, and particularly since about 1999, Australia seem to have dominated the game to an almost boring extent. Each year a team tours, gets hammered, goes home etc. This is even more depressing for New Zealand, who haven't actually beaten Australia in a test match since 1993 (oh I almost want to cry just typing that). I guess I would have felt similarly in the 1980s when the West Indies were bashing everyone in sight (if I'd been into cricket back then as much as I am now), and been excited by them being challenged for the crown of "best team in the world". After Australia's defeat in 2005 it was reasonable to think that perhaps their glory days were over: England winning a series against them for the first time since 1987 did seem pretty impressive, especially considering the English truly dominated them throughout that series and, in the end, the result flattered Australia as they clung on for dear life in each of the last 4 test matches. Yet here we are, two and a half years later, and if anything Australia have been even more dominant during this period than they ever were before 2005. However, with a few retirements either having happened (Warne, Martyn, Langer, McGrath) or not too far away (Hayden, Gilchrist), perhaps the current series is more like the "end of an era" I had hoped 2005 might be. I don't think it's that I want Australia to be beaten all the time, and have a particularly bad team (although that's probably necessary if NZ is to ever beat them again in a test), I just think cricket would be far more interesting with a number of teams competing for "best in the world". And hopefully that might be happening in to not-too-distant future.

OK, end of cricket rant.

Yes my lameness at updating has continued. Yes my moaning about my lack of updating has also continued. I guess some things never change.

Unfortunately, life has had to change in the last couple of weeks with me heading back to work. It was really awesome to enjoy the two and a half weeks of holidays that I had, particularly so because the weather managed to make itself brilliant for about 95% of that time. The other 5% involved me getting saturated while trying to deliver leaflets around Greenlane a couple of days before I headed back to work, but that was OK really as it had been so warm that getting wet was almost a welcome relief from the heat. And to be honest, work has been fairly cruisy since I've been back, at least compared with the mad scramble that it was before the end of the year. Settling back into some sort of routine hasn't been to bad either, and weirdly has meant that I've felt like doing more housework than I did when on holiday - truly bizarre!

I guess I've been up to a few things over the past couple of un-updated weeks. Leila and I went out to Piha one Sunday a couple of weeks back, and had a really nice day out there doing our best to avoid getting sunburnt (and actually managing it, at least compared with how we were after our day at the tennis!) It was good to have a swim and body-board in the Piha waves, the first time I've been properly swimming (as opposed to desperately trying to avoid getting soaked in the shallows with Amalia) since last summer. Although the surf at Piha wasn't quite its normal wild self, it was still pretty cool. I also took some really nice photos with my camera, which hopefully I'll eventually get around to uploading on to here. As I upload photos to Kiwiscrapers, Facebook and to here at times, it can end up feeling like a bit of a mission to show off my pictures. But as I've finally figured out how to use some of the more random settings of my camera to create some truly magnificent effects, I'll do my best to get some of them online here.

With the exception of a few days earlier this week, when it was overcast and unbearably humid and sticky, I feel that we've been truly blessed by an awesome summer weather-wise, at least so far. My whole outlook on life seems to be more positive when it's nice and sunny, reasonably warm (though it did get a little hot last Saturday, when the air-con in my car measured the outside temperature at 31 degrees) and you can hear the sounds of summer (good old cicadas!) I'm glad that we're only reaching the end of January, rather than the end of February, at it would be quite depressing to think of summer as coming to a close. Generally February seems to have the best weather of the whole year, and hopefully that rings true so Leila and I can get the most out of the one week's holiday to the Coromandel Peninsula that we're going to get around to at some stage in the next month.

Everything has seemed to be 'up in the air' recently, largely because it's now only a few days away from Ella, Peter and little Joseph coming home! After being reasonably OK at dealing with my little sister being on the other side of the world for most of last year, the last couple of months have seemed to be particularly difficult and January 28th has loomed large as a day to hugely look forward to. I think it's been the lack of contact over the last 2 months, as they've been travelling around Europe and now in Singapore, as well as me finally having a "they're back" date to look forward to. Well after counting down all the days for ages, it's now really not too far away at all. I'm very much looking forward to heading out to the airport on Monday to welcome them back!

Well with a new digital camera it has been pretty cool for me being able to track the holidays more effectively.

One day we went out to Long Bay with Amalia and Leila's parents. It was a really nice day at the beach, warm as anything but cool as Amalia got out into the surf for a bit. Took some groovy photos.

Then on Jan 7th Leila, Bernice and I went to the tennis. It was actually pretty damn cool going there, seeing some of the best players in the world (although unfortunately we missed out on the day that David Ferrer was playing). Furthermore, there were three New Zealanders playing that day, although sadly only one of them won their match. I got to see Rubin Statham play, the number two ranked New Zealand player. The interesting things about Rubin is that my Dad knows her mum through some bizarre method, and we used to go over to their place when I was little. And then a few years later, when I was in 7th form, I tutored him for a while in maths. Even back then my Dad was always reporting the advances that he'd made in under 14 Australasian tournaments, and it's really awesome to see him come through. While he's only 560 in the world now, he's still only 18 and by the way he seemed to be playing against the number 44 guy in the world, he could well end up being a top 100 player at the very least.

^^ Rubin.

Well I have been pretty slack with my updates. Time to do a little bit of back-dating I think.

Let's start with New Year's. After going out 'on the town' for the last couple of years (which had become increasingly lame with having to battle millions of other people for a drink) Amber, Leila and I headed off to a party to celebrate the New Year. Although the getting there and home proved to be a slight logistical mission, in the end we had a really good time, including a nice count-down to midnight and we were also able to see a good fireworks display from the Sky Tower.

I may get around to posting photos, but seriously the ones of me semi-drunk aren't that great. I slept the night (eventually) in the loft of a sleep-out, which was weird as I can't even remember the last time I didn't sleep in my bed, and incredibly hot, but in the end quite satisfactory.