Well we are in Naples. Today went surprisingly simply actually,  the moment we arrived at the Placa de Catalunya to catch the airbus to Barcelone airport, a bus turned up. There was a minor traffic jam on the Barcelona motorway heading out towards the airport, largely because Spaniards seem really pathetic at merging. But anyway, we made it to the airport in pretty good time, we checked in amazingly easily because I had been smart enough to somehow check in online, and then basically as soon as we turned up at the gate they started boarding. The flight from Barcelona to Naples was pretty non-eventful, although we got a good view of Barcelona as we left the city, and then a pretty nice view over Naples and the surrounding area as we came in to land. At the airport the necessary bus was right outside the exit from the airport, and although finding the hostel was a little tricky, in the end it was exactly where I had expected it to be, so there were no real dramas there.

I say no dramas, but really drama is what Naples is all about. This city is literally unlike anywhere I have ever been before. To cut things short it's totally nuts. There are traffic lights, but everyone on scooters just ignores them; driving in the place seems a case of moving forward slowly, honking on your horn so everyone else moves out of the way, and then making your way through the intersection, regardless of what the traffic light says, totally regardless of any potential road rules, and sometimes even irrespective of what side of the road they are on. Once again, this is particularly the case for all the nutty drivers of scooters. Crossing the road is truly a mission, as there's a steady onslaught of cars edging their way across where you're trying to cross (no car ever seems to be going quickly thankfully) , while the scooters zig-zag their way between everything. It's not just young guys on the scooters either, often very respectable looking business-women zip along in them, as oblivious to any road rules as the teenage hoon might be. Down some of the narrow alleys, about the same width as a car (forcing you to duck into a doorway when a wide car drives along one) we actually found two or even three people to a scooter. Mothers would be carrying their young kids in front of them, zipping through the mayhem, and there was even one scooter with Dad in the front driving, Mum in the back and the kid in the middle. To make things even more insane Mum and Dad were having an impassioned conversation (no conversation in Naples is ever NOT impassioned), with Dad barely paying attention to zipping between traffic. Of course nobody was wearing a helmet..... it would be a literal interpretation of every traffic safety officer's worst nightmare.

So yeah, Naples is pretty nuts. But nuts in a good way. Although our first impressions were a little stressed, lugging heavy suitcases through streets to a destination that I was only partly sure of, and having to cross super-busy roads in the aforementioned manner; once we managed to get rid of most of our stuff into our room, and headed out to explore some of the better parts of the city, the magic really came alive. If Paris made London seems quiet, and Barcelona made Paris seem quite tame, then Naples makes all these places seem like kindergarten. I don't think I have ever been in a more different place, but it is a great experience that's for sure!

 Going to try to put some photos up onto facebook.

OK well it seems like I´m getting a bit behind in my updates, which isn´t exactly ideal. However, fortunately the Spanish keyboard is the same as the NZ one, so it´s not going to be totally nauseating trying to type on it. I have a feel Italy is going to be different again, so it´s probably a good idea to catch up on everything now, while I can.

Anyway, I think I left off on Sunday. That day Leila and I headed to the Palace of Versailles - which I knew about as the place where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, and also as Louis XIV´s amazing palace of grandeur. We caught an RER train out there, which was quite interesting as it gave us a chance to see some of the Parisian suburbs. I was quite amazed to see high-rise apartment buildings way out in the suburbs, but I guess they need to fit their 8 million + people in somewhere. When we got to Versailles, along with a whole train load of other tourists (mainly Americans complaining about everything possible to complain about) it was a short walk to the palace. We had made a bit of a mistake by not buying our tickets beforehand, and joined a really long and really really slow moving queue as a result. An hour and a half later we actually bought our tickets, and then headed off into the gardens, as the thought of immediately facing another queue to walk through the palace was a little unbearable at that moment. The gardens were simply spectacular though, stretching on for miles and miles. There was perfect symmetry everywhere, which my Dad would have hated but I found fascinating. I remember in a stage one geography paper we looked at the gardens of Versailles as an extreme example of the Western European attitude to nature, as something to be tamed and dominated. After wandering down the gardens to the huge lake that formed the perfect shape of a cross, we checked out the small Marie Antoinette palaces at the bottom of the gardens (which included some amazing furniture and artwork on the walls) before heading back to the main palace. We then wandered around the main palace, which really did make the long wait and pretty steep 25 euros entrance fee worth it. While much of the art on the walls was similar to that which I had seen at the Louvre or at the National Gallery in London, it was much better to see it in the place where it was meant to be, rather than out of place in an art gallery. The huge floor to ceiling paintings made much more sense in the enormous hallways they were in, while the hall of mirrors was simply astounding. After a pretty long day we headed back to our hotel to crash.

On Monday we had quite an interestingly varied day for our last full day in Paris. In the morning we headed up to Montmartre, a cute little hill not far to the north of central Paris. The steepness of the hill and the narrowness of the streets made it difficult for any car traffic to head along most of the small streets around Montmartre, so it felt like a quaint little French town, even though we were actually in the middle of Paris. The Sacre Ceur basilica on the top of the hill was truly amazing, with the awesome views over Paris a big bonus. After that we headed across town for something completely different, the modern CBD of Paris - La Defense. In the 1960s Paris realised that it had to provide a modern business area in order for it to stay competitive with other large cities around the world. But instead of destroying its old downtown area, or mixing all different types of buildings together like London has, Paris decided to build a whole new CBD out to the west: La Defense. Awesomely, all the roads were put underneath into tunnels, and the main area is a huge pedestrian square, with great views across to the Arc de Triomphe in the east. The Grand Arche, a modern equivalent of the Arc de Triomphe, dominates the area and is a true architectural amazement. Although we got lost in the dark underbelly of the area for a little while, overall it was a really interesting experience and I took lots of photos of really amazing modern skyscrapers, not really what one would expect in Paris. After that we went to the Pompidou museum, and I got a really good introduction to the history of modern art, which truly helped me appreciate it, and to be able to say more than ¨wow that looks weird!¨

On Tuesday we flew from Paris to Barcelona. I was stressed out as anything for most of the day - as I usually am when there are flights that need to be caught, buses that need to get you to the right place by certain times, and inevitable mess-ups with delayed flights and broken luggage carousels. I guess the less I say the better about the time until we arrived in Barcelona. However, fortunately one wander around the amazing Gothic Quarter of central Barcelona made me forget all these previous inconveniences. We did find our ¨Pension¨ accommodation easily enough, and then headed out to explore. The Gothic Quarter, the oldest part of Barcelona, just across Las Ramblas from where we are staying, turned out to be an amazing array of super-narrow pedestrian walkways. Even on a Tuesday evening the place was totally buzzing, with stylish shops intermingled with millions of bakeries and souvenir shops providing plenty of opportunities for people to enjoy themselves. We wandered around for quite a while, before finally retiring.

Then yesterday we headed off to the La Sagrada Familia, basically the reason I chose to come to Barcelona in the first place. Master architect Gaudi chose to build a church that he knew would be so complex and massive it would take perhaps 200 years to complete. Currently the building is supposedly just over 50% complete, but things have progressed quicker in recent years thanks to modern technologies so there´s hope that it´ll be done in my lifetime. We caught a lift up one of the huge towers, before slowly making our way down it, including the last bit along a rather scary snail-like spiral staircase. The building was truly fantastic, even though it´s only half built. Once it´s complete I imagine it´ll be one of the most fantastic buildings in the entire world. After that we headed off to another of Gaudi´s buildings, La Pedrera (I think). This was built as an apartment building back in the early 20th century, although these days its architecture is so amazing that it´s a full time museum. Both Gaudi´s buildings really made me want to be an architect, and to create something so super special, yet at the same time something that simply works so damn well as what it´s doing. In the evening we wandered around the waterfront of Barcelona, which itself was quite interesting, although not as buzzing or vibrant as the older centre.

Then today we decided to have a little bit more of a laid back day. In the morning we headed to the Pablo Picasso museum. This gave me a chance to put some of my newly acquired knowledge of modern art, from the Pompidou, into action. Most of the museum was dedicated to Picasso´s earlier stuff, which was fairly normal for the times, although you could see it slowly developing into something truly different, and how he would eventually become one of the founders of modern art. There were a few later paintings too, which provided an interesting contrast with his earlier stuff. After that we caught a metro across town (I´m really impressed with the Barcelona metro, it´s probably better than Paris´ or London´s and a heck of a lot cheaper) to the Nou Camp, home of the FC Barcelona soccer team. We did a tour of the stadium which was fantastic as I had always admired the stadium on TV with its huge capacity of around 99,000 people. I only wish that we were around at the right time of year to go to a match.

So tomorrow we fly out of Spain and into Italy, landing in Naples. Italy´s our last new country before heading back to England and New Zealand. I think tomorrow also marks the halfway point of the trip. Even though I´m really enjoying the holiday, in a way it´s good to know that we´re halfway through it and returning to New Zealand isn´t too impossible far away in the future. I am really missing Amaliam, although fortunately it has been reasonably easy to stay in touch. But, especially with the different language in recent days, I´m missing a place where I really understand what´s going on and don´t feel like such a dumbass all the time.

OK well I am going to attempt to type out a half decent blog update, despite the difficulties of the French keyboard. There are actually some useful aspects of their keyboard, such as a greater ease in typing exclamation marks - but the Q is swapped with the A, while the W is swapped with the Z.... M is somewhere random too. I think that most other letters are reasonably similar to the NZ keyboard though.

Anyway, time for a half decent update. On Thursday we caught the Eurostar from London to Paris. The St Pancras station in London is flash as anything, and though it was rather strange showing passports for a train trip, and slightly annoying that our seats were facing backwards, once we got going it was pretty interesting. From London to the Channel Tunnel we kept on wondering whether the shorter tunnel we were going through was actually going to be "the tunnel", until it really did make sense when we'd been in darkness for quite a few minutes. Considering it's one of the longest under sea tunnels in the world, it felt like we actually travelled through the chunnell quite quickly. It was exciting coming out the other side and realising that we were in France. From there the train really shot across northern France to Paris, though it was a very interesting trip and quite spectacular hurtling along in a train at around 320 kph.

We arrived at Garé du Nord fairly quickly, for our first taste of Paris. From there we caught a very short metro train, before then heading off to find our hotel, which fortunately was not difficult at all. The receptionist at the hotel was awesome, explaining everything sweet as and we got checked in with no problems. I really would recommend Hotel Liberty to anyone travelling to Paris as it has felt like we have been in a really flash hotel, breakfast included and everything, yet it is actually fairly cheap! After putting our bags away and resting up a bit we headed out to see a bit of Paris. It was a fairly dramatic afternoon to be checking out Paris as there was a big strike (haven't yet figured out what it was over, but the French love to strike) and traffic was completely gridlocked. The only people moving were the crazy guys on scooters, that seemed to think absolutely no road rules applied to them. But I guess the chaos was fairly exciting. We wandered down towards the Seine far enough to get to the Louvre, so we wandered around the building and the nearby gardens.

The next day we headed off to the Eiffel Tower, after totally messing up our train tickets and buying a week's pass that wouldn't start until Monday, by accident. The queues for the Eiffel Tower were hellishly long, although we managed to end up in the shortest one because the one we were in was actually for the stairs and not the lift. Luckily we had a good amount of energy and checked out probably the best view over Paris. It was not even too busy up the tower, I guess because everyone was at the bottom waiting for a lift. After Le Tour Eiffel we wandered over to the Invalides Hotel, a pretty damn impressive palace with the most amazing Dome roof. By this time we were getting hellishly tired, as it was around 26 degrees, so we headed back to the hotel. Later that evening we headed out to the Champs Elysses, the main street of Paris. Starting at the Arc de Triomphe, we worked our way down one side and up the other of the Champs. At day turned into evening, it wazs a really nice place to spend our time. Annoyingly I forgot the camera for that sojourn so it will only really live on in my nice memories.

On Saturday we got up nice and early to miss the crowds trying to get into the Louvre. We managed this pefectly and ended up being one of the first people into the museum. This meant we got to see the Mona Lisa before it became too terribly crowded, while the sheer size of the rest of the museum meant that it never really felt too crowded. After many hours studing 1500-1800 European paintings I truly felt like a bit of an expert. Though if I see another "Virgin Mary with child" painting I will go nuts! After that we went to check out Notre Damme, a trult spectacular cathedral! They were in the middle of some sort of priest ordaining, which was quite interesting, although a little annoying as I think that it meant we couldn't see as much of the place as we would have otherwise been able to.

There are still 2 more days to write about, yesterday at Versailles and today at Montmartre, La Defence and the Pompidou Museum - but this keyboard is making me nauseous and my hour is almost up. Tomorrow we fly to Barcelona!

Well another day in London and another chance for this city to show me why it's so damn bloody awesome. It really just feels so alive, so vibrant, so happening - many of the things I wish Auckland could be more of so much of the time. Just wandering around the city has become about my favourite thing to do (except for the killer sore feet I'm having at the moment), taking photos of various awesome buildings and just commenting on how amazing the place seems. I guess because the inner-city area is so vast, it feels like we've seen a lot of the place but yet there's still so much more waiting for us. The big stress at the moment seems to be whether we're going to fit everything in. Fortunately we do have a couple more days towards the end of the trip when we'll be back in London - a good chance to finish off everything that we didn't get done this time.

I finally have some photos to share, so I think for the rest of this blog post I shall just comment on some of the photos of stuff that we've done since I last updated. I shall eventually get around to adding photos to yesterday's post, but for now it shall just be this one.

After my blog update yesterday we caught a train to Westminster station. We headed out of the station and it was like "bang", here's Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings". These buildings seriously have to be some of the most amazing I have ever seen. The detailing of the architecture is unbelievable and I was just spellbound. Westminster Abbey was just across the road, and it felt like truly one of the most amazing places one could ever be.

After wandering around Westminster and Trafalgar Square (a huge roundabout and square in front of the National Art Gallery) we headed off to Buckingham Palace. Took a few more photos there (see below), before heading back to our hotel after a pretty damn long day.

So this morning we started off by heading back to Westminster, to go inside Westminster Abbey (as it had been closed by the time we got there yesterday). It was really interesting going in there, seeing a truly incredible building and also the hundreds upon hundreds of tombs for various important people over the years. I got a little sick of "the Duke of such and such was buried here in 1648", but it was interesting to see the memorials for people like Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and many others.

After Westminster Abbey we headed up to the National Gallery - the biggest and best classical Art Gallery in Britain. It was probably a little more exciting for Leila than me, as she knows her art better than I do, but it was still really interesting to see paintings by some pretty famous guys. I think at one point I noted that we'd seen something by all 4 "Ninja Turtle" artists. I was particularly into many of the landscape paintings, especially by the guys in the 1700s who were creating amazing photo-realistic looking stuff. No photos allowed inside the gallery I'm afraid though, but it is a pretty impressive building.

After the gallery we wandered towards Picadilly Circus, perhaps THE centre of London more than any other spot. It was a pretty madly busy area, but at the same time having this sense of life and vibrancy that really appeals to me. Leila and I sat within the giant roundabout for a while, resting with the madness around us, a truly interesting experience. From there we wandered up Regent Street, a pretty damn  impressive shopping street.

On Regent Street we stopped off at Hanley's - surely one of the biggest and most amazing toy stores in the world! Seven floors of toys. I just have to show a few photos to truly make it believable. I thought I did well getting out of there having only bought Amalia a Charlie & Lola floor puzzle and another sticker book. The Thomas the Tank Engine train stuff..... OMG.

Well hello from London!

The flight to Singapore was really annoying, as it was dark outside the entire time but for some reason I just couldn't sleep at all. I think that for some reason the seats seemed even narrower and less comfortable than ever. Perhaps I got about half an hour's sleep, but that would have surely been it. Singapore airport was really huge and surreal, quite amazing yet very sterile (kind of like how all Singapore is I imagine). We had a couple of hours to relax before getting on our next plane. The Singapore to London flight was better, mainly because there was actually something to see out the window, and also because we got to sit by the door, which meant no seats in front of us and finally the chance to stretch our legs for a bit. Frustratingly we were also over the wing, which made it a bit more difficult to look out any windows, but luckily it was easy enough to get up and wander to the back of the plane and see what we were flying over. India and Afghanistan were probably the most interesting countries to fly over: India because of simply the amazing number of people you could see living down there, the towns were so numerous it seemed like they were almost joined together. In between them were small farm plot of amazing regularity, but never long until that next town came along. Afghanistan was just stunning scenically from the air, with its mountains and valleys. We didn't really get to see the main part of the Himalayas, but definitely by the time we were going over Afghanistan there were some pretty huge mountains that we went over. I took some great photos from the plane and will share them when I eventually get around to hooking up my camera to a computer and downloading some of the photos.

So eventually we landed in London (after about 25 hours of flying.... aaarrrggghhh). Heathrow was expectedly rubbish, with the arrivals area particularly crowded and the immigration lounge having the longest queue I've ever seen. But we made it through, caught the Heathrow Express and found our hotel way more easily than I expected. By that point we were incredibly dead, and nodded off for a few hours. After waking up we found some dinner, had a bit of a wander around, before getting a full night's sleep. I can't tell you how awesome it felt to be in a bed and being able to sleep properly for the first time in what felt like three days.

Then yesterday (Sunday our time) we headed out to explore London for the first time. We bought an Oyster Card for our transportation (a smart card that you just wave in front of the Tube gates and gives you huge discounts on fares) and caught the Circle Line from Paddington over to a stop pretty near St Paul's. We coudln't really look around St Paul's much because they had a service going on, so we crossed over the Millennium Bridge to the south bank of the Thames. Once there we did a tour of the Globe theatre, a total reconstruction of the original Globe, which was really cool. Leila even got to dress up as Ophelia from Hamlet, because there was a dressing presentation and she had the right body type to fit the clothing. Took lots of photos of that!

After the Globe we wandered further along the south bank, before crossing over the Tower Bridge and then checking out the Tower of London. I had no real idea that the Tower would be so cool, and that it had been the medieval royal palace! I basically expected to see some tower that had been a famous prison and also the crown jewells. So that was a nice pleasant surprise. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon at the Tower, as it's a pretty massive place. Took many great photos that I look forward to sharing. After that we were pretty damn tired so headed back to our hotel for a pretty early night.

Today we went to the British Museum, which is truly one hell of an amazing museum. I can't imagine any other museum in the world having a better collection of 2000-4000 year old artefacts from Egypt, Greece, Rome and many many other civilisations of the past. The Chinese collections were actually some of the most stunning too, with huge Buddha statues and incredibly intricate jewellery and other amazing stuff. Leila went crazy over all the Greek vases, which I think she had spent most of 7th form classics studying, and we even got to see the Rosetta Stone, perhaps one of the most important historical artefacts ever.

So after all that it's pretty good to have a bit of relaxation time in the internet cafe. We're not quite sure what we're goign to do tomorrow, perhaps check out the National Gallery or the Natural History Museum. There seems to be an immense number of things to try and fit into the time we have, but I think we should make a pretty damn good effort at getting through it all. We head to France on the 22nd, but I should be able to update again before that.

After over a year of planning, at least 6 months since we bought the ticket, months of finding and booking accommodation and flights, and the last couple of weeks of organising everything to take, the time has almost finally arrived for Leila's and my Europe trip. It still doesn't really seem real, like I can't quite believe that in just a couple of days we'll be on the other side of the world - I imagine recovering from one heck of a long flight. The flight does seem slightly daunting, but on the other hand for some reason it's the only thing that I can quite comprehend at the moment. I know that tomorrow evening I'll head out to the airport and get on a plane. Beyond that it's quite difficult to get my head around the masses of places I will see around the world before I come back to my little home here in New Zealand.

Over the next four weeks I shall strongly attempt to keep an up to date tracker of what's going on throughout our holiday. I've got a 2 GB memory card waiting to get filled up with photos to share with the rest of the world at least at some point (have to wait and see if I'm able to upload them while overseas). On my trip to Canada & the USA back in 2005 I kept up a pretty damn good record of the trip, and today it forms a really awesome archive of those three weeks. But just in case things don't quite go to plan, here's a brief run-down of what we will get up to.

As I said above, tomorrrow evening we shall head out to the airport. Our flight leaves around midnight (either five minutes before, or five minutes after, I don't think it really matters much). We will fly on Singapore Airlines from Auckland to Singapore. We arrive in Singapore at 6.45am on Saturday morning, although because of the time differences it would have actually been a 10 hour flight. We have just a couple of hours stopover in Singapore before departing on a non-stop 13 hour flight (oh yay!) from Singapore to Heathrow in London. We arrive in London at 3.30pm on Saturday afternoon (local time of course). From there I think we'll catch the Heathrow Connect train to Paddington Station, which is pretty damn close to where we will first be staying in London - at the Alexandra Hotel (a pretty sweet deal we got free with the plane tickets). We have three nights at that hotel, before we will shift to stay with a friend of Leila's mum, who has kindly agreed to us staying with her.

On May 22nd we then embark on the next stage of our trip, catching the Eurostar from London to Paris. I have to say I'm pretty excited about this - going through the Chunnel and on a high-speed train that reaches about 320 kph. Also arriving in Paris should be awesome. We have 5 nights in Paris, staying in what looks to be a pretty cool hostel not too far from Gare du Nord train station. This should give us plenty of time to check out the various sights of Paris, although I think one of the things I'm most looking forward to (other than going up the Eiffel Tower) is just wandering around on the streets admiring the awesome architecture of the place. Then on May 27th we are going to catch a plane from Orly Airport in Paris to Barcelona. I originally wanted to check out Barcelona for one main reason: to see the La Sagrada Familia. But by the sounds of it, Barcelona's a pretty cool city and we should enjoy our time there immensely.

After three nights in Barcelona we then catch a plane across the Mediterranean to Naples. The main purpose of going to Naples is to visit Pompei, which is probably what we'll spend the day between our two nights there doing. Then we jump on a train up to Rome, for four nights there. This should be particularly awesome, seeing all the historic sights that Rome has to offer. After Rome it's another train up to Florence, on June 5th. We just have a couple of nights in Florence, which should be long enough to check out its sights and sounds. From there it's up to Venice, which I have been looking forward to forever - as it's like the most amazingly cool city in the world. It should be a good climax for the trip, as after Venice we head back to London for a couple more days before heading back to NZ.

So we're back in Auckland at 10.30pm on June 14th. I imagine that after another 24 hour flight I will be just ready to go to bed immediately! So it's pretty exciting to think that this is about to happen, that it's not just some "maybe" plan or some "a few months away" holiday, but it's actually happening. TOMORROW!

Wow another update. Two in two days, that's something which hasn't happened in a long time. I guess that I'm doing reasonably well at this whole project to "get back in the habit" of updating before heading off overseas on Friday. Wow, Friday, that's like the end of this week! It is truly quite amazing how it's snuck up on us, as although I have been counting down the weeks for a little while now, it has always felt like "quite a while away" until about Friday morning last week when I truly went "holy crap this time next week...".

A holiday will hopefully be a useful tool in helping me revitalise this blog a little. As is obvious to anyone with at least a passing interest in this page, the frequency of my posts is far below what it has been in the past, and has indeed in the last few months almost been plunging new depths of terribleness. When I look back, late 2006 does seem very much like the glory days of updating my blog, as the posts were not only frequent, but were also pretty damn long and interesting to read as well. I've tried various approaches in more recent times to make life easier for me to update, including most recently attaching my blog to Facebook as well, in order to at least make it seem to me as though more people would be reading it than would be the case if it was just over here, sitting separate to the world. I guess that has achieved its purpose in some regards, but it hasn't really made me feel particularly more inclined to update - and now I feel pretty good generally if I'm managing one update a week, which is pretty terrible and doesn't really give me the chance to ever achieve anything with my writing as I'm so busy backdating with what's been going on during the past week or two since I last wrote, so at least the blog can at its most basic, provide a really broad record of my life throughout 2008.  I have thought about what really makes me not consider updating particularly often, or just not get around to it, when I know that generally the process of updating, and of keeping going something that really has defined my life throughout the past seven and a bit years now, does mean a lot to me.

For a start, I have always worried about what other people will think of what I write, and whether I'm going to annoy/hurt/anger/embarrass anyone by what I write. Further to that, I am (quite understandably) enormously limited in what I can write about work, because of the confidentiality we obviously owe our clients. It's funny that when I started working for REM that didn't really appear as immediately obvious, especially as I'd been hassling McDonald's almost continuously throughout my six year employment with them, but now it is the most "duh" thing ever. Furthermore, as my career progresses I imagine that my name will become ever more well known (well at least hopefully), and as this blog is strongly linked with my name - I don't really necessarily want everyone involved in my professional future to be hugely aware of everything that goes on in my private life, another reason for me to be reluctant when it comes to getting into the kind of interesting detail that would actually make me more likely to want to update more frequently. For a long time I got kind of annoyed at myself for being so strongly censored when it came to updating, and hassled myself for it, occassionally making a pointedly uncensored post (to some extent). These days when I look back at those posts, which tend to accompany some of the larger events that have taken place in my life throughout the time this blog's been running, I'm glad to have the record of what happened, but at the same time I'm not so sure I'd be quite so open if something of similar magnitude was to occur these days.

I imagine this is a pretty common issue for many people blogging out there, and they get past it through a variety of ways. I guess the most obvious is to create an anonymous blog, so that you're not particularly well linked to your actual persona, and therefore what you write can be much less censored, as any repercussions are unlikely to make their way back to you, as it's not obvious you're the one who's written that. Furthermore, it's unlikely that anyone you don't want to find something you've written is ever likely to come across it. This option doesn't really work for me though, because obviously the coolest thing about this blog, and the one thing that keeps me going more than anything else, is the history attached to it, the enormous archive of my life that goes all the way back to January 2001. I can't see myself abandoning this blog to go and start up one that would be anonymous, and in any case if I did, it certainly wouldn't help the survival of this one. The other option is to point this blog more into the direction of commenting on things that aren't particularly involved in my personal life, instead being my "take" on some issue happening in the world, or what I think about something. I suppose this is the most common type of blog, and I can see myself taking this blog somewhat towards that direction in the future. However, that would feel like quite a significant change from what I'm used to writing about, plus through my involvement with the SkyScraperCity Forums, I already feel like I achieve the purpose that would be achieved by blogging about such issues, and by being part of a wider forum community I can get the kind of feedback that just wouldn't happen on this blog (heck I can't even get my comments to work half the time!) So that leaves me stuck back here again. Oh well, perhaps if I just trudge on a little more, slowly work myself back into the habit, I'll figure out a way to shift things forward.

Yes, I am going to write a blog update. It's fairly late, I'm dead tired, perhaps still slightly hungover from the epic that was Amber's 21st birthday party (although I don't really feel hungover, just tired from having less than what seems to be my minimum requirement of about six hours of sleep a night, although not really that much less...), but despite all that I am going to update. What willpower! And yes, I am going to rabbit on about trying to figure out why I'm so utterly adept at avoiding updating this blog (or inept at updating it, whichever way you want to perceive things), but I guess for a start there are some exciting and interesting things ahead. Much stuff has happened since last blog update, but to be honest if I spent all my blog updates just giving a brief summary of the past week or so, they would turn out to be incredibly boring - hold on that is actually what I've been doing for the past six months or so - no wonder I keep managing to avoid writing here. Needless to say, Leila graduated, then a few days after that she had a minor(ish) surgery, we stressed a lot, we were relieved, we stressed again, we were relieved again. Things seem OK now, so I guess in the hope of turining this update into something that's slightly more interesting than the dribble I've written recently, I'm going to leave things there and look ahead.

Well I don't really need to look ahead much in my life before a rather big event. Yup, as of next Friday Leila and I are off overseas on our Europe trip. Apart from a few train trips that may still require booking (although by the sounds of things, we may well be better off just buying tickets on the day) everything is now largely sorted for the trip, and it's looming as something to look forwards to now, and not just something to stress about having to organise for. I think just about everything necessary has been bought, so now we're just getting stuff packed up so that Friday won't be the biggest stress-out day in the history of stress-out days. Kind of oddly, even though the trip is now much more "in my mind", because after months and months of planning it's just about here, I haven't had the kinds of "stress out" dreams I was having a few months ago. Perhaps they were just telling me to get on and organise all the necessary flights and accommodation, and now that I've done so my sub-conscious is reasonably at ease with the world.

I am still trying to get my head around managing to be OK without seeing Amalia for 4 whole weeks, and being satisfied that she's going to be OK. Whilst I have done the whole overseas thing before, back in 2005, this time it will be so different as she's four and not one, and so much more aware of what's going on. I guess in some ways that's a plus, as I can call her on the phone and send her postcards etc, which should hopefully make it seem like I haven't just disappeared off to the other side of the world, and that she's still very much in my thoughts. I guess one rather interesting silver lining is that she's become fascinated by the places that we're going to, and even brought up  Barcelona with me the other day when we were talking about the upcoming trip. There should be some pretty cool gifts that I can buy her whilst overseas, and with enough regular phone calls I feel like I can be reasonably satisfied things are going to be sweet.

I really am going to make an effort this next week to get myself back into the habit of blogging a little bit more, so that can lead on to keeping this page well up to date over the next month as I really will have a lot to say. Back in June and July 2005 I was really glad to keep this blog updated with a good record of my trip to Canada & the USA. Over time memories do fade, so it's great to have such a detailed reference that can help jog my memory from time to time. I am getting a better idea about why I am finding it so difficult to update this blog in recent months, and it feels like quite a complicated situation that basically makes it often feel unnecessary or even quite frustrating when I sit there trying to think of something half-decent to write about, and therefore find myself trying to avoid such feelings by not actually updating. That's not a particularly good explanation, but perhaps some further info about that, as well as a bit more detailed description of last night's party can accompany the blog updates that I will try really hard to make in this coming week.

Wow it really seems like everyone's had their birthday lately. I guess in the last month in particular there's been a real pile of them, most recently mine on Sunday. It has been a tad crazy because of all this excitement, and on the weekend it felt like we had so much nice food I would have ended up weighing a few kilos more than I did on Friday. It was a good weekend though, with some nice pressies that should definitely help me during the Europe trip.

It also was strangely the weekend for new furniture. I had been working out a few new pieces of furniture with my mum for Amalia over the past couple of weeks, which was a bit of a mission as the range that we both really liked, Freedom Furniture's Tuscany Range, was going out and it was a pain trying to figure out what was still available in Tuscany and also what we'd need to order in the new range, which frustratingly doesn't arrive until sometime during June. But in any case, the one thing that we wanted the most was available, so we picked it up on Saturday. Then, somewhat ironically, after stressing about whether it was going to fit in the back of my parents' car, we actually discovered that the whole thing required assembly, which then itself required a couple of hours of mind-warping work to actually make sense of the instructions and ensure that it didn't end up upside-down, or something stupid like that. I always think that there's an art form to the stupidity of instruction booklets, that someone thinks of the weirdest way to show how to put a piece of furniture together. In the end, once we'd actually figured it out, we discovered that it was definitely a good method of putting the "dresser with basket storage" together. In any case, Amalia now has a really cool toy storage unit that will hopefully spell the end of the "lost at the bottom of the toybox" syndrome that seems to be all to common.

And then to continue the "new furniture" theme, on Sunday Leila's new desk arrived - a kind of late birthday present from her parents. It's a really damn nice desk, and fills a gap in the bedroom that had been rather glaring for a while now. But it has taken a little while to get used to, with the room looking rather smaller and just a bit strange with this new big piece of furniture in it. I guess it does make the room seem rather more "well rounded" though, and will inevitably be really useful in the future as well as now for her, and probably me as well if I can muscle in to get a little space on it!

Heck another long gap, another stupid excuse that I really don't want to make, and once again I start to wonder whether there's much point in keeping my blog up to date. I guess everyone on Facebook probably wouldn't want constant "Joshua has added another blog update" reminders, so perhaps I am doing them a favour, but on the other hand when I'm only writing infrequently it really feels like I can never quite get around to writing the blog entries that I want to. It's frustrating, because I really do know how awesome this blog can be, I saw it in parts of 2001, 2005 and especially towards the end of 2006 when I think it was particularly awesome - long updates and the rest. I think that perhaps I just need to be a little harsh on myself for a while and make damn sure that I update every day, or close to it, so that I can force myself back into the habit of writing. Once that habit is established it'll go sweet from there. Perhaps.

Anyway, there is of course the huge opportunity for blogging in the next while that comes with the upcoming Europe holiday. Late last week it slipped into being less than a month away, which is extremely exciting although somewhat nerve-wracking. We've finally managed to finish all the booking of accommodation and travel (except for a few trains in Italy that it seems you can't book until a week or two before they're due to run), so that's definitely a bit of a relief all round. I kept on having stresses that somehow we'd run out of time to organise everything, or that something would go terribly wrong resulting in us having to majorly change plans at the last minute. But, at least for now, it seems that everything is proceeding fairly decently. I know that the day or so before we head off will be a major stress, and I am quite dreading having to say goodbye to Amalia for a whole four weeks, but once that's all done with and we manage to make it to the airport on time (unlike the myriad of dreams I keep having when I miss the plane) I will probably get a lot more of the excitement. After all, this is the Europe trip that I've been dreaming of since I was a little kid.

My dream last night was a little different to most others that I've had about the upcoming trip. For once, we had actually made it to the airport on time, had obviously not forgotten anything too major and had arrived in London. Yet for some bizarre reason, we had ended up in some internet cafe for most of the afternoon and evening of our first day in London, which seemed really unsatisfying - like I was truly wasting this really valuable time - but seemed impossible to escape. And then the next day Leila and I had decided to go and see different places around the city, and I somehow ended up in this place that was once again so unsatisfying normal that I felt like I was, once again, wasting my time in London so badly. I don't particularly remember that many details, just one that there was somehow this huge model train set that I was helping construct, and instead of the train slowly making its way around the tracks it was a super-powered train that really tore around the tracks almost too quick for you to follow it. Although this was pretty cool, I still felt enormously unsatisfied at the end of the day, and then I realised that I didn't know how I'd get hold of Leila to meet up with her. At that stage I woke up.

It's odd that I seem so sub-consciously freaked out by this upcoming holiday. I think perhaps I'm preparing for anything that might go wrong, so that I'll be pleasantly surprised when things (hopefully) don't go wrong. Or perhaps it's just because this is something that's so far out of my "normality", and that I feel like I have so much responsibility for making sure it all works out, that I'm a little freaked out that I might not have organised everything as well as I should have. I wonder whether this will continue right up until we leave, or whether I'll manage to convince myself that things will be OK. I guess it was an achievement that at least in this dream we made it to England.

It has been a fairly busily crazy week and a bit since my last blog update. Work has gone totally nuts with a huge new job that will keep me busy (very busy) right up until we go overseas. It still feels very surreal that we're actually heading overseas in what is now less than 6 weeks, like I can't quite get my head around the fact that I'm actually going to be visiting all these places that I've been reading about, or frantically trawling through to find accommodation. Tonight was the night that sorted out the very last of the accommodation, and I booked the last flight of our trip: from Venice back to London. So I guess in that sense it's something to celebrate a little, that all the annoying aspects of organising a trip are now sorted out, so I can instead look forward to it. The only way I seem to be able to make it real is if I think about the real basics of the trip: the plane journey (which I'm not exactly looking forward to as long-haul flights suck arse), arriving at the airport in London, working out how best to get to our first hotel, and so on. I suppose that because the whole thing feels so huge, it's difficult to get my head around unless I just look at it piece by piece.

Anyway, I guess that's enough talk about the upcoming holiday. It seems to occupy a lot of the time I find myself talking to not-so-well-known acquaintances and the like. It's a safe subject, interesting and easy to delve into someone else's past experiences, to get some knowledge from them about where they think you should go in this particular place. Yet at the same time it really doesn't dominate my thinking at the moment as much as one would think that it might. I've had the odd dream that involves some aspect of the trip, as I detailed in one of my most recent posts, but really it's still a little too far away. But I guess when other topics of conversation seem to be on the wane, it's a pretty safe bet. Gah, my blog's turning into a location for "safe conversations". Gah... It's always been like that. Shocking!

So, what else have I actually been up to lately? Amalia's managed to catch herself chicken pox, which I guess is a good thing in the long-run as it's helpful to have it when you're young. I remember as a kid getting the mildest bout of chicken pox ever, while Ella unfortunately had a pretty nasty lot. So far it seems like Amalia's somewhere in the middle, coming out with more and more spots but not really seeming as though she's sick. It's still rather inconvenient timing, with her birthday coming up this Friday and a party planned for Sunday. I have heard of "chicken pox parties" where everyone sends their kids to this big party with the actual intention of them getting chicken pox, but that seems like taking things a little too far. I guess hopefully they might have started to be on the decline by Sunday, or perhaps the party might need to be delayed.

As for myself, well I ended up having quite a nice weekend actually. On Sunday Leila and I joined up with Amber, Rowan, Sue-Li and a whole pile of other people I'm sure I've met before but only half-recognised at the Daylight Savings Concert. Leila and I had been chilling out at Borders in Sylvia Park, plus finishing off Amalia's birthday shopping, so we didn't catch most of the concert, but fortunately the time we were there was when Fat Freddy's Drop were playing. It was a nice way to spend one's late-afternoon, as the whole park atmosphere was incredibly chilled out, I think largely due to the fact that it didn't seem enormously "over-policed" like most large-scale activities like that are. Shock horror you were allowed to take alcohol there, and shock horror there were also lots of kids around, and it all just worked as everyone was like super happy just chilling out to the music and chatting with friends or eating hot chips.

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!)