rachel.blog

Category: Auckland

  • Blondes have more fun

    I’ve been really happy of late. Ben says, not to worry, I’ll get over it. The strange thing is, I don’t really know why I’m feeling so happy. My relationship with Auckland is still much the same. The only thing I can think of is that my outlook changed about the same time as bleaching…

  • Earthquake strengthening, Tourette's and Team Work

    I snapped a photograph of this building in central Auckland last week because not only does it look beautiful, but I think it has the most effective earthquake strengthening I’ve seen yet. That facade is never falling off! The paediatrician who saw Daniel a couple of weeks ago phoned me this week. She wanted to…

  • More scenes from Auckland, frogs and play

    More scenes from Auckland as viewed from inside our car (most of Auckland is viewed from within one’s car): I watched a great TED talk yesterday titled, Science is for everyone, kids included. It’s delivered by an adult, Beau Lotto, and a12-year-old girl, Amy O’Toole, who is the youngest published scientist in the world. There are…

  • Scenes from Auckland

    A couple of weekends ago I took Daniel and Elizabeth to a farm west of Auckland. They had a lovely time, patting and feeding animals. I took some photos which I’ve been meaning to share. Elizabeth loves feeding animals, even sticking her fingers into their mouths on occasion. Daniel likes feeding animals too and inadvertently…

  • I'm in the money

    Today is a momentous day. Yesterday I released a new version of my Auckland Ferry Times app. The new version includes ads, in addition to some other new features. This morning I looked at the statistics for my app and I see that I’ve earned 3c already. Although 3c is hardly worth celebrating, it does…

  • 'Twas a bit windy last night…

    …and the neighbour’s tree smashed onto another neighbour’s BMW.   It snapped clean off at the base:

  • The lurid shopping mall

    I have been highly critical of the urban shopping mall of late and I thought it might be worthwhile exploring how this monstrosity came into existence. The very first shopping mall, Southdale Mall, was opened in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota as the creation of an Austrian-born architect name Victor Gruen. With a Jewish background, he…

  • The biggest public health problem of the developed world

    Governments the world over are making leaps and bounds in the fight against smoking. Australia recently banned brand labelling on cigarette packets, the UK is running a campaign called Stoptober next month and there are increasingly fewer and fewer public spaces in which a smoker can light-up. But is smoking really the biggest public health…

  • What’s wrong with urban sprawl?

    One of my complaints about Auckland is its urban sprawl. But Auckland is not alone in possessing this, there are many other cities in the world with this characteristic flaw, like my home town of Brisbane, and I am equally critical of those places. I disklike urban sprawl and in this blog post, I will…

  • Two years on

    It has been just over two years now since we were rudely awoken at 4.35am in the morning of 4th of September 2010 at the start of the Cantberbury earthquake sequence. How do I feel now, two years on? I would say that on the whole, I’m pretty good. I don’t register a change in…

  • Could Auckland be hell?

    If hell is featureless suburbia, concrete motorways and soulless shopping malls, then Auckland is it.

  • The Auckland Harbour Bridge and computer science in New Zealand

    I was driving over the Auckland Harbour bridge last week and thinking, I don’t really trust New Zealand engineering. This is possibly because I got to witness the catastrophic collapse of two New Zealand buildings in Christchurch not long after they’d been deemed safe by engineers. Although it has since transpired that the so-called engineers…

  • Hobsonville Point

    There’s a very interesting development towards the west of Auckland called Hobsonville Point. It overlooks Waitemata Harbour from the west and was a New Zealand air force base for almost 100 years, providing a crucial role during WWII. Now it is the site of a planned community or township with a ferry service to Auckland…

  • Monogenetic volcanic fields

    Auckland sits above a monogenetic volcanic field. This means that rather than having one visible mountainous crater, there is an assorted mix of craters, lava flows and scoria cones spread out over a large geographic area. While each vent tends to be smaller in size than if there were just one vent, they can pop…

  • We gotta get out of this place

    There are three volcanoes erupting in New Zealand at the moment. Mount Tongariro in the central North Island has awoken from a 100-year slumber; White Island in the Bay of Plenty is erupting, and an undersea volcano (miles and miles away from New Zealand) has produced 25,000 sq km of pumice. None of these pose…

  • Sheep in Auckland

    We visited a friend of ours today and she has some pretty cool neighbours. Sheep! Lambing season has begun Checking for dags Freud has completely bounced back and is practically 100% again. How does he do that? Now he’s back to scavenging for food in the rubbish overnight, lungeing at cats and barking at dogs. 

  • A day at the beach

    Freud has perked up again. He’s a bit of yoyo. One day I think, this is it, he’s going to die, then the next day he recovers and continues onward. He’s not 100% but he has started eating again. The Vet gave me some acid-reducing medication as kidney disease can cause ulcers and gastric bleeding,…

  • Cousins and The Tepid Baths

    Ben’s nieces, Frances and Jessica, came to visit us this week, all the way from Switzerland where they live. Daniel and Elizabeth both had a ball with Elizabeth particularly sad to see them go. Fortunately Frances is coming back to stay with us for a week at the end of the month, once they’ve finished…

  • Nappies, Auckland and the beach

    Elizabeth is completely toilet-trained. No nappies anymore, ever. Not even to bed. Daniel on the other hand wears the biggest, most-expensive night-time nappy which still fails to hold everything and he often wets his bed. How long will this go on for? It’s always depressing coming back to Auckland after a trip away because it’s…

  • Playground-hopping

    We went playground-hopping today and found an absolute treasure of a playground at Hobsonville Point which is on the very western edge of Auckland harbour (Waitemata harbour). It had some very interesting  sculptures for children to climb on and interact with and was a big hit with our kids. We saw two magnificent rainbows while…