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Last night, we spent a lovely evening with @funkypancake and family at Te Haruhi Bay in Shakespear Park on the Whangaparaoa peninsula. As well as much idle chatter whilst munching a beach side picnic, there was a fair amount of swimming, skimboarding and rock pool plundering as well. The evening was rounded of with a lazy game of cricket until the setting sun nudged us homeward.
Waffles!
“This is gonna be fun! We can stay up late, swapping manly stories, and in the morning… I’m making waffles!” – Eddie Murphy as Donkey in ‘Shrek’
My lovely wife gave me a surprise gift a while back – a waffle iron. She managed to pick one up with some points on a store loyalty card. It is a gift filled with love because she didn’t want a waffle iron, firmly believing that, just like almost every other waffle iron on the planet, it will soon be gathering dust in a cupboard. I maintained otherwise and, though only time will tell who is right, it has had regular outings and even been used and a sandwich toaster.
I mention all this because waffles played a small but symbolic part in our emigration. On our first morning as home-less, job-less and school-less emigrants, we stepped out into the bright sunlight of a Hollywood morning. Along with Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, Los Angeles was a stopover on our way to New Zealand (mentioned briefly in this post) and, on the recommendation of LA blogger Sean Bonner, we stayed at the trendy Farmer’s Daughter in Fairfax Village. Across the street, as we discovered that first morning of our adventure, lay the Farmer’s Market and there we had the kind of breakfasts that we had only ever seen in movies. Bacon, eggs, pancakes, juice, toast, waffles – we ordered large and reveled in the strange dislocation of being between lives, eating breakfast in the world capital of make-believe.
That meal is a fond memory for me and the kids – a snapshot from our transition from inner city Londoners to rural township New Zealanders. It’s my hope that sharing Saturday morning waffles & maple syrup with the kids will become another tradition and memory to treasure.
Breakfast in Los Angeles
One of the things I like about Flickr is that, every once in a while, it throws up images that make you see things in a different way – click the image for more.
From tomorrow morning, this will be the view that will greet me and She Whom Must Be Obeyed each morning for the next week. After a family meal of chicken piri piri with our girls and a friend who will live with them for a week, we’re heading off to Aggie Grey’s Lagoon Resort in Samoa – most recently, the location for Survivor Samoa – for our first holiday without kids for 18 years. A bit of saving and a bit of a bonus and a bit of a travel agent discount have all been combined to make this happen so we’re planning to make the most of the break and really relax. As we have met and worked with a few Samoan folk in New Zealand, we are looking forward to seeing something of their homeland. Having booked this trip months back and collected the tickets on the morning of the recent tsunami, we were a little conflicted as to whether we should still take the holiday there with so many having lost so much on that day. However, the advice we have been given is that because tourism is a mainstay of the economy, just spending our tourist dollars will be of benefit. Be that as it may, we also hope to hook up with a local contact in Apia for a little mini-mission while we’re there. With that, I’m off for a plate of chicken piri piri.
The Bridge Builders
Today, our youngest and I decided to grab a little one-on-one time together as we haven’t had a ‘date’ for a long time. Leaving the rest of the family to boring clothes shopping, we headed downtown to see the Da Vinci Machines exhibition. While a little smaller and a little more pricey/commercial than I was expecting, we spent an hour or so wandering round looking at and discussing the themed replica exhibits. These ranged from the well-known like the air screw, flying machine and tank to smaller explorations of engineering principles like the wormscrew, column-lifting machine and autolock mechanism.
We both won a bookmark (a.k.a. exhibition advert) by managing to replicating one of Da Vinci’s arched bridge designs from a pile of notched logs. Da Vinci created these designs for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico ‘Il Moro’ to facilitate rapid troop movements across rivers while carrying out surprise attacks. It took us four attempts to get the structure stable enough to bear our weight and one wonders how easy it would have been to build these bridges without access to both sides of the river or under a hail of arrows or flaming shot!
A little peckish from our bridge-building efforts, we crossed the street and wandered into the small, friendly and pleasingly un-commercial Auckland City Farmer’s Market. There we tried out various things to eat including the delicious pita bread cooked on site by the lovely folk at Abu-Melamed Bakery, poppy seed and Parmesan bagels from the bubbly peeps at the Bagel Love stall and great spicy hot dogs with smoky capsicum sauce from two ladies at an unnamed stall. Sharing a sunny table, we talked to a nice couple who came from Hawaii and Sydney (long distance love?) and took a photo for them – in return, they gave us both a big juicy strawberry! We shared a fruit smoothie while we walked over to the Maritime Museum where one of us got our face painted before we walked up and down Queen Street looking in bookshops and chatting. An ice cream in the sun topped off our trip and we slowly headed home for a cup of tea with big grins on our faces.
A while back, we spent a fun evening working as models for the lovely photographer/artist Jennifer Mason. She came to our house with her partner and had us pose in a tableau-like manner for a variety of pretend situations. One of these resulted in the shot below – the everyday story of a proud Dad snapping the favoured daughter with her medals while the bored/jealous sisters look on.
This morning, we received a message from Jennifer:
Good news, I entered ‘Proud’ in the Waiheke Art Award. Last night it opened. And I won the Zini Douglas Merit Award, The Elizabeth Grierson Merit Award and I sold the work within 1/2 an hour of the show opening.
It is peculiar to think that a picture of us has been purchased by someone and may very well end up hanging in their house for other to look at.
Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone must be making an absolute fortune from all the teenage texting that must be going on right now.
Today, it transpired that 450 Westlake Girls High School students are to be in home isolation for the week after a ‘swine flu student had contact with almost 200‘. While we’re far from sure that she had direct contact with the lass concerned it would seem that, after spending part of the weekend at a birthday sleep-over, one of them could well be my daughter.
An interesting spin-off from this piece of news is that when I reported this tenuous connection to my employer (as required by our pandemic response plan), it was suggested that I work from home for a few days to see if I develop symptoms. This is ironic for several reasons. Firstly, I have only recently recovered from one bout of headcold/flu symptoms. Being paid to work from home whilst waiting to see if I succumb again would be much more enjoyable if I didn’t have a major project to deliver in the coming weeks. Secondly, as a trained incident manager working for a ‘lifeline’ utility company, I am one of those responsible for the aforementioned pandemic response plan (part of larger incident response and business continuity plans). This being the case, I find myself amusingly hoisted by my own pertard.
After checking the Ministry of Health’s website for Q&As on non-seasonal Influenza A (H1N1), I called Healthline to get advice and check if I can be tested to rule infection out. The comforting answer from the nice lady was that she had ‘no information on testing’ so, after updating my HR folks, I settled into a day of being politely hassled for board papers via email by my CEO’s executive assistant.
I’m off for a long lie down.
Technorati Tags: H1N1, Influenza A, text, swine flu, Telecom New Zealand, Vodafone, Westlake Girls
© Antonio Carluccio
Just turned to the Food Channel on the TV and caught an episode of ‘Southern Italian Feast’ presented by my all-time favourite foodie Antonio Carluccio. It’s hard to believe that I first watched this show on the BBC ten years ago back in England.
After picking up some marvelous ingredients in Palermo’s Vucceri Market, Carluccio cooks a simple Tonno al Forno con Salmoriglio (Baked Pasta with Herbs) which he served with Zucchini al Pomodoro e Basilico (Courgettes with Tomato and Basil). While samoriglio (a mortar-and-pestled mxture of herbs, garlic and oil) is usually used to dress steamed or grilled fish, Carluccio dressed the tuna steaks before baking, adding a few pine nuts and breadcrumbs for added texture.
We have friends coming over at the weekend and, for once, I know exactly what I’m going to cook ahead of time!
World Environment Day – one of the most popular days on the United Nations calendar – is slowly coming to an end in New Zealand but is still to come for much of the world. It is an opportunity to raise awareness and promote action on national environmental issues. This year’s theme for World Environment Day (WED) is Your Planet Needs You! Unite to Combat Climate Change. We can all do our part to protect the planet by using less and acting more. But too often we are presented with environmental problems without being given the tools to act. WED is about taking action to be a part of the solution. And the Daily Do Something Tips are a great start. Make your WED commitment today. But don’t stop at today and don’t stop here. Try to incorporate all of these into your life as a matter of routine. Get others to do so the same. And get involved!
DAILY ROUTINE AT HOME
GETTING TO WORK
More info:
http://www.unep.org/wed/2009/english
http://www.sustainability.govt.nz
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
I have finally found an hour or so to go through all my photos of our autumn family holiday to Te Wai Pounamu, New Zealand’s South Island. While there were some real shockers amongst the hundreds of images, I have found 38 pictures that really sum up the two weeks we spent touring the island. Enjoy and leave a comment either here or on Flickr.