Breaking News - Fire in Wellington

I got home about 5 o'clock and soon there was a nasty smell of smoke drifting up the hill. At first I thought it was someone burning garden rubbish but, looking down towards Oriental Bay it was clear there a very nasty fire there, just alongside a very large apartment block about 1.5 kms from here. Can't see exactly whether it was a wooden house of something else burning. Huge deep red flames were jumping up alongside the apartment block, over 10 metres into the air. Very scary.
Well, now the sirens are still blaring out here along the coast road but obviously the fire is under control (at 5.20) as the smoke and flames have subsided. Must check the news to see what's happened there. A strange day of fire damage on my blog this Friday. It's not the 13th is it?

Anyone seen my moped?

"You can't miss it, it's a red one...quite new..."

(Photo Nikon D300)

Blog Block

The last few days have resulted in a certain kind of blogstipation for me here in Wellington. The weather has been a bit dull and boring and so have I.
Just came back up the hill in the arse rocket after the bi-weekly trip to New World, the Kiwi version of my local K-Citymarket in Myyrmäki back home. Already the store is so familiar after only three weeks that I can prepare a shopping list and subconsciously list needed items into my iPhone shopping app in the order that they will appear on the shelves as I wheel my basket round the store. This is yet another sign of having settled in, I guess. But how nice that there is such an influx of happy young people to the job market here that shoppers never need to pack their own groceries, as we have to in good old Suomi. In general there is a pleasant service culture and people are usually friendly and interested. It takes away some of the stress and angst that we certainly suffer from up there on the North-Eastern rim of Europe.

I was also invited in to have dinner Wednesday by my neighbour 'B' and her friend 'J'. I thought to myself, how many times have I been invited to dinner by my Finnish neighbours? Finns know the answer to that one. So now I know my new neighbour and she knows a bit about me, and my background and family and plans while I'm here these five months on the other side of the wall of our little semi-detached house on stilts. The good neighbour tradition is certainly familiar from the UK. 'B' made a lovely steak and I wonder if she'd appreciate my spicy curries just as much?


I was watching David Attenborough's Life of Mammals the other night. There's a man who can't be said to have 'settled down' for a moment. I doubt whether he would ever confess to have had a disappointing life or dull existence like some people of his age tend to do. And if so, nobody could believe that. I'm from the generation who has seen a large part of the transformation of television in the UK. From the heavily controlled and limited 'picture radio' with broadcasts of news, weather, watch with mother, documentaries of World War II and not much more, totaling only a few hours every afternoon and evening we've moved to the era of 24/7, multi-channel, multi-national, mega-commercial TV animal we know today. And it's hard for me to remember a time when David Attenborough wasn't a part of TV. Well he started working for the BBC before I was born and is now, still working at over 80. I think he is a rather clever and rather lucky man and when he eventually does retire TV will lose one of its few remaining pioneers and masters of the genre of natural history.
Having said that it's also obvious that the Attenborough series are made to a very clever format. The credit for majority of the audiovisual content can hardly be claimed by Sir David for he is only the story teller and the magic of the images and the sounds is the work of some highly skilled professionals, technical innovators and cinematic geniuses. The 'making of' documentaries on the Attenborough DVD productions are real eye-openers! But Sir David surely would not associate himself with the mundane or productions lacking in quality or the Attenborough wow factor. I'm sure every time a new series is being planned that all involved know that it's not going to be an inexpensive operation.
What a contrast to so much programming that comes from our 'television sets' these days (and lets avoid thinking about what a TV really is in 2009!). Here also in New Zealand we are bombarded with all the same old (US) series or formats that I see in Finland, in the UK and, let's face it, most everywhere else too, local censors permitting.
New Zealand's Got Talent? Hmm, we shall see...

Urban Retreats

This Sunday marked the end of my 3rd week here in Wellington and, aided by the most beautiful weather since arriving, I headed off in the road racer for an afternoon trip to the Rimutaka Forest Park. The destination was decided at random from a small booklet I'd bought entitled, Top Walking Tracks of the Wellington Region. It was not a bad choice at all. Having been guided accurately (for once) by 'Nigel', the voice of my GPS in the Nokia E71, I made my way up the approach road and came immediately upon a small but impressive meeting of the Sunbeam Car Club of New Zealand.
My personal interest was not, due to some strange tendency, focused on the three rather well kept Sunbeam soft-top convertibles, but on the familiar powder blue lines of the 1964 Hillman Imp. The reasoning is easily explained as my Dad once bought an identical Imp in the early 1960s and it proved to be the worst car he ever owned. After 6 water pumps or so in the first years of ownership the nasty little Imp was traded in for something more reliable and more hefty. I took up the weaknesses of the Imp's water pump with Gary, the proud owner. He was very well versed in the details of this particular critical part of the rear-engined, low point of British auto engineering dating from the hippie era. Had my father possessed Gary's knowledge back then, and his enthusiasm for stripping down car parts to their basic elements and reassembling them again with improvements then, our old Imp may have had a longer run in the Dean family. Whatever came of 503 BAN? (It's a 'boy thing', remembering the registration numbers from childhood). Maybe, who knows, it's a proud and worthy member of the Essex Hillman Imp Club of Great Britain?

After the pleasant diversion and in-depth discussion on water pump design I finally got moving along the chosen path under a scorching afternoon sun, protected by only lashings of sun screen on face, arms and legs and a transparent backpack (Apple WWDC vintage giveaway from year dot) loaded with two bottles of ginger beer and a pack of plasters in case of mishaps. What a lovely afternoon it was, once under the cover of the forest, all senses attacked from every direction in a constant barrage of sounds, smells and the extraordinary and varied visual tapestry of the ancient hardwoods growing on the steep sides of the Catchpool Valley. The path was rough enough to be interesting to walk but well built and maintained by the Department of Conservation (DOC) so that damage to the forest from visitors is minimised. As the day was especially warm the noise of crickets and other insects was overwhelming. I've tried to make decent recording using my iPhone to help share the experience. I also spent some time trying to catch some of the more spectacular bird songs but Murphy's law came into play and these usually coincided with the drone of small aeroplane engines from the nearly gliding centre. Similarly my attempts at bird photography were thwarted when a playful dog appeared from around the bend of the track and scared off my subjects.
With this I was able to put things into focus and to see that, despite the exotic nature of my walk I am, nevertheless only a 30 minute drive from the city centre and not an intrepid explorer in the dark and hidden depths of some distant rain forest, days away from humanity. These Wellingtonians really are rather lucky.
From the urban retreat of the Rimutaka Forest I headed for Welly and the Urban Retreat in Tory Street. This hidden gem runs as a Yoga business these days but also houses what the regulars describe as, 'the best sauna in New Zealand'. I was very lucky to hear about this place from a guy in the 'nearly a sauna, sauna' of the Freyberg pool. But the Urban Retreat's sauna has a history going back to the 1960s and it is built to a proper Finnish blueprint. The only compromise seems to be the gas heating of the sauna stove which is formidable, even to Finnish standards. After a couple of visits I've now made a few acquaintances and am happily learning more about Wellington and the region from the natives. Here too, sauna really is a good place to relax and socialise away from the hustle and bustle of the city and work.
I go home clean and contented after a day of new places and experiences, new sights, sounds, a few more new acquaintances and with another few gigabytes of images. The only thing I've forgotten to do today is to eat something...

(All pics with Nikon D300).