It's been a while

Kia ora from down under. 

It's a long weekend here and today was, unusually for this time of year, a beautiful clear spring day. I'm away with friends for the weekend and we went exploring today. 

Tree ferns. 

Kawhia is an old fashioned seaside community, pretty and peaceful. 

It's a black sand (iron sand) hot water beach. If you dig a hole in the sand below the high tide mark, the hole will fill with very warm water and make a lovely bath. It wasn't warm enough to strip down to a bathing suit today but I had a great exfoliating foot bath. 

Those pesky gays

It all becomes clear....


All the death and destruction occurring in Christchurch right now is actually due to rampant hedonism according to the website christchurchquake.net which, it's reported, is registered to an address in Utah, USA.


Whoever they are the owner/s of this site sure appear to have some issues with New Zealand culture. Here's a delightful sample  -


"The families of NZ soldiers serving in Afghanistan should be asking, "Is it worth your sons', your husbands', your uncles', and your cousins' lives - to have them risking everything, just because a couple of NZ's top lesbians were blackmailed over their lesbian "threesome" with a butch American lesbian in Washington?" Yeah, that is how NZ's foreign policy was really decided! It wasn't national or strategic interests."

News from the shaky isles

It feels surreal that the beautiful city of Christchurch (about 1,300 kilometres south of me) has taken another hammering only five months after the last massive quake. This time the effect is much worse even though this quake was smaller - there's loss of life because it happened at lunchtime on a working day and the epicentre was very close to the city and only 5 kilometres deep. Aftershocks are happening every few minutes, some of them quite significant so more damage is occurring all the time. It must be terrifying; I have experienced earthquakes but nothing like this.

Please spare a thought for the rescue effort that is ongoing.

I posted a while back when I was visiting Christchurch, see here for a photo of the central city Anglican cathedral as it looked then. See link here for a current view or here for today's shots of around the city centre.

The power of nature is mind boggling.

Is it just me?

I'm scared of the air bag inside my steering wheel.

I've heard people say that if you have your thumbs on the bit of plastic that is the air bag cover in the centre of the wheel, and the bag is activated, it can seriously break your thumbs. It really worries me that I'm going to get more hurt by the bag activating than I might be from the actual crash.

Is it just me?

I wanna be a billionaire

...so freakin' bad

I don't really aspire to billionaire status but as I start to look for some cute summer sandals, I just wish that the bottom end of the market wasn't my only viable option.

Plenty more fabulous stuff where these came from on the wonderfully comprehensive fashion site fashionstylehive.com

Check out some of these beauties.

Christian Louboutin

Givenchy

Dolce and Gabbana

Jimmy Choo

We have a situation...

The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking

Check out this video above. It's an important message and we can all make a difference. The particular organisation I support is about empowering adolescent girls who live in Kibera.

Click here to go to my September 2009 post about the Kibera slum.

Friday flowers

Check out this fantastic bonsai azalea by Phillippe Massard.

The beautiful pink and white blooms and their sheer profusion makes me sigh with wonder. There's another pretty rhododendron and lots of incredible bonsai trees at this great site bonsai4me.com if you're interested.

I've been dabbling in a small way with bonsai for years (with very mixed results) but I'd love to get in to it properly. There's something about miniature things that just rocks my boat - perhaps it reminds me of running my doll house with military precision as a girl or maybe it's the empowerment that comes with feeling like a giant.

Whatever it is, bonsai fascinates me.

Is it just me?

I absolutely love driving for the first time on a brand new road. Actually I continue to really enjoy driving on them until they lose their 'newness'.

Is it just me?

Nudist fundamentalism

At Cap d'Agde on the Languedoc coast of France, there's a war brewing.

The Village Naturiste was established in the small town 40 years ago and now the 'ordinary' nudists have had enough and they want the hedonist bunch run out of town. They've been complaining for years that Cap d'Agde's once-sedate nudist quarter has been disfigured by the influx of 'libertine' partner-swapping clubs and raunchy hotels.

A flurry of arson attacks on sex clubs two years ago was blamed on low-level terrorism by nudist fundamentalists.

At this week's Cap d'Agde council meeting, the protests took a more peaceful form. Old-fashioned naturists complained that they, and their children, were being confronted with "voyeurist" and "exhibitionist" behaviour, including sexual acts in public. Worse, they suggested, the "deviant" newcomers sometimes walked about in their clothes and mocked the "real" nudists.

The town mayor said "I refuse to make value judgments on the sexual habits of other people. I can't put a policeman behind all 40,000 nudists." He also pointed out that by-laws had been passed recently to ban minors from the raunchier establishments.

Full story here.

I don't think I've ever heard the legislative process to ban minors from sex establishments sound like going above and beyond the call of duty.

Marvellous mosiac

Spotted this letter box when I was out and about. 

I love it so just had to stop and snap a couple of pics to share. 

Is it just me?

As I drive everyday I try and memorise details about cars I see, things like make, model, colour, registration, just in case the cops need help to solve a crime and I can help them crack the case with my superhuman observation skills. I do the same with conspicuous people.

Is it just me?

The land of the setting sun

Government records show that Japan is one of the world's fastest-ageing societies. One in five Japanese (28 million people) is aged 65 or more. According to local body registers more than 270,000 Japanese are aged 100 years and over. Of these 77,000 are over 120 years old and a grand total of 884 are at least 150 years old.

Amazing. I wonder if there really is something to eating whale meat.

The Ministry of Justice has recently completed a survey and has been unable to locate the whereabouts of 230,000 of these most senior citizens. The figures have fuelled fears that families might be deliberately hiding the deaths of elderly relatives in order to claim their pensions.

In August the police discovered the mummified corpse of Sogen Kato, who at 111 was listed as Tokyo's oldest man, in his family home 32 years after his death. This finding prompted the nationwide survey to check the validity of local records and the survey revealed that antiquated methods of record-keeping are still in use in smaller towns and villages across the country.

Wikipedia records Japanese women as having the longest life expectancy of anyone on earth, an incredible 86.1 years and an overall life expectancy for all Japanese of an impressive 82.6 years. Now perhaps we know why.

The full story can be found here.

Hey peeps

Thought I'd pop in to say quick gidday to anyone who bothers to stop by here and to have a quick lurk around some of my favourite blogs. 

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News in brief: Yours truly turned 45 a couple of weeks ago, took it hard I must confess. Much consumption of strong drink and funny smelling cigarettes was required that day/week (well it's ongoing actually). Speaking of ageing, life is cruel you know, I used to ingest chemicals to blur the lines of reality, now, all I have to do is take off my glasses. 

On the topic of cigarettes (a while back I acknowledge, stay with me people), I passed my 2 year smokefree milestone - yayyy for me!

On a more serious note I nearly lost another sister a  couple of months back but thankfully she survived the ravages of a terrifying affliction called Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Thank the gods that medical treatment is top-knotch (and free) here. 

Currently getting my head around the fact that I will soon no longer have school age offspring; the boy finishes high school in a couple of months then on to university next year - this is good and bad; great that he's miraculously not a drop out (statistically speaking 'they' tell me he should be a dole-bludging crackhead having been raised in the evil environs of south Auckland by a cash strapped single parent), not so great that I'm inching ever more quickly towards decrepitude (please forgive the age related whinyness; the birthday is still raw). 

I did almost manage to get away for a couple of weeks to South Pacific island (Fiji to be specific), the plan was to up the vitamin D quota over the long, dreary, wet NZ winter but finances just wouldn't allow it. Booked it all but had to cancel when a big unexpected bill arrived. I just know there'll be swim up bars and margaritas in heaven ahhhh. Not actually sure why I included that 'non news' in my news update - obviously not a lot of real news to share. Sad. 

That's about it for now folks, oh yeah nearly forgot, big fucking earthquake down country in the early hours of this morning, mucho property damage I hear though thankfully no loss of life. 

Spring has sprung here in the land of the kiwi (and various other flightless birds) and there are smiles to be seen about town again - onwards and upwards. Love Lou. 

PS Sorry about the surfeit of parentheses (an indicator of poor education so I'm told), I just can't fight it. Ohhh that reminds me yet again - I got my diploma (remember the one that I bitched on about for a year?), big double yayyy for me. Not a real flash diploma you understand - but an accomplishment by my standards. 

L

EDIT: PPS Not a good day for tourists in NZ, I hear that a small sightseeing plane has crashed and burned with none of the 9 passengers and crew surviving. 

Great movie montages

I re-watched Rocky 2 the other night for about the tenth time and was wholeheartedly enjoying the training montage as always. I know it’s silly but I love the way it builds in intensity. If I remember rightly the one in Rocky 4 is pretty great too – that’s the one in the snow in Russia.

A great movie montage is an invigorating thing, especially in a sports movie, and it got me thinking about other great movie montages.

Here’s another classic.

…and here’s a heart warming one from the wonderful Slumdog Millionaire. These kids are so adorable. I loved this movie.

What are your favourites?

Friday flowers

I went to a wedding ceremony in a local park last weekend and thought of my blog when I saw the autumn colours on this tree. Unfortunately my basic little camera didn’t do the vibrant yellow justice but I trust you get the idea.

Autumn here is quite wet usually so this bride and groom were very brave counting on a dry day – I’m very pleased to report they got it and the sun even made its way out for most of the ceremony too.

I know it’s not exactly flowers Punch but I hope this works for you.

Bone chilling

This is one of the scariest pictures I’ve ever seen.

Teenage Chechen Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova and her late husband Umalat Magomedov.

See the story at guardian.co.uk

Off the boil

I’m going through an extended quiet spell – would you believe I have nothing to say? No energy to say it more like.

After 10 or 11 hours at work everyday and another hour or 2 of study after dinner, my concentration lasts only long enough to check Facebook before I collapse into my bed.

Things will settle down soon, either that or a nervous breakdown will come first. Hope everyone is well. I’ll check back in when I can.

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Desperate times?

A 19-year-old Kiwi university student is offering up her virginity by tender to the highest bidder on a newly started NZ auction website.

Under the heading "Relationship For Sale" in the personal section, "Unigirl" is putting herself on the block and offering up her innocence on the I Need website which is run by two Waikato men.

See the ad in a new window here.

Unigirl says she is attractive and desperate for money to pay ongoing university fees. She says she is fit, healthy, with a trim physique and has "no medical conditions of any nature".

Who knows whether the ad is genuine or whether it’s some kind of stunt by the website owners but if it’s real I hope she’s factored in that as prostitution is legal here in NZ the IRD would no doubt expect their tax cut out of anything she makes.

 

Sad? Just plain dumb? Either way, surely an interest free student loan would be far simpler?

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AWOL

I’ve had a load of stuff going on and have been incredibly slack about posting here and about visiting my regular haunts. Work is chaos, I’m doing 12 hour days plus I’ve had a log jam of assignments to plough through - I’m a terrible student and I had let myself fall behind. Rory starts his final year of high school tomorrow so we’ve had to get ourselves organised for that as well.

Don’t worry too much though ma peeps, we’ve got a lovely long weekend coming up so that’ll give me some breathing space. Soon I’ll be back posting inanities again for your reading torture pleasure.

*EDIT* Just noticed by counter widget in my sidebar; I’m new again!

 

 

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