Two for Tuesday

I) This day in history

- 12 January 1908 the first long distance radio transmission is sent from the Eiffel tower in Paris

- 12 January 1915 the US House of Representatives again rejects women’s suffrage (remedied in 1920)

- 12 January 1917 the Indian spiritualist Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is born  (died 2008)

Information and photo from Wikipedia.

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II) The Joy of Summer

I was just talking to my girlfriend who lives in the Australian bush, north west of Melbourne in the state of Victoria.  Yesterday the temperature at her place was a breathtaking 44^oC (or 112^oF to you ‘merican readers).  They’re on extreme bushfire watch again already this year but thankfully Cath has decided that she’s not going to hang around if the local fire risk gets too high – she’s evacuating. See my photo below of her place in the bush taken in winter 2008.

In Auckland we consider it a scorcher of a day if the temperature hits 30^oC though it can get much hotter on the east coast of the central North Island and the central South Island. 30^oC is plenty hot enough for me as I very much favour a mild temperate climate.  The average Auckland summer day is a high of about 25^oC but it was recently reported that the years 2000 – 2009 have been the warmest on average since record keeping began here. I’m off again tomorrow for another couple of nights away on the Coromandel peninsula; this is getting to be a habit. A friend invited me to stay with her at her holiday place right on the beach in Whitianga (pronounced ‘fit e ung a’) so I’m taking off early tomorrow morning for the 2 hour drive and will be back Friday or Saturday. We’re planning some fishing and some sailing and no doubt some more lying on the beach and swimming. I’m in the middle of another good book too which I hope to finish.

Have fun at work y’all.