The Road Less Traveled

Last night cracked the 6 degree limit - 5.8 degrees Celsius, or about 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Brrrr! The norm here in Auckland is houses without insulation and single-pane glass, so let’s hope this isn’t typical!

Of course, it is also 4:45 AM - We’re off to pick up Sarah at the airport, coming down here for her “summer” vacation from college. Let’s hope she brings some of that warmer weather down with her.

We actually looked at another rental the other day - with heated floors! Might be a change-of-address in the offing!

So, I’ve been writing this blog for friends and family back home. Spending my precious rainy weekends on it. Writing, proof-reading, re-writing, editing, polishing… (yeah, right!)

Does anyone actually read it? Leave some comments behind! Tell me how poorly I write! Tell me what drivel it all is!

Max has been running a Dungeons and Dragons (”D&D”) campaign every couple weeks for the past few months with a group we met at Laserforce. He’s created an amazing world for the adventure, and now I get to have a small role in it - My character Thorkill is your typical dwarven fighter who has been digging mines in the mountains outside of Dis on the Second Level of Hell, until he got chased out by various devils and fire demons. So now, he’s looking for a few good fighters, a wizard, and perhaps a rogue or a druid, to help him get his mines back. And guess who stumbled into his house the other day, while they were escaping from some pit fiends recruiting for the Devil’s army in the Blood War against the Demons?

I haven’t played D&D for a few years (since college…), so we’ll see how it goes - wish Thorkill luck with his future damage rolls!

When we first moved into the house, there was some crazy bird with a call that went on and on - no idea what it was. Then for the last month we’ve had a fantail (or piwakawaka) flitting around in the garden - it eats flying insects, so maybe we’ll have fewer mosquitos! Then in the past week, we’ve had a tui in the tree! (no, not the beer!) Tuis make a huge variety of sounds - quite astonishing!

We’ve seen hedgehogs a few times at night as Cindy has written about on her blog. Just the other day, as I arrived home from work, Cindy and Max were following one up our driveway! Very cute, toddling along on his little feet. We escorted him safely across the street, and off into the bushes. (They don’t move very fast, and are not frightened, so unfortunetly become roadkill far too easily.) They are not a native species, and have caused problems, but not nearly the devastation to native birds that other invasive species ( stoats, cats, possums) have done. Still cute though.

Luckily not, as it turned out! I woke up early the other day, and checked my email before heading off to work, and there’s a message from Kim Bottles on Bainbridge forwarding a CNN News Alert at about 5:00 AM our time: “– Tsunami warnings issued for Fiji and New Zealand after earthquake measuring a magnitude of about 8.0 shakes southern Pacific Ocean.” It was due to hit the east coast at Gisborne first, at around 6:21 AM our time. Luckily, the alert was cancelled at around 5:30 AM once they had additional information.

Many people here heard about the alert when friends and family abroad heard the news, and phoned New Zealand in the early morning hours. Many people in Gisborne fled for the hills. The scandal here is that the Ministry of Civil Defence failed to notify people in Gisborne about the alert! It is true that they were monitoring the situation, but from the time the alert was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center after the earthquake hit near Tonga at 3:27 AM our time until the alert was cancelled at 5:36 AM our time, there was a two hour period where they should probably have been reacting as if a tsunami was on the way. If it was due to hit at 6:21 AM, there would’ve been only about 40 minutes to alert the people of Gisborne to get to safety…

Apparently here in Auckland it probably wouldn’t have been too bad, because the Hauraki Gulf and Waitemata Harbour are relatively shallow, such that any large wave would break way out around Great Barrier Island. I have heard that they have sirens to alert the public here, and besides, we live near the top of a hill.

So, for now we can relax about tsunamis, and get back to worrying about the fact that Auckland is built on an active volcanic field…!