My Auckland

Originally uploaded by beejayge

Today was the last day of my holidays, so I wanted to do something different and special. So I came up with a plan to photograph all the Auckland homes I’ve ever lived in from when I was born right up to now. This would cover several goals all in one little adventure:

• go for a drive so I could try out the latest upgraded Tom Tom maps I got for Xmas
• take a trip down memory lane
• make a powerpoint presentation of photos for Dad of places we lived in
• do some photography that I could use to start a fun new blog project and
• maybe do something with the pics on my website.

My adventure was EPIC. Well not quite as active or exciting as Tin Tin’s adventures but fun, fascinating, educational, successful, surprising and inspiring. I even got stuck in an Auckland traffic jam heading for the bridge and got a bit sunburnt on my right arm – bet nobody thought you could get a suntan this holiday coz the weather has been so appalling – but I did.

I managed to photograph all the houses even though I completely forgot about three of them and remembered while on the motorway requiring some clever & quick manoeuvring to change directions while approaching Spaghetti Junction which is not the best place to be trying to do that. But Tom Tom had me back on track very quickly.

At the very first place I went to I noticed the people were home so I got very brave and knocked on the door asking for permission to photograph the house. I don’t normally just bowl on up to random strangers and ask to photograph their house, but you couldn’t really see much of the house from the road because of the fence and gardens. The amazingly kind lady said yes of course I could and even invited me in to look around the inside of the house – wow! Unfortunately I don’t really remember much about that house coz that home was where I spent the first 4 years of my life and my earliest memories of that home are a bit hazy now. The hallway sort of looked a bit familiar, but I imagine they have done a fair bit of renovating since then with added bits and knocking down walls etc. While wandering around outside I said to the lady: “wouldn’t it be terrible, after all this, if I was at the wrong house”.

So…  from tomorrow I will start my new blog project called: Places I have lived.