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.

Tonight I went to the movies to see New Year’s Eve. It was awesome – I loved it. Of course it really was a lot like Valentine’s Day (the movie) but that was awesome too, so that’s a good thing.

I realise you were probably supposed to go see the movie before New Year’s Eve (or even on the big night itself, now that would’ve been cool) but I’m not sure if I wish I had or not. Of course the movie made me feel like going out and doing new years all over again, but then wouldn’t that lead to disappointment if the real thing was nothing like the movie? But it has certainly inspired me for next time and the rest of the year – if you have seen the movie you will know what I mean.

Anyway, on the way in to the cinema complex in Newmarket I looked up and noticed the roof (see photo above) its very cool indeed and I’ve never even noticed it before. I showed my friend the photo after I took it and she said she wanted to dance on it 🙂

Happy New Year everybody!

Summer Flowers

Originally uploaded by beejayge

At last the rain and wind has stopped and just in time for a visit to a friend’s place for lunch who lives out in the country. Well Paremoremo actually which is only about 20 minutes drive from where I live but compared to here it really is like the country.

There were sheep and cows and horses and dogs. Plus they even have wild rabbits just sitting there in the back yard. I saw one and got all excited – my friend said: “oh yeah I know terrible nuisance, they’re everywhere”. However I felt like I had arrived at Watership Down – it was so cool.

Before lunch we went for a big walk out to a place where people can ride horses or bikes on special purpose built tracks and the council have planted all these pohutukawa trees everywhere, even though they were quite young trees they were still old enough to produce the most stunningly red flowers for Xmas.

It’s Raining

Originally uploaded by beejayge

It’s the day before New Year’s Eve and it won’t stop raining. I’m half way through my end of year holidays and the weather has been so depressing, usually at this time of year the weather is great; sunny and hot – up till yesterday it was so windy I couldn’t even open the windows or my Xmas trees would blow over.

Yesterday I was craving some fresh air so I devised a clever system of clamping an upstairs window open just slightly to allow air into the room but not enough to blow everything around.  My clever system consisted of a big plastic clamp and a velcro strip attaching the window handle to the clamp.  I have used this clamp thingy for about a year now very successfully.  BUT the wind yesterday was so strong I heard several big bangs while reading a book and it took me a while to realise it was my window that made that banging noise and realised the clamp must not have worked allowing the window to slam shut.  So I ran upstairs to see the damage and sure enough the window was closed – the velcro strap was still there but the clamp was nowhere to be found.  I went outside and looked around but I couldn’t see it – it’s gone!  I hope it didn’t fly down and hit somebody or something – being hit by a largish plastic clamp thrown at you from 3 floors up would really hurt, but where is it?

At a friend’s house wandering round her garden admiring the roses when we found a brand new Monarch Butterfly trying his wings out for the first time, which gave me plenty of chances to get a shot of the wings.