On Sunday I did the official Auckland University Heritage walk with a friend.  The official walk covers the area in and around the University of Auckland taking in buildings such as those first built in the 1840s.  The guide book covers the history of each building which was fascinating and provided many great photographic opportunities.  The weather was amazing on Sunday so it turned out to be the best day to go.

The photo above is of the brand new Business School building which was the highlight for me and something I had wanted to photograph for quite a while.  I realise there is no history or heritage attached to this building but it was certainly magnificent and by far one of the most stunning pieces of architecture I have ever been able to photograph.  It also cemented in my mind what my favourite thing to photograph is: Architecture, which of course explains why the one thing I have more photos of than any other is the Sky Tower, I just can’t resist photographing it.

I’m so happy I have at last established what my “thing” is.

Happy Easter everybody.

As you can see, I’ve put a hot cross bun in my oven for a breakfast treat.  This is the first time I’ve done that before, so I’m sure you can imagine my suprise when I turned the packet over looking for instructions and there were none.  I had no idea how to cook the thing so I had to phone a friend for advice.  My friend tried very hard not to laugh and gave wonderful instructions, my hot cross bun was delicious.

I’m going to a friend’s house for Easter Eggs, dinner and a DVD tonight, then tomorrow; weather permitting I’m going to ride a bike around the new bird sanctuary near the Mangere Bridge – that area used to be the sewerage treatment plant which was recently redeveloped.

What a beautiful sunrise we had the other morning, simply stunning, this was followed by a beautiful day, clear, crisp and fresh.  With no clouds to hold in the warmth it was really cold in the evening and I started thinking about turning on the heater – but it feels like it was only a couple of weeks ago that I had the air con on cooling things down.  So I resisted the urge to turn on a heater and put warmer clothes on instead.

A really lovely thing happened on the way home the other night… our bus driver stopped the bus in rush hour traffic – got out of the bus, walked about 10 meters up the road amongst traffic, bent over and picked something up.  When he got back on the bus I saw it was a mobile phone.  He dusted it off and put it with the money.  Now most people would have either ignored the phone on the busy road or tried to run it over, but not our wonderful “Birkenhead Bus” drivers, they are different.  This morning’s bus driver was a lady in her 50s and she was so friendly, she actually said thank you and goodbye to every single passenger as they got on and off the bus.  When a big bunch of us all got off at the same stop she called out: “thank you guys”.

Today while browsing around my local $2.00 shop at lunch time I found a strip of button type batteries for $2.00, this shouldn’t be such a big shock as it is a $2 shop, but the strip contained 10 batteries and normally I pay more than $2 for just one of those batteries.  As soon as I got home I ripped into my 10 pack and used 6 of them in a couple of those way cool light up glasses which haven’t lit up for more than three years coz I never got round to splashing out enough money to buy the batteries to make them light up again.  I’m happy to report that just like the full price batteries – they work.

So why is today’s blog called Thank You India???  This morning I heard the song Thank U by Alanis Morissette and it’s been stuck in my head all day and I love the lyrics… Thank you India, thank you terror, thank you disillusionment, thank you frailty, thank you consequence, thank you, thank you silence.

My tribute to St Patrick’s Day involved food rather than alcohol this year.

I bought a yummy Irish green cupcake from the coffee shop.  When I asked the guy what flavour it was he said: “ummm dunno… Riverdance maybe.   Riverdance doesn’t sound very delicious to me, it made me think of sweating Irish dancers.

Actually it was delicious… it was lemon flavour!

In March I’m off to Hawkes Bay for a Vineyard Tour on a bike with some friends.  As I hadn’t ridden a bike for many years we thought it might be a good idea to have a practice first.  So today we got up early and headed off to Hobsonville for a leisurely practice.

It was so cool.  I loved it, felt just like a kid again whizzing all over the place just like I did when I was 12.  We enjoyed it so much we’re going to do it again next weekend.

Initially when we booked the wine tour thingy I was looking forward to getting away for a weekend, doing a bit of photography, doing something really different and trying all sorts of wines.  The bike riding part simply meant I didn’t have to worry about drinking and driving but would probably be a bit of fun (not too sure).  However after this morning I’m really looking forward to the bike riding part the most!

Here I am at the Travel Show. I rushed out to meet a friend at the travel show this morning and thought I would get coffee and something for breakfast.

However… The crowds of people put a stop to that. So in desperation I had to get donuts & a fizzy drink FOR BREAKFAST.

So here I sit eating crap for breakfast and suddenly remembering just how much I hate these type of shows. I just don’t enjoy all the pushing and shoving.

Congratulations Michelle, you are the winner with a total score of 19 out of a possible 24 points.  Second place goes to Fluffy, followed very closely by Navchick.

Michelle you are amazing, I’m not sure how you managed to answer some of those questions and your Google skills are very impressive.

Thank you to everyone who joined in and played along, I had loads of fun doing it and it gave me an excuse to get out and take photos while trying to keep up my blog (which was hard at times).

Sorry the results have taken so long, there are not enough hours in the day when you have eaten too much and simply must exercise when you get home from work.  Plus recently I’ve had a bit of extra part time work which has been very cool but it’s kept me very busy.

So Michelle what have you won?  See the picture below, it’s a magnetic wood/perspex block photo frame (my favourite type) plus your choice of printed photo to go in the frame, so let me know which photo you like the most.  It can be any of the pics in my Flickr account, would you like me to post it to you or would you prefer to collect it in person at Christmas time?

Here is the complete set of questions and answers:

1. What is the name of this church and what street is it on? St Patricks, Wyndham St

2. Which famous car parking building can you see through the windows of the bus in the photo? Farmers Car Park

3. What is the name of the flowering plant in this photo? Impatiens (Busy Lizzie)

4. What two streets is this building on the corner of? cnr Wolfe and Federal

5. What is the name of the mountain I climbed, mentioned in the previous paragraph? Mt Hobson

6. Where was I standing when I took this photo? Mt Hobson

7. How much weight did I lose in the biggest loser competition and did I win? 13 kilos & No I didn’t win

8. This is the rear entrance to a very well known building in Auckland City. What building is it? Event cinemas/Sky City/Imax complex

9. What is the old official name of the building this is the roof of, what is this building currently known as and have I ever worked here? Auckland Customhouse, DFS Galleria & No

10. What is the name of the hotel that used to be here? The Royal International Hotel

11. What is the name of the office tower? The ANZ Centre (Coopers & Lybrand Tower, Robert Jones Tower)

12. What was the name of this building when it first opened? The Fay Richwhite Building

13. What is the name of the building seen between the Twin Towers in my photo? The Woolworths Building

14. What building does this magnificent ceiling belong to? The Britomart

15. What was the name of this hotel back in the 80s? The Regent

16. What programme was I trying to record? Wipeout

17. What street was I standing on when I took this photo? Queen Street

18. While having a drink here in 1992 I discovered I needed something. In a small way that discovery was life changing. What was it? Glasses

19. What building is this? Sky City

20.  What is the name of the company I first worked for? ANZ Bank.

While out for a walk in Blockhouse Bay we saw all these cute wee fluffy ducklings and their Mum.

Today I did something I’ve wanted to do since I was a wee boy… walk over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It was awesome, it was actually a lot easier than I imagined & I learnt lots of really interesting facts. For example; the Nippon Clippon bits are not actually attached to the centre lanes. And they move up and down constantly an amazing amount.

The view was stunning and the weather was perfect. We were not allowed to take our cameras in case we dropped them onto the cars below & caused an accident. Instead the guide took photos of us & we could buy them at the end of the tour. So this is a photo of a photo, I will upload the real photos once they have added them to their website (sometime tonight apparently).