Fallen Down

Originally uploaded by beejayge

One of the many things I love so much about Wellington is its many beautiful old buildings.

The Weta Cave

Originally uploaded by beejayge

While in Wellington we caught the number 2 bus out to Miramar so we could visit the amazing Weta Cave. It’s a shop selling movie memorabilia, plus while there we watched a 25 minute documentary covering the history of Weta Workshop, the award winning special effects company that has worked on many huge movies such as Lord of the Rings, King Kong and Avatar.

Very cool.

Waitomo Caves

Originally uploaded by beejayge

Yesterday we went to the Waitomo Caves for the day. It was awesome, had a really great day. We did one of the combo tours which gave us entrance to two caves. I’m so glad we did that, coz that way we also got to go into the Ruakuri Cave, not just the famous Waitomo Cave with the glowworms.

I’ve been into the Waitomo cave before and seen the glowworms and it was cool to see it again now as an adult. However it was really boring and over protected compared to the awesome Ruakuri Cave.

The Ruakuri Cave was an intimate experience of just 7 people plus our guide was friendly, fun and interesting (the complete opposite of the Waitomo Caves guide, she was kinda patronising). You could photograph anything and everything and we got right up close to the glowworms. I would recommend this spectacular cave over the main Waitomo Cave any day. Check out my other Flickr photos of the two caves, especially to see the fantastic and amazing entrance to the Ruakuri Cave.

The photo above is of the main Waitomo Caves entrance, which looks amazing, but it’s a massive heat trap and made the whole area uncomfortable and for someone like me who hates the heat, it actually made it unbearable.

Last Xmas I bought a very cool car stereo with the money I got for Xmas and some Westfield vouchers I won.  The car stereo connects to my iPhone and I can control the songs and playlists from the car stereo and not have to worry about trying to operate my iPhone while driving just to change the song.

However… each time APPLE decide to upgrade the iPhone operating system (which happens about every two months) the car stereo no longer recognizes the iPhone and I get pissed off, this could be the cause of huge road rage.  Eventually Apple release a fix and all’s good again.  But I’m really tired of this behaviour from Apple, surely they can make sure the iPhones still work in accessory equipment before releasing a new version of the operating software.  It’s like how the Calendar dates in Outlook no longer sync correctly with the iPhone.

The latest grief Apple have caused me, is the Alarm problem.  I unfortunately slept in till 2:00 pm on new year’s day because the iPhone Alarm stopped working in 2011 and didn’t start working again till the 3rd.  1,000s of people all over the world were affected by this, people were late for work and other important appointments.  This problem also happened a couple of months ago when daylight savings came into effect.  THIS is NOT good enough.

People have complained for years about Microsoft, but I’ve never heard of these problems with Windows phones or computers, only iPhones.  Don’t get me completely wrong… I still LOVE my iPhone, it’s still the coolest thing I own and my most favourite toy in the whole world, but Apple have pissed me off.

Anyway I finally gave up today and bought a shiny new iPod Nano for the car and I’m very pleased to say… “it works!!!”

This morning I met up with a friend for coffee and a catch up at a little cafe in Birkenhead called the Tea Lady.  I have driven past there many times on my way to The Codfather for fish and chips and I’ve always wanted to go there for a cup of tea, but I don’t really like tea so I’ve never been.

So today I finally got to go there and it was not nice!  The actual venue was as quaint and cool as I thought it would be, but the food was awful and my friend and I both had coffee and that was awful too.  So we moved next door.

After our catch up I went down the road to an old favourite spot of mine… the Birkenhead warf were I took that popular photo of the Chelsea Sugar Refinery all those years ago.  Weather was not great and I only had my phone with me, so today’s pic is not flash.  I’m sure the sugar refinery has changed colours.  It used to be PINK, now it looks all orangey.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 116 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 196 posts. There were 98 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 5mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 29th with 63 views. The most popular post that day was Freak of Nature (Q3).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were beejayge.com, akirasabine.blogspot.com, flickr.com, mail.yahoo.com, and facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for beejayge, famous kiwi icons, lady bug flew into my beer, lyrics “i swallowed a fly”, and boobs on bikes.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Freak of Nature (Q3) August 2010
5 comments

Two Churches (Q6) August 2010
5 comments

Derelict (Q4) August 2010
3 comments

The Viaduct (Q5) August 2010
5 comments

Spring at Last (Q7) September 2010
5 comments

High Tea in Orbit

Originally uploaded by beejayge

Happy New Year everybody.

Yesterday I had “High Tea” in Orbit (the revolving restaurant up the Sky Tower). What a wonderful experience. The food is awesome, the tea is lovely and the view… incredible. If you want to really enjoy a Sky Tower experience then this is well worth doing, you get a very fine dining experience, treated like special people AND there are no screaming pushing children or crowds.