Swallows over Rainbow Lake

As I said below, I caught the swallows flying over the lake on Video:





I have to say that I am amazed at the slope this lake is on. It's a wonder that all the water doesn't run out!

We went away

Camille and I went away for a few days for a much needed break from our usual life. We did a bit of work while away - not too much, all very casual. We ate extremely well, drank some good wines, and generally relaxed doing nothing and seeing no-one.

Below are a few panoramic photos. Click on them to see the full size:

1) the view from our apartment in Paihia around 7:00am. The morning this was taken was unusual as it wasn't raining.

2) Rainbow falls near Kerikeri. The lovely Camille is visible in the right hand side taking her own photo. I know the critics out there will say the falls should have been framed better between the trees but I wasn't willing to go wading in order to do that.

3) The view from the Sky Grand Hotel in Auckland on the opposite side to where our room was. This was on the way home. If you look at the post titled Skycity Grand Hotel below you will see the view we had on the way to Paihia. On the way back we were much higher up but still had a crappy view. Mind you, we weren't there to stare out of the window admiring views, particularly as it was dark most of the time we were there. We also didn't get to eat at 'Dine' as we were just too tired. Couldn't be bothered leaving the room so we ate in again. Another excellent meal though.

4) The lake below Rainbow Mountain near Rotorua. This was interesting as there were hundreds of swallows flying around either dipping into the water or catching insects just above the surface. I caught this on video so I'll post it on youtube at some stage.

5) Not a panorama. This is one of the originals that makes up the panorama immediately above.

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Damn!

We had planned to eat at the Salt Brasserie while here in Paihia. It has very good revues in Dineout. We wandered past it today and there was a sign in the window announcing that they are closed until sometime in July.

Damn, damn, damn!

Knives

Before leaving Auckland we splashed out on some new kitchen knives. We like knives and find them good for paring, carving, dicing, slicing, cutting, stabbing, slitting, dissecting.... Sorry - getting a little carried away there.

Good knives are essential. Normally when we travel we carry a set of knives with us along with our favourite pan - a 12" calphalon hard anodized aluminium pan - but this time we left the knives behind along with the pepper grinder. This was an excellent excuse to buy new ones and so off to The House of Knives in Mt Eden we went.

There, after a little discussion with the very helpful staff, we selected three knives, a steel, a knife fold and a small pepper grinder. The knives were all Wusthoff Solingen - 1 23cm cook's knive, a 16cm utility knife and a 23cm carving knife. I'd have liked to get more but these pretty much cleaned us out.

I'll have to hide them when we get home so that only we get to use them.

Bitch about Auckland

We are driving around Auckland trying to find our way out of here using Google Maps. Google Maps is good. Everything is nice and clear, well marked etc. It's a great pity that Auckland isn't the same. This has to be the most poorly signposted city I have been in.

I haven't been anywhere else where you can pull up to a reasonably large intersection and have absolutely no idea of what the streets you are facing are named as there are very few street name signs.

Skycity Grand Hotel

It's about 6:00am on Wednesday morning and I am tucked up in bed in the Skycity Grand Hotel in Auckland. Camille is here too and is still asleep. We are complete opposites. I wake early no matter where I am whereas she will sleep for as long as she can. We are on our way to the Bay of Islands where Camille is going to be working. I'll be working as well but in a slightly more relaxed mode.

The trip up was fairly uneventful though the weather was crap in places and there were a fair few logging trucks on the road. They did tend to make it difficult to see the road due to the amount of spray they caused. This does cause problems when they are travelling slowly and you simply cannot see to get past them. There is no way you can see the road ahead.

Personally I think that logging firms should find a way that this spray can be reduced.

So... the Skycity Grand Hotel, not to be confused with the Skycity Hotel. The Grand is a 5 star hotel whereas the other is a 4 star hotel. What do you get for the extra star? A bigger, more comfortable room for one (judging by photos on the websites). A better selection of the minibar and other facilities - good, full sized bottles of wine, a wider variety of beers and other beverages, quality snacks, small personal touches like providing lubricated condoms for those special moments. In these ways it reminds me of the Bolton in Wellington. We haven't availed ourselves of any of these. The wine I would like to drink is $60.00 from the minibar whereas I can buy it from one of two wine stockists within two minutes walk for a somewhat lesser price.

The in room dining service certainly is of excellent quality. We chose to dine in last night after our journey and I am impressed by the quality of the food.

The entire menu was tempting and I really wanted to go for the 450gm angus beef fillet steak but it was a bit too much. In the end I plumped for Horopito roasted lamb loin on whipped kumera accompanied by roasted root vegetables and sauteed pika pika (a native NZ fern).

Best hotel in room dining I have experienced.

We will be staying here again on our way back from Paihia and will be dining in Peter Gordon's 'Dine' which is one of the restaurants in the hotel. We are both looking forward to this.

View from the room? Not that impressive!

Dinner

Last night's dinner was a very simple but excellent meal. I took the thick end of a piece of whole fillet and marinated it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Salt was sprinkled over it and lots of black pepper was ground on. I then cut some potatoes into bite sized pieces and thoroughly washing the starch out of them and leaving them to soak while the oven heated to 230 celcius.

Once the oven was up to heat the potatos were tossed in olive oil and put into roast. I then heated a heavy cast iron pan up and put some oil in. The oil was just off the smoke point. The fillet was seared on every side and then put into roast for about 15-20 minutes - just over rare. The pan was cooled and then deglazed with the remains of Squawking Magpie Syrah and the remains of the marinade.

Once the fillet was done it was removed and left to rest for 10 minutes. During this time I cut up onion, red and green peppers and some very clean button mushrooms. These were then tossed in olive oil on a high heat. In between tossings, I sliced the meat and finished the sauce with a bit of cream. The tossed vegetables were arranged on a bed of rocket. A few slices of beef with the sauce and a few potatoes completed the place.

I do enjoy a good piece of beef.

More Wellington

Camille and I did another wander around today spending money, mainly on books today. I'm not sure what Camille got but I got

1. 3 William Gibson (science fiction) books that I have wanted for years but never bothered to buy
   
   
2. "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves. I enjoy Graves' books and the Claudius books in particular. I was looking for Claudius The God as well but no bookshop I entered had a copy. I have another shop to check so I may yet get it.
   
   
3. "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene

We also met Spike for a couple of beers and a late lunch at the Herd Brasserie in oriental Bay. Spike had an excellent blue cheese and mushroom linguine while Camille and I both opted for the lamb salad with rocket, red onions and feta. Biiiigggg disapointment! While the lamb was good and rare, there was fuck all of it and huge amounts of rocket. Camille had bugger all red onion and NO feta at all. Not worth the price. I could produce something similar for two people for about $5.00 (seriously!). It cost us $40.00. Don't eat that dish if you choose to eat there.

In fact, food wise today was a bit sad really as we started out doing a brunch at some cafe. Camille got a flat white which was good and I had an espresso which was the most bitter espresso I have ever had. Camille ordered french toast and bacon which was ok. I ordered a single piece of fish in tempura batter. Bad, bad bad! Over cooked, dry and tough. Fish should never be cooked so much that it can get stuck between your teeth but the first mouthful got jammed in between them. Awful. Camille had a second coffee and that came out bitter as well.

Hotels

Everytime Camille and I stay in a hotel, something happens. This time we are having problems with our key cards.

In this hotel you have to flash your key card over a reader in the lift before the lift will work. Yesterday I did this and the lift worked. However, when I tried the key card on the door of our room it didn't work. So in the space of about 30 seconds it had expired. Down to the reception I went to get it reprogrammed.

Later that day Camille got in the lift and flashed her card and nothing happened. It was then that she discovered that you can't even open the lift door without an operational key card. Yes, she was stuck in the lift. Appallingly, when she used the emergency talk button NOBODY ANSWERED! She rang me on her mobile and I raced out to the lift to try and call it up to free her. Fortunately someone else had done pretty much the same thing and had released her but she had been in there for at least five minutes by that time. She made a trip to reception to get the card reprogrammed.

We went out today. On coming back to the hotel we got in the lift and I tried my card - not working AGAIN! Fortunately Camille's was working but back to reception I went.

Be warned - if you are staying at the James Cook Grand Chancellor in Wellington, New Zealand you need to be prepared to be stuck in the lift as their key cards seem to be bloody unreliable and they don't seem to like answering the emergency service.

I'll just repeat that hotel name to ensure it gets found by google - James Cook Grand Chancellor, Wellington, New Zealand

Mmmm... Beef!

A week ago Camille and I headed to Levin for Camille's brother's 50th birthday. I have half a beef walking around in the brother's back paddock so while there I took the opportunity to check out my side of beef and and it looks like it was checking me out in return. It's looking pretty good to my uneducated eye. Can't wait for slaughter day!

Wellington

In Wellington for the weekend. Camille is working and is in a meeting until at least 5:00pm. I've been wasting my time wandering the streets spending up large. New trousers, boots, jersey, car seat covers.

Car seat covers??

No, I didn't actually buy those. They came with the boots which is a kind of odd thing to give away with a pair of boots, particularly boots bought at Kirkcaldie and Staines.

I also bought a couple of green teas as the Jimmy Cook (ok - James Cook Grand Chancellor) hotel doesn't have green tea as one of its options in the room or with breakfast. How slack is that? The teas I bought were Gunpowder tea, so named because the leaves are rolled up very tightly and resemble coarse gunpowder grains. The other tea I bought because I liked the name which is.....

Iron Goddess of Mercy

Now that's a real tea! It isn't actually a green tea though. It's an oolong tea. Sort of half and half.

I also bought three books from Borders. They are all cheaply published Penguin books and they are:

1. The Classical World - Robin Lane Fox
2. What is History - E. H. Carr
3. The consolations of Philosophy - Alain De Botton
   

I'm really pleased that those Penguin books are being published again. When I was a child we had one room in the house that was lined with Penguin books. They bring back memories. They also bring back value for money as they cost $12.99 each. This is so much more attractive than buying a single paperback for near $40.00. They just aren't worth that and I am no longer prepared to pay it - except for the occasional impulse buy.

Over and out!

Google map swine flu tracker

Here is a google map that tracks outbreaks of the mexican Swine Flu

Oxford Writing Set

The nice folk at Dineout have just sent me an Oxford Writing Set courtesy of Mr Lu, one of their reviewers. I won it in a draw that was held as a competition for Mr Lu's first column, Around The Table, for Dineout.

Thanks Dineout and Mr Lu!

Hogarth Exhibition Update

An anonymous commenter left the following about my post on the Hogarth Exhibition:

Howdy, I happened along your blog while searching for information on a hogarth print entitled: Credulity, superstition, and fanaticism. A medley.

I saw your picture of the rabbits and the question of what they were about, well as it turns out Mary Toft gained alot of notariety for giving birth to bunnies in 1726, here's the link to the wiki page, and if you already found this out, then have a day!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Tofts

How tedious

Yet another abusive and semi-literate comment on my youtube channel from some outraged Huntly dweller frothing at the mouth over my "Huntly: The ugliest town in New Zealand video". It amazes me how a bit of light hearted fun can rile some people. (I deleted the comment).

Dave's Bus

My friend, Dave, has bought a double decker bus which he plans to use for mobile functions. The bus is a 1948 model, one of very few of its particular type left in the world. It comes with a trailer that has a chiller built in and which opens up to a pull out barbecue. Camile and I went out to Dave's the other day and had a quick ride on the bus and had dinner and drinks in the bus. There are a few videos on my youtube page.

A short trip

My brother in law had hired out his PA system and needed to go and pick it it up. The PA was sitting in a house about an hour's drive south of here. He asked if I wanted to come for the drive. Being a farrier, he also was going to clean up a horses feet while in the area.

On the way we stopped in Dannevirke to refuel. While BIL was dealing with filling the van I stood next to the footpath observing people and traffic. There was an old guy well into his seventies wandering down the footpath towards me. He stopped and watched as an old Chevy drove past and then resumed his walk.

"Gidday", I said as he got near me.

He stopped directly in front of me and said, "Did you see that Chevy that drove past? Did you see that Chevy?"

"Yes, I did", I replied.

"I got taught how to drive in exactly that model Chevy! I learned how to drive in one of those. My brother taught me. He taught me to drive at 50 miles an hour because he said you'll be going that fast any way once you have your licence. 50 miles an hour - that was the speed limit back in those days. Everything was in miles per hour.

"I bought a Chevy like that. It was a two door Chevy just like that one that went past before. I liked my Chevy. It was a good car to drive. I knew a bloke who had the four door model of that Chevy. I was driving down the road one day and he was driving the other way and I thought he's going to hit me! So I pulled right over to the side of the road and stopped and you know, the bugger came right over to my side of the road and he hit me! He bloody hit me! I couldn't believe it. Any way he had a rifle in the back seat of his car. It was sitting on the back seat and when he hit me it leaped off the back of the seat and hit him in the back of the head and it hit his wife in the back of the head. When it hit his wife in the back of the head she went forward and broke her nose on the dashboard!".

At that point I heard BIL start the van and had to try and gracefully extract myself from the one sided conversation. I left him on the footpath mumbling to himself. Obviously the Chevy had opened a window into his past.

The rest of the trip was good. I got to try on a new hat. I watched BIL do the job on the horse's hooves and give a bit of instruction on care to its owners. On the way back we stopped and watched a top dressing plane doing its bit. We also stopped at the Beyond the Bridge cafe in Balance, a farming area on the edge of the Manawatu Gorge. The BIL used to live in a horse drawn wagon on the premises quite a few years ago. The owners of the cafe were in the process of making a clay pizza oven outside the cafe. They were making the clay workable by trampling it with water in an old bath.

Atheists taking over New Zealand!

According to an article I have just read in the New Zealand Herald 40% of New Zealanders profess to having no religious beliefs. This is good news! Amazing what a bit of education and freedom to think does to a society.

Interestingly while 30% described themselves as religious, 53% of people said they believed in god - though half of them had doubts. Aren't they usually known as agnostics?

Oddly 60% of people in the survey said they would like to see religious education in primary schools with a preference for studying all faiths - an impossibility I would have thought given the preponderance of beliefs and lack of school time. Perhaps, in their woolly mind way of thinking, they just mean the major ones. How would you choose?

"I'll take a bit of Christianity (split it between, ohhh.. catholics, protestants and happy clappies), an almost equal portion of Islam, a dash of Jewishness, a sprinkle of Shinto, Confuciousness, Buddhism..." etc. etc.

Original article is here.

A t-shirt slogan

A friend's t-shirt which he picked up somewhere down south. I like it.

A birthday

Camille's eldest son turned 21 last week and had the obligatory party thrown for him. It was surprise party organised by Camille with the help of the eldest's girlfriend and cousin who kept him carefully in the dark and removed him from the premises for the day while the last preparations were made.

To the right is the lovely Camille. Not only was it a surprise party, she also decided that as her eldest had been terrified of clowns as a child that everyone should dress up as a clown so we could see if they still affected him.

When he arrived home he did say that his heart was racing and that he wasn't sure if it was because of the surprise or because of all the clowns so I guess they still have an effect.

It was a quite spread out party. A lot of it was centred around our circular driveway. Most people hung out here. The garage was cleaned up and had a professional sound system, all the fancy lighting etc and music. Inside the house was a DVD blasting out some heavier music on the big screen. Down the back of the property we had a large fire going. It's fairly traditional for the fire to happen. It's starting to chill down at night at this time of year and its very pleasant to be able to stand/sit around a huge fire while drinking.

To the right is a photo of the fire taken from the second floor of the house. It's right at the back of the property behind the pool area which may give you an indication of it's size.

I have to say that I enjoyed this part of the party the best. It's quite convivial sitting on a couple of logs around a fire at night. I slunk off to bed reasonably early but I believe the stayers were still there at 4:00am.

Around 8:00am a few of us restoked it and got some embers going and cooked potatoes in it for breakfast. It's one of the nicer ways to have potatoes. Pierced, wrapped in tinfoil and completely covered in hot embers (no flaming bits!) for about an hour. They come out with lovely crisp skin. Cut them in half and score the flesh and then place plenty of butter or sour cream (fuck the cholesterol!) on it and grind a bit of black pepper over. Absolutely lovely. We didn't bother to wash these potatoes so the skin wasn't edible. A pity as it really is good.

[edit]: I just noticed that behind Camille to her left you can just see the net camera I installed under the eaves. I set it to update every 5 seconds to the internet and to ftp the image to a storage area. Sometime in the next week I will create a timelapse of the event. Most of it is pretty dark so I'll speed those sections up.

[edit 2]: That would be Camille's right and our left!