marc.vic.max.elliot

Man, what a night!  Wellington’s been in the grip of a major depression, weatherwise. for the last couple of days with strong, winds, rain, sleet and snow.  Last night it really struck with avengeance and we had hurricane strength southerly winds of 178kph (110mph!)

Our bedroom is on the southern side of the house and was getting the full force of the wind coming straight up the valley.  I honestly thought we might lose the roof (and still might as the weather hasn’t lessened up at all) and I ended up sleeping downstairs on the northern side of the house as the noise was just too much.

There are no trains running. One of the state highways out of the city is closed and the other is borderline because it has the sea breaking right over it. The airport is shut because of the weather and the fact that part of the terminal has lost it’s roof and damaged a plane – the list goes on.

Great day coming up!

Three shots from my first roll of film put through my Holga It was interesting having no control over shutter speed and only minor control over aperture (sunny (f11) and cloudy (f8)) I spent a bit of time waiting for the sun to cloud over as I was shooting ASA400 film which was a bit fast for the conditions.  The other two are in the extended entry…..

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I’m enjoying watching the Olympics.  I was amused to see the medal tables on the ESPN website versus the one on the BBC website.  All over the world (AFAIK) and as long as I can remember the medal table has been sorted first on the number of golds, then silvers and then bronze medals.  This, of course, means that a country that wins one gold medal will rank higher than one that’s won loads of silvers and bronzes (as it should IMO) Maybe ESPN wants the US to look as good as possible… here’s the medal tables from the two websites:

BBC – and the US is ranked 7th

ESPN and tada – the US moves into 3rd!

Max, Pooh and Frosty the Snowman

We are now a two car family!  Now that we are further away from public transport it made sense to get another car.

Subaru Legacy Wagon

Normally aspirated 1994cc boxer four

Auto

AWD

ABS

No updates over the weekend as I was too sick.  I now have a new party trick though.

Give me a needle, any old sewing needle will do – one that you can thread.

I’ll shit through the eye of it……. and about twenty times a day.

Too much information?

I promised a slightly longer update on my trip and here it is (with pictures!)

As you know the trip there wasn’t exactly the smooth experience one hopes for when travelling.  I was held up in Auckland for an extra 18.5 hours while the airline fixed the engine of my original flight. 

Auckland airport – bored

After an 11.5 hour flight this gave me only about three hours shopping in Hong Kong instead of the entire day I was expecting 🙁 Luckily I know HK fairly well after being there about 6 times so I managed to get two Holga cameras (US 12 each!) and the L’occitane stuff for Vic.

The flight to Shanghai was only 2.5 hours and uneventful andI found myself in China early on Sunday evening.  Not much to report that night and here’s the view from my room when I woke up the next morning.

The next three days were filled with technical sessions from 08:00 until 18:00 with a gala dinner on Monday night and a cocktail party on the Wednesday.  The only night we had free was Tuesday and we spent that at a market about 20 minutes drive away.  The market was the usual Asian affair with loads of fake watches, clothing and DVD’s. I spent hardly any money there as there wasn’t anything I really wanted to buy.

The highlight was winning a digital camcorder on Wed night!  I’ve already sold it so I won’t go into it too much except to say it was pretty cool and I now have some extra cash

The only other time free was Thursday morning before our flight so a colleague and I went for a wander around the city center.  Not much to report as central Shanghai now looks like a lot of other Asian cities.  It has lots of new buildings and most of those have gone up in the last 7 years or so.

One of the first ones to be built was the garishly pink Oriental Pearl tower. This 468 meters high (1,536 feet) tower is the world’s third tallest TV and radio tower and was the tallest building in the city until a couple of years ago.

The Oriental Pearl tower

The trip back was uneventful with another cancelled flight out of Shanghai which luckily didn’t effect the HK-Auckland leg.

All in all the trip was OK at best and it was great to be home.  I really missed Vic and Max and it was made worse by the fact that Max said Daddy properly for the first time to me but it was on the phone from Shanghai!

Just a very quick note to say that I’m home

After another cancelled flight I eventually got home at about 17:00 yesterday and then was out straight away for Jay’s leaving drinks (he and Larry are off to the UK :()

I’ll do a slightly longer update over the weekend.

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