Long weekend in Whanganui

This weekend has been "Wellington Anniversary Weekend" and the extra day off work has been very welcome. I took the opportunity to pop up to Whanganui overnight last night to visit my young-looking parents [Hi Mum!].

Whanganui was having a "Vintage Weekend" comprising mainly of old cars and a very old tractor. At the risk of never being allowed back in town, I think that the cars are about the same age as the average resident :-)

The other event worthy of note was the downhill go-kart racing. It looked like a lot of fun - would have been nice to be in the event :-)

Photos are of some of the vintage cars and then the go-karts. My favourite kart would have to be the last one - making a good attempt at camoflaging itself against the trees... it helped that it lost a wheel on the way down also... very funny!

Red sky at night...

The last few days have been fairly windy in Wellington. No surprise there, and today was no exception.

Thankfully my house is sheltered from the prevalent northerly winds, and often it just results in interesting days watching the clouds go by.

Today's photo was taken at about 9pm this evening. Red sky and some low clouds scooting past. I should have taken some photos earlier today where there were a lot of lenticular clouds hanging around at higher altitudes. Anyway, here is the outlook from my home looking south-west.

My very own "Unexpected Journey". Hobbits not included.

I arrived home this evening to find some mail in the letter box. Opening it up, I found that it was a letter from the BNZ with my new "netguard" card [which is used as a second factor of authentication when accessing their internet banking].

Unexpected, and surprising. Why? You'll see why soon.

I immediately phoned BNZ to discuss this development, and while on hold, I then tried logging into BNZ's internet banking site. It accepted my access code, my password, and prompted me to use the new "netguard" card, which I did and it was accepted.

The following page then appeared:

BNZ Internet banking error - click for a larger version

In short, it wouldn't let me in!

It's a pity, but not altogether surprising, since I have not been a BNZ customer for about 12 months now! It appears that when I closed my accounts, my internet banking was not shut off properly. Still, it didn't actually let me in, so that is good.

Funny thing is that they still had to verify my identity before properly closing it off. banking access code [yes, I could remember it!], name, address, date of birth, phone number, email address [and not my "normal" one] and drivers licence number [also remembered], so that went smoothly.

It appears to be all shut down now. Darn. I was hoping that I had won some money and could retire young :-) Yeah right!

Christmas and the "Hunting of the Native Waikato Zebra"!

I'm just back from a trip up to Cambridge to celebrate Christmas with relatives. As expected, this ended up being 4 days of almost constant laughs, plenty to eat, not too much to drink and more laughs!

Christmas lunch was to rather large affair, with more relatives and others around a large table, then more laughs [you get the idea!]. Add in to that a trip to Auckland and even more laughs [and a few lies from what I remember!]... a great time was had by all.

A special treat though was a visit to Maungakawa, aka Sanatorium Hill, on the outskirts of Cambridge. In ages past this was a place for the treatment of tuberculosis . Nowadays, all but one of of the buildings are gone, but it makes for a nice place to visit and offers great views over a fair part of the Waikato region. Included in this special treat was a safari to try and track and follow the mysterious, and not very well known, native Waikato Zebra.

See if you can spot the Waikato Zebra in some of the photos which follow. Top to bottom are photos of Maungakawa, views and the results of the safari. Last is a photo of my parents and aunt and uncle. Enjoy!

Legal movie download options for New Zealand

I have been looking for LEGAL movie download options for New Zealand, for use on an Android tablet. I thought I would share the results of my search. I thought this would be the shortest blog post I ever made.

I was right. This is what I found

.....

Does anyone know of an option I've missed?

The Simpsons!

A very very funny version of The Simpsons opening credits!

Final day in London and back home

After a very enjoyable 3 weeks, it came time to return home. Darn. I spent a lazy morning and early afternoon doing very little. We [sister, bro-in-law and niece] went out for a late lunch at a local pub followed by a walk to get an icecream... yummmm, icecream! Mine included organic honey - yum, yum!

After this, a brisk walk "home" to be picked up for my ride to Heathrow.

I spent rather more time than planned at Heathrow. Firstly, the traffic was very light and so the driver set a world record for the quickest ride to Heathrow [without breaking any speed limits]. Next, from joining the check in queue to clearing immigration and security [including an explosives check on my bag!] was just 10 minutes! Lastly, the flight was delayed by 40 minutes.

Oh well, at least it was a relaxing wait, and a good comfy flight home [which it always seems to be on Air NZ].

Photos are:

Me, Ferne, Rochelle and Sam
Ferne being her usual smiley self
Departure board at Heathrow

Enjoy!

Second-last day in London

I've been back in NZ a week and I'm now back at work, but I'm slowly catching up on the posts!

My second-last day in London was spent wandering around central London. I started off with a visit to the London Aquarium. I seem to end up here each time I visit London, so it was good to see that it had changed a bit since last time. It also looks like they are still doing a bit work work on the place, so it could be worth another visit sometime.

After that, I wandered over to the Tower Bridge and up through the museum there. The view up and down the Thames is probably worth the visit even without the rest of the displays, videos, and access to the original hydraulic equipment to raise and lower the deck.

Looking out from the bridge then gave me the idea of visiting the HMS Belfast, a World War II warship which is now managed by the Imperial War Museum and moored permanently in the Thames. All over the warship are displays showing life on board [right down to fake peas and steaks being cooked up]. There's also a very interesting 5 minute video which is played in the main rear gun turret.

Anyhow, here are the pictures. The big tall building still under construction is The Shard is/ will be the tallest building in Europe [for how long, I wonder?], and the final picture is the Farringdon tube station entrance where I met up with my sister for an evening out at a [slightly funny] live comedy show with her and a cousin.

Belfast hop-on-hop-off bus tour and the other reason why Belfast is famous...

Something I should have done on the first day rather than the 2 day was the Hop-on-hop-off bus tour of parts of Belfast.

Obviously, one of the big "features" of this was the commentary about "The Troubles". Even though Belfast appears very safe and friendly [the shuttle bus driver mentioned that tourists are always very welcome... well, maybe not the British according to one of them :-)], if you look around a bit, it's hard to miss the fact that there is still a bit of tension about. Hardly surprising considering the history I suppose.

A few bits and pieces I picked up on:

- The "Peace Walls" still exist, and in many places, are still locked up at night to stop sectarian violence!
- The latest "Peace Wall" was built in 2004 - many years after the Good Friday Peace Accord was signed...
- Some of the graffiti and murals is very recent [for example, Queen's Diamond Jubilee stuff]
- The murals looked well enough preserved... probably a brave or stupid person who would dare to scrub them off, I suppose.

Apart from all that, it felt like a very happy and safe place, and well worth a visit!

Anyway, here are some photos from the bus tour. The first one is of the big harbour cranes [called "Samson" and "Goliath"!]. The second is of the Parliamentary building, and the third of the Guard House on the grounds of Parliament [incidentally, it's staffed by G4S... I wonder how long for after the Olympics debacle :-(].

The rest of the photos are of the graffiti and murals/ shrines from the tour. A wee bit sobering, and makes me grateful that I live in a relatively peaceful country [accepting that we have our own problems of course...].