You may recall from some of my earlier posts that I have been doing some work for the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). Along with looking super cool on your resume, this means I get to work with some very interesting people on some very interesting work. A part of this work was a so-called “team building†exercise I participated in last Friday. It started as a normal team briefing which required security clearance and everything (all very cloak & dagger).
Hard work & Recognition
I’ve been particularly busy lately with a number of projects on the boil. It means I don’t have as much time as I’d like to devote to friends, family or my blog. That said, it also means I am being quite productive. Maybe it has something to do with the free freshly-ground coffee we now have access to at work *jitters*. I guess it’s quite telling that it’s 1am at the moment and I am still thinking of things I’d like to do before going to sleep.Â
Gentrification
As an analyst I derive a great deal of enjoyment from analysing the things that happen around me in terms of models and generalisations. One phenomenon I see happening all around me at the moment has been given the name “Gentrificationâ€. It’s a controversial topic in some circles.
Urban sprawl describes the way a city grows, usually from the commercial centre (CBD) outwards and into the more rural areas. A teacher once explained to me using the term “urban creepâ€. A term they must have made up because I can find little information about it on the web.
Auckland Community Church
ACC, it sounds like some sort of city council, doesn’t it? Truth be told it’s a community of faith. An organisation of gay Christians dedicated to serving the needs of gay Christians in New Zealand, whatever those needs may be.
For me, the need was quite great back in 2005 or so. I was in a “questioning†phase in my life. It’s interesting that both gays and Christians use this term “questioning†to refer to a time in one’s life when you’re questioning the assumptions you’ve lived under so far. It’s a phase where you step outside your comfort zone and take a risk (some call it a leap of faith) in order to grow as a person.
Rest in Peace, Big Man
It was almost a month ago today, February 14th in fact, Valentine’s day. My father was up in Auckland for the day and I was treating him to a meal at a nice Italian restaurant. We sat there sipping our drinks, crammed in amongst all the star-struck couples exchanging meaningful glances over their glasses. Well, there’s no time like the present…
Rangitoto – Lunch on top of Auckland
My friend James is in the territorials (New Zealand’s volunteer army) and has been away in the Solomon Islands for a while, doing good peace keeping work there. Out of the blue on Friday, I got a text message from him asking me to go see a movie. The movie was a little lacklustre (10,000 BC, don’t watch it), but the company was excellent: I met up with both James and V (Viren), friends from uni that I haven’t seen in ages. After the movie, they invited me to go with them for a “tramp” up Rangitoto Island.
Boys’ night out
This actually happened a fortnight ago, but things have been rather busy lately so I have only been able to relate this story now.
To those of my readers with delicate sensibilities, I apologise in advance for the subject matter. To cut to the chase, this weekend was pretty gay. I always knew it was going to be quite busy for me, but it became unexpectedly so. Just so you know, there’s nothing that I would consider rude or sexual in this post, but you might see the word “gay” a lot. I have changed names to protect the mortally embarrassed.
Des the Bricklayer
Soon I am going to write a post about what I did in my weekend, along with some pretty photos, but another story has to be told first.
They are currently doing some renovating outside the place I work and as a consequence have recently poured some new cement down. I walked past it this afternoon and breathed in the heavy, earthy smell and started to remember.
They say that smells are indelibly linked to memory. It certainly seems that a certain smell can conjure up a whole raft of memories that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. For me, the smell of freshly poured cement rang a bell in my head, which pealed loudly with the name “Des the Bricklayer”.
Lightning McQueen Birthday Cake
A few weeks before the end of the year in 2007, my friend & colleague Richard turned to me and asked “would you be willing to take an order of a cake?” It had been so long since anyone had requested this that I didn’t know what he meant at first. He meant, of course, that he wanted me to make him a cake. Not just any cake, though, a birthday cake for his son Hari’s 4th birthday. Now, a child’s birthday cake is quite a special thing. In my mind, it’s far more difficult to make a cake for a child, because for children it has to be interesting. Adults will put up with any old thing.
The theme for the party would be the movie “cars” since that was Hari’s favourite movie. I bought a 3D cake tin in the shape of a car and set about making sponge cake prototypes. I endured flop after depressing flop. Every cake I tried went soggy in the middle. I realised it was because of the shape of the tin. After reading about it online, I finally swallowed my pride and bought some cake mix. As if by some dark cake voodoo, my cake mysteriously rose in the previously impossible-to-rise cake tin. I don’t know what they put in it, but it’s not natural, that’s for sure.
Garden in the sky
I’m tired of being unable to garden. All my childhood, I used to read magazines like “Home & Garden”, or take out books from the library on the proper way to prune citrus. I love gardening and I love plants. Sadly, though, for the last 6 or 7 years of my life I have been living in a flat/apartment well above ground level, where there is no possibility of having a garden of any sort. Well, this morning, I said “bollocks” to that. I have money, I have the time and the inclination and so I am jolly well going to have a garden!
I went to King’s Plant Barn and bought about $200 worth of supplies, then carried them up in about 6 trips from my car park to my apartment. I was so excited I started planting before I had half of the materials upstairs. The first thing I planted is a dwarf mandarin. It’s an ordinary mandarin tree grafted onto dwarf stock. This means it grows happily in a little 40cm pot to around 1 metre tall but produces normally-sized fruit. At its base are little rosemary and thyme plants. The idea being that they will give a nice interesting contrast in size, colour, texture and aroma from the plump round mandarins.