I don’t really have a bucket list…I’ve been around a lot and done a lot of things and am pretty content with the things that I’ve done, places that I’ve been, etc so any such list I might have of things to do before I go is pretty simplistic…for this summer, my one ambitions is to landscape this area so that any rainfall runs parallel to and not towards the house. It will have to be dropped quite a bit on the bank side and the fence past the tank will have to be replaced as the ground level there will drop my about half a metre: probably a good time to convert it to post and rail….
2. What is the most useless item on your child’s back to school list?
Not something we have to worry about now and, as grandparents, we can encourage all sorts of inanity…
3. What is the one reality TV show that makes no sense to you?
There’s reality shows that make sense? The only ones that I watch, if they meet the definitions of ‘reality show’ are some of the more up market cooking shows like Masterchef…well, just Masterchef, really….
4. What is one movie you can watch over and over again? Why?
Oddly enough, the 2009 version of Star Trek….I hated when I first saw it but it’s really grown on me. This might be just because I know that it outrages all the pureborn Trekkies to the point of pain but more and more it is because I think it has a top cast, is an interesting take on an old but tired story, and pays more than lip service to character development…on nights when TV just sucks and I don’t want to think too hard about selecting a movie or I just want something familiar on as background while I work on something else. more and more, Star Trek 2009 is my pic…
Just for those too dumb to figure out what actually happens in the movie, this picture might help make it clear. Everything after The Original Series is gone now (and so, in logic, is First Contact). Is that a great loss? Mmmmm…possibly not…4000 seasons of Voyager, The New Generation and Deep Space Ninepretty much thrashed the franchise to death…MAKE IT STOP!!!! So JJ ABrams did….get over it…
One of the things we do together as mates is watched TV…Kirk really loves watching TV…he’s been a bit crook recently and so has been getting a bit more preferential treatment than usual. I’ve adjusted his diet and he seems to be a bit more perky in the last couple of days so hopefully, it’s just a passing bug and he will be up and about fully soon…
He is very attached to that bean bag which he actually stole off Deda. As soon as he is allowed inside he will race over to it and take possession of it…I may have to hide it as I am not sure that it is doing his back any favours. I’d much rather that he’d use the flat cushion you can see in some of the other shots…
This weekend we had a bit of a Professionalsmarathon but by the last DVD, Kirk was a bit over it…
…but he perked right up when 60 Minutes came on with an item about elephants poaching in Africa – Kirk loves nature programmes and anything else that has lots of real (as opposed to canned) animal sounds…
…after 60 Minutes, TV looked pretty sad so we put on a movie…it was my turn to pick so we watched Act of Valor – Kirk’s taste tends more towards Red Dog, Black Sheep, etc – Kirk was pretty into this…
…and got right into it when the dogs in the Mexican village – near the end of the movie – began to bark…
While we were watching The Professionals, we caught this bit of unintentional humour. The plot involved an article on the other page but we spotted this about Rolf Harris’ ambition “…to star in a sexy film…” Possibly a bit regrettable today in the light of the ongoing arrests of entertainment stars from that era for a range of offences with young girls…
When I participate in these challenges and prompts, as much as possible, I like to run with the first idea that comes into my head, although sometimes it might ricochet around for a wee while before anything coherent comes of it…
In Ohakune, there is an eclair shop that is only open in the winter season – yes, I know: I should have taken a photo of it when I was there – it sells the best eclairs and lamingtons for hundreds of kilometres in any direction. It also sells really cheap big bags of carrots (well, it IS ‘Kune) and parsnips.
I spent a couple of days in civilisation – Palmerston North, anyway – last week to catch up with what’s happening at Massey University (oh, OK, then…return overdue library books!) and Hawkeye UAV; acquire some Tamiya XF-4 Yellow Green paint for a couple of projects from Mr Models, and get a long overdue haircut…I took the slightly longer route home through Waiouru and ‘Kune so that I could stock up on some fresh vegetables from the Eclair Shop.
I get that they are actually white and orange but compared to some other aspects of my diet they are very green…so green, in fact, that I have been so busy juicing that I didn’t have any tea or coffee for the first three days I was back at home…I’m chewing through the carrots (literally) but I will have to freeze some of the parsnips for a later appointment with the steaming dish…
Once this shop closes, everything goes back to nuthouse supermarket prices…our attempts and homegrown parsnips and carrots haven’t been too successful so far although (legal) herbs, zucchini and squash thrive here…so, anyway, that’s my take on a theme of green …
This challenge offers some fun opportunities to play — not only with the subject of your photo, but with light, color, and contrast to evoke foreshadow. Perhaps foreshadow is an open bottle of red wine and two wine glasses. Maybe it’s a diamond ring in small velvet box. Maybe it’s a flower bud about to burst into bloom, or the first leaf that turns color on your oak tree. What does foreshadow mean to you?
In photography, the “golden hour” is the first and last hour of sunlight of the day. Photographers venture out on sunrise hikes or sunset treks to capture a magical shot, due to the quality of the light during that time of day…go out, take some time to study light, and see what you can come up with…
I was a late starter for this challenge: I am more of a night worker in that I often work late and then sleep in so, more often than not, I will miss the day’s first golden hour; as it is winter here, the day’s second golden hour is usually when I am really riding the muse and simply don’t notice when it gets dark, and/or I am dealing with dinner, dogs and stuff…
It was only when I saw Cynthia’s post ‘COFFEE IN MY GARDEN – AT DAWN‘ that I was reminded that I needed to pay a bit more attention for first and last lights… even then it took me two days to get it right so the first light shots are from Friday and the last light ones are from Saturday – fortunately the conditions were much the same both days so most people won’t notice….
Are you as comfortable in front of a camera as behind one? Being written about, as well as writing?
Just because, I usually tend to the the do-er than the do-ee when it comes to writing and taking pictures. I’m not sure because this might be because I have a strongly sense of history and the need to record more than those things that are not earth-shattering historic events (those are good too!). Maybe it’s juts because I like writing and taking pictures. I’m not really uncomfortable on the other side of things; it just doesn’t happen that often…
Photographers, artists, poets: show us DISCOMFORT.
Discomfort is when…
…when you are big enough and bad enough to jump up on the trailer but too wussy to jump down again…
…you realise that your new nephew’s happy gurgling means that he wants to bring something up – and it’s not a new subject for conversation…
…you realise that not only are you being watched but that you have been watched and it’s unlikely that you will ever see that bone again…
…you realise that you are the only one that wants to play balloon games…
Last weekend, Kereama Graham Hare Wirangitakina passed away at his home in Waiouru. Known to many as Graham Wi or just Wiina, Graham was a friend, colleague and mentor to many of us. He was laid to rest yesterday.
One of the many tributes to Wiina, said that this video montage was one of his favourites – as it will be for many who passed through the gates of Dieppe Barracks in the 1980s although it might be entitled The Usual Suspects
I’ve taken the liberty of including some of the tributes to Wiina to illustrate the man and the effect that he had on so many…
Hey brothers. We carried our bro into the Wharenui at the Waiouru Marae and he looked so at peace after his years of silent suffering. For those of yous that haven’t seen him for some time, he progressively got worse over the years. Spoke to his brother and mum, as sad as it is, it was a blessing in disguise and he is now at peace back with his whanau in the sunny far north. He will have a catch-up with his long lost bro Andy Warren in heavenly peace. ONWARDS brothers.
Kereama Graham Hare Wirangitakina, I have been thinking all week about how you have influenced my life, and finally I know what to say. Long before I became a father, you explained and showed me what fatherhood actually meant. Little did I know at the time, that conversation would shape my understanding of parenting. There were many other snippets of gold in my memories of you Cpl Wi (Cpl at the time), but to me, this was undoubtedly your greatest impact on my life. I will be forever indebted to the interest you took in helping mold who I am today.
I am sorry I cannot be there to say farewell, but I will certainly be charging a very full glass of Rum to you….many times. Take it easy Wi, thanks again and RIP.
Chur whanau just arrived back from Wi’s tangi and I can report that things went really well. Soldiers, whanau and friends came together…we sang, we laughed, we remembered, we haka’d, we had orders, we had confirmitory orders, we rehearsed, we got cheeky, we got angry, we took a spiritual journey to Te Reinga, we had the meanest weather, and we comforted one another.
Although it was a collective effort lead by capable men and women, a big mihi goes out to the bro Soli! Nei ra te mihi atu ki a koe te kaihautu o te waka nei. The spirit of Ngati Tumatauenga is well and truly alive…mai nga piki me nga heke we will always stand tall in the face of adversity. If I can sum it up in one word “SPEECHLESS”!!
E Winar, okioki i te atawhai o te Atua bro…till we meet again dear friend.
Te taimana whero Taimana ki runga Taimana ki raro Taimana i te kura takahi puni
Whakamua! ONWARD…
Wiina’s generation shaped the New Zealand Army for the better part of three decades, and through that interface, they were also a formative influence on large parts of New Zealand society at all levels. If one word could sum up this generation it would be ‘standards’ – a closer runner-up for those who know them, might also be ‘mischiefs’…
Many of ‘the usual suspects’…
I don’t remember when I first met Graham Wi, as I knew him, it would have been as a very junior soldier in 2/1 RNZIR in Burnham or 1 RNZIR in Singapore some time in the mid-80s. But my most memorable recollection of him is from 1 RNZIR after it relocated from Singapore to the Manawatu in 1989. I think it was 1993 or ’94, and responsibility for conducting infantry corps training (infantry specialist training after recruit training) had passed to Alpha Company, 1 RNZIR. To regenerate the battalion’s numbers a lot of infantry soldiers had been recruited but the recruit depot in Waiouru was unable to handle the numbers and issued an ultimatum to the effect of ‘…you want them trained, you come and train them…’ As a result, 1 RNZIR sent a platoon commander, platoon sergeant, and some corporals to Waiouru to train a platoon’s worth of infantry recruits. Graham Wi was the that platoon sergeant.
When these young soldiers passed out of their recruit training and arrived in Linton, we were all struck by their professionalism, enthusiasm and standards – read between the lines, and you might gather that not all the products of the recruit depot at this time were as impressive. Then we started to to hear whispers from Waiouru that the 1 RNZIR training team that we had sent there might not have played by the PC rules and perhaps some of the recruits had been mistreated i.e. that their professionalism, enthusiasm and standards might be more due to fear than the infantry ethos and culture.
I asked Graham about it directly. His response was a disdainful glance north (towards Waiouru) “…Nah. All we did was introduce these young men to the concept of standards and the principle that those standards weren’t coming down to meet them…we set the bar and they all came up to it…it IS that simple…” In the months we worked with those young soldiers, that message came through again and again…they were there because they wanted to be there…they sought challenges for the satisfaction of overcoming them…
Kereama Graham Hare Wirangitakina’s generation taught an army to do the job right (regardless of your personal opinion on whether it needed to be be done or not), to be an example to yourself and those around, to fault-check and get the detail right, to push on that little bit further, over just one more false crest…
I normally don’t have time for the Daily Prompt but the rain in the last week or so, especially after the super-long and dry summer, has been phenomenal…
We normally get quite high flow down the driveway which splits as it approaches the house and diverts off down the hill on either side…this morning I had a look out the back of the house when I feed the dogs and noticed that water was starting to flow up to the back of the house. I grabbed the spade and scraped out some encouragement for the water to go elsewhere…
Tonight, I am rather glad that I did as this would be flowing under the house otherwise – sorry, already got internal running water!
This is the water flowing the other way away from the house this evening, around the front of the spa and eventually into the pond next door – until *cunning plan* we build our own pond…
Meanwhile, on the mainland…this is the northern approach to Maheno, just south of Oamaru where I was brought up. ‘Normally’ this part of the main road would be some metres above the scraggly little creek that runs under the road…not so scraggly now…
…the pub is behind the Clark’s Mill sign on the other side of the railway berm, fortunately only the basement is flooded but the beer is still cool…
…and slightly east on the coast, this is the Kakanui Bridge, normally well above the river level…apparently the bridge shakes every time a floating tree hits it…
And that yellow and blue is what wearing hearing on the roof at the moment…
The World According to Me... 