Weekly Photo Challenge: Wrong

Posted on 19 August 2012 by SJPONeill

Old Oamaru Hospital 1998

Some things are just wrong…the demise of the regional public health system…in 1998, I was home on leave…I may have been recovering from an injury as I remember doing an awful lot of walking in that period but not much, if any, running…

Oamaru is a small coastal town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand – it once was a thriving rural support centre with a railhead linking inland with main trunk rail services – we used to be able to look across the breakfast table and see the plume of smoke from the train servicing the Oamaru Stone quarry at Weston – and a small port supporting coastal shipping services – when such still existed. Both the rail and shipping are gone now: there are no passenger rail services south of Christchurch and the harbour is slowly silting up…

A view from the grounds of St Lukes, facing north-east, overlooking some of the restored Oamaru Stone Buildings

In the late 80s, Oamaru began to tidy itself up and started a programme to re-invent itself by revitalising the old Victorian port quarter – an industrial scunge hole as long as I have known it – as the new centre of town, It is now a thriving area of re-enactors, cafes and other businesses that, among other things hosts annual penny farthing races. As part of this programme, a lot of other areas in town were tidied up including restoring all the buildings in Oamaru Stone to the original blinding white of the raw stone, and developing a series of walking/running tracks all through the hills on which most of the town sits.

Oamaru’s main street, Thames Street, looking north.

In 1998, these tracks were all quite new to me and I spent the better part of a fortnight exploring them all in daily walks. One of then follows the line of Hospital Hill (so named for obvious reasons) and gives the walker the option of dropping off south towards the Gardens or heading north on a leg that runs along the hills that parallel the coast. The latter course takes one through the old hospital complex and it was here that I snapped the image above. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the re-organisation of the public health system a couple of decades ago, I still think that abandoning the detritus of this programme to rust outside the former hospital buildings was just wrong…

The walkway from the Gardens follows the Oamaru Creek east towards the sea; the building at top right is the northern edge of the restored Victorian quarter.

Leading from the Front

Posted on 13 August 2012 by SJPONeill

Major Wilson pictured here in 2010 speaking with then Defence Minister Wayne Mapp. (c) Dean Kozanic

The following statement has been issued by the New Zealand Defence Force on behalf of Major Craig Wilson, the officer commanding Kiwi Company at the time of the gun battle with insurgents in Bamyan, Afghanistan, on 4 August.
“I am writing this statement for release to the general public. Until I am well enough, these words will have to take the place of me speaking directly.

“All six of us wounded personnel are incredibly pleased at the way LCpls Pralli Durrer and Rory Malone were honoured by their Army units and the nation more generally over the weekend. We are thinking of Rory and Pralli and it gave us great comfort to see them appropriately honoured.
“Our first thoughts are with the families of Pralli and Rory and I look forward to meeting the families in person on my return to New Zealand. I appreciate the support being provided to the families of our fallen, which I know will be coming from so many compassionate people in the country we serve and love.
“We are very much thinking of the Durrer and Malone families and their friends, as well as the families of all the guys still out doing the job in Afghanistan. We really appreciate the support of the New Zealand public, and I am hopeful that that public support will be ongoing to the families of the men and women still delivering the mission in Afghanistan.
“With regard to the other injured men of Kiwi Company, I have been very proud of their conduct. We have tried to be as strong as possible. I am sure I speak for us all when I talk about the support we have received.
“This initially came from our mates on the ground, who in some cases risked their own lives to get us out of immediate danger and provided immediate first aid. Then from our medics – who have been consummate professionals all tour and stood up yet again.
“Finally, from our headquarters and support personnel who brought all the external support to bear that we needed; who made the best of what was an incredibly difficult situation; and, as always, made the troops on the ground feel supported.
“I would like to also publicly praise the coalition troops who responded in support of the situation – especially the MEDEVAC helicopter pilots and crews who are some of the most skilled and brave unsung heroes of the Afghan theatre.
“Thanks also goes to the many coalition medical teams through the chain of evacuation that in some cases saved our lives. In all cases they made us feel safe and secure. The public of New Zealand should know that these Dutch, German and American medical teams treated us like their own countrymen, working tirelessly and with great skill.
“I would like to thank our military leaders and their staff back in New Zealand, who through their hard-working liaison officers have made us feel as though heaven and earth is being moved to keep us supported, and getting us home to our families quickly, where we all want to be. We look forward to reuniting with our family and friends, getting our medical treatment finalised, and getting back on with things just as soon as we can.
“With regard to the incident itself, I and the other wounded look forward to formally passing to the New Zealand Defence Force, at the appropriate time on our return, the knowledge and detail of this battle that we possess. This battle was very fast, very complex, and came down to a pitched gunfight where the insurgent force had many advantages over us at that moment. The full story is yet to be pieced together.
“Judging by the nature of my wounds, my days as an operational soldier are probably over but I will continue working for my soldiers now and over the next while to ensure that they are accredited the respect and recognition that their actions in Bamyan deserve.
“While this was a major combat engagement, it is what our men and women work and train for. I know Kiwi Company will have continued on committed to their work in Afghanistan because they are a professional group, and that’s what soldiers do.
“Finally, I wish to thank the public of New Zealand for their support of all our service personnel on operations everywhere. It is really important to us, especially when times get tough.”

About the incident:
On 4 August, Kiwi Company came to the support of the Afghan National Directorate of Security who were under attack by insurgents. The NDS sustained two deaths and a further 11 personnel, including one civilian, were wounded. The New Zealand Defence Force sustained two deaths and a further six wounded.

About Major Wilson:
Major Craig Wilson was shot in the shoulder and received multiple wounds to his lungs, ribs, collarbone and shoulder-bone, as well as artery and tissue damage, and has lost the use of his right arm. However, doctors anticipate that he will regain some if not all function after likely many months rehabilitation. All of Maj Wilson’s wounds have been effectively treated, except the nerve damage where treatment/rehabilitation will commence after his return to New Zealand.
Maj Wilson is a married father of three, who lives in Burnham.
In 2007, he received the New Zealand Gallantry Decoration – NZGD – for events while serving with the New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan in 2004.
The NZGD is the third-highest military decoration for New Zealand. It is granted in recognition of ‘acts of exceptional gallantry in situations of danger’ while involved in war and warlike operational service.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth

Posted on 11 August 2012 by SJPONeill

This is my big dog, Kirk, before he became my BIG dog – we’ve had him since he was an itty puppy and have watched his growth over the past five years into a big dog that loves to watch animal shows on TV….

I posted an item under the Mundane to Meaningful writing challenge last week about my thoughts when I spotted the Avenger being rolled out at RNZAF Ohakea last week. Although it kinda reflects my thoughts at the time, it’s a bit maudlin and, IMHO, not that effective as a piece of writing…

So without taking anything away from the young men and women that launch themselves into the air each day from Ohakea in Hueys and Air trainers and now NH-90s and A-109s, here’s what my first instinct to write about for that challenge really was…

Saryrday afternoon and I’d finished work – I normally work a Tuesday-Saturday weekend to align with Carmen’s week and also to align with the US working day as a large portion of my work is engaging with overseas partners – and I’d just relocated downstairs from the study where I work, often eight hours in a single (literally) sitting, to the lounge where I can stretch out on the couch by the fire, watch some TV and surf the net.

Surfing the net outside off the study is a relatively new experience for us as we have always been somewhat bandwidth-limited in our scenic rural location and thus never really felt the need or had the driver of cable broadband to invest in an internal wifi router, aggravated by the fact that straight routers independent of a built-in ADSL modem haven’t been that common. Just after Christmas last year, we finally replaced our standard phone and internet services with a satellite connection – complete with big ugly dish on the west-facing side of the house – from Farmside. It’s still quite a novelty being free of the study to surf anywhere in the house, even – wow – in bed!

I don’t remember the weather but it must have been cold as the fire had been on all day – whatever the weather, it’s almost always warm inside as the house has been designed as a real heat trap in winter – but opens right up to keep us cool in summer (next time we actually have one) – so it’s not like we need to huddle around the fireplace to keep cosy. It just happens to be that it is right by the couch that faces directly onto the TV.

So getting back to Kirk…as I said we’ve had him since he was a little little puppy but he’s probably closer to me because he used to come to work with me when he was little rather than be left outside with the other dogs on a large and (then) unfenced section. I had my own office and it’s not like there was a mass stream of people queuing up to visit anyone in the doctrine/lessons learned world. So Kirkie’s kinda bonded more with me than anyone else…what that means is that every once in a while, he’s gets a bit angsty and follows me around like a shadow. If I shuffle so much as a foot along the couch, he’ll get up walk a whole half-step and then thunks (it’s like he just switches his legs off and drops) down on the floor at my feet again.

So when I’m on the couch and the fire’s on, Kirk will usually be crashed out on the floor right by the fire. You may have noticed that Kirk is a large black dog and you’ve probably already joined the dots with his heat-absorption abilities. He’ll lie there for an hour or so, slowly baking before having enough of that and lumbering over to the water bowl in the kitchen where being hot, he slobbers down a couple of litres before resuming his position with his head on my foot. So what this has to with Mundane to Meaningful, WordPress Challenges and the like?

Well…just as that inaugural Weekly Writing Challenge email chirped into my inbox – I was watching JAG by the fire – big Kirk sicked up over my feet….no surprise really after he’d just slurped up a litre or so of water from the bowl in the kitchen. I let him outside, just in case there was more to follow, and mopped up his mess – mostly water so not too bad. When I let him back in, he loped over to the ‘scene of the crime’ , sniffing all a round it, almost like he wanted to make sure it was all cleaned up…and was really quite embarrassed by his little whoopsy…

Sometimes Kirk and his offsider, Lulu, appear so human…you really wonder what is going on in those big heads; why these massive carnivores dote on us so much…what did someone say recently? That we should aspire to be the people our dogs think we are…? So when Kirk trails me around the house, squeezes into tiny space under my desk or between the coffee table and the couch, just to be closer to me, I can cut him some slack because he’s my mate…

He makes me sound like a doofus sometimes…

Home are the hunters…

Image

Home to rest, forever in hearts of those who served with them, and those who loved them.

Lance Corporals Paralli Durrer and Rory Malone who were killed in Afghanistan on Saturday have arrived home to New Zealand.

They were met by members of their families, senior military officials, and personnel from 2/1 RNZIR and QAMR during a ramp ceremony in Christchurch.

Weekly Writing Challenge: From Mundane to Meaningful

Posted on 5 August 2012 by SJPONeill

WordPress has kicked off a new challenge to encourage more regular writing…the first challenge is themed From Mundane to Meaningful…the general idea is to take some mundane action from your day or week and lead it to a train of more meaningful thought…

Because we both often away from home, we have to always have a plan for looking after our dogs…there are big enough that we can leave them on their own for about a day and a half but anything over that, we have to make other plans…Our kennel of choice is Creature Comforts, just north of Sanson, under the approach to RNZAF Ohakea. We’ve been using it for many years and know that our ‘kids’ are well looked after there: we use them often enough that the drop-off is pretty routine for all of us.

Driving past the main gate of the air base, I glanced in just in time to see the Avenger out of its hangar – the first time I have seen it since it arrived. It’s great to see this aircraft fully restored and flyable: I sat and waited to see if they were going to fire it up but no joy this particular morning.

For me, this and the other flying warbirds are a link to a past that we don’t appreciate and are all to quick to dismiss and forget amidst the tempo of our modern world. The Avenger is particularly evocative of the massive naval air battles of the Pacific War that turned back the Japanese tide at odd-sounding and other insignificant places like Midway, Coral Sea, Leyte Gulf and the Marianas.

And the thousands of young men, all of whom had other aspirations, careers, plans, lives…who downed tools, quite school and signed up to fight for some basic values…The young, now old men, who flew for Bomber Command, Britain’s only means of striking back during those dark years from 1940 to 1942, who only now have been recognised for their sacrifice seven decades ago, recognition denied them for reasons of political tidiness.

And we shouldn’t forget that every day, other young men and women launch themselves into the skies from Ohakea and Whenuapai, into harm’s way because flying will remain an inherently dangerous act until such time as we can do it unaided…I understand the physics of what they do but remain in total awe of the way that they have mastered this unnatural act…slipping those surly bonds in such a way that it seems so natural and effortless…

An act as mundane as dropping our dogs at the kennel led to a sad nostalgic train of thought…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple

Posted on 28 July 2012 by SJPONeill

I think this is Hers because its mouth is always open….

We love our home but the entire interior is brown…wood grain, chipboard of one form or another, for a little variety, maybe varnished woodgrain or chipboard of one form or another…boringly, depressingly brown…

It was designed to be functional as a ski lodge, not as a home, and everything is very hardy, pretty much (but not always) practical, and functional. It didn’t have bedrooms when we bought it, just cubicles for bunk beds – lots of them – and they were the first to go in the first month of our occupation.

The interior doors were all white…boringly, depressingly white and functional…a few years back we used to spend the better part of two hours a day driving to and from work (back in the good old days when we both worked in the same place) and, in winter, that used to be a whole new source of depression as it’d be dark when we left and dark when we got home: we’d turn on the lights to be confront with brooown, and more broooown…and the brooownest most depressing part of the house is the back hallway which doesn’t get much light to brighten it up….

This one night, on the way home, we decided to add a splash of colour to the booooring brooooown back hallway (well, actually, it’s just THE hallway as it’s the only one we’ve got). We stopped at the ‘Kune Bunnings (when such still existed) and bought a litre (quart for those less enlightened) of nice purple paint; had a quick snack as soon as we got in the door, and set to de-hanging doors…there were nine doors coming off the hallway (got that down to eight now with the absorption of the spare shower into a larger bathroom – yes, it actually has a bath in it now; before it was just a ‘basin’ room – one day the bath might actually get hooked up to some utilities…) and over the next two night we removed cleaned, sanded and painted four of the them (His, Hers, laundry and #1 shower).

In a previous episode of Raurimu Renovation, we had scored some wooden heads from the Teak import shop in Te Kuiti and, after much intellectual discussion on which was His and which was Hers, mounted them to respective doors….

This might also give you a teeny taste of broooown…..

Weekly Photo Challenge: Movement

Posted on 7 July 2012 by SJPONeill

Anatomy of a shake

Well! That really wasn’t the sort of movement that I was thinking of when I saw the topic for this week’s photo challenge but this little sucker cooked off about an hour ago and the earth sure was moving!! Not the hard nasty jolts that happen down south but just a gentle rolling movement (imagine your house being placed on a waterbed) that lasted a good 10-15 seconds, although you can see from the table above that the event actually went on for the better part of quarter of an hour.

Like the big one centred off Taranaki on Tuesday night (I remember that because it was right after Hawaii 5-O) which was bigger at 7+ but way deeper (about 230+ km) this started slow, almost like a feeling of dizziness before you realise that it is actually the room moving and not you and started to build up to a point where heading for doorway or table seems like a good idea, then it just fades away to series of distant waves over the succeeding minutes…

I can also again comment with some authority on the old wives tale that animal have some sort of prescient warning of phenomena like earthquakes: it’s bollocks!! Kirk and Lulu were doing their standard floor mat impressions and did not so much as move let alone whimper or bark during the whole thing. And it’s not like it’s just these two…twenty-two years ago, a series of what were then thought quite nasty quakes (well, actually they were quite nasty – just not on the same scale and Christchurch) shook Palmerston North and the Manawatu/Horowhenua areas over a period of a fortnight or so. The last decent one was on a sunny Sunday and I distinctly remember my flatmates two dogs, dead to the world on the deck as power poles and light standards visibly pitched and rolled as the ground rocked…

Huh? Whassgoin’ on?

…and the final figures have just come in…after scientific review, this one has been confirmed as a 5.2 on the Richter scale and 91 km deep…and just to the side of our active volcano…

Five Question Friday!! 6/29/12

Posted on 30 June 2012 by SJPONeill

What’s your favorite childhood snack that you still eat as an adult?

Probably pikelets loaded with strawberry jam and fresh whipped cream…I will post some pictures next time we make some with the girls…and then, while looking up the URL for HFG, I saw it had a recipe for cinnamon and banana pikelets so for you foreigners and colonials and rebels who aren’t quite sure what a pikelet actually is, have a look, have a go and enjoy…it is a summery one too for those sweltering in the Northern hemisphere heat…

What food will you not eat the low fat version of?

Can’t think of any really…we normally opt for the healthier version where there is a choice…SWMBO won’t touch the ‘diet’ versions of Sodastream syrup whereas I don’t really care…I guess milk maybe where we tend to avoid the full cream dark blue top stuff but won’t go as far as the green top trim milk because it tastes like white water.

What’s your favorite way to cool off during the summer?

Sitting in the pool with a cool drink and a good book, possibly an Audible version as the hard copy ones get a bit grumpy around the water.

What’s your favorite summer read?

Don’t really have seasonal reads…sometimes we don’t even have clearly discernible seasons! I’m more likely to experiment with food in summer so possibly my summer reads are more culinary in nature, Healthy Food Guides etc…

What are you doing to stay cool in this awful heat?

Hmmm…not really a problem here at the moment…just pulled up the blinds in the study and can see that we have had a bit of a frost but no as extreme as I expected last night…clear blue skies as the sun come up over Mt Ruapehu so it will be sunny today, warm INSIDE, and a few degrees above zero outside

Intelliroofing

Posted on 29 June 2012 by SJPONeill

Just saw a great item on Close-Up about a couple building their new house with the clear and achievable objective of having a ZERO power bill…great stuff and so very easy when you building a house from new because you can incorporate this very cool stuff into the design itself. The two things that I liked about this design are the extra thick wall that allows an extra 45mm of insulation to be added simply by adding an extra batten to the outside of the framing; and the ever so cool Intelliroof where solar panels replace traditional roofing surfaces, saving cost and weight…this couple claim that they will never need a heater in this house and while I think that is a little optimistic – and no cheating by wearing 17 layers of clothing in winter! – it will be a very warm house.

It’ll probably be quite cost-effective too as they are structuring it so that any surplus will be fed back into the national grid. This begs two important questions: the first, of course is why didn’t we know about this when we replaced the Lodge roof in January! Shifty Just like when we laid the big concrete drive – which still looks awesome – only to learn only a week later about the geothermal heat exchange technology (aka ground source heating) for which we could have laid the hoses under the driveway concrete Baring teeth smile – if we had known – even if we had waited a while before installing the actual heat exchangers and radiators…

And secondly, why is the Government not subsidising these sort of initiatives to promote the generation of clean electricity? Yeah sure, they do subsidise insulating your house and made it mandatory to have specced insulation and double-glazing in new houses BUT nothing that might really chip into powerco profits like a broader generation base. For us, I think we’d probably use most of the power generated while we are at home but for those periods when we are away, a good 70-80% of our power generation capacity could be directed back to the national grid. Even if every new house only generated 10% of its actual needs, that still 10% that doesn’t need to be generated elsewhere, especially in dirty stinky oil and coal burning power stations, and a potential surplus to be fed back into the grid. And if it helps stick it to greedy monopolies like The Lines Company, the better – although they are serious provocation to just cut the cable and jack out…

Intelliroof is marketed in New Zealand by SolarCity – I hooked over to their website as soon as the Close-Up item was finished and it looks pretty slick – definitely worth a look but be aware that they have been a bit lazy and all their brochures are UK ones so not directly relevant or correct for the NZ environment . Little things like that make me wonder just how secure they are so hopefully they will get that sorted quickly and will be able to establish themselves successfully in this market…

Good on Close-Up just for once for running a useful story that isn’t focussed on more whining cry-babies or more irrelevant pseudo-celebrity antics…ironically, having said that, the Intelliroof story is the only one not specially featured on their FB page tonight…

So, there you go, just a quick item on some cool technology with some real potential…give SolarCity a call and show some interest in what they are doing, encourage them to update those brochures with Kiwi ones and let’s go GREEN!

Weekly Photo Challenge – Friendship

Posted on 11 June 2012 by SJPONeill

Friendship is this week’s photo challenge…Ruby wasn’t too sure about the new kid on the block but once he indicated that he understood who really was boss, everything was rosy…during the Great Pig Invasion of ’07, it was little Kirk who stood his ground when one of them barrelled over Ruby. Ruby’s not with us any more, passing away soon after this picture was taken, but if she was, the proportions shown here would pretty well be reversed as Kirk is now a very healthy 55+ kilograms…

The Great Pig Invasion

Not ‘friendship’…they came in low under the fence one afternoon, accompanied by a semi-wild mama pigess who was well into a major sense of funny failure…the RDC animal control officer took one look and decided ‘not my problem’…in the end, armed Police had to come down – if our last attempt to corrall them hadn’t been successful, it would have been pork and bacon all around for a year…!