Somewhere writing

Behaviours picked up from a year of aftershocks

2012-02-14T19:37:00.000+13:00

Building being rebuilt in Lyttelton

Almost 12 months since February 22nd, 18 months since Sept 4th and I hate having the kitchen cupboards open, especially the one with all the plates and glasses in. It is a tall cupboard and the one we put strong magnets on, after the June quakes, to help keep it shut. The shelves have never fallen in our cupboards and nothing has broken. But I hate having them open, in case a quake hits. It will seem careless, if we lose stuff now, having gone through this far and lost so few breakable items. Doing the dishes is always a little stressful with them open to put everything away.
The only time stuff fell out of the pantry was when it was open during quite a big aftershock, I think in October or November 2010. If I sit down to dinner and realise the cupboards or pantry are open, I pop up to shut them - because you never know. It seems stupid, paranoid and ridiculous. But it is, I think, about gaining control over the uncontrollable and I don't feel so silly now because I found out other people have their rituals too. Recently someone admitted that every time they empty the kettle, they refill it and boil it. They know it is unnecessary but they like having a kettle full of water.... just in case.
I always have the ipod under the pillow and listen to podcasts to go to sleep. The first night I did that was Feb 22 - when I listened pretty much all night since sleep was hard to come by. Now I feel a bit exposed without it. I need it to go to sleep, it means I am thinking about other things - comedy from the UK or funny life stories from people in the USA.
There was a 4.0 aftershock quake the other night at around 10pm Lucy woke up really crying, not knowing why she was so upset. It took quite awhile to calm her down. I thought we would all be emotionally fine by now. We thought our kids were coping well but I am not sure anymore what is going on in their heads, but we keeping living and laughing.
We were sitting on the couches a few days ago when there was a long rumble. We've had aftershocks with no shake and I thought it was one of those and then it started to shake. It did scare me because I thought if the rumble was that long what will the shake be like? But then it stopped, after it shook the TV. Lucy said yesterday, "You know those aftershocks that go like this," and made a particular noise to try to describe the shaking - even a six year old is distinguishing differences between them.
Anyway, life for the most part is so normal for us compared to other people living in this same city.

February Again

2012-02-01T10:31:00.003+13:00

Yep, that shop looks pretty closed to me.

It is an odd feeling coming to February again. February has been such a loaded word for twelve months.
I thought as 2012 was a new year we could leave quake stuff behind, which I could while on holiday but not once all the normal yearly things kicked in. Lucy is back at school and it is still at its temporary site and while this suits us very well, in the future decisions will need to be made about its permanent site and where that is and what it looks like.
I am going to start working and the jobs I am doing have really come about because of the quakes.
Our house is still to be fixed. I am starting to come to grips with how much everything has really changed in this city.
It is perhaps with a little trepidation that I take part in all the annual beginning of the year things that I did last year. I realise how little of the year we had before it was turned upside down. I remember the things I was thinking at this time last year, that became irrelevant in a few short weeks.
It is in doing these things again, that I see how crazy last year was. The things that just became normal and I didn't question, I am starting to see were not normal before February at all - like helping strangers and accepting help from strangers or showering at other people's houses.
There is so much still to be done in this city and sometimes it feels so much easier just to leave it all behind but I also know the events of the past year are stuck inside me too.
And we still have the CBD red zone cordon with us - see below for city comparisons and we are twelve months on now.

Christchurch's current CBD red zone no go area cordon

Wellington if the cordon was there

Auckland if the cordon was there

Lego man vs the weeble wobble - Christchurch aftershock headlines vs real life

2012-01-16T19:47:00.001+13:00

We went away for a week in early January. I was checking the Stuff website most days first thing in the morning, to see if Christchurch was okay. I just wanted to know it was still there.
While we were away there were headlines about Christchurch suffering more shakes. There were about three 4.8s, a couple of 5s, a 5.1 and a 5.5 as well as all the usual littlies that you don't really feel. The 5.5, surely would mean the earthquake art had rearranged itself - we had set it up again after the larger shocks on 23rd December. I wondered what else had fallen over.
We got home and very few things had fallen. Even the little canvas picture that usually falls off in anything over a five was still sitting merrily on its little shelf.
This was the earthquake art.

Before we went on holiday

After all the shakes while we
were away

Yes, that was all, one little lego guy took a tumble across the desk. The weeble wobble was still sitting merrily on its rickety tower.
That is the weird thing with news articles, of course they have to tell the worst but it doesn't really tell you what it is like, which you think it should.
These current aftershocks were now out further east. We were the furtherest we had ever been from all the shaking. So at our place, it would appear things were pretty good. I didn't realise until this whole sequence started back in Sept 2010, how unique is everyone's perspective, even when a natural disaster hits an area. The shakes feel different everywhere. I have heard quite afew people be reassured once they have felt a shake in a new location - it gives a reference point to know how that building behaves. It helps you know how to react.
So the short articles of widely felt aftershocks told me very little about my house and if you ask someone who is there, the reply is standard and it is one, I say all the time too. "It's fine. They are no big deal." But I guess if you are the lego man - it does feel quite a big deal.

A New Year

2012-01-01T15:51:00.002+13:00

Like so many in Christchurch my thoughts at this New Year are different from the start of 2011. My friend sums it up so well on her blog here.
Last year we were very glad to see the end of 2010. With its September quake and for us other stresses and strains, we couldn't imagine a tougher year. We were so keen for 2011 to start.
2011 made 2010 seem like the appetiser, (I can only hope that means 2012 is the dessert).
Everyone is at different spots in their quake experience. Some of my friends have moved house and moved on. They have already started new lives, post quakes. The start of our 2012 looks like it is going to be messy with floor coverings all being lifted to check the extent of our damage and moving out a few months later to fix everything once a complete picture of the damage has been worked out.
All this makes me feel a little tired before we have even started.
And the quakes seem to be continuing. I think they are now saying we are having the pleasure of a 1 in 10,000 year event. Lucky us!
But despite that, we went camping after Christmas and it was stunning. We had the area mostly to ourselves. We went to sleep and woke up to bird calls. We spent a morning on a beach with only a seal for company and the odd kayaker and boatie. I felt lucky to live on these shaky islands because regardless of natural disasters, they are hard to beat.
Our malls and our airport may have shut temporarily on the 23 December but it was temporary and it was proactive. The buildings weren't falling down, they were shut for them to be checked carefully by engineers and then reopened if safe. The majority of the houses keep standing through all the thousands of shakes.
There are some things that are harder to control - like the body. I am still reacting to rumbling noises, even if not in Canterbury, before my brain can catch up and tell my body it is okay and there is no need to be on edge. This past year has definitely given me a better understanding of my body and other people.
The story in this radiolab podcast at 9 minutes 20, by Steven Johnson explains why my body reacts as it does to sounds that might be quakes. I understood this podcast because I feel this all the time at the moment.
There was another story in a podcast from the Moth in which Elif Shafak describes the response of her neighbours after they had a big quake in Turkey. I was listening to this and I knew the ending before she gave it. I knew how humans acted after such events.
It may have been a really crappy year but I learnt a lot. I don't know what will happen in 2012 but I think we are ready to roll with whatever is thrown at us and support each other.
It seems strange to have found some sort of inner peace in the most disturbing of years.

Here we go again.... my, my

2011-12-23T22:26:00.002+13:00

So two days after I wrote "It does seem the aftershocks have gone away", we have another day of sizable shakes.

Our only aftershock casualty today - a little crystal tree
fell over and lost all it's crystals. (a different story for those
on the other side of the city)

We'd not long been home from Tristan's preschool break up. I was sitting having a relax on the couch when the rumble and the shaking started. We waited to see what would happen. It kept building in strength and I got up, wondering what the best thing to do was - hold the pantry and cupboards shut or find the kids who were outside, so safe but possibly scared?
I ran down the hall as it was still shaking and finally located Lucy outside. She was really scared. She said she was worried our house would fall on her, like the broken houses on the other side of town.
The aftershocks kept coming. We had one that even while it was shaking had extra little judders within it. I never knew there could be such a range of aftershocks until the past twelve months.
We filled pots with water just in case we lost it but it kept flowing.
I was supposed to be meeting up with friends for coffee. We didn't know how big the aftershock was but there was very little damage at our house so figured we would go anyway. I had decided to bike, I thought it would make finding a park easier but it turned out parking wasn't the problem. It was the traffic. Everyone was on the roads trying to get home. All the people I biked past were looking at cellphones or talking on them.
The cafe was open and now mostly empty. We chose a table near the door and that was big enough for us to fit under should another one come. We did this half joking but then the aftershocks kept coming and another big one hit - 6.0. We didn't leave but finished our drinks and our conversation - once we were back sitting on our chairs.
When I got home I found the 6.0 had knocked over my precarious stack of board games in the cupboard, unfortunately I had been stacking all the Christmas presents on top the games too. Now they were all jammed between the wardrobe door and games. I carefully rescued them reattaching the gift cards - hopefully to right gifts.
I was supposed to be going out for tea. I began to wonder if it would still be on, now I knew the malls had shut and there was liquefaction and power issues over the other side of town.
We did go out for dinner but not everyone could come. The people in the damaged suburbs stayed away. On these days it really feels like a city split in half. Some keep suffering and the rest of us are okay.
As I drove home at 9pm - two days out from Christmas - past the mall carpark that was deserted because the mall had shut, past restaurants that should have been full but were shut. Hardly anyone was around.
I felt so sorry for the business owners. It has been one hard year. But we keep going - some day, one day the shakes must stop.

Can we go a day without being reminded?

2011-12-21T15:56:00.001+13:00

It's nearly Christmas! Tomorrow is the 22nd - ten months on from February 22nd.
If you ask a Christchurch person about aftershocks, we will tell you, we haven't felt any in ages. The point we might not make is that ages is probably different for you, than for us. We had a 5.5 only two months ago, but that is ages for the new Christchurch post Sept 4th 2010. It does seem the aftershocks have gone away. There is the odd teeny one, but they don't count.
The question we've been asking ourselves is can we go a day without being reminded about the quakes?
If it is a work day for Karl, then that is pretty hard because his workplace has still got fenced off areas where buildings are being repaired and some buildings have gone altogether. If it is a school day we can't help but notice that we are driving in the opposite direction to get Lucy to her school, rather than heading into the city.
At home life is normal because we have got used to living with taped up cracks in the floor and then sometimes I remember that we didn't used to live with things like that.
Thankfully our water is finally back to being delicious, Christchurch water so we don't need to use the filter jug anymore to get rid of the chlorine taste. Our tasty tap water has always been one of the things I loved about Christchurch and when it was gone, it was depressing.
A couple of days ago I went to get some things and I thought I knew where the shop was. But, of course, this is post quake Christchurch so when I got there, it wasn't there anymore. Fortunately because I live on the western side, another shop has ended up moving to our side of town and I could get what I was after.
But today we were driving over the other side of town and went passed a house that looked like it had been picked up and dumped off its piles. It still looked like a lovely house but it was on a huge angle. The yard was all overgrown. I couldn't help but think about the people who had lived here before. It looked like it used to be a well kept house. I wondered where they are this Christmas.
There are many things to be thankful for this Christmas but never before has it been the simple things of everyone in the family making it through to the end of the year and still having a house that keeps us warm and dry and has power and tasty water.
The one thing I will miss from 2011 was being helped and helping strangers. It was surprisingly fulfilling for differences to be cast aside, everyone being on the level and us all just being humans helping each other get through.

Red Zone Bus Tour - Beautiful Christchurch

2011-12-06T11:26:00.001+13:00

I went on the Red Zone Bus Tour on Sunday. We had an awesome Red Cross lady, Audrey who was funny and made the whole trip very pleasant. I didn't know how I would react. But it turned out different to what I thought. It reminded me of when a German guy was at our place a few months ago and told us how he had been in NZ for some months on a working visa but then had a lot of his personal things stolen from his car and he stopped enjoying NZ, decided perhaps it was time to cut his trip short and go home. He then came to Christchurch and liked it so much he decided to stay and work. We made cynical comments about it not being a city but nice suburbs and he said no. He loved Hagley Park. He saw a busker playing "Amazing Grace" opposite the fenced off Arts Centre and he said it was really beautiful and decided to stay.
That is what I found on the red zone bus tour, the Christchurch I knew so well has gone, never to come back but a new city is here and it has beauty and interesting things of its own, if I care to take it as it is.

You can buy in the soon to be heart of a new city
- even promises no camping will be required this time!

Nature has a go at its own mosaic on the footpath

The fan was swinging gently in the breeze

Only two panes smashed,
the rest look perfect

Newly exposed wall old wall

The carpark with the bit of wood on it was the carpark
I parked in 2 Tuesday's earlier, right at the front of CTV
to talk to people no longer here

I think this could be quite a popular bit
in the new city - it looks pretty

Never has this sign been more truly obeyed,
the building in front has been demolished

St John's Latimer Square is gone but a lovely tree is still there

Roses keep flowering merrily

Would these wild flowers been allowed
to flourish pre Feb 22

Carnivores is gone :(

Other than the wonky light pole, this looks lovely,
a view blocked by buildings before

Victoria Square - overgrown but still pretty - lanterns from Feb

Needs a bit of weeding but still looks like a city :)

Looking like a little survivor, this shop is
red stickered but still there so far

If the quake had happened 20 mins later this is
where Tristan & Karl would have been heading up in the car

Red Heart still gently swinging

Backs of buildings - lovely red brick

Palm Tree still looking all good.

Out in the 'burbs

2011-12-01T11:07:00.001+13:00

I hang around in the western side of Christchurch. All the things we do are either in the south west or the north west. We have got quite used to life here. The roads in some places are a bit bumpier than previously - it is harder to balance a plate of uncovered biscuits on your knee, over to someone's house. Houses are getting hazard management signs stuck to their fences as repairs get underway. Most of the commercial buildings that fell down have been removed. We are watching new ones go up and refurbishments happen for businesses from the inner city starting up in new premises.
We have also been watching the house down the road get lifted and repiled. It is into its fourth week of repairs but it is now back down on its foundations. It is all very much in recovery, getting on with life and looking to the future.
A few weeks ago for the fireworks we went over to Brighton. I hadn't been near there since February. We parked in a street which was now in the residential red zone. The grass was up to the windows of the houses. There was still dry, fine, liquefacton silt through the long grass on the side of the road. The street was really an unsealed road. We cross the bridge which has holes and broken concrete at each end, where the bridge had rammed into the banks in the shaking. Two plastic pipes snaked their way over the bridge that we climbed over several times in our crossing. Quite a few businesses were still stickered shut.
Last week I had to go up the back of Sumner. Once in Sumner, we drove up a narrow corridor of two storey shipping containers, that protected the road from the cliff and then we had to detour off as the road was closed. We were going up on the hill and we walked the last bit because again there were containers that made it too narrow to drive through. The Evans Pass road over the hill was still shut. A sewer pumping truck was at work down on the flat. It was just a different world. Designer houses were red stickered. Houses we would have lusted after, now we were very glad not to own but we felt so sorry for owners. Houses that were so well kept, now had overgrown grass and loose bits of tape across the driveway and labels of danger, do not enter.
The contrast was staggering. It can even be in one street. I went down Cambridge Terrace - the little piece that I seldom travel between Barbados and Fitzgerald. As I turned behind the Barbados Street cemetery I saw the back wall of the cemetery was lying on the footpath and the grassy bank was just tumbling down on top of it. The road was also bumpy, cracked and sliding towards the river. I had to drive carefully and as I went round the curves of the river, I saw a wooden seat on the river bank now at quite an angle towards the river - no longer a place to sit comfortably and enjoy the view. But at the end of the street, the road was fine, the houses looked perfect and they had a lovely view of the river. It feels a lottery who got badly hit and who got off comparatively lightly.
We've had Fletchers and our contract builder are here assessing the property for repair. Probably in April or March next year but now we have to be assessed by an engineer first to check our floor situation. The long tail of the disaster just keeps on going.
The aftershocks are pretty minor now, though we've had about 3 of around 3.4 in a few days last week (so enough to feel but not enough to really react to). One was in the evening and we could hear it coming, in the morning Lucy said she was lying in bed and heard it coming too and she wasn't sure if it was going to be a big one, so she hid under her duvet. When it arrived it wasn't very big so she didn't bother to come out, she just settled herself back down to go to sleep.

How Christchurch people spend a sunny, Sunday afternoon

2011-11-27T19:06:00.001+13:00

This afternoon as a family we did the temporarily opened, public walk from Cashel Mall to Cathedral Square. We queued in an orderly line for two to three minutes and then we were past the official clicking off a counter and standing in Colombo Street looking up at Lucy's old school building on the corner of Cashel Street and Colombo. The walkway was lined with fences and busy with people. The crowd was quite chatty and all sorts of ages were there. Christmas Decorations were hanging from the lamp posts.
We walked past buildings that looked so familiar and then there would be a gap of nothing. As we approached the square, the crowd became quiet, I think we were all unsure how we would react.

We walked between the old familiar buildings of the ANZ and BNZ. Many of the glass verandah panes on the BNZ building were smashed and lying in tiny fragments on the ground. The whole building will be coming down in a few weeks.

Entering Colombo St

BNZ building still to be demolished

Then we were into the Square. The paving stones look so normal and the trees and the seats - exactly as they were the many times I had sat on them. But the Cathedral was so smashed. The old Regent Theatre building was completely gone. In the opposite corner I could see just the old wrought iron entrance way to the Warner's hotel - that was all that remained of it now - behind the cenotaph. The cenotaph looked totally normal, apart from the unmown grass around it.

It was hard to get my head around what happened here, while I was in the suburbs. Lucy was okay about being back in the Square though she had moments of sadness but I think we all did. I ran my finger down the fence to make it feel real, that we were really here and this was what the Square looked like now.

Once in the Square the crowd was quite talkative and it was nice being back there with so many people. There were a couple of older people in wheelchairs, it was almost like the Square of last year on a Sunday.

During the week I saw a headline that read something like - "Familiar sounds return to the city centre". The cathedral bells jumped into my head but then I knew, it wasn't them, they were not coming back for a long time.

That is the thing- it is so hard to relate the reality of the new Christchurch, with what is still in my head as Christchurch. It is difficult to believe my city has left me rather than me leaving it behind.

Entering the Square and the

familiar old Post Office Building

People in the Square - looks almost normal

A post no longer straight

A view I have never seen

before as Chancery Lane

buildings used to be there

City Founding Father - absent

Cenotaph - looking as it

always did

A Verandah has fallen to be held up a
light, I wondered how many injuries that
light saved

The city was suffering pre Feb 22
Closing down sale

A Summer Sale almost a year on

Sober reading

2011-11-24T12:16:00.001+13:00

I know I haven't posted for a bit - life is quite busy :) I have a post compiled in my head - just need to get it down on the computer. Today though, I saw a message that I thought was exciting - they are opening up a public walkway to the Cathedral Square from Colombo Street in Cashel Mall. This is the route Lucy walked out of her school so I am quite keen to do this and see the cathedral and reenter the heart of our city.
I clicked onto the link for more details and was greeted with this as part of the information about the walk.
This is from CERA's website.

"It is your decision to enter the area. Read this first.

This space is still dangerous.
If there is an earthquake or other event you may be seriously injured or may not survive.
This is CERA space, not public space. There are conditions you must meet:

maximum 300 visitors at any one time
stay within the fences
maximum visit duration 50 minutes - the walkway is cleared on the hour
leave when asked
no pets (guide dogs permitted)
carry personal ID on your body, not in a bag
wear sturdy shoes
carry a charged cellphone or tell someone where you are going.

If there is an earthquake or other significant event:
Drop. Cover. Hold
Always follow the instructions of security personnel.

An emergency evacuation will be signalled by the constant sound of horns or sirens."

Wow! I know it is also for legal reasons but that is pretty sobering reading.

What do I teach our son?

2011-11-09T21:11:00.000+13:00

This week is a really busy week. After picking up Tristan from preschool today, I needed to get our weekly bread from the Coupland's bakery close to Tristan's preschool and I had forgotten a couple of items from the grocery shop, earlier in the week, so I thought we could nip into the supermarket at the same place.
The little problem was this was the supermarket Tristan and I were in, when both the June quakes hit. We have not been back to that supermarket since that day. I have been to this shopping centre a number of times since that day in June - just never to the supermarket. But I had decided that it was silly to make today even more busy. Today was to be the day to just "get over it".
As we drove into the carpark, I kept my own apprehension inside and casually told Tristan we were getting some bread and going to the supermarket to get a couple of things.
"No!" He was quite adamant. "I don't like this supermarket." He asked me to drive to our usual supermarket. I asked him why he didn't want to go to this one. He kept saying no and then he started crying and mentioned the quakes. The tears were running down his face and he was demanding we go to another supermarket.
I asked him if he was happy to go and get the bread from the bakery - we do this almost every week. He said yes he was quite happy about that. I told him, we would decide about the supermarket once we had the bread.
As we walked to the bakery, I thought about what I should do.
I was not keen to go to the supermarket either and it was heartbreaking seeing his face so sad and hearing the fear in his voice. It felt like the easy choice was to drive away. There are enough supermarkets to never have to visit this one again.
But I do want him to learn, that even if something feels scary we can still do it. I don't want him to be bound by anxiety.
After getting the bread he wanted to leave. But I picked him up and we chatted about it. I explained that I too was a little afraid. We talked about how even in both June quakes we were safe and nothing fell on us. We talked about how we only had to buy two things. We decided that if we could do this and face our fear and do it like normal shoppers, we could both have a wee reward.
I carried him for the first bit, but he walked into the supermarket by himself and he said. "We were here weren't we Mummy and everything shook about." I agreed. We found the things we needed, paid and left.
I hope I did the right thing and we have some soap and shampoo that are trophies of our continued return to a normal life.

We can go to town!

2011-10-31T19:51:00.002+13:00

Typical Colombo Street -
a bit like pre February.

This week was a week of anticipation. We knew at the weekend we could go back into part of Cashel Mall. We took a walk to check it out on Thursday and it was busy with people and equipment frantically getting ready. I wondered how I would feel. Would it feel scary? Would it feel sad? Would I be prepared to sit in there and have a coffee?

We are now having aftershocks only rarely. Three weeks ago we had a 5.5 but there was not the cluster of a lot of larger shocks afterwards as we have had before. Since then I have felt one small one and heard one. It feels like the earth is going quiet again.

Sunday afternoon we drove into the city. It was surprisingly exciting, to be able even to say we were going to town. We walked in down Worcester Street, over the road and joined a steady stream of people walking down the path by the river to Hereford Street. The fences had moved back up Hereford Street. We could cross Oxford Terrace. It felt like we were stepping into a new future.

On the corner was the Vero building with the Boulevard Cafe under it. The building stands alone, the two on either side have been demolished. Three bulldozers still sit on the remains of the old Viaduct and the Bangalore Polo Club or whatever the latest names of those bars were - now they are gone I can't remember. The Vero building appears to have a green sticker but the Boulevard is not open.

On the other corner of Oxford Terrace with Cashel Mall, is the Tap Room. We peer through the windows. There was a table sitting with a glass knocked over and a hat neatly folded opposite it. Another table has two wine glasses standing, stained with evaporated red wine. Everything is covered in dust. As we walk up the mall with many others, we walked past a large carpark where The Bog and Cafe Bleu and shops used to be.

On the other side of the mall are still some yellow stickered shops like Dimitri's and Radar Records. Radar is still all boarded up. We then came to the new part. The brightly coloured containers were fantastic and they are arranged in squares so it is not just a dull strip. They were so packed with people we couldn't even get in them. There were queues for the coffee shops. With so much gone, it takes a bit of effort to stop, stand and remember what it used to look like. It is definitely a new place.

We walked up to Colombo Street, where the new fence is. Some people were crying, many others were looking happy.

It didn't feel scary and I didn't feel sad. It felt lovely to wander with so many other people back in our city. I could see the inner city being, again. But it was also sobering. You can walk down Colombo Street to Lichfield Street but none of those shops were open, it was hard to tell if their stickers were faded green or yellow. They were partly tidied up but still with piles of stock and shop fittings inside them.

It is going to be a difficult journey with different agendas fighting it out and I know some things will make me upset, I am already cross that Trade Aid wasn't there, seemingly not wanted. But I left with a mostly happy heart and wearing my watch. I finally this week got my watch strap repaired (not in town, just round the road) - it broke a couple of days after the February quake and it has been sitting waiting for me to get around to getting it fixed all this time.

World Cup Parade

2011-10-26T11:29:00.001+13:00

I like this picture I took at the parade. It looks like a normal city out enjoying the All Black's win.
You can't see that just below the frame are fences blocking off that building behind. You can't see the spire sitting down on the footpath.
What I really wanted to write today was, it was fabulous at the parade and everyone was the happiest I've seen them in ages and joy was back in the city, proper joy with nothing underneath it. I thought it would be like the Band Together concert on Labour Weekend after the September quake. I thought it would all just be lovely and I would come home with a very happy heart.
I thought this, because on Labour Day Monday when walking in the neighbourhood and meeting strangers, they had really happy smiles. Smiles, with eyes as well, of the quality I realised I hadn't seen here in awhile. So I thought the parade would feel like Wellington had before the All Blacks, Canada game.
Everyone was happy at the parade but yeah, it wasn't very deep. I didn't come home with a happy heart. I guess there is just too much history hanging around us.
I remember going to the America's Cup parade when we won that. It went through The Square. That is where most parades go here - of course this one didn't. Afterwards we walked into the new bus exchange and caught the bus home. This is the furtherest into the city we have been able to get. The bus turned out of Tuam Street, down Colombo Street and that stretch is now mostly an empty lot. It is not how I remember it and it is really hard to ignore.
The number of people at the parade was also not as many as I expected, we easily got to stand in the front row with an unhindered view. The America's Cup parade we were 6-7 people back from the front. That photo is taken on my phone, with no zoom.
I think we are trying to be happy and normal like everyone else in New Zealand. We don't want to be seen as down in the dumps, or ranting on about the quakes but it is just so ongoing. Yesterday talking with a person rushing home to make sure the demolition of a house next door doesn't affect their property or driving over roadworks and realising, while it is signposted as road works, there are many streets that are just the same - but are currently considered normal. Then we see Turkey at the beginning of their long journey like ours. I couldn't help but feel a more kindred spirit with them than the All Blacks. I know this city will feel that group jubilant feeling again but it is taking much longer than I had anticipated.

Changing Safety Announcements

2011-10-20T15:39:00.000+13:00

There has been an interesting progression in safety announcements here in the, getting less shakey, city.
After September (we identify our quakes simply by month) at the beginning of an event, the organiser would say in a jovial, chatty type way what to do if there was another aftershock. They would mention the word aftershock and they would just very quickly point to the exits and say where the meeting point was. There would usually be a bit of laughter from the audience and we would all assume, it would be unlikely. Then everyone would move on.
After February there was no more joking about aftershocks. The announcement was given completely seriously, the word aftershock or earthquake was used but then the explanation was pretty simple "you know what to do" and we all did.
After June, it has changed again. Now we appear not to like calling them by name. Now the announcer says something like "If we have one of those..." or "If something beginning with 'e' should happen.." but while the first part is now very downplayed what follows seems to be an extensive explanation of just where the exits are, sometimes repeating this and what to do once you have reached outside. This part is quite serious now. There are no titters from the audience, but a careful note of where the exits are - just in case. There is never any mention of fire, which is what I always remember such announcements being for.
Maybe in the new year, it will change again.

Embracing Our Reality

2011-10-10T16:04:00.002+13:00

As part of the Arts Festival I went to a panel discussion called "Imagined Futures" about art and urban planning. As part of Hugh Nicholson's talk he mentioned the wind sculptures in Wellington and how he felt they had changed Wellingtonians view of the wind and their city to a more positive outlook.
I thought perhaps we could embrace Christchurch's ongoing shakiness with art too. We are not accomplished artists but we are enthusiastic, so the kids and I put together a framed artwork, using what we had at hand (little toys) and left it to see what new art would appear with the next aftershock.

Original artwork

After a 3.5ish aftershock

After 4.8 aftershock on Sat
Note lego army man down

After 5.5 aftershock last night

It has turned out, that though quite precariously balanced, it takes quite a shake to change it. It has survived most three sized aftershocks. It is true that weebles wobble but they don't fall down. I think a proper artist could do something quite groovey with this idea on a larger scale. We have been thinking of hanging paint brushes or pens but our house has not got the space right now.

The kids have loved running to check it after the shakes. It gives a new perspective that the earth moving does not always have to be doom and gloom but can inject a bit of fun.

The 5.5 was quite a shake here but while it woke Lucy, she was still in her bed when we got to her room. It seems quite staggering that these days even a 5.5 doesn't send her running in fear to us, but rather waiting for it to finish and then snuggling back to sleep.

Where's an extreme makeover when you need one?

2011-10-05T21:49:00.003+13:00

Old lease sign on the inside,
red sticker on the outside

It was a weekend of contrasting cities.
On Friday night I went to a parent get together for Lucy's homebase (class). At one point we talked about February 22nd. It was the first time we had talked about it as a group and with Lucy's learning advisor (teacher). I learnt a lot more about just what it was like for Lucy on that day and what was going on the minds of those right with her.
On Saturday we joined a big queue to go onboard the US Globemaster - an enormous plane, heading down to the ice on the Monday. The US army guys were amused about how many people turned up to view it. Apparently they have never had so many in Christchurch come to one of their open day events.
Later on Saturday I flew out to Wellington and Sunday I was down on the waterfront. That afternoon was the Canadian, All Black game and fans of both sides were decked out. It was busy, exciting and entirely different to the World Cup experience in Christchurch. Not because we cannot have fun down here; the arts festival events I have been to, have been well attended and everyone was in a happy mood at the globemaster open day.
But there is an underlying weariness in Christchurch. We do get up and go to work and school and preschool, each day like before. It is a busy place but it is definitely not the same Christchurch of fourteen months ago.
I am not the same. On the Wellington waterfront I went to the toilet in one of the public toilet trucks. While in the cubicle, the door started rattling. I can still see the lock banging against its holder. I wasn't afraid but I became aware, that I had completely frozen and was just staring at the lock, waiting to see what would happen next - would it get bigger? Should I prepare? Then my brain caught up with what my body was up to. It was just somebody walking up the outside steps onto the truck. My body reacted without any thought from me. It was a strange thing.
Back here, as we landed in the city of fences, shipping containers (I never knew they had so many uses) and cones, I felt the weight fall on all of us.
I have been thinking about one of those episodes of extreme makeover, where in two days they complete a rebuild. But even just starting would be difficult - insurance would be the first hurdle.
Insurance seems to be especially hard if you are building or renovating. The easiest way around the problem currently is just to steam ahead uninsured. After the September quake there was the opinion that not having your house insured was insanity and only for the foolish - the quake being the proof. Now it seems the most logical solution to the current problems. How quickly things change here.
Almost everyday there are new consequences of the quakes. We have water restrictions about to start this week, for the first time in thirteen years. People, near abandoned homes still deep in liquefaction, are worried about the ongoing dust and how bad it will get with nor'westers this summer. Even though we are fortunate to be mostly back to normal life - it is still thing, upon thing that keeps pulling us back to being quake town residents.

Memories

2011-09-28T19:53:00.000+13:00

One of the things that I thought ghastly would be losing my memories, if I got something like alzheimer's when I was older.
I think of memories as a core benefit of life. Reliving funny events or even just tiny events that made up, my life. I love them and enjoy them in my head.
In Christchurch we have seen endless photographs and YouTube videos of the ever changing inner city landscape. I am a city person, I am not a mall person. Every day I was in the central city. Karl works there, we went there in the weekends to eat or shop or walk about.
I have been upset at the destruction of so many heritage buildings and concerned about what would rise in its place. But I did keep telling myself they were just buildings. I started taking notice of buildings that would be repaired and thinking, it will be okay we will still have some old ones remaining.
But it was only last week as I drove past a part of the cordon again, that I realised quite what had happened.
This part of the cordon used to be a row of shops, half in collapse. Wood and bricks everywhere. Little bits of signage or a partial glimpse of a small section of still intact interior - a reminder of what used to be here. Now it is all gone. It is an empty piece of concrete stretching an entire two blocks.
I saw a clip on YouTube of a street I had been down many times but now one side is blank. Nothing remains. The other side is so familiar and though I try to dredge up what used to be opposite I can't.
I hadn't realised I had stored my memories in those facades. Now nothing is left, not a sign, not a piece of metal filigree, not a lump of stone or brick.
The memories are going too. There is nothing left to tease the thread to pull them back.
They are only stories from the past but people I have met starred in them and I had thought they were always safe inside my head.

Kids are weird

2011-09-22T11:30:00.002+12:00

Tristan on 22 Feb

Last week it was pleasant, having not felt an aftershock for seven days. The kids were sitting on the couch together and then Tristan said, "I hope we get more aftershocks because I like doing the turtle." It seemed an odd thing for him to say - the boy who took until November last year to be able to go to bed without having be reassured it was safe. We even did fake aftershocks, by rocking his bed, to show him he would be fine.
Lucy joined in, almost slightly guiltily, saying she hoped there would be too. This was from someone who was in the city centre in February and whose behaviour becomes terrible if she sees footage from that day.
They definitely get an adrenaline hit every time a decent shake wobbles us.
After the big ones, such as the ones in June, rules get relaxed, we usually have a random tea of something easy to cook (if we have power), and very tasty. If the water is off, they get to wee in the garden - which Tristan thinks is fantastic. They get to sleep in our room, if they are scared. We have treats and spend time with our neighbour.
They are kids from the southwest, so don't fear liquefaction and for Tristan, quakes have gone on for a quarter of his life.
The idea of the quakes stopping, for them, seems now as unbelievable as if feels for us that they started and are still going.

Rugby World Cup Slight Cough

2011-09-13T11:02:00.002+12:00

Bridge of Remembrance Fence

Rugby fever has hit the country and we in Christchurch have only managed a slight cough. We were watching the opening celebrations for the Rugby World Cup in Auckland and the mayor, Len Brown asked the crowd to cheer for Christchurch and they all did, very enthusiastically and I shed a tear.
It hit my heart, just how big this situation is. This is a party our city was to be part of. I care little these days for rugby, but the city would have been full of life. We were to have English and Argentinian supporters here for the first game. The atmosphere would have been great.
Instead I watch much of our city centre slowly being pulled down. Every time I drive past it, I see people standing at the fences looking in.
I think the rest of the country understands this was a big tragedy but I am not sure, in Christchurch, all of us quite get the scale yet. We are too busy dealing with the practicalities of it in our daily lives to sit back and take the big picture in. But despite the tragic big picture, all over, the city lives and works on - we are in the middle of an Arts Festival with a wonderful series of events. This is not a dead city at all.
When I hear support and sympathy from outside, the reality of just how big a recovery we have to make, starts to dawn. The officials are talking of a fifteen year strategy to rebuild the city. I love the new central city plan but I will be fifty three years old before it is complete. Lucy will be twenty one. If we stay here long term, her complete childhood will be in a city in transition and rebuild. I have to pause, - because I never added up the years before and it makes me very sad.
Yes, we are still going on about the quakes here more than the rugby, because it dominates our world. At least by talking about it, we keep moving on and it is easier to bear together.

The Little Things

2011-09-09T12:14:00.000+12:00

A few of the many hearts hanging in
the museum

While there are the big issues of insurance, reinsurance, red zone residents packages and land as yet waiting for a decision on zoning these are the little things that surprise me in their sadness and their happiness:

Things that make me sad:
- Watching the light turn green at what used to be a busy inner city intersection, but only my car goes through the intersection and the traffic waiting on the red are two huge trucks for carrying demolition material.
- The filter jug sitting on the bench. One of the things I have always loved about Christchurch was our beautiful water but now it tastes of chlorine and we use the filter jug to make it drinkable.
- Hearing on the news that of those hit by Hurricane Irene in the States only 17% have federal flood insurance. Living through Christchurch 2011 has made me feel much more for people in the aftermath of natural disasters. They linger in my heart instead of being replaced with the next headline. I now realise just how long and tragic recovery is.

Things that make me happy:
- Joining in the mass hug for Christchurch on Sunday September 4th - we talked freely with strangers and that lovely community spirit we felt after Sept 4th & Feb 22nd was right there again but without a shake.
- Laughing with a stranger in the supermarket at tall glass bottles of coffee flavouring on a top shelf. Had they learnt nothing in the previous twelve months?
- Slightly odd but thinking someone I haven't seen since just before Feb 22, was back in town. Are they really back? I am still not sure but as I try to find out - it makes me surprisingly happy to think they maybe.
- Seeing all the hearts, crafty people made for Christchurch, on display in the Museum. It is lovely being able to visit the Museum again. It is almost exactly as it was other times I have visited and that was so relaxing. Something that has remained the same in twelve months. The hearts almost made me cry. Someone had cared enough, from seeing our city on the news, that they had made a heart and bothered to send it over -it was quite overwhelming and there wasn't just one, there were loads. Some had wee messages cards like, "thinking of you and praying for you all from Val, Oxfordshire" and the one from Pat in New Orleans. They may seem frivolous and not practical helping, but our spirits need help too. Since I saw them on Sunday, I keep thinking of them and that people cared when we were broken and it makes my spirit glad.

A week on from the start of the quakes - this was what I was thinking last year. It feels so long ago now and so innocent of just what we had ahead of us in February.

Almost one year on

2011-09-02T10:50:00.001+12:00

It is hard to believe we are almost a year from September 4th 2010 when our region started its sporadic shaking. On the day the headline in the paper was about the increased cost to EQC we had our house assessment. We had heard so many stories of bad EQC assessments, so were quite nervous about what would happen. It was like our house was sitting an exam and we waited, hearing snippets of comments and answering questions. Our house will be repaired and the EQC guys were excellent. But we are also part of the increased amount EQC need to pay. We have gone from damage of around $1600 to damage over $10,000 from the February quake. We now join another queue for Fletchers to fix it back to how it was a year ago. It may be a year but we haven't got very far to being back where we were pre September 2010.
It is so very strange, I still find it hard to face what I lived through. I can't believe everything that has happened and how afraid I have felt in my own bed at times. I now understand just what aftershocks mean. I am disappointed that even as the aftershocks get smaller, my reaction to them as not grown smaller with them. We had two fours on Wednesday but they made me feel uneasy for a few minutes. Fours never used to worry me when we were having them all the time. I think as we get further and further out from the big shakes, the emotions come more to the surface. I haven't been dealing with those while busy dealing with getting on with normal life. Then last night we were woken at 3.30am by a 4.9. Long and rolling and we could hear a few things fall down. The kids didn't come running in like they used to in the early days, they are used to this new world we live in. They said on the news this morning we'd had twenty-five shakes in the last week but I felt three.
Christchurch is such an unusual place so much of the city is going as it always was, making it ridiculous for any suggestion the city should be completely abandoned. Other parts just aren't. Anyway insurance doesn't let you get out that easily and we have jobs and much of the city is busy like any other in New Zealand. Driving around I see restaurants or shops from the central city relocated and open, it is like visiting family and finding old friends are there already.
One good thing to come through this whole experience has been the community spirit. It is okay to help strangers and to ask strangers for help. But it is also sad to see the cracks start to appear and the media try to push us all apart. East verses West. We have enough issues without taking it out on each other. I really hope we can all keep caring for each other - not passing judgement on each other's experiences and thinking before we speak whether what we say will put others, already under stress, feel worse.It is hard to hold everyone's comments lightly. We are all tired and even it we don't admit it, emotionally affected, by the last twelve months. It is easy to say one thing now and feel different later. Things are constantly changing here.
I am glad for the lights they are putting up in the central city to mark the anniversary. It is so sad to look in at a desolate, dark central city when it should be alive and bright on a Friday or Saturday night. The light will stop that stomach clenching sadness.
On Sunday we will go and join in the hug Christchurch - the place definitely needs a hug but when you hug someone, it is in support and you do it because you know together you can pull through anything.

Lucy's crazy school year

2011-08-22T20:51:00.005+12:00

The snow shutting schools last week, I got to thinking over Lucy's school year so far.
Right from the beginning, things were a bit messy. Her school was on three floors above shops and a food court in the central city. The boxing day quake, that was centred very close to the central city, damaged the stairwell that is in the building attached to their school. This meant they had to build a temporary fire escape for the top two floors in order for them to use them. Lucy's home base (class) meets on the second floor, so plans were made to house them on the bottom floor until the right people had signed off the fire escape. I can't remember these days too clearly. The kids went swimming at Centennial pool and then on the Friday the whole school met in the gardens for the day. It was the first week of February. The next week school got underway properly, with everyone in the proper places and the fire drill using the new scaffold fire escape completed.
Then only a few weeks later it was Tuesday February 22nd. The rest of that week we were in Nelson, no school at all for Lucy. The following week she went to Tahunanui School in Nelson. By the end of the week we had power and water at home and we had the kids bought back by some wonderful friends. I thought if they stayed away any longer, they may have never wanted to return.
The following week we did home schooling with a meeting on the Wednesday at the new, temporary location at Halswell Residential. This was a welcome surprise for us as talk up until that week had been of a temporary location in the northwest part of the city.
The next week was more homeschooling while the staff worked quickly to set up rooms with the minimal resources they had (all the school's resources were still in town). Thursday 17th March, (four weeks after Feb 22), Lucy was back with her classmates that were still in Christchurch.
In the second term, they were moving to a new, more permanent, temporary site. She had a day off on May 23rd while again the staff set up a new school. This time at least they had most of their stuff from out of the city and the kids got their bags back. I remember at a parent's meeting about the new temporary school, someone asked about the safety of the prefabs in a large aftershock. I remember thinking, we'd had two, what were the chances of another large one? This was before June.
A few weeks later there was another day off on June 8th to allow all the staff to go in and get out more of their resources. A couple of weeks ago I saw the photos Lucy's learning advisor (teacher) took on this trip. The building was in relatively good shape but it was a mess. Bookcases, the kids had played next to, were lying on the ground and everything had been flung across the floor. The stairwell and lift shaft entrance was now badly damaged. There were holes in the walls and she had a photo of a gap between the school building and this stairwell. We used to walk in through this entrance every day.
Then came the June 13 quakes and school was shut for another two days while buildings were checked and signed off.
This term it has not been quakes but snow, with the three days off last week.
On Friday morning when I dropped Lucy off she said. "I'm scared Mummy we haven't felt an aftershock for ages." At six she may have missed a lot of school this year, but she knows the patterns of Christchurch aftershocks and if we haven't a decent one in awhile, it must be coming soon.
The aftershocks are back. Last week wasn't the new quiet normal, it was abnormal according to the experts. Since Saturday there have been three fairly sizable shakes (in the fours on the richter scale). The one on Saturday night was horrible. It kept building and I was watching the little electronic weather station on top of the television wobble. I could feel the fingers of dread start creeping into the pit of my stomach and then it stopped. I could relax. I could push back all those feelings that come from September, February and June. I went to check on the kids and tell Lucy she didn't need to be scared anymore her aftershock had arrived.

Another Unusual Week

2011-08-16T16:04:00.008+12:00

The snow has been a fun distraction here and I haven't felt an aftershock all week. Is it really over now?
We stocked up in the weekend on food. The fruit and veggie shop was busy, Couplands the bakery was busy and the supermarket was crazy. It was like Christmas but people were not stressed and still friendly. We know how to handle these sorts of things now.
With the snow warnings, I knew we had ways to cook and stay warm, should the power go off. I don't totally trust our basic amenities anymore. But it has been fine - we haven't lost power at all.
We appreciated that on our side of town we have a sewerage system and don't have to venture out to use a portaloo or empty a chemical toilet. We're also still hooked into the stormwater drains, so as the snow melted it was just went away. In other parts of the city, with drains still blocked, it was a battle against the rising melt.
I've been thinking this week how the past year has changed me. Lucy goes across town for one day as part of her class activities and I find it a little difficult. I worry what if we get another large quake? I don't want to drive into liquefaction territory to get her back. It is a small risk and I let her go, but it still crosses my mind.
Talking to another mum, these days she has an adult babysitter rather than a teenager - she wants to make sure there is someone who will be calm should something happen.
I started this blog earlier in the week and yesterday, while sitting on the couch reading stories, we had an aftershock. It was only a 3.6 but it was centred not far from us and it made the pantry doors rattle. For a few seconds the heart rate increased as we tensed, waiting to see if it was going to ease again or whether the slow build up would continue. It stopped, Lucy moved closer and we kept reading.
The new city plan was released this week too and it was exciting to see plans for a great looking CBD. The time frames were sobering though.
Most days now we sail along with normal life but then I talk to someone from a more damaged area or see an empty space where a building used to be - my stomach tightens and my heart becomes heavy. This was a big thing and it is going to be a long time before we return to a time like February 21.
But despite those moments, through everything, I keep admiring how fantastic we humans are at adapting and getting on with living. We keep getting up and carrying on. People really are amazing.

Build Christchurch Beautiful

2011-08-10T11:02:00.013+12:00

It feels like it is a roller coaster ride in Christchurch at the moment. I hear exciting news like an art gallery opening up down the road so we can enjoy visiting a gallery again in this city, that the owners of the Dux are looking at opening up a new place for local bands to play at, also just down the road and the cardboard cathedral idea, I mentioned in the last blog post. Then there is the down news, more buildings being slated for demolition, people being very negative about the cardboard cathedral idea, and seeing photograghs of inside the CBD red zone with whole blocks just gone.
Tristan and I watched, with a small group of tourists and workers on lunch breaks, the wrecking ball smacking into the last of a multi-storey building at the end of Cashel mall. Next to it there is a big gap where other buildings used to be, including the pub we went to for dinner on the night I went into labour with Lucy. What is going to fill these empty spaces?
When we were in Melbourne we were talking with our friend, an ex Christchurch resident, who is looking to come back - but not to a boring city. I said, trying to be positive, they rebuilt Beirut three times and it is beautiful. Seven times she corrected me and then made a very wise point that I have been thinking about ever since. She said the Lebanese care for beauty and asthetics, while Kiwis are very practical. The more I have thought about that, the more it seems to be true and it worries me. As the aftershocks continue to only be small and relatively infrequent (I have felt only about three in the last week), I think about what will built in all those empty spaces.
If you don't think there is a problem being just practical you really need to listen to this talk by Grant Ryan on "The economic cost of being boring" from TedxEQCHCH.
I understand why people said they wanted working sewers and flat roads before they wanted a cardboard cathedral. But doing these ideas has no effect on sewers and roads being fixed any faster. It is a completely separate issue but it has a profound effect on the future of this city, my city, (listen to Grant Ryan - really if you haven't yet, you should). The cardboard cathedral, for example, is also to be used as public space and with the Town Hall and other usual venues still out of action we are going to need a venue in the city if we want to help support local bars, restaurants and cafes with reopening in our CBD.
I don't own any central city real estate and I keep wondering how as a resident I can encourage building owners to build Christchurch beautiful. I think we need to think carefully about support.
I have already decided we are going to dinner when Cafe Valentino is rebuilt because the owner said he intends the building to look 100 years old, the day it opens. He is doing something interesting. I think we really do need to strategically support these people - not just sit back and then be cross when we end up with a city that is practical but dull so visitors move quickly on and newcomers choose another place to live.
One thing Kiwis are good at is doing amazing things on small budgets. I don't think beautiful always has to be expensive, we need to be clever. Here are two examples of artworks that help make Melbourne the interesting place that it is - can we use ideas like this in our new buildings? Together - surely we can do it, if we don't give up because it is too hard, we're too busy trying to deal with EQC on getting our houses fixed or because we feel we have no voice. I think we all need to keep the pressure on those that do have the power either because they own the buildings or because we elected them to the council. Please Build Christchurch Beautiful, don't make me regret staying.

A New Perspective

2011-08-01T19:51:00.004+12:00

It is great what a little time away from this city can do for the soul. Loads of people I know are taking trips away this year. Partly to get just get away, partly to have something to look forward to and partly I think because having gone through everything here, you start to get an attitude of just do it - who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Before we left, on the last day of school, Lucy saw the book belonging to the friend she was drawing with at the time the big quake struck on Feb 22. She started to cry, the friend has moved away now and everything is different. Some tilt slab concrete buildings(see above) are starting to go up already. We began getting depressed about whether our worst fears of an ugly city might come true.
Then we went away to Melbourne. On the first night as I got into bed, a wee thought popped into my head - I could relax, I was going to get a good nights sleep, (no aftershocks to wake me). I hadn't realized I even thought this back in Christchurch.
We loved looking at all the old buildings and admiring their twiddly bits, most have fallen off our buildings here. It was great to hang out in a CBD and go to art galleries.
If people asked where we were from, they then asked about the quakes. It was hard to explain that the city was carrying on but the possibility of the next aftershock was a thing we lived with now everyday. It isn't like other natural disasters that come and then are gone, leaving the clean up.
We came home to snow - which was quite pretty and to hear good news. Exciting interesting things are happening like the cluster of high tech companies in town and the temporary cardboard cathedral. I noticed the buildings that are still here and there are some good ones left or at least ones they are going to fix. Other buildings, I now notice, that have previously been neglected. I wonder if we will start to value them and do them up.
The demolitions appear to be happening much quicker now. Once the buildings are gone, the gap is easier to look at than the broken building, it suggests something new, rather than a reminder of the past year's events.
Aftershocks are also staying minor. Last night I did wake up and wonder at the stillness, that was then interrupted by a shake. But it was just a shaking, nothing fell. It definitely feels like the city is moving forward. In June people began to voice fears that it would never stop but the despair has gone. While it continues to be calm, we can stand strong.

Peeping over the parapets

2011-07-11T11:19:00.017+12:00

It is still quiet here. I mean we get little shakes (magnitude 3s every day or so), but we've had nothing bigger for several weeks. [Then there was 4.3 I fortunately missed while out in the car after writing this.] Anyway, it reminds me of being a youth group kid and playing defend the fort. When we used to sit there in the quiet and wonder, if another onslaught was about to come or if the other team had given up and gone off in search of snacks. Who was going to brave and peep over the top?

The problem with the quiet, is I get on with everyday things and the size of the job ahead starts to loom. I took Tristan for a bit of digger watching last week. We stopped to watch a building being demolished on Moorhouse Ave and then every street inside the cordon, we looked down had people working - a demolition, some hard hat, high viz vest, wearers going up in a crane and a big truck driving out more debri.

Auckland

Wellington

The cordon around the city centre has remained unchanged for quite awhile now. I looked at what a similar area would be elsewhere. It is a rectangle shape and in Auckland, a similar size would be from Karangahape Road down Queen Street to just short of Swanson Street and the width across would be from Nelson Street to Princes Street. In Wellington the rectangle would be from the Beehive to around the Michael Fowler Centre and across from the sea to around the Victoria University stop on the cable car. I had to check both of those several times - they seem like such large areas. I was thinking it would be so devastating for those cities to have that sized rectangle of the central city out of bounds. Then I realised it is that devastating to have such a large portion of your central city out of bounds but sadly I have become so used to it in the last six months. I used to go in there everyday to take Lucy to school.

The bigger problem is, that is not all the damage. I keep coming across places I haven't been and there are more damaged houses and more bumpy streets.
AMI stadium is still shut, QEII is knackered, the muesum is shut, town hall is shut, convention centre is shut, all the cool art house movie theatres are shut, The Palms mall is still shut and Eastgate is partially open. The mall situation is probably good for our city, we were so over malled but of course the ones left are not well spaced across the city. If your local shops were those cool old two story ones with old facades, they have fallen down or been badly damaged. Other newer blocks have survived better but if the land was bad, they too have suffered.

Then there is the sewerage, power and water system damage and of course, housing damage. Roughly based on Stats New Zealand data, we are in the fortunate 100,000 or so homes in the green all good to fix, residential zone, there around 5000 in the red residential zone that already know a little of their future which leaves around 10,000 in the orange zones waiting to find out which way their land is to be viewed and about 30,000 homes in white areas that have not yet been assessed to be put into an appropriate land zone. So about 3% of Christchurch homes are in the red land areas and 7% are orange. At the end of March approximately only 1% of all Christchurch residential homes were red stickered. It seems quite small (though it has probably increased following June) on the statistics level, and amazing, considering all that has happened.
On a people level it still feels enormous. I keep thinking perhaps it isn't true, we will all wake up. Then I see a building that used to be so familiar and now with large pieces just lying on the ground. Footpaths still pushed right up like the ice on the shore of a frozen lake. I find myself shaking my head in disbelief.

Good Riddance June

2011-07-04T11:29:00.005+12:00

Grim - is a word that is being used around this city and I think it sums up June rather well.

The smiles are becoming more forced, tempers and stress that have been kept in check for so many months, are starting to flare.

It's cold, it's been grey and then of course we had the big shakes of June 13th and the rumbly unexpected night of June 21st. This round there was no time afterwards to recover - life just went on as before. Lucy was off for a couple of days following June 13th while the school was checked but everything else continued as normal. So we keep trying to live normal lives while coping on less sleep and the ups and downs of the adrenaline rushes from those larger aftershocks.

This past week I have just been so tired and that makes everything seem much worse. At least the week before with the kids we were able to do baking for the volunteer liquefaction movers and you felt you were helping and that felt good. Last Monday I slept badly and didn't even know it was because of some middle sized aftershocks through the night. They were enough to disturb my sleep but not enough for me to wake their shaking. But we all keep struggling on. Little aftershocks are now completely ignored - in a hope they will go away, if not even acknowledged.

At school the other day, a little girl was talking about the volcano ash and got confused whether the volcano was in Christchurch or Chile. All the adults present - chuckled but not because a volcano Christchurch was a crazy thought but because we all turned to each other and said, "I hope not!" The earth's ability to do anything is now a possibility we consider.

In the weekend we found some bricks that you can push backwards and forwards against the house. The mortar has cracked right through across one level. Luckily a bit of wood panelling above the door is keeping them in their place. Sometimes with all the little broken bits in our house. I want to give up and issue an ultimatum to the earth. "If you do a big shake again, that's it! We are leaving!"

But the earth doesn't care and I know it is not true.

If another large aftershock comes we will do what we did in June. Text each other and check we are okay. Gather the kids, if they are not with us. Go home. Check what amenities we have this time and be extremely thankful if by good fortune we retain power and water. Then get on with life as best we can.

And when it gets too much, you can't help but stop and think how lucky we are. We are in the green residential zone. We don't have liquefaction issues. We are in New Zealand, where the government is prepared to help. We still have much compared to many even in New Zealand and definitely compared to many across the world.

A good few nights of decent sleep helps too. We haven't had any major aftershocks for awhile now. We are going days without feeling anything. The aftershocks diminished to a low level much quicker after February than September and after June, they became small even faster.

In my head there are two thoughts that keep going around. One says - it is too quiet now, the earth is building up pressure, another larger one is coming. The other is - June was the finale and that is it - no more big shaking. It could be either so we plod on, not planning too far into the future, getting through the days and waiting to see what the earth will do.

What I can do

2011-06-28T11:41:00.002+12:00

This post is not about the new zoning of land in Christchurch. We are green, as expected, but this is Christchurch. Everyone has friends or family in the red residential zone. It is so emotional, so complicated - with the options and what insurance companies are prepared to do - and I haven't yet got a proper perspective on it.

So here is my list of what I can do.

I know it is irrational and it is in no way indicative of anyone else but me in Christchurch. With the February and now the June big aftershocks, while our experiences are all similar they are also all different, depending on where you were. I have friends with other lists that to me seem as irrational as the following will to you. Of course many others here have no such hang ups!

Things I can do:

1. I can go and do a grocery shop at the supermarket with the kids. Admittedly the first time I went back to a supermarket after getting caught in one TWICE, on June 13th, I went alone and only for a couple of essential items. I almost cried when I entered the first aisle but now I can do a proper shop as I used to (though maybe still a bit faster).

2. I can go to a mall to go to a particular shop, that I can't find outside of a mall, to get a particular item.

3. I can park on the roof of the mall carpark.

4. I can enjoy going to a cafe for a coffee or a meal.

5. I went to the Ballantynes sale at the CBS Arena when the crowds were gone and I could get in, choose items and out in fifteen minutes.

6. I can park beside a concrete or brick wall - if that is the only option left.

7. I like shopping in places on the edge of the city cordon. Parking is currently quite easy!

8. I made a list of all our crockery and glassware in case a large aftershock finally shook that cupboard open. (I have already had to change it as we broke two glasses in the weekend - probably both times due to tiredness from aftershock interrupted sleep.

Things I am currently avoiding:

1. Going to malls to wander around and browse.

2. Eating at a cafe or food court inside a mall or building that I can't easily get to the entrance.

3. Large groups of people where I don't have enough personal space to get under something. (The photo of the first day of Ballantynes sale with all the crowds, amazed me.)

4. Parking on any floor but the roof at the mall.

5. Going back to the supermarket I was caught in on June 13.

6. Driving on the Port Hills.

Things that make me slightly nervous:

1. Ceiling tiles in commercial buildings. The other day I was visiting a place that was now missing some tiles following the sharp shock of June 21. I knew the likelihood of any falling on me right then was unlikely, but I found another part of my mind had wandered off and worked out I could fit at least my head under the overhang of the desk.

2. Glass bottles and wine close to the edges of shelves. At friend's place I saw a glass olive oil bottle in the pantry at the front, close to the edge. (really it isn't you - it is me! I think that feeling was from February, and all the bottles crashing and smashing around me).

3. Getting stuck in a line of cars on the off ramp of the carpark, especially under the concrete roof.

In the future, I will look back at this list and be surprised. That is another thing this whole experience has taught me, humans are so adaptable.

Oh what a night!

2011-06-22T11:03:00.005+12:00

I was going to call this post - what a week, but that was before last night when an aftershock hit with force - short and sharp. We didn't get up until it had finished. Tristan was still asleep, Lucy had all the duvets on her head. It didn't stop though, constant tiny aftershocks and larger ones throughout the night. Lucy slept on a mattress in our room for the rest of the night but it was interrupted sleep. Morning came far too quickly.

A few things fell over, the big breasted, pottery, Brazilian lady fell over again into her pottery Brazilian sheep. She hasn't broken so far but she has now been put in a box, I don't want to lose her after making it this far but she is rather top heavy. At least her head wasn't stuck in the Egyptian candleholder - I had already put that down in the box after Monday.

This week there has been a lot talk around the town of staying or going. It is irritating to hear outsiders saying we all should leave. The talk, which seems to be fast becoming fact, of abandoning 12,000 homes is about 8% of Christchurch homes. Only some of Christchurch is deep in liquefaction. I cannot even begin to know how those people feel and what it does do your state of being to have liquefaction pouring in through your power sockets and I live here.

That is what's so strange about being here.

The city is far from dead. It will never be the same again but much of life and work in this city keeps going despite everything. I visited a business on Monday with two huge containers in their carpark and more on the way. The port was shut last week and they are working hard this week to get through all the containers that were held up. Their old reception area downstairs has a crack in the floor and the dust of old, tidied up liquefaction. Their new reception is upstairs - clean and tidy and bright as always - though the floor moved more than I expected. On the street there are small piles of liquefaction but the work goes on.

Yesterday we had a wee walk in the gardens and came across the peace bell red stickered, (the picture above). It made us laugh. Can a bell be red-stickered? Or was it a symbol of the current state of world peace? We are not the only ones having a rough time. The gardens were still looking lovely despite the grey and the lack of people, but it was a freezing day.

A year ago I was having counselling to deal with my anxiety. One of the things I was struggling with was fear with what I thought would happen into the future. The counsellor kept saying to me - your picture of the future is just one scenario and noone knows the future. It felt so real to me, I really struggled to think that the future could be different. Now after so many quakes and aftershocks, (none of which I had pictured in my future scenario), I am much better at living in the here and now. Waiting on EQC, it is not even worth thinking too far into the future and Monday last week was testament to how quickly things can change here - anything you get done on any given day, is a bonus.

It is hard here and for some they have lost too much or been pushed too far but don't tell us all to leave - we can decide that each for ourselves. These quakes come out of nowhere and with no warning. If we move, we will not be any more immune to random bad events - it will just be a different place. On Monday night I was reading a novel about World War II and the lady wrote in 1946 from London "Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people." She could have been talking about Christchurch.

I love London now and Christchurch will be fine - when the land goes back to sleep.

Christchurch keeps on

2011-06-15T20:48:00.009+12:00

When I reach school after the 6.3, Lucy runs across the grounds crying, "Why did you go?" - a good question I have been asking myself! After hugging others and wishing them all the best for the night, we head for home.
It is a funny feeling to approach our house and wonder what services we will have. I walk in. Is that the freezer in the garage I hear? I flick the lightswitch by the door. We have power! The relief is wonderful. No cold, dark night for us this time and we have the Internet! I check the tap - a dribble, then nothing. No water means no toilet. This is a little trickier this time. It is cold outside. We find gumboots for the kids. Luckily weeing in the garden is great fun, as far as they are concerned.
The aftershocks continue but are mostly small. The kids are relaxed enough with it all to even go to bed in their own beds. We have water back by then so in our house things are almost normal and definitely normal for life post Sept 2010.
We are woken in the night by another large aftershock. We are back to this - broken sleep, though the kids sleep through it.
Very little has fallen in our house. Nothing appears to be broken. The precarious stack of board games has fallen down in the cupboard but I leave them for later.
Tuesday is much like after September 4th. The western side of the city is operating as normal. The picture at the top is our street after 25 quakes larger than 5.0. The latest popular item for businesses are massive "open" flags - as big and bright as possible. I know in parts of the city people are busily shovelling but how much help can I be with two little kids in tow?
The kids are pretty grumpy and I feel like I have had a big night out, but I haven't - didn't even get around to having any alcohol on Monday night. I think it is the fallout from the shock and the adrenaline.
The big stockpot is back on the stove to boil the water.
We go to a smaller suburban mall to get the things for Tristan's birthday cake I hadn't managed to get on Monday. I don't want to go in but the other little shops we visit don't have what we want. Inside it is okay. Everything looks normal. I feel better.
In the shop an area is roped off. I look up and some of the ceiling tiles are missing. Others are half hanging - the metal frames that held them bent and twisted. My stomach sinks. We grab something that is sort of what we want and leave as fast as possible for home.
I can't help think of Haiti. They have been through this too but without the fixing and clean up we have between the biggies. According to the wonderful website of geologist Mark Quigley, Haiti had 16 aftershocks greater than 5.0. Admittedly according to geonet, we've had 25 above 5.0 but I still feel very fortunate to live in Christchurch.
When I think about leaving, I find my biggest fear would be to go through this again from September. At least we are surely further through this natural disaster sequence and are closer to the end than the beginning. Today Lucy said "I am going to take a picture of that building that is totally fine so I remember lots of buildings were okay."

Tell me why I don't like Mondays

2011-06-14T15:20:00.005+12:00

We were up early to watch the Canadian Grand Prix. It was a very exciting race. Heavy rain meant it went a lot longer than usual so we were on the verge of being late but we decided to watch it to the end and what a finish! On the last lap Button passed reigning champion, Vettel for the win. We actually cheered and then raced for the door.
Last week I got a little sick of all the moaning in this city. Things are really hard for some people but it felt like everyday there were stories of someone being wronged. Were these really issues or one off strange situations? How many tradesmen were really ripping off EQC? How many people were going to be cold this winter? Had the big copper dome really been stolen? Hadn't it been in a picture on a truck of debri early on? I was finding it frustrating reading these half written stories. It spurred me to do my own helping to fix things I had been moaning about. On the Monday morning while working through my big list of jobs, I got an email back from a Community Board Chairman about collapsed building rubble that was still lying in the cycle lane on Lincoln Road.
I sent an email to councillors who had been taking up car parks all day at the local library because they were using a meeting room regularly with the council building still not in use. They replied within minutes thanking me and agreeing they could easily park somewhere else and free up the parks for preschool parents and the elderly.
I went to pick up Tristan from preschool at lunchtime, having got all the other morning jobs out of the way and feeling quite pleased with my responses from council people. I thought to save petrol and time, we could do the grocery shopping at Barrington Mall. It wasn't our usual supermarket but I only had a few things on the list and we needed to go to a couple of the other shops to get some things too. It would all work out well and I could tick a lot of the jobs off the list in my head.
The day was going so well.
Tristan asked to sit in the trolley which he hasn't done in ages but it certainly made the shopping quicker. We had only one more item to tick off our list.
Wham!
The ground was moving and the wine bottles at the end of the aisle were crashing onto the floor. I stood, my arms over Tristan to protect him from stock falling. I realized we were next to some free standing shelves. Worried they might fall, I pushed the trolley forward past them. I swore and cried as everything kept shaking and I stared at the lady with her trolley facing me. I was not dealing with this!
Finally it stopped. A meadow fresh person, who had been filling the fridge, came over and put her arm around us.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
Then a supermarket staff member was there telling us calmly to leave our trollies and we needed to go outside. Outside everyone was on their phones. So was I. We decided I had better go get Lucy so off we went, feeling another shake just as I was getting into the car.
The roads were not too busy but then I met a line of traffic coming out of the city. I got to school and Lucy was fine.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
I tried to keep it casual about the aftershock. We knew now it was a 5.5. She wanted to stay and they were going to make noodles. I thought perhaps I could get my shopping after all. I decided to go back to the mall hoping to get my other shop visits out of the way at the same time. We Christchurch people know. that if you have a big one, that is it for the rest of the day, any future ones are much smaller than the big one. I pulled back into the mall car park, cursing the aftershock for messing up my plans and causing me to use up even more petrol. I found a staff member with our trolley. We got the last few things and made it to the checkout. Everything was loaded on the conveyor. The guy in front was on his phone and the cards he bought wouldn't scan. I tried to not be too impatient. I tried to look at the positive, there were no extra things this time. I had put a few non list items in last time but they had already been put back and I couldn't be bothered going back for them.
Wham!
This time I was laughing. No way, it couldn't be happening again. I grabbed Tristan and ran through the checkout to crouch by the wall, away from any stock. With Tristan under me I watched lights in the roof swinging violently. I realized we were under a plasma screen and worried it might fall off, I shuffled along out of it's way - the building lurching under us. Finally the shaking stopped. That one was worse. A staff member calmly told us we needed to leave the building. I couldn't believe it had happened twice. We went to the car to go to Lucy. This time I wasn't going to leave her. But everyone was trying to leave and I was trapped. We sat in the car and it kept rocking.
"Are you doing that Tristan?"
"No Mummy, it is the ground!"
We watched the ground leaking out of the ashphalt.
I was shaking with shock and adrenaline. Watching the Grand Prix seemed so long ago now and no longer relevant. My list of jobs was knackered. Now all I wanted was to get Lucy.

Why Leave Now?

2011-06-07T14:21:00.011+12:00

The only thing worse than aftershocks, is not having any for awhile. The last I felt was a couple of smallish ones on Tuesday night last week and then an even smaller one on Sunday morning. No decent ones for awhile could only mean one thing, a biggish one was coming soon. The Press ran a large headline of our chances of another sizable shake to cries of scaremongering. I don't think so. These guys were in the Square, in a building now listed for demolition and if I was thinking the aftershocks had died down to early February levels, I'm sure I wasn't the only one thinking about what happened in later February. These days we don't have quite the security we did after September of dodging the worst of it. The worst happened and just when we thought it wouldn't.
We still have a box of things off the book case that sits under the table in the office. I put the full bottles of wine on the pantry floor and we put string across the shelves in the garage. We are thinking whether to put a kiddie lock on our tall cupboard with all our glasses and crockery. It hasn't opened in any of the quakes so far and we haven't lost anything out of it but what if we get a large, shallow, close aftershock?
Queens Birthday Monday morning - it started slow, built up and just as we started to wonder.... it died down to a gentle rocking. Flowers in a vase swayed and the kids ran and sat in the corner where the table used to be (old quake habits die hard), and finally the ground stopped rocking - it was a bit of a long one. It was the sixth largest but I've decided that doesn't mean a thing. Nothing compares to Sept 4th, the immediate aftershocks, Feb 22nd and that awful night. A 5.5 followed by calm is fine - we didn't lose power or water either.
We decided to go to the beach to wear the kids out before they drove us mad since they had the post, large aftershock, adrenaline rush. We had a bit of a discussion about going to Sumner. We hadn't been since a couple of weekends before February 22nd. Was it wise to go there these days?
We decided to go and I'm glad we did. The news shows all the devastation but it isn't like that everywhere, even in the badly hit suburbs. There were very badly damaged homes in Sumner and on the way - a house that looked normal until you saw the end of it had dropped off - but many houses looked totally fine from the outside. They probably have what is known here as; "the usual quake damage". The cliffs have completely changed in places and seeing Shag Rock (Rapanui) was pretty heart wrenching. But the kids played on the beach and made sand castles - this is their new future. Our past was a different looking place that has gone now but that doesn't make the future bleak.
That is the thing with Christchurch, it is crazy to say lets all up and leave. Where in New Zealand is safer from earthquakes? Apparently now Christchurch's chance of another biggie is equal to Wellington and the Hawke's Bay but I don't see too many moving from there in a hurry. We have our house here (admittedly with "minor structural damage" but quite livable until insurance fixes it), we have our business here, we have jobs and schools here.
Currently it is more stressful and not a day goes by that I don't think about the February quake - whether because a business I go to visit is no longer there or an aftershock hits or one of a million other things that have changed since February but many other things each day are completely normal.
Before the big quakes in September and February there was no warning - they hit out of seemingly nowhere, our cat didn't even get any animal intuition. I know now, my thoughts of what the future may hold can be completely wrong and I can't run and hide. There are forces out there much bigger than little ol' me and nowhere is completely safe so I have to make the best of it and luckily for us at the moment, that it is not too bad. (And my ipod of podcasts is still under my pillow, if I get woken in the night by a shake.)

How to build a temporary school

2011-06-01T11:37:00.006+12:00

Last week I was amazed at just what can be done in about six weeks. A temporary school has been built to house Lucy's school since their old building is right in the middle of the red zone. They brought prefabs down from the North Island and a big ashphalt pad has been poured in the middle. Decks have been built connecting all the rooms, a toilet block plumbed in, paths, grass and a driveway. No portaloos was one of the requests from the students so they are very happy with the toilets. It is fantastic. There are still finishing touches going on like shade cloth being put up over the decking and sometimes there are issues still to be ironed out, like power was lost to one room on the first day and heating in one classroom didn't work as planned but considering the monumental task that has been done in such a short time - it is incredible. We met one of the local residents who also had watched in disbelief at the speed of assembly.
In one of the rooms, the blackboard has a massive "Kia Kaha" written in chalk, messages of support from theschool it came from and all the names from kids at that school. It was cool to see and had far more heart I think than the free little Toy Story army sets, Lego sent the school kids because of the loss of their school.
Furniture from the school came out of the old school in the CBD - which was very exciting and also a little weird. Lucy's little tote tray with the sign she had made only a few weeks before the February quake. In her tote tray was her books and her pencil case. We also got her bag back with her rain jacket and her drink bottle. There was a card, another girl in her class had made for her that day, before the quake hit. Seeing these things nearly made me cry. I think, it was, as my friend Rose said, they were from a different time. It is a time we can never go back to and we are different people now. It was so nice to get them back and life has felt more normal since - packing Lucy's own bag and going to her own school - not sharing with another.
There are ramifications though. The temporary school is leased land and it is definitely until the end of the year but I am not sure after that. A permanent school has been talked about on the outskirts of the CBD but I can imagine building a permanent place will take quite a while longer than six weeks.
The school they were at last term is for low intelligent kids with loads of support to help make their lives successful. The high school is still sharing this site so only a few of those kids could come back to their school. I asked the principal what happened to the rest and they have been mainstreamed with support - a far cry I would have thought from the residential school that they had been used to a term ago. They come from families all over New Zealand. I don't know that it is fair that these kids, already disadvantaged are having their lives so affected by this earthquake, when their school was essentially fine. Earthquakes are very far from fair.

TEDxEQCHCH

2011-05-23T19:44:00.008+12:00

If you haven't heard of TED - Ideas Worth Spreading, then you should have - ted.com - the talks are truly inspiring, like reading a good book and having watched a few, when the chance came to able to go to TEDxEQCHCH I signed up.
Warning Rant to follow:
It was a marvellous, head overflowing with ideas and thoughts, day.
I loved Cameron Sinclair and his on the ground actual experience, in rebuilding after disasters. It was amazing and practical. I also loved him because he said the real work starts later when work is actually done. Having ideas is the easy part - actually doing something about it is the hard part. I couldn't agree more. Anyone who can show eight slides of eight weeks to completely build a new house - is also just most awesome.
I loved Coralie Winn for her wonderful approach to temporarily making newly flattened buildings beautiful. I'm signing up for that mailing list.
I loved Karen Blincoe for her quiet and understated presentation that slapped me full on in the face with what building a sustainable city actually means. I think we need to be careful what words we bandy about and what we really want. Even in the room there seemed to be a hum of agreement when the words sustainable city was put up but I knew - since I did bike, that the majority of people had come in cars to hear these talks and probably not full cars either. Actually doing things, is so much harder than talking about them.
I loved Dan Cullum for bringing renewal back to individual sized portions of offering a few hours a week to community things. Hugh Morrison from Arrow was practical and laid it all out in steps - which was relieving and also eye opening on the scale of what we are facing. If I remember right he had a deadline for July 2012 (a whole year away!) for completion of all demolitions.
So many ideas and that was all before a tasty lunch.
It was exciting and energizing and yet also strangely, deeply frustrating.
Because really what could I do about it?
How much say would I have in the rebuilding of the city?
Most of the buildings are privately owned in the CBD. I can't vote in the person who is head of traffic. I didn't vote in the urban planner dude - though he impressed me with his talk and down-to-earth manner. He already had preliminary findings from the share an idea event last weekend (what people wanted more of and what they wanted to see less of in the CBD), which was pretty cool and speedy work. He does have to work fast though, he has to produce a plan in nine months.
Another thing that annoyed me was - looking around me most people looked a little like me! We were all educated, middle class and probably mostly from the lesser damaged areas of the city or with at least enough in the emotional and financial tank to be able to deal with bad damage. Probably they were preaching to the converted, which is why we all loved it but what can we all do? How many of us owned buildings in the CBD?
Were we a suitable cross section to have heard these fabulous inspiring talks? A recording of Majora Carter talk from TED left me wondering - what voices would miss out on input into the rebuilding of this city?
I could try to listen for them, but would that help if I was listening?
And another thing - in the last eighteen months or so we learnt some very fascinating lessons about what people say and what people actually do. People are happy to share ideas on how they want the central city to look like in the future but unless we all make a commitment to go there and shop there and work there - it will be a dead red zone just like it was heading for even before Sept 4th. I hope there is enough people and companies with guts to go back to the central city and I really, really hope Christchurch has the guts to actually turn up and support them.
Hugh said he can make his plan but it will need people. It is so true. I have watched in recent years just how quickly seemingly committed people will walk away - often with seemingly good reasons. It is really tough, if you are one that says - "No I will not walk away. It will be hard but I will see it through." I can say from experience, there is no thanks for you and often there is only surprise and even ridicule from others.
I really don't want to be disappointed when our city centre reopens. I hope at least the 700 who had the privilege to hear such amazing speakers on Saturday support it and make it better by turning up and not just once but again and again as only then will businesses remain viable there. Only then will we have a beating heart of the city again.
Though perhaps, if they really were all a little like me - they will.

Echoes of the Day

2011-05-19T11:35:00.004+12:00

We are getting well into the swing of our new post quake lives here but then something catches you out.
I was driving through Sydenham the other day, because it was the quickest way to get to where I needed to go. I hadn't been down that part of Colombo Street for some time. I have shopped on and off in Sydenham over the past thirteen years so I had a good handle on what it used to look like. It was not somewhere I thought of as pretty. In many places it was quite run down and a little icky - it needed a bit of a decluttering and a clean up.
Now when you drive up Colombo Street between Brougham and Moorhouse - much is gone. It is about four blocks and each block on one side of the road or the other, the majority of the block is just empty space - nothing there at all. I crossed the intersection of Sandyford and Byron Streets and three of the four corners were blank, demolished spaces. I nearly cried. I was surprised at my reaction but it just seemed so sad that history and little businesses had been totally erased.
On Tuesday this week at 12:40 ish there was a sizable aftershock south west of the city. I didn't feel it at all as I was in the car. It was quite close to Lucy's temporary new school location. It was a Tuesday again and at a similar time of day - lunchtime and to her, it started in just the same way as the big one on February 22nd. She cried. I didn't realise any of this until I went to pick her up after school. She was fine by then but it was the first thing she told me about. How she had made herself into a turtle and covered her head and listened to the shelves with rocks and shells rattling in the cabinet beside her. That is the weird thing with these aftershocks they are so psychological. For me it was as if nothing had happened that day but for her she was back with some of those scary feelings from February.
I can easily tell people our story of February 22nd and what happened but I don't revisit the feelings and emotions. Sometimes I see them as if through a door crack and I don't want to get any closer to them - they are something of the past and even now almost beyond my comprehension.

It must be over by now!

2011-05-11T21:16:00.006+12:00

I came back from Wellington last weekend thinking, new term, back to less earthquake stuff - more future planning stuff.
I was woken that night at some time, I don't even recall, by another aftershock. The ground seems determined for us not forget its power and how little we are really in control. On the Friday of that week I was sitting next to a lady who is currently living in a motel - it is very far from over.
I remember when we were kids, there were days when the sun shone under the nor'west arch, lighting everything in a soft yellow like one of those old paintings in the art gallery. The nor'west would die down and all would be still. "Earthquake weather we used to say." I don't why we thought that. Earthquakes don't care for weather, they happen in brilliant sunshine, in the night, in the rain - anytime they fancy. I was thinking on Tuesday night as I was lying in bed, about how to describe the last week of aftershocks. It is hard to remember because they do merge into together. So there was one big enough to wake me on the Sunday night. I think we had a couple of days of no aftershocks that I felt and then there was a largish one that I didn't feel as we were in the car but when we arrived at school everyone was talking about it. I think there were a couple more littlies over the next few days. Saturday afternoon we had a sizable jolt. Monday there was another that had me doing the meerkat impression - stopping raising my head and looking about to see if things would worsen. Then of course in the early hours of Wednesday we had another large rattle. It woke three out of the four in our house. 3am shakes are bastards because it is so hard to get back to sleep and before you know it, the alarm is going off. It was one those aftershocks that made the whole house rock for quite awhile at the end of the major jolt, like it was rocking itself back to stock-still or we were on a boat crossing the ferry wake in the Marlborough Sounds. Then my brain stopped and thought hang on! This was the ground, it was not supposed to gently rock to a stop!
The next two days everyone was tired. Imagine a whole city tired from broken sleep on top of months of dealing with change, (the new positive word that is being used for the situation we find ourselves in), traffic is not pretty, nor that safe a place, to be at the moment. At least we are all in it together.

I'm a Christchurch Freak

2011-05-03T11:31:00.005+12:00

So it turns out being in the middle of large natural disaster changes you.
In the last week, we've had some non Cantabrians stay with us and Lucy and I stayed outside the region with people who hadn't been through two major quakes.
It showed me just how much I have changed.
In Christchurch I am so aware of any shakes and rattles - teeny aftershocks are heard by my well tuned ears that pass by non Cantabrians unnoticed. Larger aftershocks are just shakes to non Cantabrians. There is no fear it might get bigger. My body reacts without me telling it anything. What is happening in this shake? Is it easing? Is it increasing? I don't seem to have much control over the reaction. Outwardly I may not move. but inwardly a little dialogue starts up. I am ready for whatever comes next.
In Christchurch, get together with anyone, even strangers and the talk is dominated with quake related stories. It is something we all have in common and at least it is more interesting than the weather to talk about. Outside Christchurch, if you are the lone Cantabrian, you don't talk about earthquakes at all, there is just no need.
Twice I also found myself sitting near a stranger. I felt I really needed to talk to them find out their name and where they were from. I wondered why - I don't normally talk to strangers. On the flight home beside me was a stranger. She started talking - "are you going home? How is your house?" Her home was also Christchurch. We chatted and shared enough information that should anything happen we could support each other. In Christchurch it seems it is still important to know those around you. You may need to help each other. I am sure this will wear off but it is actually nice living in a community that is acting like a community and looking out for each other - whether a stranger or not.
I enjoyed looking up at building facades and just admiring them, now knowing things can disappear so fast. I have also noticed I am finally thinking less about the future, enjoying today - this moment is enough. I have seen how everything can change in a few seconds. On Saturday night I was watching people dancing and enjoying themselves I didn't think what would happen next. I just enjoyed the moment and felt happy that others were happy and having fun. What happened after the dancing stopped didn't matter. I seem to have a new appreciation for other people's enjoyment. I don't even have to be happy but I can still enjoy others having a good time. It is hard to explain but I guess it is that community feeling kicking in, it is less about me now and more about everyone and how we can all get through life together. I am sure these feelings will change over time but it is nice to notice them now.
Driving on the edges of the shut off red zone, I saw the Hotel Grand Chancellor from another angle and realised just how much the building is not standing up straight. It is scary, that a building that big can lean like that but also impressive that it can and not fall down. It is also odd how once buildings are completely demolished and the land cleared, it is like they never existed. An empty space means nothing to those outside the city but to those familiar with what used to be, it is going to take some adjusting. It has not all gone either. The more we see, the more we notice what has survived instead of what is gone. It is the same with me, I am starting to notice the new person that has come through this.

Emotions and aftershocks

2011-04-18T15:46:00.004+12:00

It has been a strange week.
I learnt more about another layer of this natural disaster this week - the emotional and psychological layer. Many people are just getting on, doing the best they can to do normality under the circumstances, but for others it is not just that easy. Some are very emotionally on edge or turning to things like excessive alcohol to get through. These are not just some random people over the other side of town but friends and family of people I see regularly. This is very real and very draining especially when those doing the supporting have also gone through this whole event too.
I have now washed all my non urgent washing - even non urgent washing becomes urgent when you start running out of towels and sheets. I added a little every wash and it is finally all done.
The breaking of a major sewerage pipe in Ferry Road this week, called for people to be more careful with using water and sewerage systems. They are now saying to not use dishwashers, no matter what part of the city you live in. Obviously noone can tell what you do in your own home and I am sure many people in the less affected suburbs in the west are carrying on as pre quake but we have stopped using the dishwasher. I can't do much to help those in other suburbs but I can do that. We were so good at being community minded in the initial few weeks - it is the long haul of caring for each other in little unselfish ways that is a lot more difficult.
5:49pm Saturday night reminded us why it was important. In our western suburb, we didn't lose power or get any liquefaction to deal with. The kids did dive under the table. This time Lucy was more badly affected than Tristan and was shaking afterwards. Tristan was caught up in believing his duvet house would shelter him from anything the earth cared to do.
Karl went for the laptop wobbling atop the television. I stood where I was undecided whether to grab the pile of trays and pans I had just taken out of the oven and put on the bench in a higgledy, piggledy pile. They slid but didn't fall. Above me the fly sprayer thing fell over but backwards not forwards so didn't fall on me. Then it all stopped and we got on with what we had been doing, with half an eye on the internet to see the magnitude - that one was worth checking out.
Lucy went to her room and came back holding her little canvas painting. This little painting balances on the lip above the wardrobe, against the wall and is the kids gauge of aftershock size. When they get scared, I ask; "Did the painting fall down." They check and if it is still up we agree the aftershock, was not worth being afraid of. She came back from her room holding it and smiling - even the painting had fallen down.
We knew it had been a sizable one and afterwards we kept getting little ones. Sunday morning we had a jolt wake up and Sunday night another noisy one rumbled towards our house, thwacked it and then seemed to rumble off into the distance. The blokes slept through that one but Lucy called out in the dark. Every aftershock is different and now we get them from all sorts of directions.
Do you remember the Boxing Day aftershock being in the news? People ran from Boxing Day sales and some buildings in town were damaged badly because it was centred very close to the city. After Saturday that aftershock, is no longer in the top 25 for magnitude. It doesn't feel quite real that we have felt so many.
I also went to a mall for the first time this week. These days the thoughts that ran through my head as I got there was I would park on the street. I didn't want my car stuck in a carpark building should another aftershock hit. Then when I couldn't find a park(everyone else having the same idea), I decided perhaps parking it in the carpark building might be a good plan, the car had been playing up a bit. I worked out even if I had to walk I would be able to get to the kids from there. Of course my logical brain was also suggesting, nothing would happen and nothing did. I thought how funny it was all those thoughts running through my mind and then Saturday night's 5.3 aftershock, makes the thoughts seem not quite so stupid.
The aftershocks are supposed to ease off within the year. I have asked Tristan if he remembers what it was like living before earthquakes and aftershocks and he says yes but he doesn't want the ground to be "rolly polly" on his birthday. They seem to come in clusters these days so he might be lucky.

The long tail of natural disasters

2011-04-12T10:57:00.003+12:00

The wonderful news at the end of last week was that we no longer have to boil the water. I didn't think much of this announcement, as I thought we had a pretty good routine but it is much more normal just brushing your teeth from the tap and using the big stock pot for cooking, rather than just in the constant rotation of boiling or storing boiled water.
Every day since September I am very thankful we live in a first world country. There is always improvements going on with infrastructure. Roads that I drive on regularly, keep improving as they are repaired or at least remediated to a point, that makes them less of a slalom course and less likely to be further damaged. While not everyone may be happy with solutions that are happening, there are constant solutions being provided. We are so lucky to live in this country.
But it does take a long time. Media move on to new disasters around the world and the people here keep on dealing with stuff - day in, day out.
The more severely damaged Eastern suburbs keep getting the harsh end of the situation. They have to deal with the severely, damaged sewerage system and less robust, repaired power network. But the sewerage treatment works are in the East - all our sewerage, whether in the system or overflowing into rivers has to go east and encounter the more damaged areas. I still keep being surprised by events or even Lucy's school being much nearer to me. But I am in the west - everything is coming to the west, to avoid the damage. Great if you live west - difficult if you don't.
On Sunday afternoon I walked past people emptying a covered trailer into new premises. Lawyers offices have popped up all over the place in suburban areas. The new Christchurch continues to emerge.
We can get into more of our inner city now but not the heavily damaged "red zone". We have to wait for October for that. It seems so far away but that is the long tail of these things.
The aftershocks we are having, quite intermittently now, are pretty small. Most seem to be more noise than shake. I had thought after September I would never worry about an earthquake again. But now, even these tiny ones cause a bit of back straightening. We are very aware of the movements in our surroundings - we don't duck for cover or even check how big it was, anymore but it seems like our bodies note it and are ready, if required to react. I find myself getting very irritated if someone is doing something that repeatedly makes a bang or thump. I get annoyed at my body overreacting even though I know what it is.
It is sad watching more and more buildings being demolished. When I put together this historic walk in July last year, I had no idea that the Carlton Hotel, where it starts would have to be demolished less than a year later. They are only buildings but there are many stories that went with them.
I hope the new buildings that end up being built are interesting and unique enough to generate their own stories.

Quirks of the Quake

2011-04-04T14:18:00.006+12:00

My uncle said that he remeasured his house position using his GPS unit in late February after all the quakes and relative to the satellites his place had moved thirteen metres.
It seemed a bit far fetched but we also have a GPS unit and knew where we had measured our house location. We checked it again and it reckoned our place had moved nine metres. We tried it over several days and we definitely had a new location always eight - nine metres from what it used to be. Our old position is now in our neighbour's house.
Someone on Friday night described how living in Christchurch now resembles a board game. Some of us suffer hardly at all with each roll of the dice and others have lost their house and now are finding out they have lost their jobs and it all seems quite random. Some struggle to get any kind of assistance while others get phoned and pressured into taking help they don't think they need.
It is all so complicated. The other week a lady mentioned that now another grief was happening; bureaucracy betrayal, for those that are being let down by not being able to successfully negotiate the system.
I experienced the most unusual phone call I have ever had with an insurance person. It was our commercial insurance - who haven't returned calls for five weeks. Then suddenly I got a call from someone in America. It seemed they wanted to help and did everything they could to make sure we got some help.
Everyone I've talked to here, mentions how unusually tired they are. I think it is just the constant stream of new information we need to assimilate - new routes to work, shops we can't use, new routines we need to do and an underlying tension of uncertainty about further shocks.
Then there is the future, the rebuild of the city and what will happen to suburbs not rebuilt and where will the homes go?
It doesn't take the community spirit long to dissipate - with comments of; "not near me", "the land here is much more valuable than the land was in the east" and "it is unfair to move people to new areas". We have a long road ahead and I hope the uglier side of humanity doesn't come to the fore in the tiredness and the tension.

Christchurch five weeks on

2011-03-29T11:02:00.005+13:00

So what's it like living in Christchurch these days?
Well sort of normal and sort of not.
We are still boiling the water so each day we still check how much water we have boiled and if we need to boil more. We still have the glass of boiled water for brushing teeth and use some in a bowl to wash salad vegetables from the garden.
Karl is in his second week back onsite at work. So routines are much more normal. Lucy had started at her temporary school location but then got chicken pox so is back home again. The current site for her school is just for this term, so next term her school will move again.
I had total sympathy for the business owners desperate to get into the inner city for things from their businesses after four weeks. It is such a long time to not be able to operate and while commercial insurance may cover some things, it doesn't cover losing customers to other companies because you have been unable to operate for a whole month. However, after talking to an engineer who has been working in the city since Feb 22nd, my opinion changed.
From the outside it is hard to see what is going on in the central city, but it has been really busy in there. Teams of USAR people and engineers have been working twelve hour days - four days on, two days off to check all buildings for safety. As areas have been checked and buildings stabilised or demolished, areas have been opened up. The cordons have shrunk a great deal in the last five weeks. Of course that means, the worst area in the middle is still cordoned off but with very good reason. The engineer I spoke to said it is an extremely dangerous place for an untrained person. Some cracks look bad but don't affect the building structurally, while other buildings may look fine but be very dangerous. Columns have been bent or broken so a concrete floor or roof maybe completely unsupported. Stairwells can be badly damaged and just hanging on by tenuous attachments. If you don't know where to walk, it has the potential to be fatal. So the poor business people have to wait, but many are now gaining limited access to get out essential items. It also stinks - five weeks of no power with places like sushi shops and fish restaurants...
I have driven passed the cordon for various reasons and even on the streets that are open, there is noone and hardly any traffic - even if your business could open, there is no one there to buy.
I dropped off an order from our webshop the other day and was met with many eyes from a bedroom and a lounge full of people working at desks, relocated from their usual workplace.
There are many temporary measures that we are all doing for today and tomorrow. At some stage I guess more permanent plans will have to be made.
The aftershocks have dropped off significantly we are only getting them sporadically, a couple a week. It is now not unusual to have quake free days. The kids still need reassurance with any unexpected noise or rattle - a big truck or bus passing or the wind rattling something.
The roads on this side of town are fine but we all still weave around bumps and dips. More holes have been repaired in our road and then heavy rain gets in to damaged parts and small ones open up.
We have had the rapid assessment by EQC of house last week and have been placed in the 4-6 month minor structural damage grouping. I still need to ring our own insurance about the driveway damage.
I did the first proper supermarket shop last week - not just for essentials. I haven't yet gone to a mall, but I wasn't a great mall shopper anyway and just now I don't really want to go in one. I have been caught out by trying to shop places that are still shut, even in areas I thought would be okay but the shop I wanted to go to was not okay.
It is hard to believe five weeks has passed and yet many are still living elsewhere, waiting to come back until next term. How will they feel coming back? Will they remember the sewerage is still far from fixed, even it appears that way at their house? How will the city cope with the increase in usage of power and water?
So it is sort of normal but not at all as it was on February 21st.

Visit to the Memorial Service

2011-03-22T11:03:00.006+13:00

Lucy and I attended most of the Memorial Service. Lucy was disappointed she didn't get to meet Prince William and that she wasn't on tv. Here were my impressions of the service, if you didn't get to make it along.
A lot of people went! For all the negative chat beforehand, when our bus pulled up, it was already three-quarters full and everyone was going to the service. I felt a little underdressed in my jeans and sweatshirt. Women were dressed in skirts or smart trousers and men were wearing shirts. This was not another concert in the park, it was a memorial service.
Once off the bus we walked into the park. As we approached the Park Terrace corner of North Hagley park, we heard a bellow, at first Lucy thought was an elephant but then over the loud speakers came "Toia Mai Te Waka". This song is about pulling your canoe up and is often used in powhiri to welcome guests. I found it surprisingly reassuring. The voices rang out so strongly of a people that in the past have lost many more whanau to the arrival of such things as infectious diseases and fought much bigger battles, than what our city was currently facing. They were still singing out strongly after all these years and Christchurch will too.
Before the service started, they showed the fourteen minute video of the severely damaged central city. Everyone was quiet. It was eerie to sit in such a large crowd in silence for that length of time. People got really irritable if anyone broke the silence, I still haven't quite figured out why.
The organisers had billed this event as a family event but unfortunately for us the video wasn't so great. Lucy hadn't seen too many images since walking out of the CBD on the 22nd. The video reminded her of that day. Her behaviour went downhill after that. She became belligerent and rude. Later we talked that perhaps it is better to cry than to misbehave. I guess the kids feel emotions and then don't know what to do with them.
One of the musical acts was Dave Dobbyn singing Loyal. Whatever you think of the song, I found it sad at the service. Only a few months ago we had Band Together in this same park. Everyone was laughing, talking, singing along and eating hot dogs. At the service, everyone just sat in silence until he finished playing. How much the mood of the city had changed in just five months.
There were many different religions represented in the service but there were more Christian traditions. After all it is New Zealand's background and often how we mourn. The Lord's prayer was said. I thought so many people all mumbling the Lord's Prayer in low voices, was a little like the hum of an approaching aftershock. Everyone gathered together made that sound.
We were under a clear blue sky and a very hot sun. I couldn't help but look around the crowd and wonder if everyone had sun cream on. In the wake of such a big change in the city, little things like sun cream can seem trivial but how much skin damage happened that day, that could lead to melanoma? Sometimes the world can seem a very cruel place.
Lucy and I left early and walked back into the Botanical Gardens. A couple asked if I could take their photo in front of some of the trees, just starting to show autumn colours. It was a lovely shot of a happy couple surrounded by the beauty of nature.
Many of the world's cities are near or on faultlines because they offer us so much - beautiful, rugged mountain scenery that I love and groovey stuff like gold. Apparently someone has worked out that on balance, the benefits for humans living near faultlines outweighs the nasty earthquakes. Sometimes it just takes awhile to see the beauty again.

To Kiwis outside Christchurch

2011-03-18T09:29:00.002+13:00

Here is what I wrote for my friend, who had been asked to comment on Christchurch at their work thing today in Wellington

Today is a memorial day for those that died and for our city. Please tomorrow and the day after, remember the living in Christchurch.
For many, I think this day has come too soon, not all the dead have been named, not all funerals held, schools are barely up and running, many businesses are still working out their future - Heck we can't even get into the middle of our city.
Personally, I am a bit scared of memorial day, probably like many here, I haven't thought much about the grief of this quake. Life has been too busy doing basics.
I am worried that if I take the time out on this day everything that has happened will hit me like an unwanted aftershock - The people I no longer will see, the change in our business, the terrible damage to the city, the changes to our own house. At some stage, I am going to have face these new realities.
After today's service - as the media moves on, Christchurch will still be here just starting to grieve; the elderly couple realizing they may not live long enough to see the city rebuilt, the kids missing classmates who have permanently left town, without getting a chance to say goodbye. People dealing with images in their heads who only say of February 22nd "I saw some things…..".
Everyday I hear of new situations that make my heart sad.
I think we are all still coming to grips with what has happened.
We are still having aftershocks that bring back memories of September 4th or February 22nd, depending on their shake.
We are still working out how our lives go from here.
Please remember us.

I'm a motorsport fan - so why do I care about Rugby?

2011-03-16T17:31:00.008+13:00

Pre Feb 22, I was already sick of the rugby world cup; the disruption to the inner city in preparation, the stupid corporatey rules about what words businesses can and can't use in marketing. But Post Feb 22, I became quite a strong advocate that Christchurch should still host rugby world cup games. Today I realised, I have been fooling myself about my city. I knew we were experiencing a new normal at the moment, but I guess I always figured we could get back to proper "normal" in the nearish future.
This morning I heard a business consultant on the telly say business was not trying to get back to normal in Christchurch, it was currently in survival mode and then it would be finding a new normal.
An email from Lucy's Learning Advisor (otherwise known as her teacher) with a list of resources they needed made me realise, my relief at them finding a temporary location was only a very small part of getting the school up and going. Then I was confronted with all the small details - Lucy's bag is still in their school building in the red zone in the CBD. I need to find a new bag, some books and pens and pencils. Her pencil case is in the CBD. Her rain jacket and polar fleece she used to wear to school, also still in the CBD. In fact teacher's cars are still stuck in the carpark building in the CBD. I was thinking school being back was a step to a more normal existence but it is not normal at all.
This week I have seen a little of the better part of the Eastern side of the city - imagine gravel back country roads, that were previously busy, smooth city streets. I have seen a little of the inner city. I nearly cried when I saw the inner city, not because of the buildings that we've seen many times on the news but for the buildings that have never made it to the news that are lying as a pile of rubble, the windows smashed and still lying on the footpath. It is like a raw wound.
Seeing a little of both these areas, what hit me with a chilling lump in my stomach was the littler things, the folds in footpaths or new step ups in the ground that used to be flat. They reminded me of the amount of force that it took to push the ground like that and how that uncontrolled power felt.
By the time I saw the announcement on the World Cup I already knew what it would be. In some ways perhaps we needed this decision to make us admit that we really are in the middle of a national disaster. The word surreal has often cropped up in conversation, because our life here does feel unreal. We are three weeks after February 22 but sometimes it feels like only minutes and sometimes it feels like months. I may not be a rugby fan but it was really hard to hear that decision. It is one thing for us to say our city is munted. It is another for outsiders to tell us.

Normal Day in Christchurch

2011-03-11T15:46:00.008+13:00

I know in every city, everyone's normality is different. What is normal for Christchurch people now? At the moment I think we are acutely aware of how different normal is for people living in the same city.
We live on the south western, good side of the city who have power and water. This is our new normal, but again it is something that is constantly changing.
Currently we don't have the wakeup alarm on because we don't have set places to be at the moment. Of course the little guys get us up at a regular time anyway.
We go to the toilet with the floor crack the length of the room. We only flush when necessary and know even then, that it will be floating down the river past our friend's house at some time in the near future. For showers, the kids share with us and they are as fast as possible - no thinking time.
When the kettle boils we take the lid off and let it boil for three minutes to make sure any bugs are killed. We check the supply of boiled water and put on another stock pot if needed.
After breakfast, we brush our teeth using a cup of boiled water that sits in the bathroom.
We do a minimal amount of washing, to not overload the wastewater system. When will I be able to clear the backlog of less important washing? Perhaps another trip to a friend not on Christchurch's water and sewage systems.
Then it is time for homeschooling. Next week Lucy's school starts back but it is never going back to its third floor central city location. In the future they will build a new school close to the city but only one story. At the moment they are in beautiful borrowed premises down the road from us. Karl's current work is highly varied, he may need to spend several hours working via the internet or he made need to be somewhere to do things. Each day it is different and work is no longer set hours but any time. In between things, I keep our webshop ticking over, organising orders and if I have to go out somewhere, I try to leave plenty of time. The traffic is terrible with much of the central city still shut off. Getting across, even the western side of the city, can take much longer than it used to.
Conversations with other people from Christchurch are different. Now there is always the question - "Are you okay, how is your house?" Everyone is very aware of the losses others have suffered, so the answer is generally.
"We're fine, the house is okay. Well it has cracks but we can live in it." Being able to live in your house, is now something that is great. It doesn't matter about its appearance, that it maybe cracked or the floor dips and rises - it keeps off the rain and in the warmth and that is enough. Sometimes the answer is;
"It is munted, we have four bags of belongings and that is all."
How do you respond to that?
All through the day at any time there may be an aftershock. They come in all shapes. Sometimes they are more noise than shake, sometimes they are all shake and no noise. I asked this evening how you would describe the noise. Tristan reckons it was like moving your tongue over your teeth rapidly, Karl suggested thunder, Lucy said like the wind pulling at your house. I describe it as a low rumble, like a truck going past but more substantial. Sometimes they are small and sometimes they cause us all to pause and wait, to see if it will stop or not. I am not terrified of them anymore, though at night they still get the heart pumping. The land feels a lot looser than before. It seems to move more and take awhile to stop even with the smaller aftershocks.
It is tiring feeling them, waking up to them and not feeling them, sub consciously waiting for the next one. The amount we get in a day varies. We might have one or two larger ones. Yesterday I didn't feel any all day but then we had a couple of over four magnitude quakes in the evening. These meant the house creaked and rocked but nothing fell over. Even as I type this we just had one, that sent Tristan scurrying for a hug because he was scared. It was only a 3.3 but centred just a few blocks away. Nothing fell down.
I find myself always shutting the pantry and cupboard doors, to stop things falling out. I push things back from the edges of furniture. Bottles are put on the floor in the pantry or further back. Plastic containers are at the front. Some items are still sitting in a box, not yet put back up, while we wait for the aftershocks to die down.
This is our current normal.

Post Quake Thoughts

2011-03-07T19:17:00.003+13:00

Some things that I have been mulling over these past 13 days.
The day the 6.3 aftershock hit we were supposed to be running a Thai cooking class that evening. With sauces smashed all over the floor, I was trying to tidy them up, thinking I have to have it all nice for tonight. Of course as I became aware of the magnitude of the situation, the class never went ahead. Now looking back it seems unbelievable that I ever thought it could.

On the evening of the quake, it was suggested we leave town for Nelson. I didn't see why, we would get power and water probably the next day, it would be okay. By about 4 in the morning, when I was still awake and being shaken by aftershocks every few minutes - our decision was made, we were leaving town.

I will never forget driving north. Every stop we met other Christchurch people. You could tell they were Christchurch people because they looked as pale and sad as we did. There were no smiles that day, except from the kids. Just downcast mouths and haunted eyes. After the 7.1 we were smiling because we got through with comparatively little damage and no loss of life - this time was vastly different.

We had no power at our house for six days and no water for nine days. We are some of the luckier ones. Once you get water and power back, it is hard to believe how you lived you when you didn't have it. Did you really only shower at other people's houses and use water collected from elsewhere in the 24ltr beer fermentor? Having power and water you quickly get back into life's routines - even if you boil the water for 3 minutes before using it and have pots of boiled water sitting about on the bench.

Today we learnt something about how the kids are really feeling - we spent an hour just sitting with them on our laps and giving them hugs. Following that, they went to bed much better tonight. Yesterday Tristan wet his pants a number of times, finally we found out why - he was too scared to go to the toilet by himself. It has a crack right through the floor and I guess it just kept reminding him of that day. They don't tell you their problems, they just act all crazy and slowly we have to work it out, without getting too frazzled by their behaviour and our own emotions.

As life slips into some old routines but not others, it is hard to get a grip on our new life and what shape it will take. Everyday there are little steps forward to normality but then you hear another ramification of the quake and you feel you have slipped backwards again, wondering how this city and it's people who remain will ever move forward.

I guess it is like the little kids book we had out of the library a few years ago - One step - that is all we can do at a time.

Quake aftermath

2011-03-03T12:52:00.005+13:00

This is what I . wrote last time, a week after the quake.
It is not like that this time. We are sleeping better because the aftershocks are not as frequent or as large but everything is different. Last time I said the aftershocks "are now just part of life". It is not the same now. We had an aftershock last night and my body reacted so badly - my heart was racing and the adrenaline started pumping and although I don't want to admit it I was terrified. I think it is because last Tuesday, I thought it was just another aftershock and I didn't initially react and as the shaking got worse and we huddled under that counter listening to crashing glass, I still didn't really believe what was happening. Now my body thinks any of these aftershocks could develop like that. My head can tell you all the scientific data and the logical sequence of aftershocks but my body no longer trusts the brain and reacts all on its own before any signal from my thoughts.
We still do not have any water. We thankfully have power. Last time I was already talking of moving on and getting on with life. I was preparing to go back to the central city for Lucy's school the following week. There is none of that this time. Instead I get messages from people no longer coming back to Christchurch. They have lost their businesses or their jobs. Many people have left town temporarily. Our future is completely different too, with the shop shutting and working out how we can do markets and keep the webshop going.
Today I was looking in the boxes of sticky products, I was straight back there with the smell of sauces combining and the crashing and shattering of glass.
This is going to be a long process - for our city and for our hearts.

6.3 Christchurch's dark day

2011-02-24T15:35:00.003+13:00

I was in our shop, talking with a customer when the ground began to sway. I wasn't worried we have had loads of aftershocks and the shop has always been the safest place to be. Nothing falls off the shelves. The customer started to looked stressed, I was about to say, don't worry nothing falls here, when the shaking just got worse and worse. I grabbed the lady and we hugged under the counter. I rubbed her back as if she was one of my children. Bottles crashed off the wall shelving, smashing on the concrete floor - filling the air with the smell of quality sherry vinegar and the tang of chilli sauces and sweet kecap manis.
The ground stopped and we stood up, our hearts pumping. We surveyed the damage and went outside. The traffic was building up, the lights were out and we had no power. I realised my cellphone was beeping. Lucy was at school in the CBD. I had no idea the damage there and just figured she would be fine but I didnt know how we would get to her. Karl was at home on his day off with Tristan. He rang and I told him the damage to the shop. He was off into the city to find Lucy. Texts came all out of order. Details trickled to us that things were quite bad around town. I started cleaning up, cutting my fingers on bits of glass. I checked on neighbouring shops. People checked on me and we talked and commiserated and passed on the small nuggets of information we had. Karl still hadn't found Lucy. TIme ceased to have any meaning.
The sun was gone behind the clouds and as it got darker, I continued to sweep up the floor. Then wham another large aftershock hit and more bottles crashed onto the floor. I sat under the counter in tears. I lost it - the mess was worse. The hours of picking things up and starting to clean up was wasted. A middle aged man was walking past. He came in and reached down and held my hand. I calmed my shattered nerves and got back to cleaning. Two Burnside high school students came in and helped shift all the stock down onto the ground. They stayed and help clean up.
Then Karl arrived with the kids and we hugged and I burst into tears. We were together and safe. We tidied up as best we could. The floor still slippery and smelly with flavours. Then we went home.
On the drive home I looked at my watch it was 4:30pm - where had the day disappeared to?
I had barely eaten a thing.
Our driveway had a small hill and a pile of liquefaction. Things had fallen and broken in the aftershocks since Karl had left the house. The toilet floor had a crack through it. Our neighbour was home and okay and we went over to his house, pooling our food resources before they were destroyed from no power. Then some work colleagues of his arrived with a packed car of belongings. Their house in Mt Pleasant was broken and so were many of their neighbours. They told us people had died and we realised just how serious it was this time.
As the darkness filled our home and the rain began to fall outside, we went to bed - all in one room. This time I was in bed in clothes - shoes & jacket by the bed. I listened to the radio trying to work out how bad things were. Tristan fell asleep but Lucy lay awake and so did we. Every few minutes we were shaken by more aftershocks. They kept coming. Lucy finally fell asleep around midnight.
Karl got the call to go pick up a doctor friend from his work at the Latimer Square triage - pressed into action after visiting Christchurch to run a workshop. Karl left not knowing how driving would be and how far into the city he could get.
I cuddled up in the duvet, in the dark and the shaking, my body still tense, waiting for him to come back. He came home with stories and we tried to sleep. I felt myself start to drift and then my body would involuntary jump and I would be awake. Cramp squeezed my legs and feet.
I finally fell alseep around 6 am and then at 7am Tristan was beside me, asking for breakfast. The aftershocks continued and we decided what we were going to do.
We fled to Nelson and then we saw the coverage - the damage to the central city, the very streets Lucy had walked down with her classmates to congregate at the botanical gardens.
It is unreal. We are trying to make decisions on our future and it feels like this is a new beginning. Nothing will ever be the same. We had an old life, now we need to work out a new life - whatever shape that will take.

....And back to the earthquake

2011-01-27T14:18:00.003+13:00

I know nearly five months has gone by since the Big One or the 7.1 quake that rocked Christchurch. After that day we were so relieved no one had died and in our case we suffered only minimal damage. So I guess it is with some surprise that we, largely unaffected ones, are still very much living in the shadow of this ground shaking event.
One of the most obvious signs is the aftershocks. We don't get them everyday now - thankfully - but we are still getting sizable ones. We had a 5.1 last week and then a 4.0 just on Tuesday. I watch the minimal damage getting minimally worse each time. We have been assessed and got a payout except it was written out incorrectly so we are waiting for that to be fixed so we do actually get the payout and then ... What do we do? I was thinking we could get on and get repairs done but then another large aftershocks sends the whole place creaking and I wonder if there is any point.
When we do get the money, I am going to ring the insurance company and get their opinion because so far I have been told to wait before getting it fixed until the aftershocks diminish further and also to get on and get things fixed or further damage won't be covered. There are a lot of stories and he said, she said comments flying around the city.
Then there is the central city which seems to constantly change, which streets are open and which are not, so driving around is quite frustrating. It seems everyone has their own ongoing saga, earthquake story.
We all still talk earthquakes, I guess because it is something in common, it is like the weather and an easy way to keep conversation going. It is also feels better to talk about it, that you aren't going just a little bit mad feeling aftershocks.
Since common opinion seems to be that these aftershocks can go on for a year - we've only eight months to go and presumably now it is monthly for a larger one, soon that will be two monthly and then maybe three monthly and then not at all.
On one of the nights just after the initial quake and I wasn't sleeping, due to being woken by an aftershock, I was listening to the radio. An older lady phoned in who had lived through the Inangahua quake in 1968, which was also a 7.1. She remembered the aftershocks and how long they went on and how you wouldn't feel one for weeks and then another would hit. She said it had not been a fun time and now I know why but it was nice of her to let us know and she got through it all fine.
It gives you new empathy for those in other regions hit by natural disasters that leave the TV news so quickly but now I keep thinking about the people caught up and hope they are doing okay.

Why I would not be a good Mary

2010-12-15T18:25:00.005+13:00

I never really took much notice of Mary in the Christmas story. I guess it was the shepherds or the visitors from the East that held some resonance being the onlookers checking out what was going on.
After I had become pregnant and given birth, my attitude to Mary changed and I began to see why some sections of the Christian faith truly revered her. She was quite an amazing lady.
I would have been a crap Mary. Even the first time she is mentioned in Luke, she is impressive. In response to the angel's prophecy of her giving birth to Jesus, she said "May your word to me be fulfilled."
I would have said "Why now, why couldn't you wait just a bit until I had married Joseph. It is going to be a nightmare for me and him. My friend's are never going to believe it. It will just make your son look illegitimate. Why can't you wait just a bit!"
Then just before she was due to give birth a census was decreed. How mad I would have been about this. "For goodness sake, I told you to wait a bit with the conception, now I have to go to Bethlehem. I am heavily pregnant, it is going to be so uncomfortable. I said I would do what you wanted and now look! Is this really your will? Can you please change things so I don't have to go. I have my midwife here and everything arranged."
If the travel wasn't bad enough, there were no rooms left when they got to Bethlehem. Again I would have been pretty mad about this. God plans his son to be born and has not planned a room for him. I would have agreed to the animal area, any area to rest while heavily pregnant but my hormones would have got the better of me and I would have done a fair bit of crying.
Even once the birth happened, things weren't all gold and angelic choirs - Mary and Joseph were told not to go home but to flee to Egypt. I would have been quite cross about that too.
But Mary did it all. It isn't reported she got that mad either.
Here was seemingly one of the most important events according to the Christian faith and even then lots of things appeared to go wrong or were extremely difficult for those involved. Makes you think just what kind of faith this is and how much faith you have to have, especially if you think God is asking you to do something.

2 months on from the earthquake

2010-11-20T13:15:00.003+13:00

Well it really has been ages since the earthquake happened here in Christchurch.
Finally in the last few weeks, three year old Tristan has stopped saying he is too scared to go to bed because of the aftershocks.
Are we still getting them? Yes we are. Now, though we get around 1-2 over four magnitude quakes a week. If we haven't felt a decent one in a week, we know it will happen soon.
How do they make me feel?
We went away for a night to Geraldine and I felt so relaxed. I am not consciously thinking about aftershocks in Christchurch but it must be there in the back of my mind - constantly wondering. That little bit of tension never letting go.
We came back to Christchurch and arrived home about 3:30pm. At 7:30pm there was a 4.7 aftershock. The noise was back, the shaking, the rolling and then it stopped. My stomach had sunk again into a nervous waiting. Will it stop, is it another larger one? I was fine after the big one but a large shallow 5.0 aftershock near our house a month afterwards has ruined it. I thought I would never fear another earthquake again but now that is not true.
Now when a decent aftershock hits, inside, I am thinking forward what will happen next? Will it stop? Will it not? It is different for out towners to experience a couple while they are here, that is kind of cool and then they can go away but we stay and they keep coming every week.
I want to relax and not worry about them but now I find that really hard because I start thinking into the future about what the shake will do next.
There is a lot of ongoing issues from this quake, mostly under the surface because we have to say we are all alright. Everything is go in Christchurch! But really everything is waiting in Christchurch, waiting for it to stop so repairs can begin. We have been assessed and expecting a small payout to fix our minor damage. But so far that minor damage is just getting a little bit worse with each large aftershock. The cracks grow wider and more appear.
How to end this? Well like our lives currently, there is no end to living with the intermittent shaking, we just keep on planning and going about our lives.

The Good Samaritan

2010-10-29T14:00:00.003+13:00

Did you read the story about the thirteen year old boy Daniel?
He was waiting at a bus stop in Sydney.
The bus driver came with his bus but it was full. He had been told not to take anymore passengers. He saw Daniel by himself and thought he would be all right. He drove on.
A lady driving a car passed Daniel and saw him with a scruffy looking man. The combination of a tidy teenager and a scruffy looking man didn't fit. She felt uneasy but she drove on.
Another lady was driving passed with her husband. She saw Daniel and the scruffy man with evil eyes and pulled over up the road a bit. She watched them in her rear view mirror. She watched for Daniel to wave to let her know he needed help. He didn't, so she drove on.
You know this story, it is like the one Jesus told and we know who comes next.
It is the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan comes, cares about a stranger and takes the risk to stop. But this is not a story Jesus told. This is reality at a Sydney bus stop. There was no Good Samaritan who came along after the others.
Daniel has not been seen since.
I am sure everyone in this story and all his family wish to God the Good Samaritan had come along. So do I. Where were they when Daniel needed them?
It makes the Good Samaritan story's point pretty scary.
What scares me most is would I have stopped?

Earthquake and business

2010-10-15T13:24:00.004+13:00

I know, it has been over a month already - get over the earthquake!
We are in nothing like the condition of Haiti but there are long term consequences from the quake and I think various businesses are going to struggle for awhile.
There are things you don't think about and of course everyone wants to put a positive spin on things but these are the realities after talking to people.
Real Estate is really tough. Banks won't give loans unless there is insurance to cover it and insurance companies were having 21 day stand down periods to cover property so no insurance, no loan, no house sale. The figures for Canterbury in September were well down on last year. It is easy to look at figures and and let them slide off the screen but those figures are connected to real estate people's wages who were possibly thinking spring would bring good things after a very wet winter and suddenly it is not so pretty a spring.
The damage for many businesses from the earthquake was minimal. But talking to a commercial insurance broker in Canterbury there is a minimum excess on natural disaster of $2,500. Imagine you are hairdresser or a fast food place and sustained $2000 of damage. Even though you pay a hefty insurance premium every year, when it counted, you get nothing and have just wiped $2000 of profit off your year. That is a lot of hair cuts or curries to sell to recoup that loss. Then the broker suggested that after this big quake, Canterbury's minimum excess for natural disasters may go up to the same level as Wellington of 5% or a minimum $5000 excess. No doubt insurance rates will increase next year too just to make the little guy hurt even more.
Everyone stopped spending after the quake, retailers enjoying the upswing in sales with spring were suddenly back in winter again as people put away their purses. Just as things were getting back to normal for many retailers in less damaged parts of the city, the GST rise occurred.
Then there are the businesses still trying to relocate and find new premises. If a property is damaged so much you can't tenant it, the tenant can stop paying rent immediately in many leases agreements, but not all are like that. Also one company relocating said the offers were changing all the time, initially there were open ended leases that could be done month by month and then very quickly landlords were wanting people to sign up for three years. Some businesses in undamaged buildings, find themselves next to buildings badly damaged and either have to move themselves for demolition work to be carried out or have to contend with big cordons of wire fences putting off potential customers.
Then for every business affected, there are the suppliers affected and so the trickle down occurs. Restaurant suppliers suddenly have goods no one wants because either the restaurant is damaged or the restaurant didn't need so much because the central city was cordoned off and no one was out eating. Karl went passed a wee Thai restaurant in the central city one night after the cordoned had been lifted. The smells coming from it were divine but it was totally empty.
How many restaurants currently still shut owed money to suppliers and without any income coming in, I wonder if they are paying the bills.
Not only is landscape of Christchurch going to be changed with the demolition of a number of old buildings but the landscape of local businesses is going to change too and they really give flavour to a city.
Of course, the aftershocks keep happening too. We might get a few days without them and then another hits, rocking the house. They are now more an annoyance than anything but there is always that thought of, what if the next one is bigger, in the back of your mind. Christchurch definitely doesn't need that now.

Good from the earthquake

2010-10-09T15:52:00.004+13:00

So we are still getting aftershocks but they are fewer and we can go for a few days without feeling one, which is nice. The assessor guy comes on Thursday to check our house is okay. I think it will be fine, but it will be good to get the okay from someone who actually has knowledge about these things.
Now it is a new reality and it feels a life time ago when every night we were woken from sleep - now it is only some nights.
I look back to the day of the quake and the day after and how I felt. For most of the year I have been battling anxiety issues. Those two days gave me a window into a new way of living and a reference point. My anxiety, which is apparently irrational, is mostly over the future. It has been quite some steps even to admit that what to me seem perfectly legitimate concerns and anxieties are actually irrational and not really legitimate at all.
Those two days of the earthquake were different. I couldn't think about the future at all. I had to stay in the present. I had to make sure our family was safe. I had to make plans for cooking without power. Everything I had to deal with was just for now, because we didn't know what would happen next. I was anxious about aftershocks but so was everybody. This wasn't crazy anxiety separating me from the rest of the world. This was normal anxiety that we all could talk about and share.
For two days I felt quite free.
I dealt with things as they happened and had no thoughts of the future, other than getting through, that day and then the next. I didn't have to think about what would happen later in the week because there seemed to be little point. We were here today and in 5 minutes or even 10 minutes there might be another big aftershock, so just deal with now and be glad for what we have.
It was a different way of living for me. When other major things have happened in my life, you do live in the moment but whatever it is, dominates the moment. In the case of the earthquake, our house was fine, we were fine - so my mind was free to think about what ever it wanted but there seemed no point thinking about the future.
It didn't last of course, because you do have to think about the future and make decisions for things that might happen. I now know what is like to not be anxious about it and when the anxiety starts to build, while I am still learning to control it, I can remember the feeling of freedom of the quake and think I did it then, I can do it again.

What lasting memories will I have of the quake

2010-09-16T12:58:00.005+12:00

Things that have stuck in my head since the Saturday big earthquake:

There must have still been some power at the time of the quake because I can remember looking down the hallway, while kneeling in the doorframe, holding a shivering Tristan. The whole house bucking and rolling and the pictures on the wall banging. The noise of the quake, the banging of the wardrobe doors and windows and the creaking of the house.

The silence following it when everything stopped and the power was gone.

The starry, starry sky looking so calm and beautiful, when everything around us had gone weird.

The strange, grey silty volcanoes that appeared down the road.

The contrast of things being completely normal in parts of Christchurch and buildings completely wrecked in others. All the fences and cranes, busy fixing buildings and making them safe.

The friendliness of everybody looking out for one another.

The constant aftershocks in the night, that stopped us sleeping properly for over a week.

A week on from the quake

2010-09-11T18:24:00.004+12:00

A week ago we were hit by the 7.1 earthquake. It is hard to believe. The week seems to have lasted forever. My new frequented websites are geonet and a googlemap of the aftershock locations.
Last Saturday, it was all about getting through the day, surviving aftershocks and being glad from lack of damage. Yesterday the fatigue really hit hard. A week of sleeping badly and it was catching up with me. We had some drinks in the evening, didn't need many, which made things seem a bit more normal. And we went to bed early, hoping not be woken up this time by another aftershock. But no around 5 we were awake again. At least it was a smaller one and a lot further on in the night.
Today feels better with more sleep but now the earthquake and its associated issues, are added to the background of life.
The ongoing effects that need to dealt with or just lived through are now part of our future. Thoughts of how things would go in September before Saturday are now having to be rethought.
What is strange, is having lived on the edge of my nerves all week as the aftershocks kept coming, on Friday they were less strong and I realised now they were just part of the day. I almost can't remember what it was like to not expect aftershocks every so often. They are now just part of life. Wait, feel them, check if everything is still okay, get on with life. Last Saturday with no water, no power and uncertainty on sewage you think, I'll never take these basic services for granted. A week on, I am already. I expect water from the tap and I trust the power to stay on. Some people still don't have these things, even in the same city but on our side of town, it feels mostly normal and my normal attitudes to water and power have returned too.
Next week as school and preschool begin again, will be strange. Driving into the central city for school does make me slightly nervous. Not the trip in, but the trip home goes down some of the streets that sustained heavy damage. Places we drove past everyday of the school week and now may not be there. We can't forget but we have to move on too.

Aftershocks

2010-09-07T15:13:00.006+12:00

You don't appreciate the stress of aftershocks until you've experienced them. Being without power all day Saturday we only caught the end of a tv special on prime and Eric what'sisname and Barry bowtie guy were saying how they were from Hawke's Bay and Wellington so knew about earthquakes and were asking whether Christchurch people were nervous due to not being used to feeling earthquakes.
Umm no.
Sure the aftershocks were of a variety of strengths but the problem is that everytime one is a stronger magnitude, your body reacts to the memory of the big one. Adrenaline starts to flow and you are on edge once again.
Most people now don't even care about any aftershock under 4. Between 4 and 5, the conversation pauses, we wait - do we need to take cover or will it calm down? Over 5 we're moving to the doorframe and even if we don't make it, the heart is pumping and adrenaline is rushing again. We had a powerful jolt this morning that made some things fall down again. Afterwards we were shaking. Even though mentally we were okay, our bodies are really taking a hammering to the constant feeling of unease. Each big aftershock takes you back to sitting in the dark, hearing the rumbling and the banging of everything in the house.
The slightly less strong ones, there is the mmmmmmmm low rumble then shake, shake, shake and it passes on. Maybe 10, maybe 5 minutes or maybe an hour later mmmmmm shake, shake, shake again. And so the days go on.
Now on the fourth day, there are not so many little ones happening all the time, which is a relief for the nerves - just every now and then, bang. This can go on for days apparently! We are so lucky to be in a country with building codes such that many people are still in their own homes. I can't imagine going through this in Haiti or Pakistan surrounded by rubble and with nothing.
One day in the next month or so hopefully life will return to a more relaxed normal.

Christchurch Earthquake

2010-09-06T11:10:00.005+12:00

I woke up with Karl jumping out of bed, saying "it's an earthquake!" For a split second, I thought of staying in bed as the earthquakes are usually small and over in seconds but it was getting louder and more shaky. I jumped out of bed too and we grabbed the kids. I was under the door frame with Tristan who was still not properly awake. The whole house was violently heaving and there was long low hum and the noise of everything shaking about. So many thoughts go through your mind. I remembered the red cross person in form 1 saying Christchurch will have big earthquake in your lifetime. This had to be it. Then there was relief that the house was still standing and we were all okay. We stayed under the doorframe. Tristan was now shivering with the shock. It was pitch black as the power had gone off.
Then the after shocks started happening. You would hear the low hum and then it would hit, the house lurching and creaking once again. Each time we would pause and wait, get to the door frame, it was a bad one or just wait and see if it was getting worse.
Miraculously we had very little damage. Things we thought would have fallen were still in their place. We took a mattress out to the lounge with the duvets. We got a kettle on the camp stove heating up some water for a cup of tea. By now we had found the torches and lit a candle. Every aftershock we held the candle while it passed. Karl said to put the heater on as it was really cold. I hadn't even noticed. Then we went outside and it was freezing but the sky was amazing. Stars staring back at us unchanged but now we could see them. No light from the city showed a full, brilliant sky of stars and the hills were completely dark apart from sugarloaf. We checked on our neighbour and he was fine. We were glad to have heating that wasn't reliant on electricity and the lounge was getting nice and warm. In the glow of the torch light were Tristan's two big brown eyes, everytime an aftershock hit.
The text messages started coming. From outside the city they said buildings had collapsed. We replied, no they haven't it's not that bad. But we were quite wrong. We made porridge on the cob oven. We now had the internet via the iphone and realised just how bad things were. We turned the radio on in the car in the garage and began to hear what it was really like.
Daybreak was a relief but also strange as now the water had stopped and we still had no power. What to do? It felt wrong to do normal things but we tidied up, pushed things, that hadn't fallen back from the edge where they had shuffled.
Walking out to the street, you couldn't see any damage. It was surreal. Had it really happened?
We drove across the city to see if our business was okay and it too, had miraculously come through pretty much unscathed. The power was even back on there and the roads were busy and many people were walking around. Over there, you couldn't even really feel the aftershocks.
Back home, we still didn't have any power but we did have water back and you could feel the aftershocks. Everytime the kids dived under the table. Everyone else paused, waited and then carried on what they were doing. It was tough on the nerves the low hum warning of what was to come.
We were tired and the nerves were frazzled, even just down the road, chimneys had fallen and the weird light grey mud had bubbled up out of the ground forming little volcanic circles. It seemed so random who had suffered and who was fine.
Saturday night was hard, the aftershocks were still coming but we finally had power, which was a relief. The kids were too terrified to go to sleep and just after we had calmed them down, another aftershock would shake them up again. In the end we all slept in our room, waking up to the larger aftershocks.
Sunday was even stranger as we seemed to be almost normal but we had to remember to boil the water and there was still the aftershocks, which we had got almost blase to now. Quakes that, had we not experienced the big one, would have had us stopping and going - that was an earthquake! Most of them come with the low hum before them.
We went to the supermarket as it was our usual shopping day, the shelves were half empty from things having smashed and you could see juice splashes still up the stands. Some stands were still in pieces. The bread aisle was completely empty.
So we made our own bread at home.
The roads could be fine and then there would be a big bump or a slump. There were still more aftershocks on Sunday night and I woke up just after midnight, why was I awake? Then I heard the low hum and my stomach sank. You just get sick of it, the constant uncertainty. The aftershock hit and it was a larger one but it passed. Lucy came into the room and climbed into our bed, her heart pounding. That was the night sometimes you slept through them and sometimes the shocks woke you up.
Monday there was no school but Karl had work. Walking around the house, I noticed cracks we hadn't seen before, maybe the aftershocks were still causing damage. They were not that major but should we call into the earthquake commission?
Today I feel really tired, three nights of less sleep, over the feelings of being on edge every time an aftershock comes (at least they seem to have dropped off quite a bit today). We walked down to get some milk at the dairy. Walking you noticed more of the damage, the cracks, the silt that had bubbled up from the ground, engineers checking the shops. Life is now sort of normal but we still boil water and it seems things aren't going to be completely normal for awhile,

Historical walk/drive around part of Christchurch

2010-07-06T17:43:00.004+12:00

I got the information for this from a cool little book called St. Albans, from swamp to suburbs put out by the NZ Federation of University Women, Canterbury Branch and we did this on a beautiful sunny winter's day with the kids - hence we tried to do the interesting stories they would enjoy.
1. The trip starts at the car park behind the Carlton hotel at the corner of Papanui Road and Bealey Avenue. This is a little bit of history about the building of the current suburb in this area. The land before that was swamp and while Maori would have used it as a rich food resource and a thoroughfare between different pa sites, this particular area didn't have settlements I don't think.
There were no roads and it really was quite different. Flax was ten feet high and there was dense bracken, very peaty soil and swamps! Settlers from England come in the 1850s and for 150 pounds they got a 50 acres of rural land - like in the St. Albans area and a quarter acre in the city - the other side of Bealey Avenue. They chose their blocks then had to build roads to get to their land. One of the first roads was Papanui Road because that brought in wood from Papanui Bush, so the settlers built their houses facing onto Papanui Road. To pay for the road a toll bar was put across the road but all the residents hated paying so instead they would go down Caledonian Road or Springfield Road but these roads were so bad it was said a horse could sink up to his abdomen in the mud! Today there are lots of streetlights but back then there was very few and if you wanted one on your street corner, you had to help pay for it. There was 18 streetlights in the whole area by 1885 and even then they didn't light them on moonlit nights and turned them off at 2am on other nights because they were so expensive to run.
2. The Carlton hotel on the corner was built in 1865 for farmers bringing in their stock to sell. Behind the hotel was sales yards to sell the stock. A guy called A. W. Money owned it but he didn't keep the hotel up to scratch and in 1882 the license board said he could only keep his license if he rebuilt it, he said yes but then didn't do it. He sold the hotel to the Wards Brewery in 1901 and they built the current building in 1906 for accommodation for visitors to the International Exhibition in Hagley Park in 1907. In 1907 A. W. Money was killed outside his former hotel when he stepped off a tram and broke his neck! Before you go onto the next stop, note the Avon River.

3. 150 Springfield Road - almost opposite Abberley Crescent. This home was for John and Susannah Green who arrived in New Zealand in 1850. They didn't have running water so they had to go and get it from the Avon River, down by the Carlton Bridge (past the Carlton Hotel) A long way to walk for water.

4. You can walk from here or drive - corner of Rutland Street and St. Albans Street. St Albans Street was put in by the Provincial Council because James Field complained that his land and others had no access to them. So the road was put in but it was often under water. He and others complained again but the provincial government said it wasn't their problem as people were subdividing their land so the landowners should provide and pay for the roads.

5. On Rutland Street Henry Forwood took up farming in 1890. He had been a banker in London but decided he wanted to try farming. He got a lot of books and set about setting up a model farm. He had dairying, pigs and chickens. He grew oats, carrots and potatoes. A reporter at the time said "Mr Forwood's farm is a very interesting one and will well repay a visit of inspection." Most of the farms in the area were dairy farms. Then as the land got more profitable they started growing more crops and plant nurseries. It was hard work though as the land had to be drained and some people didn't have enough money to make the drains so then they couldn't use their land. Once the land was drained, it sunk and then all the logs off old Kahiketea trees that had fallen into the swamp had to be removed and put in piles so the land could actually be used.

6. Shepherd Place off Trafalger Street, at the end is St. Albans School and English Park.
7. English Park used to be the site of the Philpotts Homestead. They were Methodists and a number of methodists settled in the St. Albans area. In 1853 the Reverend Kirk was on his way to some Methodists in Otago, when his boat put in for repairs in Lyttelton. Methodists in St. Albans walked to Lyttelton over the Bridal Path (you can see it in the distance over English Park) and brought him back making a path through the swamp to lead him along. He held a service in the Philpott's kitchen and ended up staying in Christchurch.
8. The methodists were very keen on education and ran day schools and educated ladies in the area also started teaching children from their homes. It was decided a school was needed and St. Albans school was opened in 1872. To pay for it a rate was put on the houses in the area. Children often didn't make it to school because they couldn't reach the school due to flooding or they were needed at home to work or they were sick with measles or scarlet fever or smallpox. One such epidemic shut the school from June 2 to July 17 1882. The school got its funding based on average attendance so if not many kids turned up, they would shut the school to try and keep the average up. School was supposed to be compulsory for 7-13 yr olds and they started to use the police to enforce this. Children had to attend school 50% of the time. A boy, James Hazell was taken to court for only going to school 11 times by May. But the case was thrown out because half the year hadn't passed yet. Interestingly the only secondary schools in the area are private ones.

9. Caledonian Road - corner of Holly Road. This has now been cleared and is selling for residential sections but this used to the Caledonian Hotel. Before that it was a general store called the Rising Sun owned by Mr Innes. He had a room on the side of the shop that he got a license to sell "refreshments" It was very popular as people could pretend they were just going shopping for bread and things but then go through into his room for drinks. One woman smashed the windows because she was so angry that her husband had been jailled because of the debt he had not repaid that was supposedly for potatoes.

10. On the way home you can look at the trees down the middle of Bealey Avenue. The trees between Springfield Road and Montreal Street were paid for by Gould, a man who had a very big house in the area. He thought it would be nice for people and he provided seats for people to sit on and admire the view. He asked the council to put fences around the trees to stop them being eaten by wandering stock. A bit different from today!

Passing Cows - a wee story the end

2010-05-12T20:50:00.001+12:00

“Well it is a hatch.” I suggest.
We open the boot and fold down the back seats. We climb in either side of the picnic basket.
It is cramped and the car roof is low. Propped up on one elbow we pass the rolls and the butter and the meat and the salad between us. Simon squishes his roll together, encasing the ingredients. He looks up. “The farmer had better not come past and see us now.”

Passing Cows - a wee story part three

2010-05-11T19:22:00.003+12:00

The cows sway in time to their hooves as they amble to the side of the road.
We drive carefully down the arrow of road re-emerging in front of us. The cows only give us a passing glance. They are more interested in the grass on the verge.
A human head pops up amongst the black and white bumpy back bones. The farmer is astride his quad bike and riding towards us. He takes one hand off the handlebars and is waving at us.
Simon drops the window as we drive up abreast of him. The farmer leans across to the open window.
“Christ mate. Slow down. Do you know how much damage one of these could do to your car?“ He shakes his head and looks back to the cows.
The farmer stands up on his bike. He guns it towards the back of the herd.
Simon stabs the button and window slides up again.
We creep forward much slower now.
“How are you supposed to know how fast to pass cows?” Simon mutters.
I shrug. “The sign didn’t say.”
“Stupid cows.” He grumbles.
The cows are thinning out and walking faster. Around another corner we are alone and begin to pick up speed.
“You wouldn’t believe we were so close to an international airport would you?” I say.
“In some cities we’d still be in the suburbs, not passing cows.”
The wipers sweep up the collection of rain polka dots on the windscreen, smearing them in arcs.
“Yeah. Do you remember that two hour bus ride in London to get to Heathrow?
There was that guy who wanted to know what we were laughing about?” Simon asks.
I laugh “Do you think he knows how fast to drive through cows?’
On our right arrives the yellow signpost pointing to the reserve and our destination. We turn onto the rocky patch of scrubby cut grass, half surrounded by a remnant of native bush. It is hard to decide whether to be pleased this piece has been saved or sad it is the only piece in the area remaining amongst the farmland.
We get out of the car into the rain. It is falling more steadily.

Passing Cows - a wee story part two

2010-05-09T14:37:00.003+12:00

Simon indicates and we turn onto a narrow sealed road heading into the hills. The first drops of rain burst on the windscreen. I look up at the sky. “I’m not sure the picnic is going to work.”
Simon wrinkles his nose. “Wonder if that farmer is pleased? People always say, the farmers will be pleased when it rains.”
The hills press in towards the road, squeezing it between the folds of the land. They are a lush green. Maybe the rain here is not so surprising. The colour in the long grass and the trees is even more brilliant against the blackboard sky. We drive around the end of one hill and head down into a gully. The ground on either side of the road starts to flatten out.
On the side of the road is a yellow, diamond, warning sign with the silhouette of a cow. There are no cows to be seen. The road is lined with old silver birches and willows beside wire and worn wood fences. Their leaves are hanging like lace curtains for the privacy of the farmland against the city traffic. We turn another corner.
The curtains are gone.
There are cows all over the road.
Simon rams the brake pedal hard.

Passing Cows - a wee story part one

2010-05-04T19:25:00.002+12:00

A scruffy ute suddenly pulls out from gravel driveway. Simon hits the brakes.
It speeds up very slowly in front of us.
There is no one behind us, the road is an empty black ribbon under the blue sky.
“Why do they do that? I mutter. “He could’ve waited until we went past. It wouldn’t have made any difference to him.”
“He’ll probably turn off again soon, just to really piss us off.” Adds Simon
“He’s slowing down.” I sigh and we slow again too.
The farmer does not indicate, but the ute is drifting to the left and then turns onto another gravel road. We both grimace in annoyance. What else can you do?
The sky changes to thunder grey, the closer we get to the foothills. The ragged Southern Alps we had been staring at for the last thirty minutes, disappear behind dark streaks of heavy rain.
Our home in the city is probably still in the brilliant sunshine that demanded we go out and enjoy it.

Behind Every Good Astronaut - the end

2010-04-14T21:35:00.003+12:00

He came back to me.
He stood in the doorframe. It still had the blue pen lines where I had marked his height each year on his birthday.
He came over and awkwardly pulled me to him. My head rested on his heart.
Quietly I said. “Aidan. When I found out I was pregnant with you. I cried. I cried for my future I thought I’d ruined. I cried for you and how unfortunate you were to be mine.”
His arms loosened around me.
“But everyday, I tried to keep you happy and eased your reflux. I was worried you would die and it would be my fault. As you got older, I worried you would run onto the road or get hurt climbing trees. I kept you reading and looking out for Mars. I thought you would finish your studies and settle down in a job in a university somewhere, maybe with a family.”
I took a deep breath, “I am afraid to lose you Aidan. What is my life now? Without you, what am I?”
Aidan let me go. We stood centimeters apart but alone in our own thoughts. I stared at the vinyl diamonds between his socks; the vinyl he had run his cars across.
“I tried my best Mum. I wanted you to be proud of me. I am good at physics. I am good at this.“
Aidan’s phone rang and it tore off the cloak of tension holding us. He went into the lounge and I heard him, picking up the photo frame of him and me on his first day at school. I looked at that photograph every day.
Aidan came back into the kitchen where I hadn’t moved since he left. “I will always love you Mum, wherever I am.”
“Me too.” I whispered.
“I’m scared I might die out there.”
“Me too.”
“But I’m still going. I want you to be happy for me.”
I walked over and held him.
“I’ll try Aidan.” I said into his shirt.
Aidan wrapped his arms around me. “I’ve asked Katya to keep an eye on you. Every time you look at Mars you can think of me, and the nights we used to spend together looking up. And please, I did do it for you.”
I was not sure it was the best gift from a son to his mother, but I had no choice.
I squeezed him hard.

Behind Every Good Astronaut - a wee story part 5

2010-04-10T18:26:00.001+12:00

“I love my work. I have given up everything to get to this. Look at Katya. I loved her. I wanted to stay with her but I couldn’t have both.”
“You wanted Mars more.” I murmured.
“This is history. It is bigger than you or me or Katya.”
“Nothing should be bigger than the people you love.”
“I thought you of all people would understand. I did it for you for Christ’s sake. For you.” He picked up his laptop and scratching his head, where there used to be curls, he walked out of our kitchen.
This kitchen was where we had played with playdough; we had built space rockets and Martians in multicolours.
He turned around.
“Look at you Mum. You are still living in the same house; even the table is from when I was a kid. I am not your baby anymore.”
I heard him in his old room and then his footfalls on the worn carpet in the hall, the floorboards creaking.

Behind Every Good Astronaut - a wee story part 4

2010-04-07T16:32:00.002+12:00

I made myself a cup of lapsang. Aidan had never liked it. He was working on his laptop at our formica, kitchen table.
“Aidan. I love you.” I blurted.
“I know.” He said, as he tipped the last of his coffee in his mouth and handed me the empty cup.
I didn’t take it.
He looked at me. His long lashes fanned against his eyelids.
“You are so selfish and I did not want you to grow up like that. Everything is just about you and Mars. I meant for you to learn to love...” I trailed off, looking into my tea for inspiration. The smoky aroma reminded me of those nights.
“I know what you gave up.” He said, rubbing his laptop like a pet. “I know you wanted to complete your PhD but I came along and Dad left you and went back to Germany. Aren’t you proud of me?”
I said bitterly, “You think you have gotten where you are because you did it.”
“I did. But I did it for you.” He was staring at me now without blinking.
“Have you not seen all the people that have helped you?” I could feel the tears on the edge of my eyes.
“Every winter night when you were little I checked on you. You always wiggled out of your blankets and I would gently pulled them back up over you so you wouldn’t wake up cold.”
“What are you trying to tell me? Not to go? Not to make history? Didn’t you used to say I should make my life worth something?”
He stood up and I stared up at the underside of his chin.
But he was still my son.
“Not without love.” The words were not right and it sounded soppy but I hoped he understood.
He exploded before me like a supernova.

Behind Every Good Astronaut - a wee story part 3

2010-04-05T10:15:00.001+12:00

Katya came to congratulate him on Tuesday afternoon. She gave him a hug with her shoulders, her black hair tied up tight behind her head. She gave me a hug too. I could feel her heart thumping against me.
“It is amazing isn’t it?” Aidan said. “Aidan Jones going to Mars.”
Katya agreed it was amazing.
I asked her what she was up to these days.
“I’m teaching physics part-time.” Katya said. I have a wee boy – just turned three.”
It seemed only a few years since Aidan was that size. Aidan left to check to his messages, while we were sharing toddler stories. I saw Katya out.
That night I went outside, to look up at the stars. Aidan had looked out the door at me. I was going to tell him how much I enjoyed those evenings long ago, standing outside with him leaning against me, smelling the wood fires, feeling the chill against my face and staring up at the myriad of stars. Aidan hadn’t come outside. He was not used to Christchurch’s temperatures after California.
We went to the University on Wednesday for more speeches. Katya was sitting at the back, with a little boy driving cars around her feet. Aidan glared at him when he dropped a car on the wooden floor as the vice chancellor was finishing his introduction.
I played with Katya’s little Theo while Aidan caught up with his old lecturers and then suddenly he was calling me to his next appointment.
The whole week was one event after another. I began to feel like his secretary.
On his last day he had no more appointments. Now was my chance.

Behind Every Good Astronaut - a wee story part 2

2010-04-04T14:58:00.002+12:00

This week I needed to be honest with him. If Mum were here, she would encourage me. “It doesn’t matter what I think.” She’d say. “If you think it best for Aidan, then you do it, you’re his Mum.”
Monday we went to his old primary school. He told them to work as hard as he had. He opened the Aidan Jones Technology Centre.
As we were leaving he said to me; “What are the chances of them ever reaching space?”
“You did.” I replied.
“None of them will work as hard as I did.”
I said nothing. The “I” in that sentence bit into my bones.
Aidan got As right through primary school. When Aidan was seven, I took him to lecture by an astronaut. Aidan was mesmerized with his stories and pictures of earth from the orbiting space station. The astronaut had said; “I wasn’t the brightest student in my class, I just worked hard.”
In the winter evenings Aidan and I would go out on the back, concrete steps and look at the stars. He would rest his head of crazy, blond curls against me. I said he was lucky to live in New Zealand. We could see so many stars from our house, not like in those bright cities the astronauts captured in the pictures.
When he was twelve, I said there was a downside to living in New Zealand. Yes we could see so many stars with our clear skies but he was unlikely to become an astronaut. “Kiwis don’t go up in rockets”. That night we stayed out late looking up in silence at the winking stars and then he just gave me a hug and went inside.
At high school going to parent-teacher interviews was easy. Aidan most enjoyed physics and decided that would be his major at University. He soon lost me, he was delving deeper and deeper. He brought Katya home, she seemed to be able to keep up. I liked her, we would share a pot of lapsang souchong tea but soon I realized she was coming to chat with me. Aidan was back in his books. He was determined and addicted. I should have been pleased but his intensity was unnerving.

Behind Every Good Astronaut - a wee story part 1

2010-03-30T19:16:00.000+13:00

It was our first dinner together in three years. Aidan’s eyes flicked across me and back to his plate.
“Jesus died just to point out we shouldn’t let being scared of dying stop us from doing things. All that theology about it being for us, shows we can’t handle our own insignificance in this universe.” He sucked in mouthful of spaghetti noisily.
I kept twirling the spaghetti around my fork. It had only been a year since Mum died. She would be shocked at his flippancy. She had taken Aidan to Sunday school every week until he was twelve. I had treasured those Sunday mornings by myself. I missed her so much. Aidan missed her funeral; he was already busy with training.
Aidan was only home for a week. We were going to fly back together to the United States and I would watch him take off. This was it. My boy might never return.

Nappies & Christianity

2010-03-06T16:21:00.003+13:00

The other day had an interesting wee ponder on the parallels of movements. (Not the bowel kind.)
I joined the modern cloth nappy movement not at beginning but in the early days. The equivalent in the Christian movement of just before the big growth phase in Acts thing. It is interesting five years on as the modern cloth nappy idea has grown and what has changed.
Five years ago when I mentioned we were going to use cloth nappies I got a lot of rude comments and put downs and "you'll never do it" comments. Now they are even in supermarkets. Here is the interesting thing to become mainstream they have to take on some of the mainstream characteristics. To meet price requirements of chain shops or supermarkets, modern cloth nappies have to be made in China. At the beginning they were not Made in China. Now we see divergences in the nappy businesses some refuse to go for cheap labour and maintain manufacture in a country, such as NZ because it something they feel is important. It was at the start. The people who first started using modern cloth nappies were those not afraid to be different, not afraid to be ridiculed by friends. There was a very strong environmental bent that usually meant those who used modern cloth nappies also did other environment conscious things and didn't usually choose the mainstream way of doing things. They mostly usually went unnoticed by the main stream crowd and media.
I look at Christianity, which is a much much older movement and I see the same things. Starting with a small, unremarkable group who found someone and something. When they started off, they all held similar beliefs and the most important thing was just sharing the word - what they had found out. It was the same with the modern cloth nappies. People used to say I converted someone today and everyone would get excited. Just like those early chapters in Acts with comments of how many were being added to their number. Then as it grew and grew other things came in, people have their bias and tangents happen. All still for the cause but in different ways.
Some say the worst thing to happen to Christianity was when the emperor became a Christian and declared it the religion of the Roman empire because suddenly it was no longer in the background - it had become mainstream and to be acceptable to mainstream things were subtly altered and added to.
You wonder what the early founders would think today of the Christian movement. Some would probably be pleased with how big it has grown and others would probably be disappointed with how things have changed. "It's not like it was in the old days." "Do you remember...?" So it is with modern cloth nappies - interesting.

Dancing road worker

2010-02-19T14:39:00.003+13:00

The other day, going to the supermarket we passed some roadworkers, working near an intersection with lights. Everytime the lights went red for the main lot of traffic, one guy would start dancing - presumbly to music in his head.
Then the lights would change and he would get back to work. No doubt the other guys worked far harder than him. The light changes are quite regular.
Is he a slacker? Or was he doing great PR for the roadworking people?
He was very funny and the kids thought it was hilarious. He definitely made us notice the roadworkers and what they were doing. He made our day a bit brighter too so I think he did deserve his wages that day.

cath - gone but not forgotten

2010-02-11T15:15:00.000+13:00

It was nine years ago at the end of last month that Cath was killed.
Funny things remind me of her. The Wellington Sevens Rugby tournament because I went the day after her funeral. The kids, because after we got married she was always asking when I was going to "pop a sprog", but she wasn't around when I finally did. Facebook, because she would have been right into that, but it didn't exist in her lifetime.
I see a person that looks like her. That is the silly thing I guess, they look like her nine years ago. She will always look like that now, never get older like me.
It is also weird to think nine years have passed. Now I have lived nine years longer than she has. It doesn't seem right or fair but that is the reality.
I can remember getting a cell phone call that she had been killed and it took awhile for me to get the message of what had happened. Then I heard it on the news but the names were not released and for twenty-four hours it felt like she was okay, maybe it was mistake and it wasn't her. I went off to Auckland for work but that night in my hotel room I saw the news and they showed her picture. There was no pretending, the cell phone call had been real, it was Cath. It was only twenty four hours but it seems looking back, much longer the waiting for the media to somehow make it true.
I think about her family these days and how everyday they have reminders that she is no longer with them. Then it is strange to think of the impact of her death and how so many many people have died in Haiti and the grief so many over there must be feeling.
Death is so arbitrary but so final.
Well Cath no matter how many years go by, you won't be forgotten and you'll be forever young as I get more wrinkles and I think you would tease me for that.

Another year vanished

2010-01-08T13:54:00.003+13:00

I had a wee look back as I head into 2010.
2009 for me, seemed to be year of learning more about me - weirdly. You'd think after 30 plus years I would know all there was to know about me but apparently I have been ignoring some traits or recent events have just bought them to my attention.
So what have l learnt?
I have a pretty bad phobia of spending money and worry too much about it. It doesn't seem to matter if I have enough or even more than enough - I worry. This year I am going to try to worry about money less - this will be very hard. Though yesterday I managed to go from mild anxiety attack to relative peace so there is hope yet.
I learnt I am motivated by success and find it hard when I can't tangibly achieve that.
I've learnt life doesn't instantly change - that is only in the summarised magazine article or television interview. Everything takes time.
I've learnt people are what I enjoy. I thought I loved travelling and want to do more but looking back on the travel I have been fortunate to do, it is the people that stick out in my mind. The sixty year old German who was forced so close to retirement to take a move to China by the company he worked for. He was loving it, he was thoroughly enjoying seeing something completely new to him every day he walked to work. His attitude was fantastic. The lady in Sri Lanka who was so thankful I came to help train them when she said in her heart she thought I wouldn't since the airport had been bombed a week before. I know what it is like to ask for help and then get turned down from afar.
This year I haven't left the country but we have had some really neat people to stay through SERVAS. Even though sometimes we've been busy and I need to reorganise the house when they come, each time it has been worth it and my world has increased. It is also surprising what people will tell you as the person behind the counter. We opened our world cooking ingredient retail shop - Summerfields Foods - last year and I have met some very interesting people I would never have met otherwise. Their lives have taken a course they might not have chosen but it sure is interesting listening to their stories. Now we are busier that doesn't happen quite the same but it is great to be growing the business and the busyness.
I've also learnt;
a tidy house to live in is important to me.
that kids can adapt and thoroughly enjoy things you were worried might adversely affect them.
I can hear someone say the stress of a new business and trying to be superperson, took it's toll with a near breakdown and not see that same thing happening in my own approach.
that great friends are there when you need them.
that little kids really do grow very quickly.
that there are an every increasing number of "morals" related to the "right" way to bring up children and that it is okay for me to pick the things important to me for our kids and that doesn't make me better or worse a parent for the things I am not worried about.
Life is not always easy but when it is not you learn a great deal more than when everything is lined up nicely.

Today's random thoughts

2009-12-18T12:54:00.005+13:00

Is it wrong when you go the bank - that charges endless fees for seemingly even just breathing near your business account and then you have to queue 1/2 hour to get anyone to help - that you want to take your waiting fee in large numbers of candy canes from the counter?

One can only be impressed when you see a bloke that has the balls to shave his head but leave a little strip right across his head and then grow a beard so his face is surrounded in a neatly trimmed halo - awesome!

Sometimes you can click a link and read on a blog words that touch your very soul. Words that express exactly what you feel but didn't know others felt the same and it totally makes your day - to not be alone, to know you are not weird and that you can change it. The person will never know their eight sentences has affected someone a world away. Someone who is so grateful they wrote it. Even I left a comment on the old post, it probably wouldn't get across what those eight sentences meant. Sometimes you just gotta love the internet.

how will the future view us?

2009-12-15T17:06:00.004+13:00

If you read a historical novel, like "Pillars of the Earth", or watch of a movie of a similar era there are the landowners and there are the workers and boy do they work for not a lot.
Some landowners are nice to their tenants. Other landowners are horrible and evil and despite their wealth take everything, while the people that have actually done all the work, go hungry.
When I watch or read these things I don't want to be the ones doing the back-breaking labour, but I want to be the nice landowners being generous to those worse off - while of course living in a big house.
Then I think of today. There is still the split, but it is on a global scale. Instead of on the land outside the big house, it is offshore, elsewhere people are getting paid very little so I can have cheap clothes and shoes and so many other things I buy everyday.
I can't see them so I can live in my castle and pretend they don't exist. I can pretend that can of tuna was not put together by someone working really long hours in the heat and smell for little pay. And yet I read the labels and carefully pick the one that is mostly skipjack tuna since I have been told this tuna is not overfished and is doing okay. But what of the people catching it and canning it?
Sure we get told the wages are low but that is because it is cheap to live in that country. But then from a friend who used to work a call centre in India sometimes after the travel expenses they didn't have enough for food - that doesn't sound like a living wage to me. They were extremely grateful for the job, just as the fish factory workers are. But is that right?
If someone knows it is not enough, surely it is not just to only pay what they do?
A living wage should be enough to live with your immediate family - not have them live somewhere else that you can only afford to visit once a month even though it is only one bus ride away.
In a hundred years - how will the stories be written about our era? Who will be the heroes and who will be the underdogs?
I can look around see much wealthier people and be smug at my small efforts of charity and choosing items on where items are made. But I wonder at what size is a three bedroom house just a big house?

Service by the Lay

2009-12-01T20:47:00.005+13:00

I was biking home tonight and passed a place selling stone. It had a sign out the front; "Full Supply and Lay Service".
As a Christian - gosh I hate that phrase, so usually followed by some judgemental statement about something. As an aside I don't think Jesus ever used that sort of condescending approach, he seems a lot more straight up about things - anyway I digress.
The reason I mention the Christian bit is because probably to others this sign made perfect sense but for some reason my brain was on another track. Lay in a church setting usually refers to people who are not clergy(the ones who are vicars and bishops and stuff). The Lay people are everyone else.
So here I am thinking why are they saying "lay service"? Is their service a step down, dealing with the everyday people not the people set aside to be in charge of the stone? Are they planning a service run by the lay and what has this to do with stone?
Then it clicked.
Oh they lay the stone for you.
I didn't even go to any service on Sunday, Lay or otherwise. But I think I need to get some sleep, my brain has gone weird.

Another wee story - Prayers of the people - the end

2009-11-20T22:10:00.000+13:00

She made a decision. Vera stepped out into the aisle behind Margaret. She slipped her hands onto the handles of the wheelchair.
“I’ll take it from here. I know you’ve got the sanctuary to attend to.”
To her surprise, Margaret looked at her gratefully and stepped aside. Still smiling Vera pushed her new friend towards the oak doors and out into the foyer.

another wee story - Prayers of the people part five

2009-11-18T19:23:00.002+13:00

She looked at Reg who was staring at her in surprise across the rows of heads, that were now rising and turning to look at them.
Vera knew she was committed and spoke up. “My bracelet is caught in the little girl’s hair.” She could see Reg weighing up whether that was reason enough to interrupt the prayers. She kept going.
“My friend here has locked her knee and is in severe pain.” She gestured with her free hand at Beryl.
“And.” She wanted to say about the little girl and then she realised the mother was about to slide herself back onto her seat. She pushed her free hand across the pew.
“Don’t sit back!” She ordered aggressively.
The woman frowned at her rough tone.
“Sorry but your wee girl has wet her pants and it has made the pew cushion wet. ” Vera smiled at her.
The church was no longer silent; a general hubbub was slowly swelling. Vera glanced at Beryl. Margaret had been the first on the scene. She had been a nurse and she was already directing people to get ice from the kitchen and the courtesy wheelchair from the foyer. Margaret worked her way into the pew beside Beryl. She put her arm around Beryl’s shoulder and quietly began talking to her. Vera sighed there went her chances of a new friend.
“You’re free,” said the mother, holding the bracelet out to Vera.
“Oh thank you.” Vera felt its weight in her hand and pushed her hand into her jacket pocket.
“Now my next problem.” The mother sighed.
Reg was attempting to regain control from the front. Heads slowly turned away and the music group began the introduction for the offertory song. Vera stood up carefully.
The woman in front took her cue to gather up her wet child as the rest of the congregation stood to sing. She headed down the aisle.
Vera felt a tug on her arm. It was Beryl. Margaret had managed to get Beryl’s knee moving again and was about to help her into the wheelchair.
“I’m so glad you invited me to sit next you. Maybe see you next week?” Whispered Beryl. She straightened up and with Margaret’s help slid herself into the wheelchair. Beryl looked across at Vera as Margaret eased off the wheelchair brake.
“Thank-you.” She mouthed and smiled.
It was a smile that warmed Vera from the inside. She smiled back as she fingered the troublesome bracelet in her pocket. But then her heart filled with rocks as she watched Margaret begin to push Beryl away. Would Beryl see her next week or would Margaret, being the kind, friendly woman she was, be asking how she was this week, offering to sit with her? Vera could see herself standing in the background yet again. Brave one minute but too scared the next, to even make a proper friend. Vera fingered the bracelet again.

another wee story - Prayers of the people part four

2009-11-17T10:22:00.003+13:00

“Oh.” Vera was startled. “When did you do that?”
“When I sat down for the sermon.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
Reg’s voice rode across their whispered conversation, “Lord in your mercy.”
"Hear our prayer.” They both murmured automatically.
“Well” said Vera. “I’m stuck too. My bracelet is caught in the little girl’s hair.”
It was Beryl’s turn to look startled. “Oh.”
“Can her mother help?’ She nodded her head at the woman in front.
Vera shook her head. “There is another problem. The wee girl has wet her pants and it is all over the seat. I don’t want her mum to sit in it.”
Vera nodded unhappily.
She listened to Reg, trying to think of some way to solve all their problems. He was nearly finished the prayers. A song would be next and neither of them could stand. The girl would wake up, move her head and her hair would be pulled on bracelet. She would end up crying. Then there was the mother who might sit down and Beryl trying to keep herself rigid in one position.
Reg’s prayers penetrated her thoughts.
“We pray for those in Zimbabwe, Iraq and elsewhere, where living is a daily struggle. Lord in your mercy.”
Vera remained silent.
Her problems hardly compared with those. She felt isolated and alone in the nodding sea of heads.
Reg was winding down. “And for ourselves Lord, we ask in silence for your help. Give us grace to serve Christ by serving our neighbours and our community, loving others as He loves us. Lord….”
The prayer words jolted her into action. “We need help.” The words slipped out of Vera’s mouth before she even knew she had said them.

another wee story - Prayers of the people part three

2009-11-15T20:17:00.002+13:00

She looked up and realised the mother of the little girl was kneeling in the pew in front of her.
Vera leant forward across the pew as much as she could, without moving the hand wearing the bracelet. Then she saw a dark stain on the red cushion. Her eyes followed it to its source. The little girl had wet her pants. Vera felt sorry for her and looked at the mother’s back in pity. Now she had two things to tell her. Vera noticed the lady was wearing a light grey skirt. Somehow she had to attract the woman’s attention but make sure she did not sit back on the seat. Vera looked at the wet pew cushion and realised the red dye was probably coming out too. She had to stop the woman from sitting down.
“Lord in your mercy.”
Vera murmured. “Hear our prayer.”
She was going to have to ask Beryl. Vera had been so pleased there was a new person her age. It was a rare event at St. Mark’s. New families were always turning up on a Sunday morning, but her age group were the same old ones that had been there for years. Even better, Margaret, the most outgoing one of them all, had been involved setting up the sanctuary. Vera had the chance to get to know Beryl first. Everyone ended up friends with happy, resourceful Margaret but Vera felt sometimes she could be a better friend if she were only brave enough to act like it. Here was her first opportunity at making a new friend for months and she was going to have to ask for help for being a clumsy fool.
She turned to Beryl, who had remained seated for the prayers. Then Vera saw the tears. Two lines had made their way through Beryl’s foundation. Vera berated herself. She had been so wound up in her predicament she had not even noticed what Beryl was doing.Without shifting her hand, she tried to lean closer to Beryl.
“Are you okay?” She whispered.
There was a pause.
“No” Beryl whispered back without opening her eyes or looking up.
“I’m not sure if I can help but what’s the matter?”
She looked around to see if anyone was noticing what was happening in their corner of the little stone church. Beryl opened her eyes. Vera could see the pain etched in them.
“I’ve locked my knee. It won’t move and it really hurts.”

another wee story - Prayers of the people - part two

2009-11-11T20:31:00.001+13:00

Reg’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Lord in your mercy.”
Around her the congregation murmured in unison. “Hear our prayer.”
Shifting her weight, Vera tried to push the catch with her thumb while the hand, adorned by the bracelet, tried to pull the ring part of the catch free. She gave up in disgust at her own helplessness.
She looked at her bracelet, the cause of the whole problem. She stared at the peacefully, sleeping, little girl on the pew in front. Vera had admired her curls flowing over the pew during the sermon. They were so perfectly curled in little concentric circles, she had really wanted to pull one out and see how long it would stretch.
Reg’s voice cut in again. “Lord in your mercy.”
“Hear our prayer.” Vera joined in the response.
“I need an answer to prayer right now!” She muttered to herself.

Another wee story - Prayers of the people - part one

2009-11-10T21:08:00.001+13:00

It happened so quickly. Vera was caught before she realised what had happened. She tried to pull her arm free. The hairs started to pull tight. She stopped. Hurting the child was the last thing she wanted to do.
Behind the lectern up the front, Reg was continuing with the prayers. Vera looked to see if anyone had noticed her predicament but Beryl, the new lady beside her, and the rest of the congregation, had their heads lowered.
Vera knew it was old fashioned of her, but it felt right to kneel for prayers. Secretly she was proud she still could, the arthritis had not affected her knees yet.
The little girl had stirred in her sleep with the rustle of movement as the prayers began. Vera had leant on the pew to ease herself onto her knees. In that instance of leaning, kneeling and the little girl moving, Vera’s bracelet catch had caught in her curls. Now it seemed the bracelet was somehow weaving itself into the hair. Vera tried to keep her arm completely still. Could she stay like this for the whole prayers?

Racing to Melbourne for the Formula one - the end

2009-11-07T14:03:00.003+13:00

We eat Malaysian, Greek, Indonesian and each night evaluate a different gelato shop. We walk down the thin back streets to a bakery to buy the last of today's bread at discount prices for tomorrow's lunch.
At the track a bottle of Gatorade is $4.20 on Thursday afternoon, $4.80 on Friday morning and $5 by Friday afternoon. Saturday my fellow race watcher stops buying Gatorade.
Saturday is qualifying day. We watch qualifying from Brockie's Hill on the back of the circuit and it has a big screen opposite so we can see the timings. The hill is almost empty when we arrive, but once qualifying starts I have to strain on my toes to see the cars through the crowd. Behind us the fairground rides still run with squeals from passengers enjoying no queues.
Ralf Schumacher's Toyota breaks something and on the big screen I can see it crawling slowly back to the pits. When he passes in front of us he is still going fast, it just looks slow compared to a Formula One car at full speed. Kimi Raikkonen secures pole position.
On race day turn nine, our chosen viewing spot, is already neatly laid out as a grandstand of deckchairs and we congregate behind the last row. The race is still five and half hours away and we spend the time subtly fighting to keep our piece of dusty turf.
The crowd is much more cosmopolitan. We meet Daniel from France. He has travelled the world going to Grand Prix. Daniel has a stand ticket but is in the general admission area because he can take better photographs without the double safety fences in front of the stands. Behind us arrives a group of Poles supporting Robert Kubica. Beside us are some Scots.
The tension and excitement builds until finally we hear Formula one engines starting and then the cars appear on their way to the grid and then again for their formation lap.
It is fantastic. First I see the race start on the big screen and then they come into view as small dark shapes that grow rapidly and then they are braking for the corner. A Spyker pushes a Super Aguri car roughly, momentarily off track and then they are gone, the roar of the engines trailing behind. After that the race goes by surprisingly fast. It seems it has barely begun and they are on the last lap. A mere one hour, forty-five minutes later it is over. Kimi Raikkonen's lead in his Ferrari went unchallenged but Lewis Hamilton, in his first ever Grand Prix, takes third.
The crowd pours onto the circuit. I wade ankle deep across the fluorescent pink stones in the corner and then my feet are sticking to the rumble strip as if it is covered in sugar. I find the marbles so often mentioned in the television commentary. They are black, thumbnail size scraps of sticky, tyre rubber. I can squeeze them in my fingers. There are millions of them lying on the tarmac.
We begin walking around the track to the front straight. Again I realise how fast the cars are. It is a long walk. Sporadically there are loud horns as tow trucks carry damaged cars back to the pits.
Workers are already moving across the spectator mounds picking up rubbish. A fan is climbing a fence post to get a sponsor's sign to take home. A large forklift and crane are beginning to dismantle the safety fence.
On the starting grid thousands of photographs are being taken of friends sitting in grid slots or standing on the finish line. The fence alongside the pits is also a wall of people holding cameras aloft. On the other side crews are packing up their gear. The team stands on the pit wall are already down.
We walk the last piece of the track that in a few days will return to being Aughtie Drive. As we walk out the gates, there is a line of trucks with crates on their trailers sporting team names. Everything is off to Malaysia.
I climb aboard a crammed, happy tram for home. I decide my favourite day was Saturday. I saw the Formula One cars twice on track and qualifying was very exciting. It also had the tension of waiting for the climax of Sunday's race. Oh and the toilets at the track are as clean at end of the four days, as they were at the beginning.
In the evening we walk to the famous Italiano stretch of Melbourne, Lygon Street. Seating flows out from the restaurants onto the footpaths. The tables are filled with people sporting team colours and sun reddened faces. A race replay is flickering at the back of a restaurant and commentary is competing with a neighbouring restaurant's music. A waiter squeezes between the stream of pedestrians to deliver a platter piled high with crabs, mussels and a lobster. The Ferrari flags are flying in the gentle breeze. The camaraderie of a shared passion lives long after the gates close.

Racing to Melbourne for the Formula one - part three

2009-11-05T20:07:00.003+13:00

The speed of the cars is astonishing. It is difficult to believe a human is inside controlling it. They look unnaturally fast, like a slot car on its track. The speed of the cars distorts the track size. They complete the 5.3km circuit in less than two minutes.
Standing beside the track and whipping my head left to right as the cars scream past, the insane nature of anyone stepping onto the track, chills me. The other unbelievable nature of the cars is how they stop. From high speed to dead slow for the corners is like snapping your fingers. The brakes glowing hot red.
The advantage of Melbourne being the first race on the calendar is all the drivers are out during the practice sessions. The disadvantage is I am not familiar with the livery of the new season's cars and I keep diving into my now coverless programme to remind myself who is who.
We are surrounded by people of all ages wearing bright t-shirts and caps of their favourite team. Families are here with children in strollers, wearing large ear protectors. On Friday the park is swarming with school groups given free passes. Most of them gather around the merchandise and the F1 experience tents. It is stifling in the tents as children get their photograph taken with pit girls to the 'rat a tat tat' of the tyre air guns on the pitstop challenge. The bright orange Gillette tent is busy. You can get a shave by a model and keep the razor. The patrons come back proudly showing orange tinted photographs of themselves and half a model's face. There are also car displays and the Royal Australian Air Force do an impressive F/A-18 jet aerial display at various intervals. The highly tuned engine noise being overhead instead of on the track.
Over the four days we make a plan to move around the track looking for the best spot to view the race. I get an idea of the top speed as the cars roar down the straight. I watch them crowd out of the pits. I see drivers take slightly different lines through the corners.
Every evening after returning from the circuit, we wash off the track dust and head out to enjoy the restaurants of Melbourne.

Racing to Melbourne for the Formula one - part two

2009-11-03T13:55:00.002+13:00

The Ferrari drivers finish before we are even halfway to the front but the Honda drivers are coming. While we wait, we discuss which page in the programme is the best one to get signed. I choose the crimson back cover.
Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello emerge wearing black sunglasses. I feel it beginning to get dark. My head is moving away from my body. I crouch down in the dusty straw. I am about to pass out. I don't want to lose my place in the queue.
We wave frantically to friends standing up near the front taking pictures. Drink and lollies arrive and I feel myself returning to the Park. The line has hardly moved and I still have my place.
Finally we are at the front. The drivers are surprisingly short. As a Kiwi, I am used to rugby celebrities and with the huge media hype that surrounds these men, I am not expecting such diminutive figures.
We file past as quickly as it takes to do a squiggle with a vivid. Jenson says "How you doing, alright?" I don't mention my near faint. He has enough problems this year with his car. If only he could know what happens in 2009.
Later I find the marker is rubbing off the shiny cover, no one else is allowed to look at my programme in case they damage the fragile signatures.
Friday is the first practice day for the Formula One. It is raining lightly but still warm. I wear earplugs and a marshal on a motorbike stops to give a pair to a teenager leaning on the fence. Standing anywhere in the park, I instantly know when a Formula One car starts up. The high pitch distorts in my ears through the earplugs and rattles in my stomach. As the cars chop down through the gears and brake for the corners, there is a loud scream and then shockwaves seem to hit my back.

Racing to Melbourne for the Formula one - part one

2009-11-02T13:46:00.004+13:00

The last race of this season has just been raced - Next year Melbourne is the second race on the calendar. This was my experience of Melbourne - the first year Lewis Hamilton blazed onto the F1 scene.

At the cramped, hot, downtown ticket office I wait in a spiralling queue for our four-day general admission Formula One Grand Prix tickets. Behind me two grey haired, bespectacled Englishmen compare races they have attended. One complains Suzuka had only one class with just four cars, other than the Formula One. They agree Melbourne is great because of the entertainment and races that fill in the gaps between the Formula One sessions. Despite the sweat breaking out on my forehead, the talk builds my excitement.
No Formula One cars are practising on the Thursday but we decide we cannot wait to see the track at Albert Park. It is near the inner city and we clamber on a tram, free-of-charge with our Grand Prix tickets, for a ride right to the circuit gates.
Thursday is hot, dry and dusty. The park is mostly empty and the ING clad volunteers look pleased to find us to give jellybeans, sunscreen and lanyards. The crackly public address system announces the Ferrari drivers will be available for autographs. In the heat we walk across the closed in, metal bridge over the track and the white plastic pontoon bridge floating on the lake, to finally reach the tent where the drivers will appear. We find the other Thursday spectators in a long red queue. Brown dust from the straw covering the ground, sticks to my sweaty feet. It will not brush off and it embeds in my hands and under my fingernails.

a wee story - Travelling to Somewhere - the end

2009-10-27T12:18:00.002+13:00

I shut the book. I could still hear the gentle rumble of the traffic – it was almost like the sea. I went to see what message had been left on my phone. It was from work. I wandered over to check the email, but I clicked on my web browser and started to search for secondhand tents. I still had my sleeping bag and everything would fit in my pack. The boxes I could dump on my way south. I checked my bank account. There was enough money for a tent. I listened to the traffic. I slid the arrow over the buy now button. I did not click.
I sat back on the box I was using as my chair. It wouldn’t be the same. I have heard there are hotels in Punakaiki now. I bet they have built a boardwalk over that flax swamp. The West Coast had moved on; not back to the great days of the gold rush and the coalmines but no longer how I remembered it either.
I left my search and clicked to check the email. It was just like the phone message - another piece to add to the corporate puzzle I was assembling. I had never bothered to build a career before. I had taken whatever jobs were going until I had enough money to move on.
I started to type a reply to the email. I was on my career path, like the cars outside, heading somewhere. I hoped it would be worth it.

A wee story - Travelling to Somewhere - Part three

2009-10-26T10:46:00.000+13:00

January 5 1984
There was a lake outside our tent door this morning. We had yacht races on it with our jandals. Dave won. The river behind the tent was bank to bank and we were supposed to be going to Punakaiki. We pulled down the tent in the rain.
We found the Post Office, sent postcards to Grandmas and started travelling. On the way we pulled over to let a truck pass us. It went by so fast and with so much spray, it made our car go off the road.
We stopped at Waiuta. It used to be a town during the gold rush. Now it was just a few chimneys and flat concrete bits. It was hard to imagine a town or anyone living there. On the way we saw a shaft that wasn't covered up. If you were a fool you could go in. It was the best.
We went to Greymouth and had hot soup for lunch that burnt my tongue.
The tent was wet when we packed it up so when we put it up at Punakaiki, the water came through.
After tea there was a thunderstorm with bright lightening. In the olden days a man was promoted from Wellington to here.
Mum slept in the car. We slept with Dad in the tent with the ground sheet above us in case it rained.

January 6, 1984
Today was a nice sunny day so the tent dried out. We saw the blowholes and the Pancake Rocks. They were fantastic. There was a surge pool with the sea crashing and bashing about.
After lunch we went with the DOC rangers to a new reserve. We waded through mud and amongst flax with water up to our knees and in our sneakers. We found a dead Westland Black Petrel. The flax was really tall. I think they want to build a walkway over the mud. It would be a good idea. I don't know how the rangers knew where to go but we suddenly walked out of the flax onto a beach.
We hunted for Pounamu. Mum found some. Her piece was a big round piece like a fifty-cent coin. I found a bit too. I think. I hope.

January 7, 1984
Today we went down the Truman Track into some caves. In the caves were a whole lot of shells where Maori had eaten ages ago. We had to be very respectful.
There was another blowhole and a waterfall. You could stand under the waterfall and not even get wet. There were rock pools and we stuck our fingers in anemones.
We stayed and had dinner on the beach. I guess like the Maori did, but we had bread rolls filled with lettuce, luncheon sausage and cheese. We watched the sun set into the sea from the top of the rocks. Dad said it would look like a light bulb just before it set and there would be a green ring around it, but I missed it. Mum said it was the best bit of our holiday.
When it was dark we walked back up the track. We walked with no torches. We saw fluorescent fungi shining yellow and white in the dark and some glowworms.

January 8, 1984
We packed up and drove home.
I came home to my two fish, Jack and Jill. I had got them for Christmas. They were dead. Their tank was full of green algae and it looked like jelly. They were floating near the top. The pet shop lady and the fish book said you could leave fish for three weeks and they would be all right. But now they were dead so we buried them.
Dad goes back to work tomorrow, he seemed sad. Mum was happy, but not about the fish.

A wee story - Travelling to Somewhere - Part two

2009-10-21T20:57:00.002+13:00

Yet inside, upstairs I could see the motorway heading south out of the city. From that motorway you could go anywhere, down towards Tauranga, or to the Lake or keep going to the Capital and the Mainland. I guess some people would hate it – that room overlooking the cars. But I liked watching them zipping past when it was empty or inching slowly when it was full. They were like pieces in a board game. On the near side, cars flicker past just out of my view. Those cars were heading into the city and I felt sorry for them.
The flat was just one of a block – flat, cream painted, tilt slab concrete. At night in the halogen spotlight that spilt out through the double glazing, I noticed the potted herbs in one window, the fake crystal hanging in another and through mine there was nothing because it was all still in a couple of boxes. Boxes wearing the lint of gathered dust, shaken off on the courier trip north. The writing on the sides of them, was careful, rounded black marker for if I ever came home to open them. They hold an old life; perhaps they should just be taken to the dump. All these years, they have stayed closed, untouched, and unrequired.

January 3, 1984
Tonight Mum made damper dough with flour, sugar and water. Dad looked after the fire and we went looking for damper sticks in the bush.
We wanted long straight sticks that we could mould our damper onto the end. It had to be long enough that we could hold the mixture over the fire without our hands becoming too hot. Dave found the best stick. We got handfuls of the damper mixture and squeezed it over the end of the stick. We held our damper over the fire. We kept tapping them to see if they sounded hollow and cooked.
A couple walked past from a campervan that had just arrived. The campervan couple went away and came back with golden syrup. We filled the middles with the golden syrup and got very sticky fingers. The man from the campervan said he hadn't made dampers in fifty years. The lady hadn't made them at all.
When the damper dough was gone, we had hot milos with a tacky taste from our plastic, camping cups. The sandflies were fierce and now I itch. When we were in bed we heard thousands of frogs but they didn’t say ribbit and there was something else.

January 4, 1984
Today we packed up and drove to Reefton and put the tent up again.
We looked around the town. The shops were wooden and there was a cinema with a sign that was made up of thousands of tiny silver disks. It was supposed to sparkle but the disks were rusty. They shook in the wind against the peeling, white paint. On the way back to the tent, it started to rain. It rained hard and soft.
After tea we went for a walk and Dad took us to have a look at this thing. It was the ruins of the first hydroelectric power station in the Southern Hemisphere. I looked down into this pit and there were just heaps of bathtubs lying around with pipes.

This first box had been mostly old certificates, reports and my academic record from university, typed up in black courier font with Degree Conferred, not even in bold. I should probably keep them. I had worked so hard for them and I thought they held my future. Then I found the diary. My cellphone started ringing in the lounge. The laptop replied with a ping of new email arriving.

A wee story - Travelling to Somewhere - Part one

2009-10-20T21:10:00.003+13:00

It was salmon pink, covered in velvet and did not suit the room. It was a grown ups room with its dark stained, wooden floor and white walls, waiting for my stuff, that had been packed away at Mum and Dad’s in Christchurch for so long. There was only my pack, grubby grey and red, leaning in the corner, its top dangling open like the pout of a little kid. This was the least interesting place it had been in the last ten years.
Mum was so pleased her youngest was back with a proper job; even it was at the other end of the country. Mary had stayed in Christchurch, now married with two little kids, who were quite good at pouting when I had seen them. Dave was in Sydney climbing the corporate ladder with ease and confidence, unlike my recent nervous jump onto the lower rungs here at home.
I flicked through the pages of the pink diary from when I was ten.

January 2, 1984.
Today was very exciting we went camping for the first time in our new tent. Dad said we should have got the new dryer Mum wanted.
We started travelling at 9:38.
There were lots of little hills in the road and they left my tummy behind. We stopped at Culverden and got a Moro bar each and some plates because Mum forgot to pack them.
Tonight we stayed at Marble Hill. We were in the middle of the mountains with tall peaks and bush covered hills surrounding a meadow of knee high grass. Mum said it was proper camping using our gas cooker and a long drop toilet. Mary said a long drop toilet was not a proper toilet and I agreed. It stinks.
Just beyond our tent was the bush - the tree trunks covered in black mould, disappeared into darkness. I collected drops of yummy bush honeydew off the mould while I tried not to think that it was insect wee. The ground was covered with fallen beech leaves and patches of green moss that was springy to walk on. A little way into the bush, there was a small stream with three tiny waterfalls close together, surrounded by moss. It looked like a dreamland. It was so quiet I thought I could be all alone in the world.

Out the window Auckland’s traffic was filling on the motorway. My new flat was hidden away around a series of back street corners like a cheap backpackers searched for in a foreign city late at night.

Traffic lights - are they necessary?

2009-10-10T11:25:00.004+13:00

I recently saw an item on a Dutch town that has now removed all their traffic lights and traffic signals. It is possibly Drachten, which was in the news a few years ago for removing most of their traffic lights, but I can't quite recall the name.
The idea seems to be the buzz of the last few years in traffic safety. The discovery is that removing traffic lights actually makes roads safer for all, with people taking more responsibility for their actions. The traffic guys in my city clearly don't seem to be aware of this - despite London and New York trying it out (fairly big, trendy cities I would have thought that would be worth checking how they do things).
No. Here it seems to be more traffic? Quick bung another set of traffic lights in, that'll fix it!
The other morning I was driving into town and a set of traffic lights was down. It was at a major intersection with five roads coming into it. I approached with intrepidation how was this going to work?
Well it turned out very well, everyone was looking out for each other. I had to come back through this intersection on my way home too and it was still going smoothly. It made me think of the town in the Netherlands, of name uncertain, - they are onto something! My wait was much less than previously at this intersection and it felt more interactive. It felt we were all watching out for each other instead of just being intent on our own journey and how quickly we could get there.
I hope the traffic people here take note of these overseas trends or the younger people coming up get to try it this stuff. The sticking traffic lights in everywhere is just so frustrating and it would seem makes roads no safer.
I did a bit of googling to try and find the name of the Netherlands town - which I didn't but I found this site. I love the unbelievable amount of information on anything on the web. From this site I learnt that the new LED traffic lights (which I had thought were quite a cool idea if you were going to have traffic lights) are not hot enough to melt snow so if it snows a lot you can't see the lights. Another reason just to pull 'em out.

News or is it?

2009-10-07T14:06:00.003+13:00

It has been terrible watching the devastation caused by the earthquakes and tsunami that have occurred around the Pacific rim recently. It is when major events like this happen that I do watch the television news more and I hope for miracle survival stories.
In the reality of news delivery -disaster stories seem to be big business. All the local networks had people on the ground in Samoa within hours almost and seemingly reporters from all their different news shows.
So we have "live" reports and first hand pictures and then weirdly I saw a news promo for the 6pm news. The newsreader said something along the lines of "why are all these earthquakes happening around the Pacific Rim? We'll reveal all at 6pm."
No you won't. If most people remember their basic NZ school geography, they should know about the Pacific Rim of Fire. That is a googlable thing - that is not news. I am wondering about the person who wrote this little bit of script - had they never heard of the Pacific Rim of Fire? I am sure wikipaedia has an article all about it and they do. This is not news. My first thought was how badly is your news show rating that you use encylopedia information to get me to watch? I didn't watch, I remember geography.
But the idea of someone learning about it for the first time and going - "Check this out - it is amazing! There are plates and that is why all these earthquakes happen where they do. Wow I never knew, I'll use that to promote our news tonight." - is kind of cool.

Other people's opinion

2009-09-26T17:09:00.006+12:00

It is a weird thing - other people's opinion. I think I have been told through my whole life, not to worry about what other people think and just to do what I think. I find myself saying those same things to my kids. But it is a kind of hypocrisy since I do always think about other people's opinion - what it means and if I should be taking notice of it. Then you see the latest news about Flavio Briatore in Formula One or ex Formula One as he is now.
A few year's ago I read an article all about him that was glowing. How amazing he was to be able to mastermind world championship wins with a lesser budget than other team principals etc etc. It listed all his feats and his strengths and sure it mentioned some of his weaknesses but reading the article, one had to conclude he was a pretty exceptional man.
Now in the light of recent allegations of race fixing he has been derided and the very same news source mentioned his weaknesses in stark, short sentences and a very small nod to his feats of the past. It is the same guy but such a different view.
The whole situation does make you wonder about other people's opinions and how much we should listen to them. What is the truth about anything, even yourself? I can quickly change the opinion on myself depending on what I have done in the last hour or so.
We are undertaking an exciting, new venture at the moment. I can see if it is a raving success no doubt people will say aah it is because they planned well, stuck to their budgets and looked after their customers. If it doesn't work out I guess others will say aah it is because they were inexperienced and naive. Yet whatever happens the same people are involved. How can it be either one or the other depending on the outcome? Opinions are very weird if you think about them too much.

Marketing stories

2009-09-24T12:54:00.003+12:00

Karl gave me a really nice Moleskine notebook for my birthday. It is lovely and it has a great story about being used by Hemingway and other creative types. I always have notebooks hanging about for writing in so it is a perfect gift and the history behind it is pretty cool. But my curiosity began to be nagged when I read the information inside about how the books had stopped being produced and then a small Milanese printing company began to make them again. It said bits of them were handmade. Really? Was this notebook handmade in Italy? Nowhere on the book did it say where it was made. But it did have a website - moleskine.com. Now I've worked with a couple of Italian companies in the past and websites were not really something they were strong on. Also they usually were .it not .com. Was this really made by a small Milanese printing company?
I looked up the website and sure enough that small Milanese printing company has been purchased by a bigger company with a really boring name. Sure they are designed in Italy but now the handmade bit is in China.
The latest marketing thing is to tell stories about your products makes it more authentic, people buy into the story, etc etc. The problem is when you are just doing it as a marketing technique, it still rings hollow. If you go to this website you read how the handmade bit is done in China but how this is so appropriate because the Chinese invented paper. They know and we know the only reason they are being handmade in China is to keep costs down. Sure it is a book with a lovely history and they are trying hard to market it as that but when it is made by some big comglomerate with a boring name in China - it does take the shine off the lovely back story.
I do still really like the notebook and it is made well but it doesn't matter what marketing technique you use, if the background doesn't back it up, the warm fuzzies are not really generated. Though there is a little thought gathering momentum in the back of my mind. If this was handmade by a small Milanese printing firm - would I have been able to get one outside of Italy? If it wasn't handmade in China - would it have been unaffordable to me?

Magic in my Kitchen

2009-08-14T14:34:00.003+12:00

The other day, a magic trick happened before my very eyes!
I was making a crumpet for lunch and despite others' opinions, I happen to like butter, vegemite and melted cheese. It is the best ever crumpet topping.
My crumpet was toasted and I had spread the butter, the vegemite and carefully laid out some cheese on the top.
I put it on a plate in the microwave to melt the cheese for thirty seconds.
Our microwave is not used very often so it sits atop the fridge. This makes it above my head and I have to reach up to put things into it more by feel, than sight. Our microwave is also very old and spins the food around fast.
The beeper dinged. I opened the door and felt for the plate. I lifted it down and as it reached my eye level, to my surprise, there was no crumpet on the plate.
The crumpet had vanished. I thought perhaps this time the speedy spinning had finally been too much and my crumpet had been flung out and stuck to the wall of the microwave by its melted cheese.
I stepped back so I could see the walls of the microwave. They were clear. My crumpet had taken part in a great disappearing trick.
Magic!

Tangled up in words

2009-08-06T14:26:00.005+12:00

Language is suppose to help communication I thought but some words are too similar. I was enthusing on about place that sold free trade goods until I listened to myself. I didn't mean free trade, I meant fair trade. How come two such different concepts, with such different ramifications are so similar? Just as well I am not in some trade negotiation, I could agree to anything.
How come awful apparently used to mean full of awe and now means horrible? While awesome, which surely having only some awe is less than being totally full of awe, gets to mean awe-inspiring?
How come a marketer thought it was smart to have a shop sign that said half price, half shop? The two "half" words underneath one another so the poor shop assistants had to explain to every customer that only half the things in the shop were half price, not that it was a half price shop which your brain automatically registered it as.
I listen to my children trying to get their head around a language where you can have "yours" but not "mines" and you can have "listened" but not "heared".
And I still think alot should be an acceptable compound word.

What scares me

2009-07-31T13:30:00.003+12:00

Being currently in the middle of a massive life change I am learning a lot about myself. It seems my biggest fear, stumbling block, thing that stops me from doing stuff, is money. I don't mean just a momentary - eek, don't want to spend that - kind of feeling. I mean a terrified, out of control, being sucked down the black hole, light headed, kind of feeling. A hide in a corner and hope it goes away, kind of feeling.
Over the top? Yes.
Verging on paranoia? Probably.
One thing I do know, saying snap out of it and thinking through everything logically is not helping. My current approach is just to ignore it and hope it goes away to where it came from. This is the worst it has ever been but looking back, all my major life changes so far, money stands out as being the thing I most worried about.
It has made me think how for other people money is not this concerning. Some people think nothing of leaving their job and starting a new life in a new country. I always intended to do that and now I am wondering if the reason it has never happened is deep down, it freaks me out!
It has made me think about other people's situations where they seem to want to change their lives because they want something else but can't or won't. Perhaps they are just like me and have a big fear stopping them too but maybe theirs is people or commitment. i imagine if I felt about commitment the way I feel about money, long term relationships would be hard and the idea of having children would be nightmare fuel.
It is weird how much your mind and emotions can interfere with your life. I feel I have no control over these feelings, even though they are mine. So far in the past if I have just got on and believed the more rational thinking about the problem, things have been fine and you would think I would learn from that. It feels almost an instinctive response that I am squashing to get on with my life.
I wonder if we all have these things that shape our lives more than we realise. Most of the time they are almost subconscious and it is only when we challenge them with bold decisions that we realise secretly they have been controlling our lives.

The Supermarket's Birthday

2009-07-15T12:39:00.003+12:00

Well apparently it is my supermarket's birthday. As part of the party, there were games - well special offers, which for me became a game.
I didn't realise it was the supermarket's birthday so it was the last week of it's celebration, I had not used any of the birthday coupons, cheerfully referred to as presents. They don't let you use more than one at once so it was the big decision which to use with today's grocery shop.
The two I most liked was the instant $5 off your bill or the win your whole shop free. What should I do? Take the $5 - that would be half the bottle of the tasty Riesling that was on special or go for it all for free.
I thought about it all around the supermarket, down the aisles with the staple food items and especially down the aisles with the biscuits and the chocolates and the ice cream. If I won this shop for free, it would be so worth putting in a few bars of chocolate....
I got to the counter.
I still had not decided.
"Do I give you this coupon now?"
"At the end," the checkout chick said.
I still had time to decide.
I watched the items be scanned. This was adding up fast.
It was an expensive shop. Would $5 off be worth it or should I gamble it on a total freebie?
The last item scanned and she looked at me.
I looked at the total.
It was a birthday, it should have games.
I played the game.
I gave the win a free shop coupon.
It was the supermarket's birthday so it won. I paid for the shopping and pretended to be happy about it.

Buying a paper shredder

2009-07-01T13:05:00.003+12:00

On the telly I was a little unsettled by seeing the ease with which people can steal your identity from documents in your recycle bin. I decided I didn't want my identity getting any ideas of having a more fun life with someone else so it was time to buy a shredder. There seemed to be quite a range of shredders from every expensive to very cheap. Having no expertise in being able to tell the difference I went for cheap.
Once home and unpacked from all its packaging - which disappointingly was inappropriate to shred - it was the on the bench plugged in, eager to shred something. There it was, sitting there innocently by the box, the instructions. They were printed on paper just begging to be shredded. On one level it seemed wrong to shred the unread instructions as the first piece but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed so right.
There were instructions on the shredder anyway. There is a little line of pictures of what not to put through the shredder. There is a person with long hair dangling, there is tie, there is hand - all fair enough so far - then there is a baby and what looks like a bomb. I wonder if the sticker person was given a specific number of he had to include and that necessitated some lateral thinking.
It turns out shredding is quite addictive - maybe that should be warned about on the unit... or maybe it was in the instructions.

The appearance of a white rabbit

2009-06-18T13:50:00.003+12:00

Four year old Lucy and I were walking past the cathedral on a cold, windy morning last week, when what should stroll out of the cathedral but a rabbit!
Well more accurately, Lucy was trying to dance an Irish jig and I was trying to get her to keep walking and then a bloke in a rabbit costume, looking a little tired, walked out of the Cathedral entrance. He folded up a sign that said "camera crew working".
He seemed so disinterested, I thought it was just by chance he looked like a rabbit. I thought maybe it was really a costume so he could lie somewhere and film without getting dust and dirt all over his clothes. Then as he turned we saw he had a little rabbit tail.
He was a rabbit. Lucy wasn't at all surprised. Rabbits popping out of a gothic revival style building seemed quite within the realms of possibility in her world.
So we went on our way.