ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE ...

 ... Wellington without your eyes tearing up.

It's a great day and I've been out and about enjoying the sunshine with no chill factor winds.

After a walk about town I took a bus ride on a route I've never been on before - Number 24 Miramar Heights.

I wanted to view suburbs and properties on the way. From the railway station this route went through the inner city to Courtenay Place and then followed the road around Oriental Bay to Evans Bay. From there it went past the airport to Miramar but turned left after the Miramar cutting and went up to Mount Crawford. In all my years living in Wellington I've never taken this road, either literally or figuratively as it leads to Mount Crawford prison. The views across Wellington harbour to the city and across the harbour entrance to Eastbourne and Cape Palliser are stunning. Here would be a great place to build or buy a house.

The bus route meandered around extremely narrow and windy roads necessitating other vehicles to reverse or drive up onto the footpath at times and encircled the flat area of Miramar. At one point it went past Totara Road in the hills where I had a girlfriend named Helen in the 7th form at school. See: SOX

I stopped off at the Miramar shops where WETA and Peter Jackson's cinema are. There are lots of cafes and bakeries (soon to do a starve with the huge layoff of staff at WETA Studios) and I had lunch there.

I spied a lot of desirable apartments along Oriental Parade but it may be that we won't be in the market for an apartment. Recent research I've done suggests that purchasing an apartment in Wellington is not financially viable due to low capital growth, the length of time it takes to on-sell and the excessively high body corporate fees, on top of rates, due to high earthquake insurance. All this on top of the physical risks in an earthquake. Purchasing a townhouse would be a better option. 

Fortunately The Old Girl is coming to this conclusion as well and, living in an inner city apartment for the next few months will likely strengthen that view. Apartment living can be noisy, too hot or too cold, prone to evacuation with fire drills and false alarms, logistically difficult to bring things in and take things out like furniture, shopping and rubbish etc. You can see by this that I'm in favour of buying a townhouse. The problem is though that there are more apartments than townhouses in the inner city/waterfront area where we want to live. We will just have to wait until an opportunity arises so may well keep renting for a while next year.

If, in time a suitable townhouse isn't available, we may opt to rent an apartment in the longterm rather than buy one. We can leave the house sale money in the bank to earn interest (assuming that we ever sell the house), rent a better apartment than we could probably buy, not have to pay body corporate fees and leave the worry about lift repair, structural issues, earthquake rating issues and other council imposed restrictions to the landlord.

TOADY'S TUESDAY

 Frog has turned up after having been missing for a few months.

The Old Girl had put him away in a box when packing things in the house - IN A BOX!

She asked me to bring that box of household ornaments down to Wellington with me.

I was worried when I couldn't find him as he's been a faithful companion for years. See: HERE

I'm taking him back uo north so that he can, once again, sit and keep watch over the house. Hey! He doesn't require batteries and has a longer track record than the ARLO security cameras I use.

TELEPHONE BOOTH

 

The Old Girl showed me around her office on Sunday. It's in the new BNZ building on Waterloo Quay.

This is a very new, very smart and superior building - much superior to the previous BNZ building located on the Wellington waterfront and was known as ‘Harbour Quays’. 

Harbour Quays - BNZ's previous building

Owned by Centre Port, this building was a '5-star green building', but, following the November 2016 Kaikoura/Wellington earthquake, the building was abandoned and later demolished. 

Hopefully this new building won't suffer the same fate. The new earthquake-proof regulations means that this building is supported by base isolation and a structural steel diagrid.

Example of the interior columns that can be seen everywhere inside.

There are great views across the waterfront and harbour which makes for good workplace ergonomics.

I liked this feature which is like a phone booth that employees can use when making private or personal calls There are several of these scattered through the shared, open-plan office set up.

The Old Girl sits in here when calling me.

I can see why she decided that she'd like to see out her working life before retirement in this office.

Staff have just been informed that there will soon be a company-wide directive ordering everyone to work out of the various offices throughout the country (and the world). In 2020 due to COVID work from home was approved for many employees. 

It works in well with our Wellington plans.

SATURDAY MORNING

 It's a nice day and the view across the city is sparkling.

Zooming in I can see Richard's place and maybe even Robert's place over beyond some island or other.

We'll venture out soon - shopping - but I expect it to be chilly so will wear some of the warm gear I brought with me. At least two layers I guess. We will visit The Old Girl's cousin (two streets away) for dinner this evening. I plan to have at least three glasses of wine (primitivo and merlot) so didn't have anything last night.

Tomorrow, with luck we will catch up with that old guy from Why?doesitmatter? and his lovely wife Shelley. If they can get away from grandparent duties I guess. Maybe they go to Mass on Sunday mornings.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this (I don't want it).

I GROW OLD ...I GROW OLD ...

 ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Last night we had dinner with an old friend who has been undergoing chemotherapy for an invasive medical condition. He's doing OK and the treatment is working but there are side effects.

During dinner our conversation turned to aging and health. We swapped stories about our own ailments and how many, well all really, of our friends and associates are experiencing aches, pains, ailments and worse. Getting old sucks.

The Old Girl said that over the next year she will be considering another hip replacement and cataract surgery.

I've had the cataract and lens replacement surgery myself but fortunately my hips and knees are functional. It's my ticker that's the problem with me. AF - atrial fibrillation, a heart condition characterised by an irregular and often rapid heartbeat. I have been hospitalised because of this and take daily medication to try to keep it in check. Exercise is also helpful.

It is what it is though and we all have to make the best of what we've got. 'Dealt' if you believe in fate or 'blessed with' if you believe in Robert's god. On that point, what sort of useless or mean god designed us to crap out after only 70 or 80 years? It must be like those bastard manufacturing companies who have planned obsolescence in their products so that consumers are forced into early replacement 

STAND UP FOR THE GOD SAVE THE QUEEN ANTHEM

A grumpy old joker from Waitheheckdoesitmatter commented on my previous post about sandwich bars.

He rather tersely 'reminded' me that there is a good bakery where The Plaza cinema (he meant picture theatre) used to be.

I remember a lot of Wellington picture theatres but couldn't remember The Plaza until I Googled it and was told that it used to be on Manners Street. Now I remember.

In my school days I used to go to a lot of these, particularly in the winter months to see Saturday afternoon features - usually the 2 o'clock ones. This was back in the day when shop opening and closing hours and picture theatre viewing hours were easy to remember: 11o'clock in the morning; 2 o'clock in the afternoon; 5 o'clock in the early evening and 8 o'clock in the evening. It wasn't until the 70s that 'late features' at 11 o'clock emerged. This was when 'am' and 'pm' was introduced as well and later the word 'cinema' to replace 'picture theatre'.

The inner city picture theatres I went to were - the aforementioned The Plaza plus Kings, The Majestic, Embassy, Lido, Roxy, Tudor, Paramount, The Regent and The State (later renamed and remodelled as Cinerama). Richard will no doubt remember more.

Almost every Wellington suburb had one or two picture theatres as well but the only ones I went to were The Ascot and Rivoli in Newtown and The Vogue in Brooklyn.

When I was at university I used to frequent the Victoria University 'cinema' named The Memorial Theatre and was a member of the Wellington Film Society which had a screening room beneath the old Wellington Museum.

I've mentioned Wellington's old picture theatres before so, for that grumpy old joker here's a link to one of them:

SATURDAY AFTERNOONS

Tuti frutti.

 

 

C.O.M. COMME CA

No doubt Richard, channelling his mother, would call me a sandwich bar crank or an old moaner for what I'm going to post here.

I know, I know, I've complained about this before - twice - when writing about walking about Christchurch and Whangarei but ... here I go again.

Wellington city is great. It's far superior to any of our other cities and beats most overseas cities I've visited. What makes it great, for me, is that the city is contained. The suburbs radiate out into the surrounding hills and don't just seem to go on endlessly like in Auckland and Christchurch. The central city area is flat and so walking is easy and enjoyable. The harbour is a magnificent feature and the public transport system world class.

I'm spoiled for choice here with cafes, wine bars and restaurants amongst the interesting and often quirky shops. This is all fine but when, walking about at lunchtime and I want a simple ham and tomato or an egg sandwich even being prepared to accept a fancy club sandwich, almost all the offerings are overpriced and tarted up nonsense like ' pork and cranberry sausage roll' for more than $20 or a giant open sandwich made of fruits, meats and vegetables for $25. I found a place named 'The Pie & Pickle' but the cheapest pie was $26 and came with mashed potato and salad. Sheesh!

The Dixon Street deli has disappeared as have a few of my other favourites including Sir Breadwins in Lambton Quay and the cafe that used to be opposite the old town hall. Admittedly the last time I'd visited either was in the mid 1980s but ...

I did find, in Ghuznee Street a fancy bakery place that had some interesting but large and expensive fare. I bought a Chipotle chicken pie ($12) and a vegetable and feta pie ($10) to take away (unheated) for my and The Old Girl's dinner tonight. I'll make some mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli and zucchini to go with them. I've come home and had a boiled egg on toast for lunch.

Now don't get me started on the dawdlers who walk so slow along the footpaths that they might as well be standing still and the millions of idiots waking along texting or watching videos on their phones and not looking where they're going. Shee ... but that can be the subject of another post.

HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IT

 Richard was surprised that I wrote a post today:

It reminded me of Victor Meldrew - my inspiration as a curmudgeon:

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

 Well I'm in Wellington* at the moment and experiencing what Wellington has to offer by way of weather.

It's raining and it's cold so I probably won't do much exploring today.

To be fair though, the last few days have been very nice - sunny and warm.

Northland, as well, is experiencing bad weather - rain and high winds. I heard on the news that there have been floods, slips and power outages in Whangarei. I checked our house on-line using the security camera app and yes, it looks a bit wild.

We have three cameras fitted - one at the front of the house, one at the back and one inside in the hallway. They work well and it's handy to be able to check on-line what's happening live and to review any video captures of movement around the house - usually the neighbours cat snooping around.

I've set up my laptop at the dining table here and, unless The Old Girl 'moves me on' will be able to do some blogging.

I might get relegated to a position in a cupboard if I don't keep the workspace tidy but, at least for today I'll be at the table. Who knows? I might write a couple more posts (and not filler ones).

* What passes for a pun in Wainuiomata

LOOK OUT FOR JOHN KEY

A kiwi-born (Wellington) dancer who lives in Australia, after nailing a spot in the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading team has been criticised for having her hair in a ponytail.

Faith Ward is the first Kiwi (and the third Aussie) to be involved with the Texan-based cheerleading squad.

See the story here: KIWI WITH PONY TAIL IN DALLAS COWBOYS

No doubt ex prime minister John Key will have noticed this bit of news. Remember him and his liking for ponytails?

No? Well here are some reminders:

HERE

HERE

and 

HERE

Faith Ward: "Do you like it John?"