A year ago today – triumph and tragedy

Posted on October 23, 2012 by toscanakiwi

It began as a day like all others as the sun climbed over the Crete hills to the east – except that we were up early enough to enjoy the sunrise and completely confuse our girls when we gave them each a pat on the head and departed for Siena. We were cutting it fine and the mood in the car was sombre. There was none of the usual banter as we headed along the SR2 into Siena.

Thankfully we didn’t get stuck behind any of the local autobuses on the way and as we drove through the Porta Tufi and into the old city to park we had 10 minutes left for the walk to the Campo.

It was Rugby World Cup final day. Half a world away two teams were about to go head to head to determine who were world champions – our might All Blacks or the unpredictable and dynamic French.

We arrived at the bar in time to find a seat amongst the small but growing number of New Zealand fans and the far more numerous French fans. We ordered our usual RWC colazione (breakfast) – cappuccino and tea, followed by white wine and birra. The discipline required to start drinking at 8am was something we had mastered over the preceding 6 weeks as we had watched the pool games, the quarter finals and the semi finals. In fact we were well known in the bar and our order arrived at the table the same time we did.

The game was engrossing. What everyone expected to be an easy All Black victory became an arm wrestle with the French doing what they do best – being unpredictable and playing ten times better than they did in the early rounds of the tournament – and with 15 minutes to go the score was 8-7 to the All Blacks. The remained of the match was agonising with neither team able to get in the killing blow.

The tension in that little bar in Siena was palpable. The Kiwis had gone quiet while the French supporters were vocal as the underdogs refused to roll over.

Victory for the All Blacks, when it came, was more relief than triumph.

After congratulations all round we left the bar and stepped out into the sunlight of the Campo. We headed to our usual bar – Al Mangia – to celebrate with a glass or two of Prosecco.

At Al Mangia the talk was not of rugby but of motorcycling. Motorcycle ace and local hero Marco Simoncelli had died after falling off his bike in the Malaysian MotoGP earlier that morning and the bar patrons were noticeably affected. Simoncelli was just 24 years old.

It was, it turned out, a day of triumph overshadowed by tragedy.

: Post game celebrations in the Campo

: 5 minutes to go and the pressure is showing

In defence of photo albums

Posted on October 22, 2012 by toscanakiwi

An early casualty of the digital photo revolution was the traditional photo album. During our stay in the UK and Italy last year I took 4,626 photos. Of that vast number exactly none have been printed out.

They are all stored on my iMac, and on two back up drives that sit humming away next to it. If we want to show people the photos we gather around the television and run a slide show with commentary provided by Jean and I as our guest’s eyes slowly glaze over.

We have lost the tactile fun that is a photo album – and we were reminded of this when my brother and his wife visited last weekend. They had just returned from a trip to Texas and the East Coast of the USA. Upon returning, brother Geoff had taken the memory card from his camera to the local photo printing place and returned with 6×4 glossies. All of which are now in photo albums.

Going through them was a pleasure. All of us huddled around the albums as they were passed around. Fingers pointing at certain shots and describing the situation that went before or after. Turning pages to connect one shot with another. We spent an hour going through them and didn’t realise where the time went.

So here’s the thing. If you’ve got all your photographs sitting on hard drives or CDs of DVDs, go non-digital and print off an album or two. I intend to.

Tui on a wire

Posted on October 19, 2012 by toscanakiwi

Five years ago we had never seen a Tui in our back yard. We thought of them as birds of the bush or forest, certainly not visitors to our suburban home.

These New Zealand native birds have a distinctive white ruffle under their chin and a call which is a mix of ringing bells, clicks, whirrs and buzzes – with the sound of someone gargling mixed in for good measure.

About 3 years ago Tui just started to appear around the house and now their annual arrival is a mark of spring and the arrival of the warmer weather.

Their resurgence in numbers has been quite significant and is due, in no small part, to a successful breeding programme at our local wildlife reserve.

Nice.

The book of the blog

Posted on October 16, 2012 by toscanakiwi

I started writing this post as an endorsement of a fantastic service for turning your blog posts into a book – Feedfabrik.com. But I’ve just learnt that, due to problems between the partners, they have stopped taking orders, their website is offline, and it is unlikely to return anytime soon.

I first used Feedfabrik last year to produce a simple black and white book of the first 100 toscanakiwi posts which we had delivered to our cottage in Tuscany. We carefully carried it around Europe on our travels and it’s sitting, slightly battered and beaten up, in the bookcase next to me.

A month ago I ordered two volumes of blog posts (about 200 posts in all) hard bound on high quality paper and in full colour because they produce the pictures that go with blog posts as well as the writing. The books arrived last week and they look absolutely stunning.

It is a real shame that others won’t be able to make use of this excellent service in the foreseeable future.

Our thanks to the team at Feedfabrik.com. We love your work and hope that you’ll be back soon.

It’s just a jersey, right?

Posted on October 16, 2012 by toscanakiwi

I am a rugby fan. I just want to say that up front. I religiously follow the All Blacks, I tune in to as many Super 15 games as I can and I’ve even managed to watch some ITM Cup games despite them being sprayed, seemingly randomly, across the week. Readers of the blog may also remember the lengths we went to last year when we were living in Siena to find a place to watch the All Black games in the Rugby World Cup – live at eight in the morning. I am a rugby fan.

So last week I was fascinated by the announcement of a new All Black sponsor – AIG Insurance – and more importantly the placing of their logo on the sacred black jersey. On the front of the jersey, in the middle, where no logo has ever gone before.

As a marketing guy by trade I had one of those heart versus head moments. The marketer in me understands the value of this sponsorship, the rationale behind it both financially and strategically and admires the ability of the NZRFU to negotiate what seems to be a great deal (rumoured to be worth up to $20m a year for the period of the sponsorship). But the rugby fan in me sees the black jersey with the new sponsors logo on the front, standing out like a target, and decries the end of a tradition of independence, and the notion that the jersey was worth more in it’s own right than emblazoned with a sponsors logo.

Yes, I know that the jersey already has another All Black sponsor’s logo on the front – Adidas – but it’s discrete and, let’s face it, they have a real stake in the jersey because they make it.

It was interesting listening to the current All Blacks talk about the sponsorship and logo. My impression was that they were also torn between the value of the sponsorship and the price in terms of the jersey changes.

But I’ll leave the last word to Dan Carter who summed things up nicely when he said in an interview – no matter what’s on the front of the jersey, it’s not going to make any difference to the way the team plays. And for this rugby fan, that’s what it’s all about.

Photos courtesy of TV3 and Adidas

You hum it, I’ll play it

Posted on October 12, 2012 by toscanakiwi

In the last few days Wellington has been plagued by an outbreak of humming. Not your run-of-the-mill, can’t remember the words humming but rather humming on a city-wide scale. As our local newspaper put it on Tuesday:

Mysterious hum reported in Mt Victoria

A mysterious low-pitched humming sound has been troubling some Wellington residents for the last few days and it seems no-one has any idea what it might be. The Wellington City Council has had several calls over the past few days with the most recent being about 5am today. Spokesman Richard MacLean said the complaints had been coming in from Mt Victoria, Newtown and Mt Cook residents. “We are interested to hear if this starts to become a constant thing. We are keeping our ear to the ground.”

One Mt Victoria resident said he and his fiancee had noticed the noise on Saturday and it hadn’t stopped since. He likened it to a low to medium pitched humming sound and said it went all day and all night and was “doing his head in”.

Of course the source is a mystery but there have been many suggestions made in the local paper. Some rational and some not so:

“Maybe it is the 50Hz hum that comes from a transformer feeding electricity to the area. If the transformer is overloaded it will hum louder, or maybe something on or near its enclosure is vibrating at 50Hz.”

“The Mothership is preparing [to] leave. Because Mt Victoria is actually an ancient alien spaceship. It would be a bit annoying for the suburb’s residents, though it would make the commute between Te Aro and Hataitai substantially quicker once it left.”

But this comment is my favourite: “Why is Mt Victoria humming? Simply because she doesn’t know the words.”

Summer is almost here

Posted on October 6, 2012 by toscanakiwi

It’s been a while since the last Toscanakiwi post. Maybe that can be blamed on the end of winter – that period of the year where the worst of the bad weather is over but still the sun won’t shine and the days are more rain and wind than anything else. Good news – spring has finally arrived and from last Sunday daylight saving commenced. Suddenly the days are longer, the temperature warmer and every plant in the garden is growing as fast as it can.

Last weekend we travelled to Nelson on the northern tip of the South Island for a family birthday. If there was any doubt about the arrival of spring, the afternoon spent sitting on the deck looking out over the Waimea Inlet to Tasman Bay and beyond was proof enough. It was a fantastic weekend – thank you to our wonderful hosts and, once again, happy birthday to wee James.