Monthly Archives: March 2013

Only 20 days of water left

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Dry Lake Bed of Mojave Desert

Wellington has been experiencing a drought. It has been a dry summer and with no rain in the last 6 weeks all outdoor garden watering was banned a few days ago.

By  Sunday we were down to 20 days of water left in the reservoirs around the city.

Presumably once that’s gone we will be forced to drink wine and bathe in champagne. And friends, any spare bottles of Perrier you have sitting in the cupboards, please send it this way urgently.

If you sense a little cynicism in this post it is only because I am a Wellingtonian and I just knew that the good weather couldn’t hold out forever. Yesterday and today the rains arrived.

Good news for the garden but bad news for the Wellington water supply – apparently. Because the catchment area streams and rivers have been so low and full of dust and dirt, the recent rain washed all this muck with it and became too dirty to be purified by the Wellington water system.

So the irony is that after 2 days of solid rain we have 2 less days of water available. Now, where’s that champagne?

Not a sight I wanted to see

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Sad 911

Yes, that’s the 911 sitting forlornly on the back of a tow truck on it’s way to the Powerhaus for repairs.

The reason for the repairs? The complete absence of a clutch – push the pedal and there’s nothing, nix, nada.

And forcing the car into gear amid a graunching and grinding of gears doesn’t make for enjoyable motoring.

Windy Art – where else but Wellington

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One of the things I enjoy about Wellington is the amount of public art around the city. I’ve already blogged about the writers walk along the waterfront – the snippets of kiwi writers works carved in stone scattered here and there for people to discover. But there is so much more.

On the way to Wellington airport are a series of wind inspired works, each one making a unique statement about Wellington’s defining climatic condition and each animated by the wind in a unique way.

Here is the first in a series of shots of the various Meridian Wind Sculptures stretching between Evans Bay and the airport. Zephyrometer is a work by Phil Price erected in 2003. It is a giant “windometer” which often reaches close to horizontal in strong southerly winds. Something every Wellingtonian will have seen over the last 10 years.

The second sculpture is Andrew Drummond’s Tower of Light. The stronger the wind blows the faster the rotor on top revolves and the more neon tubes light up powered by a generator in the rotor. If you are driving into the city from the airport and see all the rings illuminated be prepared for a rough time.

Cute animal videos

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If you think this blog is the place to come for cute videos of animals – you’re right.

In the past it’s been videos of our girls doing what Bichon Frise do best, but this time it’s a video, not of our family, but of other animals.

The lovely Jilly D posted this on Facebook and I couldn’t resist passing it on. It’s called “If animals ate fast food.”

It was produced as a trailer for FMX 2013, a conference on animation, effects, games and transmedia being held from April 23 to April 26 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Their site in http://www.fmx.de