Wellington NZ - Vale, Dean Gifford

Early last month, I posted about my partner's cousin Dean and his battle with a brain tumor.  We knew Dean didn't have long to live then, and he died early morning on August 23rd.

I haven't been able to post for a while because we were very sad and we had to go to Wellington, New Zealand for Dean's funeral.  There was an obituary for Dean in the Dominion Post.  He was only 42 and sadly left his wife and two children, aged 7 & 5.

Dean's funeral was huge.  It was at St Mary of the Angels Catholic cathedral in Wellington city.  There were 1400 people there, standing room only in the church, and a huge crowd outside.  They even had speakers so those outside could hear the service.  The whole street was closed.  There were 500 uniformed police officers in attendance. Police officers were pall bearers bringing Dean's coffin into the church, they wore white gloves and some of them were crying.  He had the NZ flag draped on his coffin, and his cap.  An officer followed the pall bearers with a pillow bearing a police medal.

As Dean's coffin came down the aisle of the cathedral, the police Kapa Haka group performed traditional Maori funeral procedures.  It was very moving, you could have heard a pin drop.  At the end, there was a police honour guard.  The whole of the street was lined by uniformed police on both sides, including members of the dog squad, and there was a final haka of farewell to Dean.

We had a wake for Dean that evening.

The next day we went to Scorching Bay for lunch.  The weather was beautiful - normally in Wellington at this time of year it isn't.  So we were lucky.

Scorching Bay

Scorching Bay

The Cafe

Wellington Bays

Across the way

We didn't feel much like taking photos, so there aren't many to post.  However, the next morning we took a walk to the Weta Cave, part of Peter Jackson's immense studio complex in Miramar.  We were staying with relatives just up the road.  There were a few Lord of the Rings things:

Life-size Gandalf...King Kong is on the wall at the back

Gandalf

Gandalf

Lurtz - over 7 feet tall, and actually a real guy, except the feet

Lurtz is large and scary

On the walk home to our family's house in Miramar, we saw there was a regular Tea Dance at the church:

That guy has a bottle of champagne - no Tea to be seen

Telco dramas

It's hard to believe but we haven't had any telecommunications in this house since the afternoon of July 18.  Our landline and DSL were just restored yesterday.  That's almost 5 days.  What happened?  So, I'm on my iMac and suddenly last Wednesday afternoon my DSL line goes down. Yep, restart the router, isolation tests etc etc.  No joy.  Must be my ISP?  But there's nothing on their website to indicate a fault in my area. Yes, luckily we still have the trusty iPhone to connect via 3G.  Mmmm.  Ok, well I don't care so much so I'll switch everything off and leave it till the morning.

In the morning, nothing.  And my wireless home network is not even available.  I plug my laptop into my router via ethernet and discover my router has lost all of its settings. What?  OK, log a call with my telco.  To cut to the chase, via a process of elimination we realise our landline is suddenly a different number.  In fact, it's my neighbour's number I found out later.  So sure, the phone is working, but we don't own that phone number.....All this took days to resolve.  So then they fixed my neighbour's problem (that's also our problem) and disconnected our line altogether.  In fact they cut it - yep, cut that is, with a cutting tool.  The cable.  This had to be fixed at a junction box about 500 metres from our house!  Crikey, this has been really annoying.  So now I've had to reconfigure the router, which is finally OK and all our connections are back.  I actually backed up the router which I had never done before but highly recommend!  Now I can finally relax and get back into the real world.

During this period of non-connectivity, we used the iPhone as a personal hotspot with both the iMac and my Lenovo laptop. I'd never had to do this before and it worked a treat.  I love my iPhone.

Life without the internet

My internet access has been down for four days.  FOUR WHOLE DAYS.  My ISP has been performing network upgrades which basically stuffed almost the whole of NSW from Thursday - Sunday.  It's been very annoying.  I can access the net via my iPhone but I haven't really been able to do anything USEFUL.  Now it's back up I just need to vent how irritating it has been.  Then I'll try and post what I would have if I could have the last four days.

Excuses

I haven't updated for nearly a week for several reasons:

1. We were sightseeing Cairns and surrounds and all that fresh air and sunshine left me tired at night
2. I had no internet access for a few days
3. We were traveling home
4. I got a bad cold and felt miserable
5. Angry Birds Seasons was updated and I started playing Piglantis
6. I read The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper (dubious, but interesting)
7. My partner's cousin has been fighting a brain tumor for sometime and we found out Thursday night that things are not good.  He is a policeman in Wellington, New Zealand - his wife is also on the force but is now on indefinite leave.  They have two little kids.  We'll be going to Wellington soon to see him. He is only in his 30s.  It sucks.

Now I'm going to work on the rest of the Cairns trip.  I have loads of photos to review, I still have a cold, and the football is on TV.  I still feel a bit grungy but last night I had pork bone Ramen for dinner, went to bed at 8:00pm and slept for nearly 14 hours.  I broke my fever so I feel a bit better today.

Germs are everywhere

We should be very scared of germs.  They are EVERYWHERE.  And microscopic or even smaller, so you cannot see them.  They can creep up and attack you from anywhere.  Especially in your home.  This is why you need to buy anti-germ and anti-bacterial products and keep your house as sterilised as a hospital operating theatre.  Or so TV ads tell me.

The humble kitchen sponge is a paradise for germs and bacteria, so based on the horror stories I've seen on TV which include animations of untold numbers of scary green nasty germs, you probably should use just once and throw it away.  Otherwise your children could get a disease and you'll be in trouble for being a parent that just hasn't got the DIRT message.  I say dirt, but I mean germs really.  For goodness sake, didn't you know that walking on the floor in bare feet or even touching the kitchen bench can be life threatening?  You must use antiseptic floor cleaner and antiseptic bench wipes every time anything comes into contact with any surface.  And that's just the kitchen.  You probably should include door handles, taps, computer keyboards and mice, toys, anything at all!   And I'd rather not even go into the bathroom at all.  Except that the latest product I've seen is for anti-bacterial soap that has a "wave your hand in front of it" dispenser.  So you don't even have to TOUCH it.  Because touching means germs!  Get real here.

When I was kid, we lived in a normal house.  I think the kitchen floor got washed once a week?  Gee my parents must have been remiss to the germ dangers back then.  We ran around like maniacs and ate dirt and picked our peanut butter sandwiches up off the ground if we dropped them.  We touched animals and insects and gunk and didn't wash our hands immediately.  I once brought a decomposing dead cat home and made my mother bury it with a funeral and everything.  I survived.  Even without a decontamination ritual outside of a normal bath.  We also used the same soap that other people had actually used before.  How many germs were there in that cake of soap?

Clearly just leaving the house is a hazard because of all those germs lurking.  A few years ago I got golden staph in my right eye.  How did this happen?  My doctor said I must have touched a surface that had been touched before by someone who had golden staph, and then I touched my eye.  Maybe it was a pen?  Or a hand rail on the train?  Think of your children and what you are exposing them to!  Best wear gloves at all times now - I don't think so.  By the way, the golden staph cleared up really quick because I hardly ever take antibiotics.

I don't know how we managed to survive in days gone by without all this anti-bacterial stuff, perhaps we actually developed immunities to germs and bacteria?  What I do know is that there are alarming rates of child allergies in the western world in 2012 and this was something that barely existed when I was a kid.

Please, let them eat dirt.  And catch germs.

Can my partner watch the football?

Yes, of course.  Don't you want to have a long-lasting relationship?  Isn't football fundamental?  Good gracious, my partner is from New Zealand (aka a kiwi), where Rugby Union is in the blood.  No question.  You can't get around that.  The Bledisloe Cup is like a gladiator's match between Australia and New Zealand.  The kiwis won the Rugby Union World Cup last year which was just as well for me.

Presently in Australia, it is football season, because it is winter.  I know it comes round every single year and has done my entire life.  Not just Rugby Union, but Rugby League and AFL (that's Aussie Rules).  It isn't like I don't mind watching some matches, just that I'm not that into it.   But my partner is.  And this is where the reality lies.  My partner talks about football to me, I guess I'm getting the latest updates.  I do retain some of this stuff, but it's usually when I'm reading something else and I go "Oh, really?", "Is that right?", "What was the score?", "How are you doing in the footy comp?" and "Who?".  Either way, it is best to just go with the flow and have it on TV.  I realised this in 1987 and I think I've mostly been pretty good about it.  I've also seen some great matches and I can appreciate the sport.  Here in Australia they have no protection aside from mouthguards, they crash into each other, jump into the air, tackle each other around the ankles and / or any other body part including heads and get broken necks or worse.  There's also a fair bit of biffo (on-field fighting, as in punches).  So, these guys are tough, and usually very big, aside from the wingers who are there to sprint with the ball. And those wingers can be very, very fast.

Needless to say the footy is on tonight, that's OK with me, dinner is cooked and I'm doing this.

My TV is not dumb

Lateley I've been seeing ads on TV for "Smart TVs". It made me comment to my partner that our TV must not be smart. On reflection, I wondered what was so dumb about it? It's a perfectly good 80cm Sony television. It has a great picture. I use it to watch TV and cable, record using Foxtel IQ, watching DVDs and even movies on demand if I want. If I had one, I could plug a Playstation or Xbox or Wii or whatever into it. I can plug my iPhone into it and watch stuff I've downloaded. There's even a VCR connected but that has a video cassette stuck in it and won't turn on anymore, oh well. I have the whole collection of Northern Exposure on video tape but can't be bothered fixing up that VCR for now. The one thing I didn't mention is that my TV is CRT. And not High Definition or digital. And it weighs about 85kgs. Is this a crime?

Now, years ago when plasma first came out we were amazed. We saw the first one in our lives (a Philips I think) for sale in a department store for $33,000. Yes, I really mean $33,000. Are you serious? Around the same time, one of my students (I did a stint teaching IT at business college) was bragging that his dad bought one of those overhead projection units for $12,000 so they could project the thing onto their whole rumpus room wall. Wow! I later learned that the bulbs were only about $3,000 to replace, so that was a bargain! I wonder whether you can still buy those bulbs? Maybe on ebay, but I don't care because I don't need them.

The TV has been very good to us - must have had a gizillion hours of use over about 7 years and never missed a beat (and certainly not a pixel). I guess one of these days we'll dump the Sony and go with something smarter and well, lighter. But right now I have more internet connectivity than I need, I don't need to teach my TV to recognise my voice in order to change channels (is this possible?), I don't need to share my viewing experiences with Facebook friends, and frankly anything in 3D makes me feel queasy. For now, we'll leave the beast at rest.