Motat and what's that?

Kia ora, this is Mike. Renata is taking a break so I thought I would jump in with a bit of a story and some pictures in her place.

Marty and I just went to Motat today, which is the Auckland Museum of Transportation. This is a museum, or series of museums that has lots of very important vehicles from New Zealand's history. Marty seemed to have a good time, but I had a blast. The very first thing we did was to ride a tram from the main museum area to the location that had planes and trains.



The interior of the tram alone was pretty amazing. The restoration on this thing was great. This was just one of several of these trams that they have running between the museums.

Next we went to the Aviation portion of the museum. This was really cool. The hanger they were being shown in was jam packed with all sorts of aircraft. They even had a seaplane and a bomber.



After that we went out to the area where they had an old steam locomotive pulling passenger cars. Marty was offered a ride in the cab and declined. I wanted to ride up there, but there was barely room for the engineer and fireman as it was.

After that, Marty and I got a private tour of the workshops where they maintain and repair all the locomotives and rail cars. This was very cool. The man that took us though was very knowledgable and was quite young, but you could tell he was into the trains. I told him I previously worked at Microsoft working on the MS Train Sim 2 before we were laid off and he said that quite a few Kiwi's build 3d trains for MSTS1. I thought that was extremely cool.

I took almost 300 pictures, so I will just post 3 more of the cooler ones.

We have lots more pictures from there, but I wanted to also talk about the other thing I saw this week.

It appears something very important happened in Auckland last week. As you can see from the crowd gathering, it is an momentous event. Is it a visiting government official?


Nope, it was a parade to kick off the erotic expo. The parade was called "Boobs on Bikes"



No, not that guy, and to be fair, it wasn't really "Boobs on Bikes". It was more like, some topless women on various motorized vehicles and some transvestites and shirtless guys, just so everyone is accounted for.

These are the safe pictures that I could post. There were others not fit for man, woman or child. I am not a prude, but when a woman looks like she is smuggling two professional wrestlers in her bra, it's just not attractive. The woman I am talking about was riding on a tank and I believe it was out of concern for the weight the vehicle would have had to carry.

The funniest part of the whole parade was actually before it even started. There was this massive crowd waiting for boobs on bikes and this guy comes hauling butt down the street on a kids scooter. Everyone started whistling and yelling "OH BABY!" I am not sure he knew why he was being cat called. I am not sure I know why grown men ride little kids scooters here.

Hopefully no one will find the content offensive and will take this in the spirit of the post. When in New Zealand, live like a local or go back home.

E noho rā

The Kiwi's Love Their Sweets

The Porter family have certainly noticed how much the Kiwi love their sweets. In our little town of St. Heliers there are 5 bakeries. And that is just counting what I have seen. If you are walking down the waterfront after school is let out, you will see many kids eating pastries and ice cream. My kids are VERY jealous....all the time. They know eating a huge pastry before dinner isn't going to fly. The kids and I kind of go through this "Huh, I wonder" laundry list every time we see a kid in uniform in hog heaven over a double scoop ice cream cone. "Maybe they don't eat dinner here. Maybe they eat dinner at like 10pm. Maybe they can afford to eat all the sweets due to the constant running, biking, swimming....whatever they are doing."

I picked up a few extra, and very much needed, bucks this weekend working at a store called Martha's Backyard. It's a store that carries US products. It's nothing fancy, but they can't keep stock on the floor. The owner goes to the US and shops almost every month. She brings back containers of what she can find great deals on and what special requests she can fill. A lot of what they sell are American packaged foods like Skippy Peanut Butter, Bisquick, Hidden Valley Ranch, Doritos...things that we expats are jonesing for. Then there is the candy. It is amazing how much candy is sold. It's also funny watching people who have been here in New Zealand for a while get all kinds of excited when they see Twizzlers or a Milky Way. Things they have forgotten about or haven't seen in a very long while. I watched one lady get so excited over Zingers I had to laugh out loud. Sandy, the owner, even has a Twinkie club. I personally don't get that one. Twinkies are nasty. My personal list with Sandy: Franks Hot Sauce, Ranch Dressing, and Grits. Yep, Grits. Kelsey is getting tired of eggs for breakfast.

All Things Equal??

Yeesh....this weekend was kind of a pain. We finally had TV programming installed only to learn that not all HD is created equal. So, remember on one of my earlier posts about Mike bringing his gigantic TV to New Zealand?? Yeah, it's the biggest standard black and white TV on the face of the planet. It has something to do with wave ratio or line ratio, who knows. I kind of start to fade when Mike starts talking geek. Anyhow, they make a converter but it's expensive. I guess it's cheaper than a TV, so we will eventually break down and buy it. In the end, we were all happy to have the TV back. Black and White or not.

Then there is the Disco, my car. The battery died at a most inopportune time. I have to tell you how irritated I was Saturday night having to get a jump from our new neighbors to go pick up Marty. Then in my haste I forgot to look up the address in my little map book thing before I left...under the good light....where I had reading glasses readily available. I was sitting in my car half laughing half crying because I couldn't find Lindale Ave on the map. I couldn't find New Zealand on the map. Dim light from a bad battery and no glasses just made for a jumbled mess in my tiny little book. I finally stumbled across a street I recognized and found my way to Marty. Then like a ding bat, I turned off the engine. AAAAAAARRRRRG....if I could have kicked my own ass, I would have. Then the interpretation chain began: me to Marty, Marty to his friend from Thailand (who speaks broken New Zealand English), the friend to his Dad (who speaks no English). The father finally understood what we were saying when his son said, "Dad, electricity BZZZ BZZZZ" as he gestured with his two hands like he was shocking someone or giving them a purple nurple. Mike was able to fix the battery with my kitchen scrubby...I asked if it would work on the TV. He didn't even crack a smile.

Monday was much better. The kids had their first appointment with the new Endocrinologist. The visit went really well. They were very organized and helpful. We were in and out within the hour and they spent a decent amount of time telling me about all of the government assistance that is available to us. It seems that we can get assistance monthly to help pay for the kids meds as long as they are in school. They also help to pay for the kids, up to age 15, to do activities during the year. So, if I wanted to send Marty to a diabetic camp I can submit to the government and they will pay the camp directly. I thought that was very cool. I did have some fears that they were going to be hard to deal with and push us to make changes, but when the kids A1C's came back...they realized we were doing pretty good.

Well, I still haven't found work. I did however pick up a two week contract to do some administrative work at Mike's school. I am supposed to have a phone interview with the Cricket Association of Auckland. Hopefully that will happen this week.

Until next time...everyone have a great week.

Auckland Domain

In an effort to find things that cost little to no money, we went to the Auckland Museum this Sunday. It's a storyline of a lot of the Pacific communities and all of their wares. Then there is a lengthier history of the Maori items.

The one thing I found to be cool was that a lot of the items were not behind glass or out of reach. For obvious reasons we told the kids not to touch, but I have to admit that I did reach out and touch one of the earlier boats. Amazing.

From there we went to Wintergarden where they had a lot of the native plants and flowers. Kelsey is taking a photography class in school and wanted to do bright colors, so this worked very well for her. She took a lot of pictures to put together her first story board.

The grounds are massive and there are a lot of families having picnics, playing rugby or Frisbee. There are couples walking and lounging by fountains and statues.

Below are pictures.


The first picture has tattooing tools to the left. Kind of hard to see unless you open the picture.








The second picture is jade, really large and thick pieces.


The picture with the Maori is blurry...dang it! The pictures below are of different types of Maori buildings. The second one is like the meeting place that you saw in Whale Rider. The inside walls are covered in carvings. Sorry...we didn't get a picture of that.













The second picture is of a bannana tree.








The first statue is of Truth, Strength and Integrity.



There's a boy in that tree somewhere.