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Suburbia

Well there’s never a dull day in the burbs.

Last night one of the people who lives a few houses down the street got high on something
(at least that was what looked like had happened), went crazy, and got shot by the police.

I got up when he was running up and down the street yelling at 2am, and called the police.

I pointed them to where he was when they arrived.

Later I went and helped with first aid after he ran down the street and tried to bust into another house brandishing a knife, and got himself shot.

Turns out he’ll probably be ok, with to the best of my knowledge only a broken leg and a few soft tissue injuries to show for being shot three times.

Lessons from this however are:

  • Don’t do drugs. Just don’t.
  • If you are yelling for the police to come and help you, when they do show up you should believe them when they say they are trying to help you.
  • Try not to do anything stupid (like placing yourself in a situation where the police need to shoot you) – This is a variation on the second of the three major principles of my own religion. Ask me about it some time…

Other observations from this include:

  • People don’t appreciate how cool it is to live in a country where at any time of day or night you can call a simple number and have police, ambulance and fire professionals come and help you out. When you think about it it’s a brilliant arrangement. No driving to the police station. No paying bribes or protection money. No one saying, sorry, we don’t have anyone available at the moment. Brilliant.
  • Secondly, it’s also good to live in a country where one of the biggest disincentives for police to shoot people is the mind numbing amount of paperwork you have to fill in afterwards. This goes some way to ensuring that people only get shot as a last resort.
  • Finally, previously I had been pretty heavily opposed to Police having tazers/stun guns/etc, however this did illustrate that they may have their place, given that this situation may have been able to have been resolved with less injury if a tazer had been available.

The Big adventures of little Charlotte in NZ

Hello for the first installment of Charlotte’s adventures overseas. To see bigger versions of the pictures, click on them.

It all began very late one night with a trip out to the airport. Our plane left at midnight, and daddy had been working very hard in the days beforehand, so he and I had a little sleep one one of the couches while we waited for the plane to begin boarding. Mummy said that she was going to go to the toilet and look after the bags, but she also also took some photos which look very undignified. I don’t think Daddy has even shaved.

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After we got to Auckland we picked up our rental car (which was a luridly bright blue ford XR6) and drove into the city in peak hour traffic. Mummy reminded daddy about the family rule allowing for swearing when driving in big unfamiliar cities, but daddy didn’t have to use it (much).

After we found the hotel, checked in, and had a little nap, we went for a walk around town. We looked in the shops down Queen street, the viaduct basin where all the Americas Cups boats were, and around the area of the sky tower building (which dad kept making derogatory comments that I didn’t understand, something about collective compensation…).

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The next day we piled back into the car and drove north to the Bay of Islands. Once there we went for a walk along the waterfront, before heading back to our rented unit (via the bottle shop so dad could pick up some Otago Pinot nior wine). After some wine and cheese and crackers (I didn’t get to have any, despite my very non subtle hints that I’d like to try some too) we went out to a restaurant which had a big aqueruim in it, so that I had to divide my time between watching the fish swim past and watching the food going into mum and dad’s mouths (again, they completely missed my subtle suggestions that I’d like a sample or two).

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The next day we got up and caught a ferry across the harbor to a town called Russel, where we had breakfast and looked around. Apparently it had once been the capital of New Zealand, but I don’t know how that could be, because I didn’t see any sheep, and I only saw two pubs. I suppose that there were some nice old buildings, including a really old french catholic missionary house with a printing press for making bibles in Maori, but I soon fell asleep.

In the afternoon we returned across the harbour, got in the car, and went up the road to a place called Kerikeri. There as a big old stone building which had been a store ages ago, but after we saw that I got dragged from art gallery to craft store to yet another art gallery. The only upside was when mum took me into a chocolate factory, and later on when we went into a furniture store and she talked about buying me the play table made from several thousand year old kauri wood.

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The next day we went on a big drive right from one side of the island to the other (even if this was only about 200km). I got dressed up in my cutest outfit.

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On the way we saw some kind of traffic jam. Daddy got all excited and said that this was brilliant, and just like what he remembered was fun about NZ. Mummy didn’t get it.

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Along the way we stopped for a coffee and a scone, and there was a sign that mummy found both amusing and terrifying. I thought that if they were having coffee I couldn’t see why I couldn’t have one, and a puppy sould like fun.

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The point of all the driving it turned out was to see a huge kauri tree called Tane Mahuta, who in Maori mythology is apparently the god of the forest. He certainly was big.

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On the way home we stopped at a place called Opononi so that I could ride a Dolphin. There had been a friendly dolphin who used to live in the harbour next to the town, and it would let kids play with it in the shallows and occasionally even ride it. Apparently New Zealanders had songs and stories about Opo the friendly doplhin that all the kids used to know. Unfortunately the dolphin eventually got old and died, but there was still a statue of him to ride (which was probably for the best anyway, since the water in the harbour looked pretty cold).

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For the afternoon we went to Waitangi, which is the birthplace of New Zealand, and where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. We learned lots of things about the history of early New Zealand. Daddy saw some native wood pigeons, and some Tui birds, and was very happy. I got to ride on some big war canoes called Waka.

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And have a nice walk around with mum as we looked through Maori greeting houses, a colonial missionary house, and some nice native bush.

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The next day we packed up our stuff and headed north, so a town called Kaitaia, and on to Cape Reinga, which is the northern most point of New Zealand. There was a big light house there, and some very pretty views out to where the Tasman sea and the Pacific ocean met and mixed.

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The next day a big storm hit, and so we drove back to Auckland (we had been planning on this anyway, but we we pleased to get back to the big city and out of the worst of the weather). Along the way daddy had to stop and help some people whos campervan had been blown off the side of the road by a strong gust of wind.

The other thing that was waiting for me in Auckland was my Granny and Grandad, who were very pleased to see me because I’d grown lots since they’d seen me two months earlier.

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We went to the Auckland Museum and I saw how big a Moa was and all sorts of other interesting stuff. After that we want and saw Daddy’s god mother for afternoon tea, and I got told how much I’d grown and how beautiful I was.

Next day we went shopping around the city and to the art gallery. In the evening we went out to dad’s friends Tim and Leanne’s house, where we had dinner, and we met their new daughter Annabel, who is a bit younger than me and who was sleeping most of the night (which was good, because it meant I could use her rocker which played music and flashed light, which was very entertaining).

On our final day we went out to Kelly Tarlton’s underwater world. I got to drive a (pretend) submarine, go on a snow car ride to see penguins, saw sting rays being fed (they’re very pushy and messy eaters, but quite playful too), and went through the underwater tunnels to see lots and lots of different fish.

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That night we all went out to dinner, before going to bed early so we could get up and go on the plane again in the morning.

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Two thumbs up for thumbs

Charlotte is continuing to discover new tricks, like holding her own head up and looking round, smiling (intermittently (and no longer always associated with an impending fart)) and sucking her thumb when a dummy is not available.

She also seems quite chuffed with herself in relation to this last one, although it only works when she’s quite awake, so when she wakes in the middle of the night and wants a dummy she kind of forgets that she has a take everywhere option available close at hand (so to speak).

Daddy daughter day

Today Simone is off doing some surgical assisting, and so thanks to a few bottles of pre-emptively expressed milk and a minute-to-minute timetable for me to adhere to (already Charlotte is lamenting having been born to two type A personality organisation freak parents) we get to have our first proper day together alone.

Admittedly due to her love of sleeping, and feeding, and sleeping some more, it’s not exactly high adventures at the Ramsay house, but still, it’s nice.

Social butterfly

Charlotte is now a few days over a month old and now thinks she should be allowed to expand her social circle.

So she went out to dinner with a few of our friends.

And did lunch at a local italian restaurant with the parentals.

And had a friend over for a play date (our friends Tim and Renee had a little boy a day after Charlotte).

And have taken the Rolls out with the chauffeurs for a day touring the coffee plantations and vineyards (ie we took a day trip to the Atherton tablelands).

Next week it’s champaign cocktails before the Gala ball…. (And her designer dress is just divine don’t you know).

Food critic

Well Charlotte is 10 days old and finally seems to be getting the hang of the breast feeding thing, and is (by and large) sleeping well also. Initially she didn’t seem to get it, and would get on, suck a few times, and then just sit there not doing anything more. Thankfully however she seems to have decided that she likes the menu at the all you can eat Mummy’s restaurant and has been latching and suckling for 30 or 40 minutes at a go.

Currently she is lying curled up against my chest listening to massive attack with me and overseeing my blogging, and she hasn’t objected to anything I’ve written so far. It’s already a pretty foregone conclusion that she’s going to grow up immersed in my computer activities, and as well as overseeing my blogging she got her first introduction to gaming the other day, helping daddy play Sam ‘n’ Max for an hour or so.

She has been on a few trips into the outside world with mummy and grandma and grandad, including a trip to the hospital to meet mummy and daddy’s work friends and colleagues (everyone wanted to give her a cuddle, and there were extensive “Oh, isn’t she cute”‘s from just about every nurse we saw), to the mall for a bit of shopping (Charlotte wanted a new outfit or four, and was working pretty hard at trying to convince mum that she also needed a matching handbag…), and out to Palm Cove to sip coffee at the beach.

Meanwhile daddy has been slaving away at work. Poor daddy :-(.

Anyway we remain quite pleased with her. As one of my coworkers commented yesterday, she seem to be a generally superior product.

With luck I will get some more photos of her up sometime over the weekend.

Insomnia

Well we’re into day 3, and Charlotte is starting to settle into a rhythm.  Unfortunately the rhythm appears to be: sleep all afternoon, party (read: whinge loudly) all night.

Welcome to insomniaville, population: Us.

This has meant that I have spent 2-3 hours of each of the last few nights wandering up and down the maternity ward corridors in the wee small hours trying to rock Charlotte back to sleep. She cries when you put her down, stops when you pick her up, settles and closes her eyes when you walk her for a little while, and then cries again as soon as you put her down again. I think it’s attention seeking, but either way it results in me needing panadol for breakfast, and a big afternoon nap…

But otherwise everything is going well, this morning we left the hospital and bought Charlotte home. We gave her the tour of her new home, introduced her to Jack, and watched her promptly fall back to sleep on the couch.

The other thing we have found since getting her home is that her cot is quite absurdly large for her, but I suppose she’ll grow into it (in a decade or two). Probably more photos will go up in a day or two.