Aotearoa, the Land of the long thin clouds, is the Maori name for New Zealand.
Over the years, I have had the pleasure of living for extended periods in England, Canada, and the US, as well as a few countries where English is not the lingua franca - so to speak. Once upon a time, an Italian exchange student -- now a Professor in Australia -- told me that there is an Italian proverb “Many countries means no country.” I have come over time to learn that this is true. One slowly becomes unfit to belong anywhere.
With whatever perspective a life of being an outsider provides, this blog will attempt to add some light-hearted observations from a 4th English-speaking country, courtesy of the hospitality of the Institute of Information and Mathematical Science at Massey University in Auckland.
David Erbach
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Indoor flying
Auckland has an active model engineering community, and one part of it is the indoor modeling group. Normally they fly at Papakura, which is some 40 km south of Northcote. But they lost access there temporarily, and set up shop at the War Memorial Coliseum in Balmoral, just on the south side of
Monday, October 30, 2006
Overlander to Auckland
The real point of the excursion wasn’t to visit the hometown of the politicians, or even to mosey down Cuba St. It was to take the endangered passenger train the Overlander.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Around Wellington
After a long day’s journey on Wednesday, we were ready to be out and about on Thursday. Our hotel was on Cuba street, the Capitol’s funkiest. Considering how prim much of NZ is, it looks one of the places in the country where people let their hair down – sometimes in complete disarray. But funky
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Wellington bound
Lectures over – final examination not until next Tuesday – and a reasonably promising weather forecast. Definitely time to hit the road. So we made reservations to go spend a couple of days in Wellington, the national capitol of New Zealand.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Model railroad exhibition
As a child I used to like model trains. Then I guess I put childish things aside in the interests of algebraic coding theory, torrents of alexandrines, and such like. But I’ve always had a fondness for trains. So when the North Shore MRA had an exhibition today, I couldn’t resist paying a visit.
