Lights on, lights off

Lights on

Last Saturday night we went to check out the LuxCity light show in what's left of our CBD.

In transition

The house-building process is kinda like any human relationship except that the equivalent journey of  meeting/dating/planning a wedding is squashed into a much shorter timeframe, with a few different people involved.

There's the courting phase in which you check out all the suitors/building companies, spending considerable time eyeing them all up and comparing their good points. During this phase your potential partners are all on their best behaviour, calling regularly to see how you are, emailing you with updates and options, and always excitedly looking forward to the next meeting.

As you head towards formalising your relationship, you may find yourself under a reasonable amount of pressure to 'put a ring on it' and sign the contract. Like any pre-nuptual agreement, this document needs to be carefully worded and thoroughly checked. Cynical friends may tell you that your future partner is only interested in the ring/contract and won't be nearly as attentive afterwards but you brush those thoughts aside and head off to another catering meeting/material supplier. So many choices need to be made at this early stage of planning the event that the momentum of constant decision-making carries you along.

You may sense a change in your partner after the signing of the pre-nup/build contract, a growing gap that wasn't evident earlier in the relationship. There could be phone calls that aren't returned, emails that aren't responded to, or questions that go unanswered.

For Want of a Nail

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where this blogger is?

 A demolition survivor in my garden

Apologies. For a while there, life got well and truly in the way. But, having emerged (just yesterday) from the binary black holes of house and marking, I finally have time for an update.

Anniversaries

There have been a couple of notable anniversaries since I last wrote... the most obvious being the second anniversary of the Sept 4 (Darfield) earthquake. It was the first weekday observation - the original event was early Saturday morning, and the first anniversary was on a Sunday. Being the middle of term, I was busy with tutorials and workshops at polytech for most of the day before dashing across town to the university for a meeting. I barely had time to stop that day, but it was lurking in my thoughts the entire time. 

Although it was noted in the day's news bulletins and current affairs shows with the predictable two-years-on stories, the fact that this original event has since been overshadowed by the Feb 2011 quake will see it fade sooner from the nation's collective commemorative moments. I don't think it will be too many years before the Sept 2010 quake becomes merely a footnote to Feb 22nd, and those of us who suffered most in the original event will forever be pointedly reminding people that we got munted first.