25/3/20

Today it’s been five whole years since everybody’s phone beeped at 6.30pm, and all the awfulness that we’d just been watching on the news came and hit us hard. Well, up to a point. Our definition of lockdown meant eliminating the virus, not just suppressing it, as in most other countries (same as China - no comment - and Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, most of SE Asia) and though shutting our borders was hard and sharp, it did mean we had very few deaths for the first couple of years, and were able to enjoy almost normal lives (socially-distanced, masked, in bubbles) while the rest of the world was in lockdown. The numbers shot up in 2022, but overall we’ve had now only 5,700 total deaths in a population (or ‘team’) of 5 million. Bad enough, but could’ve been so much worse. We had some very tedious lockdowns, especially here in Auckland, and there was, finally, discontent and rebellion against the rules and mandates, some of which were certainly OTT. Generally, though, we came through well, compared to most other countries (and we Kiwis love nothing better than to compare ourselves to other countries).

For me, though, and for this blog, it was a kind of death. All my travel plans were eliminated - goodbye, scheduled cruises to Japan and to Greenland - and they have never, thanks to boring stuff that happened in the meantime, been revived. All my former colleagues are back at it again, but my passport is now totally redundant. Even domestic travel has been restricted to short and generally local destinations. Big sigh.

But at least I, and everyone I care about, we’re all still here. I’m still producing the occasional story. And every single day that 6pm news bulletin features somewhere I’ve been where, in most cases, I’m currently happy not to be again. So on we go…

1915, 2015, 2025 - ad infinitum?

This is good news for everybody in, or visiting, Wellington. It’s a - literally - big display at the national museum, Te Papa, that’s focused on the experiences of NZ servicemen and women (ie a nurse) at Gallipoli. For non-Kiwis/Aussies, that was a campaign in Turkey Türkiye in 1915, planned by Winston Churchill, pitting NZ and Australian troops against the Turks, that was a disaster for all concerned, on both sides. But it had the effect of establishing our bi-national ANZAC identity for ever after, and the date it began, 25 April, is our day of remembrance in both countries.

The exhibition opened in 2015, to mark the centenary, and was meant to close in 2018, but has been so popular that its run has been extended over and over, with its closing date now pushed out again till 2032. Getting on for 5 million people have visited it already, and I reckon not a single one of them would have failed to be moved by it. Weta Workshop’s genius was to tell the story by focusing on a single, different, moment experienced by eight real people - soldiers, doctors, the nurse - who are all constructed in minute detail, 2.4 times life size. While that makes the models’ physical perfection that much more visible and awesome, it doesn’t distract from the story each one tells, that draws you right in. I’ve visited it several times, and been gobsmacked without fail.

I have to admit, having been beforehand to the Anzac centennial ceremony at Chunuk Bair itself may have made me a bit more susceptible, but the exhibition is so stunningly well done that, honestly, no-one would be immune to the emotion that this brilliant display evokes. It’s just such a horrible shame, eh, that there are soldiers out there right this very minute, in multiple countries, reproducing these scenes in real life.  

White Lotus, black spider

No disaster links today. (That’s a choice, of course, not an actual state of affairs, as we all know.) Anyway, the background in the screenshot above interrupted my moderate (so far, I reckon last season was better) enjoyment of The White Lotus. It’s a phenomenon I have written about before, that recognising scenery wrecks your suspension of disbelief while watching TV and movies. Life is tough in so many ways, eh.

I was quietly pleased, though, that my identification of the location was instant and the memory vivid, because my cruise through these spectacular islets (in a much less fancy boat, natch) took place way back in early 2009, even before this blog lurched into existence. Look:

How could you forget something like that? It's in Phang Nga Bay, in Phuket, Thailand. I was there on a working trip, my second time in the country (or third, if you count a stop at Bangkok airport after aborting in just Singapore my 1977 overland OE to England. Ran out of money. Had enough to buy a souvenir bronze letter opener though - which I last used just this morning). It was a very busy famil, and what with being on the go all day and evening, plus everything being so vibrant and colourful, the five days felt much longer.

The cruise out in the bay, even, though very pleasant, had its tensions too - most notably squeezing inside a couple of these hollow islets. We did it in rubber inflatables, and when it turned out that the tide was a bit on the high side to get easily through the tunnels, they told us to lie flat with our heads in each others’ laps while they let some air out of the rafts, so we could just scrape through, pulling ourselves along by grabbing at the rocky roof, and scaring off the little bats clinging there. OSH would not have been impressed.

We managed it, though (the second island was much more of a challenge than the first one, above) and it really was lovely inside - very quiet and peaceful, with egrets perched on mangrove branches and brown spotty jellyfish in the super-clear water. All my laid-back chill was wrecked later on, however, back at my hotel, the Indigo Pearl resort with its enthusiastic industrial chic theme, when I once again took four wrong turns in the grounds on the way back to my room. I blamed exhaustion and lingering jetlag, but really the designer needed to take some responsibility. Also, the creepy big metal spider on the mosquito coil burner? That didn't help with the ambiance. Not something those rich people in The White Lotus had to put up with, I bet.