Goodbye Irene

Hurricane Irene has gone to Canada - well, not a hurricane any more - but she's left a lot of damage in her wake. Not in Manhattan as was feared, but elsewhere, including Vermont, and on the news tonight there was sad footage of a covered bridge being swept away. It looked a lot like this one, and it may actually have been the very one - whatever, it's a shame. Those bridges are so pretty, and such a significant part of the scenery there, I can understand why on the soundtrack people were wailing.

We only had a day in Vermont, sneaking over the border from a trip sponsored by Tourism Massachusetts, because we wanted to see the bridges, and buy some maple syrup. I've still got the leaf-shaped bottle, refilled many times over; and remember clearly how neat and lovely the countryside was that autumn, all the leaves so colourful and pumpkins everywhere.

On the news it looks dreadful, brown water rampaging over roads and through towns, breaking bridges, houses, fences and barns; it's going to leave an awful mess. Oh, nature is giving people such a run-around this year, all over the world.

Anyone here read Chinese?

I'd love to know what it says on this billboard, seen on the approach to Macau's A-Ma Temple, which is an attraction both for tourists and for local people, who go to make wishes, pray and light joss-sticks. Why are all the children in love with the sparkling pink toilet? Are they being encouraged to keep it clean? Get one? Pray to it instead of the temple? It's a mystery. They're an inscrutable lot, those Orientals - particularly if you've never bothered to learn their language.

Bathrooms featured remarkably prominently during our five days in Macau. Drawing a discreet veil over the evening I spent unhappily defiling the marble in my own hotel bathroom, let's consider instead the astonishing rooms we trailed through as a group on our otherwise fairly tedious programme of site inspections. Because they were wanting to impress us, they showed us their fanciest suites, and all the bathrooms featured acres of shiny marble, dinky bottles of expensive toiletries, twin basins, televisions, gold taps, and space, vast expanses of space. They had shower rooms, not just showers - some with a glass wall into the bedroom, which seemed odd, some set up almost like a stage. One was big enough for an entire rugby team to wash in at the same time with no unmanly touching. Another had a raised infinity spa bath with a projector and screen overhead. Several had killer views over the city about 40 floors below. They all had adjoining his-and-hers dressing rooms.

But mostly they had mirrors. Mirrors everywhere: floor to ceiling, on every wall, in the shower, even on the ceiling. And that's where they made their mistake, I reckon - because if I'm going to fork out a thousand dollars or so a night for all that luxury, I want to spend my time in there feeling good. And catching sight of my naked self bent over scrubbing my feet in the shower just ain't going to do that.

All shook up

So they had an earthquake in Virginia yesterday, a 5.8 which caused alarm and despondency in New York and Washington, broke the tips off some spires on the National Cathedral and sent the mergansers at the Zoo flocking into the water in the clear expectation that there would be no tsunami. Pft. Well, 5.8 is a decent size, I suppose, and it's certainly a rare event on the US east coast - so rare that it seems no-one knew the drill about desks and doorways - but still, pft.

Canterbury's up to 8457 aftershocks now since 4 September - almost a whole year ago, amazingly - 28 of them over magnitude 5, two of them bigger than 6. And many of them have been very shallow, so they didn't slip by unnoticed. There've been three 4+ shakes in as many days since Saturday. People's hair is falling out with the stress, there are still 1600 households unable to use their own toilets, and the announcements have begun about whose homes and suburbs are unsuitable for future habitation. Demolition in the city centre is continuing apace and every few days there's an announcement of another notable building having been condemned.

But although it's tempting just to smile and shrug, and to think along the lines of 'we should be so lucky', I do understand all the excitement and anxiety about the Virginian quake, especially amongst New Yorkers. After all, they have a big anniversary of their own looming up.

Hi ho, eh bro'

This is the kind of thing you see along the road on the East Cape, even today. I also went past a house where there was a shaggy horse in a little paddock in front and a saddle slung over the gate, where I assumed someone had come for a visit and parked the conveyance outside. It's good to see horses used for everyday errands and not just for having fun; and if it had been the summer holidays, I'm sure there would have been kids riding bareback down to the dairy - one school I drove past had a paddock full of assorted ponies across the road that I'm sure were only there till 3pm and hometime.

But I did also see a remarkable number of quad bikes buzzing about, loaded up with all sorts of things but especially, given the chilly weather and the storm on its way last week, lengths of bleached driftwood off the beaches, being taken home for firewood where I imagine they would make the room smell of the sea. I guess the bikes will become the new horse for the future - though there were so very many horses everywhere, that'll be some way off, I'm happy to say.

(Note the white gumboots, by the way: from the freezing works. And the checked bush shirt, thick and scratchy - standard back country uniform.)

Only the horses were missing from Taika Waititi's movie Boy, which I watched again last night and loved again, though I still find it more sad than funny. It's about to be released in the US. I really hope it does well.

Signs

Writing about the East Cape circuit today, where even though the scenery was stunning, my attention was still caught by the odd quirky sign like this one, which to me indicates a true Athenian at the end of the arrow.

And next I have to do a Macau story which alas has to be mostly about the hotels, since someone else has snaffled all the interesting Portuguese-angled material for the same magazine. It wasn't all stylish suites and scented spas: walking down the busy lanes from the ruins of St Paul's to Senado Square, I was diverted by the assumption by some Chinese company that this would be a good fashion label:

Maybe there's something about those simple letters that looks elegant and classy to a Chinese eye - who knows? And probably they could be forgiven for not being familiar with the word. But really? They didn't see anything wrong with this one? Really???

Caveat venditor

Today I bought a new (to me) car, a Mazda 3 like the one I drove this week all round the East Cape's many, many corners - and also almost like the one I went down to Christchurch two years ago to drive to Kaikoura to review for the Mazda in-house Zoom-Zoom magazines for here and Australia. As you do - or as I wish I did more of, since it was lots of fun, came with an expense allowance and paid extremely well. And I even got another story out of it, later.

It was a cool little car with a cheerful grin/grille and I loved driving it through the bright winter landscape of North Canterbury up to Kaikoura where the photographer and his wife and I stayed in a fancy tree-house, ate excellent meals, rode Segways, went whale-spotting in a cute little bubble of a helicopter, bought a crayfish from a roadside caravan and saw dozens of baby seals playing in a pool underneath a waterfall. There was quite a lot of driving back and forth past the snapper on top of his stepladder, and some personal posing that was less fun; but altogether it was a jolly couple of days and left me with positive feelings about the car.

So now I have one of my own, sucked in by my own sales pitch to believe that it's the car for me; and though it's not the same vibrant blue of the one in the story, I'm trusting that its paler colour doesn't mean that my future driving experience will be similarly subdued.

Pining for the open sea

This is why the air smells so tangy outside on the river bank - and why I had to grip the steering wheel hard with both hands over and over again on my trips up the Cape. I must have met dozens of these logging trucks thundering along pulling trailers, loaded up with logs from the forests out east. Yesterday they were like some mythical beast, bearing down on me in a great cloud of spray and passing with a whump! And the returning empties were no better, their trailers on top and whizzing along well over the speed limit (them and me apart, there was precious little traffic on the road, which did allow all of us some personal interpretation of speed advisories and white lines).

Gisborne is a busy little port and concerns itself with fishing, forestry and frozen food. At the moment the logs are stacking up so high, there must be a ship due in soon to take them all away: in the few days we've been here, the wharf has filled up with them, of surprisingly assorted thicknesses. Possibly the weather is delaying the ship's arrival, with blustery squalls sweeping past, big breakers rolling in on Waikanae Beach, and people in town being blown along the streets like autumn leaves.

It's a nice little town, with some fine old Art Deco buildings, wide streets, a musical clock, Phoenix palms lining Gladstone Street, and all the shops anyone needs. And even though 'Perfect Roast' serves meats rather than coffee, you can also get a decent cup; and we've had a good meal out each night. Tonight though, the sights are set lower for a pizza and beanbag at The Dome cinema: could be fun. Could also do my back in.