Sir Paul Callaghan on prosperity in New Zealand

I went along to a public lecture by Professor Sir Paul Callaghan on Wednesday evening. He's a scientist who focusses on nanotechnology and magentic resonance. He was voted New Zealander of the year this year.


The lecture was organised by the main Wellington university and the City Council, as part of a programme of 'during the World Cup, but not rugby' events. The audience turnout was really impressive, with around 1,200 people showing up.


The subject of his talk was how New Zealand could become more prosperous. His arguments for why this needs to happen included a personal account of his battle with cancer - he has paid for treatments himself where they aren't funded by the healthcare system here.


He made the case that greater propserity shouldn't (and can't) be achieved through exploiting natural resources or by expanding tourism and the wine industry. Instead, he advocates a focus on high-tech export businesses that aim for small niches in the global market. These would need to be developed by scientific entrepreneurs, so policies should look at how to support researchers and reduce the brain-drain overseas.


I thought the proposed silver bullet was a bit too simple. I did really enjoy his speaking style and the energy he put into making his case. I haven't been able to find footage from the lecture, but
Update - here's a link to the lecture http://vimeo.com/29126569

he gave a shorter version of the address to a public service leadership course that my colleague went to a few months back. Here's the video of that -

Red Rocks Seal Colony

Last weekend Helen, Harry and I made the most of a sunny winter Saturday. We went to look at a seal colony that someone at work had mentioned to me.


The colony is on the coastline just to the south of Wellington. It's accessible by an easy walk of about an hour from the end of the road. As it was a clear day and the trail was right on the southern tip of the North Island, we were able to see snow capped mountains on the South Island on the horizon.

Path to the seal colony, with the South Island mountains

View back along the coastline towards Wellington Airport

The route passes a collection of naturally red rocks in the shallows, inventively called the Red Rocks. There are several Māori legends about Kupe associated with the colour of the rocks. We were passing the rocks in the afternoon and so unfortunately they were mostly in the shadow of the headland and it was hard to capture the colour.

We then made it to the colony itself. A few sites I'd read online before we set off told me that the colony is made up of young males who hadn't managed to find mates. The first thing that struck me as we got close was the powerful smell of rotting fish, so maybe that's what is putting the female seals off these guys. Initially it was easy to miss the seals as they were mostly lazing motionless on rocks. After a few moments we started to spot more and more of them in the water and all around. 

Play fighting in the water

Looks like a tough lifestyle

'Watcha taking a photo of me for then?'

Return to Ruapehu

I went snowboarding at Mount Ruapehu again this weekend. This time, I went up for a whole weekend with my friend Angela from work, her flatmate Scotty and their three Irish friends.

We got out of work quite early and were on the road by 4pm. I was driving so was glad to cover quite a lot of the route in daylight and to have the time to stop for food and breaks. We cruised up without too much effort and arrived at our Bach (holiday cottage) about 9 in the evening. It was freezing cold when we arrived, but there was a wood stove in the sitting room that we soon got lit. With that fired up and a cold beer in hand we were pretty sorted for the evening.

Inside our bach

The next morning we got up to beautiful sunshine. After a nice cooked breakfast we set off for the 30 minute drive to the slopes. Well that was the plan, we hit a queue at the start of the 16km road up to the base of the ski resort. because of ice they were getting everyone to put on snow chains, which was taking ages at the one spot to fit them. After a very slow 2 1/2 hours (!) inching along, some very random conversations and a bit of luck we were at the snow chain area. Just as we were fitting our chains they announced the road had improved and we didn't need them. Pretty soon we were parked, kitted up and on the chair lift. Conditions were really good and despite the slopes being busy I had a good afternoon on boarding.

We got down into town at the end of the day and went for some food in a bar restaurant with a big open fire in the middle of it. One of the guys recommended trying the Big Burger. The components I remember are - beef patty, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato, beetroot, hash browns and onion rings...oh, and loads of chips. For those in the know, it's knocked the Tocade burger off the top of my list of top-ski-resort-burgers-with-hash-browns list.

Dinner in Ohakune

On Sunday we had a quicker drive to the slopes. We even randomly got waved all the way through to get to park right by the bottom of the chair lift, avoiding a long walk. It was sunny again and conditions were good.

Crazy looking cloud as we drove up to the ski field

I found my snowboarding really clicking as the day went on. I felt really in control and was hitting everything I wanted to including little pop-ups I've never really nailed before.

Happy on the chair lifts

In the afternoon four of us headed right to the top of the slopes and started to explore off-piste. We found some steep drop-ins and great snow and had the most amazing run all the way down to the base camp. The first time down was the most fun I've had since I began snowboarding. We went back up just before the lifts shut and although I was getting knackered it was almost as good the second time round.

View down to the slopes from our off-piste vantage point

This is my first attempt at embedding a video. One of the guys showing how a drop-in should be done...and another showing how it shouldn't! It's Scotty getting up at the bottom after his own wipe out.

We loaded up with big flat whites to help keep me awake for the drive back to Wellington, which took until about 10:30pm. We even christened my car LaFayundai on the journey back. 

This morning I felt pretty tired dragging myself out of bed for work, but it was totally worth it.

Steak, Sport and the Slopes

Had an excellent weekend. It started out quietly with a few drinks on Friday evening with a couple of mates from work.


On Saturday a group of us went to a show called Soap in the afternoon. An impressive range of acrobatics that was a bit like a scaled down version of Cirque du Soleil. At points it was a bit silly and they could have ditched the singer, but overall it was a good show.


After the show we went for a few drinks and some food. I went for a nice big hot stone steak -

Yum!

Helen, Harry and I then went to watch the All Blacks beat the Springboks 40 - 07 in the Tri-Nations. The stadium was nearly full and there was a good atmosphere. 

The Haka - really impressive live

Corey Jane starts his try-scoring break

The springboks looking worried in the first half

Richie Mccaw signing autographs after the match

 As if that wasn't enough excitement for one weekend, on Sunday I went snowboarding with my flatmate Matt and his mates. It was a hideous 5:30am start to drive up from Wellington to Mt Ruapehu. This is the main ski resort in the North Island and sits on the slopes of a giant volcano. Because it's a single peak sticking up from the land it looks totally different to the European resorts I'm used to.


The weather was beautiful and sunny and the snow was good. With the weather and being the last day of school holidays it was busy on the slopes. Still managed to get a good day of 'boarding. Suitably knackered and bruised we loaded back into the car just before 5pm for the journey back to Wellington. 


All in, the day trip was about 16 hours. Totally worth it, but I'm looking forward to making it up for a whole weekend.

Looking down on the North Island from the slopes

Mark launching off a serious kicker

Auckland and Samoa

It's been ages since my last post, apologies for that.


At the start of July I had my first visitor from England. Tyra came out for a couple of weeks.


We met up in Auckland. It was my first visit to the largest city in NZ. I was a bit underwhelmed after Wellington. Everything felt very spread out and we never really found anywhere that felt like the heart of the city. We did the major tourist sites and after a couple of days were ready to move on.

Auckland Skytower

View of the city centre from the skytower

We took a day trip up to Northlands. We headed up to Waitangi, the site of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 between English colonists and Maori iwi (tribes). 

Inside the marae at Waitangi

As it's the middle of winter here in the southern hemisphere, we'd decided to spend a few days in Samoa and get a bit of sunshine during our trip. We started out with a few days of relaxation at the Le Vasa resort.

View from our bungalow

We didn't travel far!

After a couple of days on the coast, we moved to the capital, Apia. Although it's a tiny town, it was still a bit of a culture shock after the resort. We pottered around the sites in town and went to visit the baha'i temple, which is the base of the religion in the pacific.

Baha'i temple

We flew back in to Wellington, where we spent a couple of days sightseeing in the city and took a drive around the Wairapa region. 

1,000 hits

This blog has just gone over 1,000 page views. Although that's tiny numbers compared to many blogs, it makes me pleased that I've got some readers.

In other news, I'm off to Hamilton for a couple of days with work and I've just bought tickets to go see the All Blacks play South Africa as part of the Tri Nations at the end of July. 

Wellington half

Today I ran in the Wellington Half Marathon. I mentioned that I was signed up in my post about the last half marathon I ran back in April. Unlike that race, which was all pretty last minute, I've had a couple of months to train.


The course was really nice and flat. It started at the Westpac Stadium, where incidentally I'd been the evening before to watch the Hurricanes (Wellington Super 15 rugby team) get beaten by the Crusaders. After heading through the centre of town, the route is around several bays out to the airport and then it looped straight back. This is the road I've done most of my training on, so I knew what to expect.

As we're now in winter I also had an idea what to expect weather-wise, and Wellington didn't disappoint. It was raining pretty heavily when we started, luckily that eased off for most of the race. There was a strong north-westerly, so as I came round a couple of the headlands it was head down and dig-in to keep moving forwards.


I'd decided to aim for a time of 1 hour 40, but wasn't sure if that was going to happen given the weather. In fact, I managed to get round in 1 hour 38 mins. Full stats on the race site. I ran with a pace team for about two-thirds of the distance and that definitely made it easier to keep on track.


Probably through a combination of the faster pace and the weather, it was a much tougher run than in April. As I type this I'm not feeling too bad, but will have to wait and see how mobile I am tomorrow. Really glad I managed my target time as that made the effort worthwhile.


Next decision is when/if to enter another race.