This site was originally a Forum for family / friends to act as an alternative to using Facebook, however never achieved adoption and subsequently evolved into a personal general blog that it is today (serving as my personal self-hosted surrogate to Facebook).
As always, the views expressed here are my own and (unless otherwise explicitly stated) I do not purport that any of my views to be factually correct and opinions on any given topic are most certainly subjected to change. The intended audience of this blog is Family and friends and the content here should be regarded in the same vein as a series of personal public Facebook posts as opposed to a fully-fledged blog.
We keep sprawling out while failing to protect needed future transport corridors. This is unusual for a city in a developed nation.
Look at the area East of the Tamaki River. Endless sprawl without either a grade separated transit (busway or rail) spine or a motorway spine.
Instead we have endless traffic light infested arterials. Worse, traffic lights that do not seem to be optimised to keep platoons of vehicles flowing smoothly in either direction
Even Worse, many of those newer developments such as Flat Bush and Ormiston aren’t any where near a bus service, so what are residents / households who move into the area going to do? Buy a fleet of cars adding ever more cars into an already deeply constrained Auckland wide roading network. Once household travel patterns becomes establish it is then very hard to reverse. This basically guarantees we will be stuck in a cycle of car dependency and abject congestion as a city for the foreseeable future.
It is clear (unlike cities in other developed countries) we have not learned from our past mistakes and this is personally the bit I find hardest to reconcile.
Of course once the concrete is laid down, it is often very difficult and costly to fix it later on especially if we haven’t reserved any corridors. Look at the Eastern Busway. We ended up having to acquire and demolish houses at huge cost. — I for one am going to say up front this project isn’t going to be the saviour of East Auckland as we believe it is going to be. Too many “at-grade” intersections, unlike the Northern Busway.
As an ordinary rate-paying resident, I’m at a total loss at what I can do. I’ve submitted my views where I can to the Council, AT and other government agencies involved both during consultations and outside of it but feel like I’m being stonewalled. I’m surprised transport advocates whether they are pro-PT or Pro-car haven’t also spotted this and kicked up a fuss.
If you employ Parking Services Ltd to manage your customer car park, you WILL lose me as a customer.
There have been repeated reports of this Papamoa Beach based company issuing inflated breach notices and even incorrectly to genuine paying customers of some businesses.
Aside from the moral concerns of a private company charging an inflated breach fee to the public, as a customer my concerns are that…
I certainly don’t want to risk the stress and wasted time of dealing with disputing an incorrectly issued notice (which if the news reports are anything to go by, they regularly do) and…
I certainly do not at all appreciate having some firm monitoring (via CCTV) my car park movements like a hawk for the slightest breach ready to pounce and issue with me a $85 – $95 breach notice.
If I see the Parking Services Ltd (PS Ltd) logo at your site, I will simply take my business elsewhere and go to your competitors and I will encourage friends and family to do so likewise explaining my reasons why. A line has to be drawn regarding these sorts of practices.
THINK TWICE before choosing to subject your customers to this invasive monitoring
Note: This is an entirely separate organization to the Wilson parking’s owned Parking Enforcement Services. “Parking Services Limited” appears to be a smaller outfit run by an individual out of a residential address in Papamoa Beach.
Piazza at Hamilton Gardens. Little / short roadtrip to get out of Auckland for a while to collect my thoughts + a short hike at the North end of Hakarimata ranges. Trails appear to be rather quiet currently.
Hamilton Gardens Piazza
In other news. Yes, to confirm the stories on the grapevine, I did indeed purchased yet another rental property earlier this year. (Why people seem to be so fascinated at this, I wouldn’t know…)
There’s little I can do to fix the state of the state of humanity or the world as an individual. Can only ever hope to look after my little part of it and “bear witness” I suppose. I’ve said my piece, and shall hunker down, rest and “protect my fire” as it were.
The world is changing, people are changing. I don’t necessarily agree with (nor understand) the way the world is currently headed, but other than continuing to express my views and concerns to elect representatives, “chewing the fat” with friends and family over the challenges facing society, participating in public consultations held by any government agency, discussing civics in a broader setting and continuing to partake in civic discourse, I otherwise feel powerless to effect any change as an individual.
Just another day out of the house… Someone causing a scene and getting arrested at Britomart.
In a way, it feels like some sort of generalized regression or devolution is slowly creeping in to the human species, but can’t put my finger on the root of it. Closer to home, It just seems some kind of ‘strangeness’ is happening. E.g. Everytime I head out, chances are very good that I will witness at least one incident of people losing their shit in a public freakout. People obviously under the influence smashing things, public shouting matches between groups of people, physical assault along with other public disorder incidents. In truth, it is beginning to feel like scenes out of a zombie movie at times as obvious drug use continues to increasingly grip society.
As my uncle said to me, you can’t save the world and you know what? He is 100% right. Going to be hunkering down, closing up a bit, sticking to my knitting as it were, and focussing more on taking care of the people who matter the most in my life. (Engaging Some sort of self defense mode as it were).
I’ve tried (and I shall continue to try – through continuing to engage in the civic process over issues such as housing affordability, inequality, infrastructure, public health, transport, public safety, among other social issues), but the reality is, there’s little else I can do and anything I do in the overall scheme of things has little impact on the prevailing. Embrace human imperfection, I guess. Even if any fix for any given social issue may seem glaringly obvious.
I’m also anticipating in due course, I will probably eventually stop updating this site entirely. I’m seeing little point in continuing to write and spell out my thoughts here.
“Night Glow” at Claudelands Event Centre, Hamilton for Balloons over Waikato…
Night Glow at Balloons over Waikato. Claudelannds Event Centre, Hamilton
Didn’t have a ticket (They’re Free to grab, but very limited in number), was passing through The Tron, so walked up and took some photos through the fence.
Part of a series on Disdain and Dividends where I document investing (out of existential dispair) in companies that I deeply dispise as a psychological analgesic due to public apathy and the institutions who are suppose to protect us legitimize these companies’ actions through inaction.
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The situation I feared almost two decades ago has materialized.
Facebook has begun and is already replacing having a website for a lot of businesses. Often when I do a search for a business, I find they now only have a Facebook page. The issue with this is that it effectively forces people to get a Facebook account to look at their page. (Scroll a handful of posts and FB now demands you login or create an account)
I will admit to buying shares in Facebook (now Meta Platforms Inc.) as a psychological analgesic to try and take the edge off of my high disdain towards the company. The stock price has now since quadrupled.
Despite my attempts to set up alternative self hosted platforms for friends to use (this site, peak.nz originally being one of them) to try and stop Face-borg taking over in this fashion, this was ultimately in vain. In hindsight and upon blunt reflection, I stood no chance.
The old web is dead. 15 years ago I was panned for being “Oh so pessimistic” for suggesting what has now eventuated today.
Admittedly, I really dislike the “new” Internet and have responded by drastically cutting down my personal use of it
Update 5th February 2024: Have now tested negative. Apart from sleeping for much longer and a dry cough, symptoms are largely gone. Overall, for me, felt like a longer acting but milder version of the flu.
Positive COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test
Symptoms initially appeared mid last week sometime but daily Rapid Antigen testing only began showing positive 4-5 days after symptoms first appeared.
So far symptoms have been rather mild (so far). More like a mild / low grade influenza with mild fever for only a day and a tickly / itchy throat for the rest of it,
That said, it’s appears to affect everyone differently and quite vastly so. Have had APAC Development team members at work being knocked out for weeks at a time.
Funnel cloud spotted from Grand Drive, Remuera as I was nearing home yesterday. First time I’ve ever seen such a thing with my own eyes. Thankfully it never developed into a fall blown twister / tornado.
Funnel cloud spotted in Auckland
Admittedly, I was initially concern that it was headed for my home. Turns out the thing was quite a bit away fortunately (out in the Harbour). The formation did resemble almost precisely the tornadoes I’ve been repeatedly seeing in many of my apocalyptic dreams.
Reported this issue to Auckland Transport. With “return to office” mandates and the lack of Travel choice in much of the East Tamaki Employment zone, thought this should get looked into.
Saw traffic backing up along Ti-Rakau Drive (West bound traffic) and all the way back to Botany and up along Harris Road as well (when returning back home from the In-office day on Wednesday)
Update: Auckland Transport have since come back to me and confirmed the issue and have kindly made adjustments to the phasing along with thanking me for report this.
From what AT have implied, this was the first report of this they have received. As far as I know, this issue has existed for months so it did leave me wondering why no one else has report this? Even if it’s to inquire if the current programming / phasing of the lights are correct. (This isn’t the first time this has happened, are people just assuming someone else will pipe up and report these issues?)
That said, with the Trugood lights now “fixed”, the congestion will likely be moved further down (e.g Ti Rakau / Revees Rd interchange) so overall travel time savings for my route will probably only amount to around a few minutes.
