Car dependent, congested transport hellscape with key zones scattered all over the show. Worse of both worlds for Public Transport users and Drivers including business traffic.

No corridor protection for either Public Transit nor Motorways.

Any bus routes implemented in the area made to zig zag all over the place. Public transport typically taking 3-4 times longer than car in this area.

Large area served only by a handful of undersized traffic-light laden arterials (Ti Rakau / East Tamaki Road)

Lack of direct roading links into East Tamaki industrial area to the west and north means having to detour in the opposite direction before proceeding in the direction you want to go wasting time and causing congested clash points in traffic flow.

Ti Rakau Bridge is beyond capacity and is a real pinch point for traffic between the suburbs of Pakuranga and the Botany / East Tamaki area.

Eastern Busway (unlike the Northern busway) that is currently being built is full of at-grade intersections and I struggle to understand how, even with aggressive traffic signal prioritization is this going to successfully encourage modal shift.

Continued unrestrained sprawl out towards Ormiston / Flat bush ensures the pinch points East of the Tamaki river will remain under pressure for the foreseeable future. Residents having to cross existing already overloaded arterials to get out to the rest of Auckland.

All round a very poor show — Particularly for a city that is allegedly in a developed nation.

Photo from a past road trip.

Nothing really new on the personal front to report.

Been having repeated unwanted phone calls from a guy calling himself “Mark” operating some investment firm billing themselves as Blue Rock Hong Kong. If you receive unsolicited cold calls from someone pushing some US stocks and purportedly representing Blue Rock HK, hang up immediately.

I’m aware there are other legitimate firms operating with the name Blue Rock including a Shenzhen furniture sourcing company of the same name. The red flags in this case is the cold calling offering stock investments together with the mention of “Blue Rock HK”

Bought a battery from Mr. Positive (online NZ battery store) for a UE Boombox BT speaker.

While dispatch was pretty quick and orderly, With in a week of receiving it, the battery regularly stopped accepting a charge and then failed completely some weeks later. Looks like a “thermistor” fault / short circuit.

After sending it back and a bit of chasing up over a month. Got a refund on the order. However, I feel this was a bit long for redress

Auckland CBD from Kauri point reserve (North shore)

 

Photo from Auckland West Coast…

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.

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…)

Kaiate Falls (Lower).

Western Bay of Plenty district council page for Kaiate Falls

Autumnal colours.

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.

Fed up with the quality of Web search these days, gradually switching over to use more ChatGPT, DeepSeek in order to at least point me in the right direction. That way, have been able to find what I need sooner.

With that said, I understand it’s not going to stay that way. In time AI chat will too get polluted in the same way as web search as the pressure to turn a profit increases.

Commonwealth Securities (CommSec) have emailed me (and purportedly other NZ resident customers as well) to advise they are closing our accounts.

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.

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.

So I’ve discovered that I’m sugar alcohol (Artificial sweetener) intolerent. Seems this applies to almost any Artificial sweetener including sorbitol, xylitol, aspartame, and others I’ve so far tried. Even a small dose will mess with my system – Ends up giving me flu like symptoms such as headaches, nausea, including joint, muscle and body ache, Diarrhea (Though without the respiratory ailments typical of influenza or COVID).

Used to be able to declare that I had no specific dietary requirements or restrictions when asked (on a form or otherwise). These days are obviously now gone for me with the use of sugar alcohols becoming more prevalent and I just now have to take care to check the ingredients of anything I buy and consume.

“Night Glow” at Claudelands Event Centre, Hamilton for Balloons over Waikato…

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.

I haven’t been able to get my desire to travel (overseas for leisure) back since COVID-19 – Essentially the desire to do so completely disappeared over the COVID lock downs and it never recovered.

In a nutshell, the potential enjoyment derived in my mind / grey matter doesn’t yet exceed the potential hassle / stress / cost at the moment. Given that it’s now been 5 years and the itch still hasn’t returned, I think it would be fair to say it may not return for a very long time (at least not to the same level as it was prior to COVID-19)

If there is a “purpose” to the travel, be in for work, volunteering, or other opportunity (that is not purely for leisure), then perhaps I can tack on a “leisure” component afterwards, but until that comes, will leave it be.