Tag: Reference

Searching for locations: Queenstown Gardens, Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown Gardens are not far from the center of Queenstown.  They are just down the hill from where we usually stay at Queenstown Mews.

More often than not we approach the Gardens from the lakeside during our morning walk from the apartment to the coffee shop.  You can walk alongside the lake, or walk through the Gardens, which, whether in summer or winter, is a very picturesque walk.

There’s a bowling club, and I’m afraid I will never be that sort of person to take it up (not enough patience) and an Ice Arena, where, in winter I have heard players practicing ice hockey.

I’m sure, at times, ice skating can also be done.

There is a stone bridge to walk across, and in Autumn/Winter the trees can add a splash of color.

There is a large water feature with fountain, and plenty of seating around the edge of the lake, to sit and absorb the tranquility, or to have a picnic.

There are ducks in the pond

and out of the pond

and plenty of grassed areas with flower beds which are more colorful in summer.  I have also seen the lawns covered in snow, and the fir trees that line the lake side of the gardens hang heavy with icicles.

Searching for locations: Gollums Pool, New Zealand

Tawhai Falls is a 13-meter high waterfall located in Tongariro National Park.

It is located about 4 km from the Tongariro National Park Visitor Centre, on State Highway 48.

An easy walk takes just 10-15 minutes to reach the waterfall’s lookout.

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The top of the falls.  There was not much water coming down the river to feed the falls when we were there in May

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Tawhai Falls is also the filming location of Gollum’s pool where Faramir and his archers are watching Gollum fish.

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It’s a rocky walk once you are down at ground level, and it may be not possible to walk along the side of the stream if the falls have more water coming down the river from the mountain.

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Searching for locations: Kaikoura, New Zealand, and, of course, the whales

I’m sure a lot of people have considered the prospect of whale watching.  I’m not sure how the subject came up on one of our visits to New Zealand, but I suspect it was one of those tourist activity leaflets you find in the foyer of motels, hotels, and guesthouses.

Needless to say, it was only a short detour to go to Kaikoura and check out the prospect.

Yes, the ocean at the time seemed manageable.  My wife has a bad time with sea sickness, but she was prepared to make the trip, after some necessary preparations.  Seasickness tablets and special bands to wear on her wrist were recommended and used.

The boat was large and had two decks, and mostly enclosed.  There were a lot of people on board, and we sat inside for the beginning of the voyage.  The sea wasn’t rough, but there was about a meter and a half swell, easily managed by the boat while it was moving.

It took about a half hour or so to reach the spot where the boat stopped and a member of the crew used a listening device to see if there were any whales.

That led to the first wave of sickness.

We stopped for about ten minutes, and the boat moved up and down on the waves.  It was enough to start the queasy stomachs of a number of passengers.  Myself, it was a matter of going out on deck and taking in the sea air.  Fortunately, I don’t get seasick.

Another longish journey to the next prospective site settled a number of the queasy stomachs, but when we stopped again, the swell had increased, along with the boat’s motion.  Seasick bags were made available for the few that had succumbed.

By the time we reached the site where there was a whale, over half the passengers had been sick, and I was hoping they had enough seasick bags, and then enough bin space for them.

The whale, of course, put on a show for us, and those that could went out on deck to get their photos.

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By the end of the voyage, nearly everyone on board was sick, and I was helping to hand out seasick bags.

Despite the anti sickness preparations, my wife had also succumbed.  When we returned and she was asked if the device had worked, she said no.

But perhaps it had because within half an hour we were at a cafe eating lunch, fish and chips of course.

This activity has been crossed off the bucket list, and there’s no more whale watching in our traveling future.  Nor, it seems, will we be going of ocean liners.

Perhaps a cruise down the Rhine might be on the cards.  I don’t think that river, wide as it is in places, will ever have any sort of swell.

Searching for Locations: Waitomo caves house, North Island, New Zealand

A relatively unassuming lane leads to what could be described as a grand hotel, called Waitomo Caves Hotel.

The original hotel was built in 1908, and it was later extended in 1928.  Part of it is ‘Victorian’, based on an eastern Europe mountain chalet, and part of it is ‘Art Deco’, the concrete wing, and a feature, if it could be called that, is none of the four corners are the same.

Views from the balcony show part of the surrounding gardens
 

and the town of Waitomo in the distance.
 

In gloomy weather, it does look rather spooky, and I suspect there may be a ghost or two lurking somewhere in the buildings.
 

 
But…
 

This a a very interesting, and the words of one of my younger grand daughters, a very creepy place. It would make an excellent base for paranormal activity, and there could very well be ghosts walking the corridors of this hotel.

It has the long darkish passageways that lead in all directions and to almost hidden rooms, a creepy nighttime aspect, and the creaky woodwork.

I know when we were exploring, it was easy to lose your bearings, if not get lost, trying to find certain places, and once found, hard to find your way back.

All in all, it was one of the best stays in a very old place going through the throes of modernisation.

And looking at it from the outside at night, I’ll leave you with that thought…

In a word: Deal

Deal or no deal.  That was a game show on TV once, involving briefcases.

Then, if you win…

It’s a big deal!

Or, of course, it is if you get in on the ground floor, which is to say, you’re one of the original investors, it becomes a great deal; it’s meaning, taking part in a financial transaction.

The word ‘deal’ along with big, great, tremendous, and once in a lifetime, feature prominently, but if you are like me by the time you invest the pyramid is about to collapse!

Then you’re in a great deal of trouble, meaning a lot of trouble — at the time, it feels catastrophic.

Or you’re working impossibly long hours to enrich the others above you, it a good deal of effort on your part for no reward.

Or deal with a problem, which is to say cope with or control, though if it’s a problem child, good luck with that.

But enough of the depressing descriptions,

When you play a card game, the first thing to happen is to deal the cards.

The second is to ask yourself if the dealer is dealing from the bottom of the deck, even if it looks like the top.

My father called these dealers ‘card sharps’.

Then there is a piece of wood commonly called deal, usually thin and square though not always so; it can also be a plank of pine or fir.

Searching for locations: Old Shanghai, China

The old Shanghai refers to a small area of Shanghai that used to be walled in and remained that way until about 1912 when all but a small section of the wall was demolished.  With the advent of the concessions, Old Shanghai became the administrative center until later when it became a shopping complex.

Now it has many restored historical buildings as well as new buildings in a somewhat traditional style that has become one of Shanghai’s main tourist attractions, housing many shops and restaurants.

The “Old Town” is not exclusively old, as you still have a chance to take in the atmosphere if you wander into the quaint side streets.

But, on first viewing walking down the street towards the complex, I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say this is in reality old Shanghai, except for what appears to be a true representation of it architecturally. 

The buildings, which are shops and restaurants, are set out symmetrically, with streets, alleyways, and squares which may prove that it was specially built for the tourists, and no mechanized traffic.

Anyway…

The buildings are magnificent, and a photographer’s delight, and you’d finish up having hundreds of photos by the time you leave.  All the buildings are exquisite representations of traditional Chinese architecture. 

As for buying stuff, remember if you’re not Chinese you have the sucker tourist stamp on your forehead, so be prepared to walk away if the vendors will not bargain.  

Nothing here is worth the price tag and in our group discounts like from 130 RMB to 50 RMB and from 1 for 1,200 to 2 for 950 RMB are common.

Here common t-shirts that we can get for 3 dollars back home start at 150 RMB which is roughly 35 dollars.  It’s that kind of market.

We end up is a tea room, on the third floor of the meeting point below, and discover all the tour guides sitting around a table counting money, and I have to say it’s the most $50 notes I’ve ever seen in one place.  
It is, we were told, where they discussed ‘strategy’.

I’m trying to write a period piece

Televison is a great recorder of the past, and most channels, and especially cable tv have great libraries of films that go back more than a hundred years.

And, whilst it’s possible that modern day films and television series can try to recapture the past, the English as an exception being very good at it, often it is impossible to capture it correctly.

But, if you have a film shot in the moment, then you have a visual record of what life, and what was once part of our world before you in all it’s dated glory. The pity of it is that, then, we never appreciated it.

After all, in those particular times, who had the time to figuratively stop and smell the roses. Back then as life was going on, we were all tied up with just trying to get through each day.

Years later, often on reflection, we try to remember the old days, and, maybe, remember some of what it was like, but the chances are that change came far too rapidly, and often too radical, that it erases what we thought we knew existed before.

My grandmothers house is a case in point. In it’s place is a multi lane super highway, and there’s nothing left to remind us, or anyone of it, just some old sepia photographs.

I was reminded of how volatile history really is when watching an old documentary, in black and white, and how the city I grew up in used to look.

Then, even though it seemed large to me then, it was a smaller city, with suburbs that stretched about ten or so miles in every direction, and the outer suburbs were where people moved to get a larger block, and countrified atmosphere.

Now, those outer suburbs are no longer spacious properties, the acreage subdivided and the old owners now much richer for a decision made with profit not being the motivator, and the current suburban sprawl is now out to forty or fifty miles.

The reason for the distance is no longer the thought of open spaces and cleaner air, the reason for moving now is that land further out is cheaper, and can make buying that first house more affordable.

This is where I tip my hat to the writers of historical fiction. I myself am writing a story based in the 1970s, and its difficult to find what is and isn’t time specific.

If only I had a dollar for every time I went to write the character pulling out his or her mobile phone.

What I’ve found is the necessity to research, and this has amounted to finding old films, documentaries of the day, and a more fascinating source of information, the newspapers of the day.

The latter especially has provoked a lot of memories and a lot of stuff I thought I’d forgotten, some of it by choice, but others that were poignant.

Yes, and don’t get me started on the distractions.

If only I’d started this project earlier…

Searching for locations: From X’ian to Zhengzhou dong by bullet train, China

Lunch and then off on another high-speed train

We walked another umpteen miles from the exhibition to a Chinese restaurant that is going to serve us Chinese food again with a beer and a rather potent pomegranate wine that has a real kick.  It was definitely value for money at 60 yuan per person.

But perhaps the biggest thrill, if it could be called that, was discovering downstairs, the man who discovered the original pieces of a terracotta soldier when digging a well.  He was signing books bought in the souvenir store, but not those that had been bought elsewhere.

Some of is even got photographed with him.  Fifteen minutes of fame moment?  Maybe.

After lunch, it was off to the station for another high-speed train ride, this time for about two and a half hours, from X’ian to Zhangzhou dong.

It’s the standard high-speed train ride and the usual seat switching because of weird allocation issues, so a little confusion reigns until the train departs at 5:59.

Once we were underway it didn’t take long before we hit the maximum speed

Twenty minutes before arrival, and knowing we only have three minutes to get off everyone is heading for the exit clogging up the passageway.  It wasn’t panic but with the three-minute limit, perhaps organized panic would be a better description.

As it turned out, with all the cases near the door, the moment to door opened one of our group got off, and the other just started putting cases on the platform, and in doing so we were all off in 42 seconds with time to spare.

And this was despite the fact there were about twenty passengers just about up against the door trying to get in.  I don’t think they expected to have cases flying off the train in their direction.

We find our way to the exit and our tour guide Dannie.  It was another long walk to the bus, somewhat shabbier from the previous day, no leg room, no pocket, no USB charging point like the day before.  Disappointing.

On the way from the station to the hotel, the tour guide usually gives us a short spiel on the next day’s activities, but instead, I think we got her life history and a song, delivered in high pitched and rapid Chinglish that was hard to understand.

Not at this hour of the night to an almost exhausted busload of people who’d had enough from the train.  Oh, did I forgot the singing, no, it was an interesting rendition of ‘you are my sunshine’.

The drive was interesting in that it mostly in the dark.  There was no street lighting and in comparison to X’ian which was very bright and cheerful, this was dark and gloomy.

Then close to the hotel our guide said that if we had any problems with the room, she would be in the lobby for half an hour.

That spoke volumes about the hotel they put us in.

Do you ever think about…

And probably it is a matter of being better off not thinking

But…

I’m sitting here and writing a piece for a novel about one of my characters, and all of a sudden I stop, right in the middle of where he’s about to get violently murdered if he lets his guard down.

Why have I stopped right there?

A strange thought goes through my mind.

Did he remember to have breakfast, did he make the bed and tidy up after he got up?  Did he have to arrange to have his clothes cleaned, or were they cleaned for him?

Does he have a maid and a butler and a cook to do all those things?

The problem is, we don’t know what happened before he finished up in that precarious position.

We may know that he was taught to fight by a zen master, a swordsman, though I’m not sure if there is a requirement for fencing, to drive defensively, to kill people in more ways than you’ve had hot dinners.

We may know that he was in a similar fight the day before, and his energy has been depleted and may be running on painkilling drugs.  Of course, if that’s the case, and knowing the side effect of some of those drugs, he may be impaired, and slower in reaction time, which might mean premature death.

But we don’t know if he ate anything, whether he slept well, or not at all (though sometimes it rates a mention more often than not as an afterthought or an excuse), whether he has any distracting thoughts, like what the hell am I doing here?

Everyday things which all of us, and I’m sure even the most successful of spies, have to deal with.

Just a thought.

Back to the fight, yes he wins, got a couple of slashes and there’s a copious amount of blood on his shirt.

Let’s not worry about who’s going to clean up the mess, or do the washing.

A few running repairs with needle and thread, including the requisite grimaces in pain, someone else will clean the shirt, and yes, there’s always a cupboard full of clean clothes to change into.

Moving on…

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 16

Space command, one of our captains is missing

…

Before I called, I had one question for the second officer; where were we heading. The answer was not surprising, Uranus.

The next question was why the alien pirate had told us. The first answer that came to mind, we would never get there in time, that is, he had a much faster ship than us.

Us humans were going to have to get a lot more savvy in a hurry.

I had a special channel to call in space command if anything went wrong. As the Admiral had said, he didn’t want our mistakes to be front page news.

This was not a mistake, but it was news that might start riots. A lot of people had been against going out into the universe to explore.

My first attempt to raise him failed. It was when I realised it would be around 3am where he was, and hardly at his console waiting for me to call him.

But, 10 minutes later, he was calling me.

‘I take it this is about Vanderhoven and Myers.”

Again, it took a moment to remember that the ground crew could monitor everyone on the ship, a precaution because we were heading where no human had been before.

“We were boarded by an alien who transported onto and off the ship the same was transport inanimate objects. He purported to be chasing after the pirates who stole the plutonium fuel rods bound for Venus, and was asking for our help in chasing down the purportrators. It was a ruse to keep us occupied while his men were looking for Myers.”

“They stole plutonium?”

Again, not my first question. “I think the first revelation might be the more significant, that there are other life forms out there.”

“And hostile?”

“I don’t think they plan to attack earth sir, because according to this alien, they have had people on our planet since before the second world war.”

“And you believe him?”

“Do we know of any rogue earth based people who could secretly put together a ship vastly superior to this one, which is supposedly the best we’ve ever had?”

His silence told me there wasn’t, not the he’d probably tell me if there was, but his expression spoke volumes. He also looked deep in thought.

Then, “in the absence of the captain, you’re it. I’ll confirm it within the next few hours. Do you know where they’ve gone?”

“I believe so. One of Uranus’s moons, Coronis.”

“That’s nothing but ice.”

“Maybe. Well know more when we get there.”

OK. I want a more detailed report of the incident in two hours. Something you should be aware of, your ship is capable of a SSPD factor of 10, not 4. We were not going to tell anyone until after the shakedown. I’ll talk to the Engineer, and he’ll get back to you when it can be implemented. Keep me informed.”

The screen went dead.

As number one I was responsible for making the Captain look good. As captain, I was now responsible for a priceless ship and all 2,223 souls aboard.

Too much, too soon.

But before I had time to consider it, the scene officer was back.

“Sir, we have a problem.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021