Ali Hassan

A little while back I wrote about the time that I hosed my mother down on Guy Fawke’s night. I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I was a complete and total brat, so I’d like to provide a little context for that story.

When I was a kid I played rugby on Saturday mornings. It was usually cold — Christchurch gets pretty heavy frosts in winter. The shaded end of the pitch was usually frozen solid if we had a 10 am kick off, while the other end of the field would thaw and get quite muddy. It was that sticky sort of mud, the kind that cakes up and stays stuck to your skin and clothes in big lumps. I enjoyed the mud; it was part of the fun of Saturday morning rugby.

My mother did not enjoy the mud. She didn’t like the mud getting in the car, or in the house, or in the shower. And fair enough, I suppose.

Her solution to this problem was to have me stand by the back door and hose me down until she had gotten all the mud off me. This proceeded in two phases. First she would hose off my uniform, then, once she had gotten the mud off that, she would have me strip down to my underwear and continue hosing until I was clean enough to be allowed indoors.

So when doused my mother that Guy Fawke’s Night, it was not an entirely spontaneous act. There was a degree of old-fashiioned eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth score-settling involved.

Here’s a handy hint for finding wifi when you’re away from your regular internet connection: use Kismac, a wireless stumbler for Mac OS X, to find open networks in your vicinity. Not only will Kismac tell you what networks are present, and whether they have WPA or WEP protection or are open, it will also give you an indication of their signal strength. Being able to keep an eye on the signal strength is just what you need when you’re trying to position yourself to pick up a weak wifi signal (as I have been this week).

This is a shot of Lyttelton Harbour taken from the Summit Road. It looks a lot like the picture I posted earlier of Akaroa Harbour because the two harbours are part of Banks Peninsula.

Meanwhile, as I write this I’ve been watching a kiwi TV show called Pulp Sport that has been cracking me up. Video 1 (NSFW); Video 2.

Thickshake for lunch. Creamy.

This is the cathedral that sits in the centre of Christchurch. I think it’s obligatory that I post a picture of it.

In other news, I spent some time at the Avon/Heathcote River estuary today, so I had another opportunity to reacquaint myself with the local wildlife. Here’s the list for the day:

Black scaup, pied stilt, eastern bar-tailed godwit, spur-winged plover, pied oystercatcher, pied shag (successfully catching a fish!), white-fronted tern, white-faced heron, pukeko, Canada goose, paradise shelduck, black swan, mallard duck, red-billed and black-backed gulls.

The godwits are the most interesting of that lot. There weren’t a whole lot around today, but a lot more will probably arrive in the next few weeks. They fly in direct from Siberia in spring, then fly back via East Asia in autumn. That’s a long haul for a little bird — they’re probably not much bigger than a baby chicken.

Cornish pastie for lunch. Delicious.

Here’s a handy list of Google Mail keyboard shortcuts.