Who would’ve thought there would be things I would miss about Auckland?

A couple of things today-

The pier..

I used to love sitting on the edge of the pier, especially in the morning sun with my iPod. It was nice living by the ocean there for the first time in my life. …I suppose I’m just noticing how far I am from the ocean again now, living in the desert.

Also, it’s that time of year again & I’m missing out on Auckland’s awesome Lantern Festival for Chinese New Year. It was something I looked forward to each year, possibly more than English-calender New Year. The beautiful lanterns, the food, the crowds, stalls, performances, fireworks. It was a great week. Auckland also celebrated Diwali really hard *remembers the incredible smells & music wafting in the window from Britomart*.

I’m wondering if it’s something quiet unique to that town because of its cultural diversity. I hope I’m able to find more cities that celebrate international festivities so heartily.

I guess I’m surprised there are things I miss from New Zealand..

I think I’m just learning there are things you take with you, even from the “smallest” of places. As the list grows of places we’ve visited & lived in, no matter how brief or the circumstances, I’m finding that I’m becoming romantic about my time spent there & remembering the friends made & experiences collected. I’m becoming homesick, but “home” is spread out now with a brick in every town I’ve been.

So my blog is kinda the reverse of most. The holiday-season has come & gone & you didn’t hear a word from me. This is usually the busiest, bloggiest time of the year for most sites. You’d expect me to do a big x-mas themed post with kitchen adventures & stories, ..well x-mas was total bore-mas. We were in a motel that week, no special dinner, no decorations, no special anything.

Then came new years, right on time. I swear I must be the only blogger out there who didn’t post their new years resolutions. Well, we spent the new years countdown trucking across the state-line from Arizona to California, carting belongings from storage to our new house. No partying for us obviously.

So the holiday season was all a bit of a non-event for me, despite being really excited for it originally. I suppose that’s life, the lead-up & anticipation to stuff is often more exciting than the actual event. Meh, I’ll make up for it next year. I am (shamefully) a fan of x-mas & making a big deal of the holiday but living out of a backpack & on a tight budget just didn’t allow for the occasion this time around.

This week we’ve just been decompressing in our new house in Apple Valley & airing out the backpacks. It’s a small town north of LA, in the California desert, & I’m surprising myself just how much I’m able to appreciate the landscape (ask me again come summer however). Nik & I have made a ritual of going for a drive each afternoon to explore a new area of the valley, climb some rocks, take some photos, explore abandoned buildings, watch the desert sunset etc. There is surprisingly a lot to see & do in this barren land. We’re right next to the ol’ Route 66 so there is a lot of Americana scenery, historic old buildings & stuff to check out, lots of big factories & cool industrial areas to explore (& proving to be great photography subjects), plus all the desert landscapes that still intrigue me. I love all the open space. It’s just what I was craving, coming from our claustrophobic Vegas apartment.

I’ve been a bit of a shutterbug, taking hundreds & hundreds of photos this week. Nik taught me a few software techniques that I’m just loving. I was never able to do HDR with my basic point n’ shoot camera since it can’t do multiple exposures etc, so Nik found a way around that problem by creating multiple exposures with different values in photoshop, & doing it all post-camera from just one photo (seems so simple but it never dawned on us). Very cool. I’ll post some pics eventually, but I’m still having fun taking my time & experimenting. ..We also don’t have a decent internet connection at the house yet, so uploading pics may have to wait.

Until next time.

We moved into a new house at 2am last night in Apple Valley, California. Woke up this morning excited to explore my new neighbourhood.

Due out next September, “9″ already looks awesome. A Tim Burton produced animation in the making.
I’d recommend going to apple.com to watch it in HD though. Your eyes will appreciate the candy.

The scifi channel is getting me all kinds of excited about the new (& final) season of Battlestar Galactica starting on Jan 16. They’re pumping the ads an awful lot & showing …well, nothing really. But they’ve started posting “clues” on scifi.com

What do you make of them?

You Will Know The Truth