The Tallest Building in the Southern Hemisphere

I visited the Sky Tower the other day. I live about ten minutes away from the Sky Tower so it would have been a little silly for me to not take a trip to see it while I'm here in New Zealand. The only thing that had been holding me back was the cost. Prior to visiting the Sky Tower, I considered the attraction to just be an $18 elevator ride (they don't let people use the stairs). But when I finally got to the top and was able to see the shape and size of Auckland city, I was glad I made the trip.You can really see all of Auckland from that thing. We were just so high up, it was like being in a hot air balloon or a plane or like standing in the southern hemisphere's tallest building. 

Being as tall as it is, you'd think jumping off the top of it would be exciting, but the way they have it set up, it doesn't look very exciting at all. The "jumpers" just sort of step off of a platform and gently slide down a cable until they touch down on a little target on the ground. I'm pretty sure they never get to terminal velocity and I think the winch that lets out the cable actually slows the fall down. To make things more exciting, I think they should have a little staged fight on the platform and then the jumper should get pushed off in the heat of the moment. Either that or a trap door.

The views were great though. I got to see all of the little volcanos that I had been hiking around. I also got a good view of Auckland University with its "Clocktower" building and the enormous brand new business school building. The number of boats in the marina was also pretty impressive. I guess it's not much of a surprise that a country consisting of two islands would have a lot of sailing enthusiasts.

The elevators that run inside of the tower have glass floors that enable you to see exactly how fast you are moving. I think glass bottomed elevators are a good idea. In fact, I think all elevators should have a little window in the bottom or top of the car. Just imagine how much more interesting elevator rides would be.

This last photo is a picture of the highest sink in the southern hemisphere inside of the highest bathroom in the southern hemisphere.

Where Have I Been?

I'm sorry that I haven't been keeping up with the blog. I've been a little busy finishing up school stuff here in Auckland. Classes are pretty much over with and I have a month before final exams start. The long gap between the end of classes and final exams is called the "study period." Because I am so smart, I don't need to study and plan use the "study period" to do some hiking and camping around the northern tip of the country.

Actually I'm a little relieved that I didn't force myself to update this blog over the past month or so. I wasn't really doing much worth writing about and I've never liked the idea of sharing boring personal stuff like the interesting patterns that show up in my leg hair or my views on leaf-blowers.

I do have a couple of little trips to share though. And since school is done, I'll have more time to travel, explore and share.

Wintergarden

Last week I visited a place called Wintergarden in the Auckland Domain that is right next to my flat. I'm still not sure if I should be referring to this place as, "The Wintergarden" or just, "Wintergarden." Has anyone else heard of the term Wintergarden? Are there other wintergardens out there? For now I think I will just say, "the Wintergarden."

The Wintergarden is a set of three greenhouses (actually, two greenhouses and a fernery) that are in the middle of the Auckland Domain. "Greenhouse," really doesn't do the Wintergarden justice. The large glass and brick structures are as impressive to look at as the plants inside of them. The three structures are connected by a little garden in the middle with fountains and statues. 

The first building was filled primarily with eggplant plants. At least ten different varieties of eggplant were mixed with the typical variety of flowers that you would find in a normal cool climate greenhouse. In addition to the unusual eggplant display, there were five or six varieties of pepper plant. Most of the peppers were really small and looked a little fake because of the bright purple, yellow and orange colors. The fact that vegetables were on display in a government owned public greenhouse was interesting to me, but far more interesting was that it was just a eggplant and pepper display (excluding the one lonely citroen plant). 

The second greenhouse wasn't quite as interesting. The orchids and water lilies were great, but they didn't have the same grade school teacher at a monster truck show exoticism that the eggplants had. 

The Fernery wasn't that interesting either. Filled with ferns, it lived up to it's name and made no effort to achieve anything else. Ferns, just ferns.

Pictures of "The Wintergarden": http://picasaweb.google.com/TrevorCBraun/Wintergarden

Some Quick Stories from the Field

Dead Sheep Pass

Most of the territory that we were studying was farmland. This meant walking through lost of cow and sheep pastures. The first couple of days, we tried to avoid stepping in the huge amounts of cow and sheep dung. But by the end of the week, we were covered in it. At one point, I was lying on my pack on top of a pile of cow dung simultaneously trying to take measurements from a limestone bed and spit out whatever sort of animal excrement had made it into my mouth. 

There were also dozens and dozens of dead sheep. I don't know what was killing them all, but after watching their behavior, I wouldn't be surprised if they were dying from lack of intelligence. Decomposing sheep smell bad, so you can imagine how unlucky we all were to have to walk through one in order to get to a certain rock formation. Those of us with sufficient balance and shoe tread managed to get away with only some rotting sheep carcass and maggots on our hands. Those less fortunate ended up with a mixture maggots, wool and three week old rotting flesh all over their front or back. 

Doctor Warwick Prebble

Doctor Prebble, or Warwick as he prefers to be called, has been studying geology for over fifty years and has been a lecturer on this field trip for 28 years. I can't begin to fathom how deep this man's knowledge is in all things related to field geology. Warwick blends both the new high tech gear with the old low tech gear. He caries with him a GPS unit as well as some sort of clinometer that looks as if it was stolen from Marco Polo. While out in the field with us, Warwick seemingly wore the same combination of cotton cargo shorts and a light blue button down shirt. This left me wondering if his cabin had a closet filled with seven cartoonishly similar sets of shirts and shorts for the week or if some holy/geological force keeps him completely dry and clean, regardless of the conditions. 

This year was bittersweet as it was Warwick's last year of coming on the Port Waikato trip. After 28 years, Warwick is retiring and looking to do, "other things." I know when retirees say that, they usually mean that they just want to sit around and relax, but for some reason I keep picturing Warwick hiking around Greenland or Patagonia in his cotton shorts and blue shirt. 

That Was Awesome

Seven full days of running around the New Zealand countryside with a clipboard, a hammer and a compass. It doesn't get much better than that. Actually it was better than that because along with all of the geology students, there were five very smart and enthusiastic geology professors with bigger and better hammers running around with us. A typical day went something like this:

6:00: wake up, shower, get breakfast, make lunch

8:00: get on the bus to go to field location

8:30-5:00: geology stuff

5:00: back to camp, shower, unpack field gear

6:00: dinner

8:00: evening lectures

The weather was pretty good at first, but then it got really, really bad. After an hour and a half of hiking on the fourth day, we climbed down a cliff to study some amazing formations in a secluded cove. It was raining most of the morning, but by mid-day the skies had opened up and the rain was so heavy that you could barely see fifteen feet in-front of yourself. We backed away from the cliff because big boulders of basalt and limestone were falling off onto the beach. The lecturers gave up trying to teach anything because nobody could hear anything they were saying over the rain. 

We had to take a couple of detours on the way back because our path had been flooded or the rivers we crossed were dangerously high. It was amazing. 

Unfortunately, this same storm cause flash flooding of a nearby river where some high school students were canyoning. Seven of the students and a teacher were killed when the river to quickly for them to get to higher ground. Our field trip was organized and run by professors with over a hundred years of field experience with them. At no point did I fear for my own personal safety. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been a part of that canyoning group. Even those who survived are left with the awful experience of watching their classmates swept away by a freak flood. 

It's Different Here: Part 5

This is a double post.

1. They really don't use hotdog buns here. In fact, hotdogs aren't that common. Sausages are much more common. And they put the sausages in a slice of bread. 

2. Outlets are different. I knew the shape of the plug would be different, but outlets here also have switches. For every outlet, there is a switch right next to it. Switches are different here. Up is off and down is on. They are also rounder and much flatter. I like it.

It's Different Here: Part 4

Paper here is different. It's bigger, (A4 sized) and it usually feels a little thicker. Sometimes the extra long page is nice, but it means that everything else has to be bigger: binders, folders, drawers, basically everything paper related. 

The really weird part about the paper story is that they use two-hole punches instead of three. This seems silly because the giant A4 sized page is left hanging on two holes that are pretty close together. What if one rips? I'm not sure what the benefit of the two hole punch is yet, but it makes me wonder if people from other countries wonder why Americans insist on that extra third hole.

It's Different Here: Part 3

Police officers don't carry guns in New Zealand. I guess they don't in England either. I'm not sure exactly what to think of that. It seems like a good thing, but I think they can get away with it because they have such a super low crime rate. All police officers wear a stab proof and sometimes bullet proof vest all the time though. 

It's Different Here: Part 2

There really isn't stick deodorant here in New Zealand. I've always been on the fence about the use of deodorant and I generally don't use it if I don't have to. When I found myself in a position where I needed to use deodorant, I went to the pharmacy to buy some. To my surprise, they only have the roll-on kind. While I've heard of roll-on deodorant, I had never actually seen it until I was in this New Zealand pharmacy. 

When I commented on this to my New Zealand flatmates, they were surprised that I had never seen the roll-on kind and they themselves had never seen or heard of stick deodorant. Crazy. 

It's Different Here: Part 1

There is no such thing as a yellow traffic light. They call yellow traffic lights "orange" here. 

I checked to make sure the color yellow actually exists and it's not just considered a light orange or something. It does exist.