Protecting yourself from scams.

See the Ministry of Consumer Affairs Scam Alerts page: http://www.consumeraffairs.govt.nz/scamwatch/protect-others/scam-media.html

For more see their Scam Watch page: http://www.consumeraffairs.govt.nz/scamwatch/index.html

The following page is describes the many different types of scams around:
http://www.consumeraffairs.govt.nz/scamwatch/protect-yourself/no-the-scams/

scam busting website: http://www.scambusters.org/

Digitised Sources Updates

Digitised Sources Updates

Royal Society Proceedings
Royal Society of New Zealand

" Plenty of historical works drifts towards the scientific, particularly the ethnographic/anthropological end of the spectrum" Catch it at:

http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz

NZETC New Zealand Electronic Text Centre

Launched in 2002, the NZETC offers a free online archive of New Zealand and Pacific texts and heritage materials, and was a partner with the National Library on the above-mentioned Royal Society Project. The NZETC is part of Victoria University's library... NZETC collaborated with the National Library to put Te Ao Hou - the bilingual quarterly published by the Maori Affairs Department from 1952-1977 - on line.

http://www.nzetc.org

Early New Zealand Books

The early New Zealand Books Project is an initiative of the University of Auckland Library. It provides searchable texts of books published about New Zealand in the 19th century. The ENZPB is concentrated on the accounts of early travellers and British settlements, and is scanning books from its own collection. As of last year, 39 books are online but it plans to continue extending the collection. See Early New Zealand Books at:

http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz

Wellington City Archive

To make an inquiry, click on the Archives Search button for a pop-up window.

'New on-line facility and in development'. Impressive collection.
Rudimentary image search facility, as the site moves to own platform the scope for digitising and presenting information is enormous.

http://wellington.govt.nz/services/archives/#Aa.

New Zealand Gazette

1993 onwards. The online version is offered by the Department of Internal Affairs, which publishes the Gazette.

1841 to present day, has been digitised only available for free at present at the National Library.

http://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Services-New-Zealand-Gazette-New-Zealand-Gazette-On-Line?OpenDocument

Now searchable from your computer and they keep coming. Great Work

HAWKES BAY EVENTS (Hospitality, food and wine)

SOME KEY UPCOMING HAWKES BAY EVENTS (Hospitality, food and wine, art and culture) in February.

Church Road Jazz Concert: Sat 2 Feb 2008
The Church Road Jazz concert is part of the annual Harvest Hawke's Bay festival and always features a fabulous collection of musical entertainers each year in its open air environment. This years artist is New Zealand’s best jazz export, Nathan Haines.

Harvest Hawke's Bay: Sat 2 - Sun 3 Feb 2008
This exciting event is designed to please all wine and food lovers. This stunning weekend in the beautiful Hawke’s Bay allows Hawke’s Bay wineries to showcase their award winning wines to visitors, whilst being entertained in all sorts of ways!!

Geon Brebner Print Art Deco Week: Tue 12 - Sun 17 Feb 2008
Napier's Art Deco Weekend is held every year on the third week of February. Join the hectic programme and enjoy wining, dining, jazz, dancing, film, theatre, house tours, vintage cars, plane rides, and much, much more.

WETA Wine & Food Festival: Sat 16 Feb 2008
Soak up the ambience of the WETA Wine Festival in Central Hawke’s Bay, with the best of Hawke's Bay's wine, tantalising tastes & summer jazz.

Sea, Sky, Bush Walk: Sat 23 - Mon 25 Feb 2008
The Waipukurau Rotary Club's popular 3-day guided walk across beautiful Central Hawke's Bay farmland. Take in the awesome coastline, river lands and natural bush.

CJ Pask Great Long Lunch: Sun 24 Feb 2008
Dine on the region's finest cuisine in a magical seaside setting, whilst sipping award-winning Hawke's Bay wine from CJ Pask Winery. This unique alfresco dining experience accommodates 800 guests at a table nearly 300 metres long.

Mission Estate Winery Concert: Sat 01 Mar 2008
The kind of magic only Hawke's Bay and the geographical uniqueness of Mission Estate can conjure up. A natural amphitheatre, which is unrivalled anywhere in the country, leaves even the most traveled and world wise artist gasping accolades. This years headlining international artists are Tom Jones and Jimmy Barnes.

Hone Tuwhare, Poet.

Hone Tuwhare has died today and oh what wonderful writing has he left as his legacy.

To salute him I have reread his poems from my Anthology of New Zealand Poems in English (eds. Jenny Bornholdt, Gregory O'Brian and Mark Williams), and picked out a few to retype and read...

About Hone Tuwhare..
Born in 1922 in Kaikohe, Tuwhare belongs to the Ngapuhi hapus Ngati Korokoro, Ngati Tautahi, Te Popoto, and Uri-O-Hau. An Active trade-unionist, he worked as a boilermaker before becoming a full time writer and performer of his poetry. His collection No Ordinary Sun (Blackwood & Janet Paul, 1964) was the first book of poems by a Maori to be published. In recent years he has read his work in Germany and the United States. He has also written a film script, a play and a short fiction.

Monologue

I like working near a door, I like to have my work-bench close by, with a locker handy.

Here, the cold creeps in under the big doors, and in the
summer hot dust swirls, clogging the nose. When the
big doors open to admit a lorry-load of steel, conditions
do not improve. Even so, I put up with it, and wouldn't
care to shift to another bench, away from the big doors.

As one may imagine this is a noisy place with smoke rising,
machines thumping and thrusting, people kneading,
shaping, and putting things together. Because I am nearest
to the big doors I am furtherest away
from those who have to come down to shout
instructions in my ear.

I am the first to greet strangers who drift in through
the doors looking for work. I give them as much information
as they require, direct them to the offices, and
acknowledge the casual recognition that one worker
signs to another.

I can always tell the look on the faces of the successful
ones as they hurry away. The look on the faces of the
unlucky I know also, but cannot easily forget.

I have worked here for fifteen months.
It's too good to last.
Orders will fall off
and there will be a reduction in staff.
More people than we can cope with
will be brought in from other lands:
people who are also looking
for something more real, more lasting,
more permanent maybe, than dying...
I really ought to be looking for another job before the axe falls.

These thoughts I push away, I think that I am lucky
to have a postion by the door which open out
to a short alley leading to the main street; console
myself that if the worst happened I at least would have
no great distance to carry my gear box and tool-box
off the premises.

I always like working near a door. I look for a
work-bench hard by - in case an earthquake
occurs and fire breaks out, you know? 1964.

Papa-tu-a-nuku (Earth Mother)

We are stroking, caressing the spine
of the land

We are massaging the ricked
back of the land

with our sore but ever-loving feet:
hell, she loves it!

Squirming, the land wriggles
in delight.
We love her. 1978.

A Fall of Rain at Mitimiti: Hokianga

Drifting on the wind, and through
the broken window of the long house
where you lie, incantory chant
of surf breaking, and the Mass
and the mountain talking.

At your feet two candles puff the
stained faces of the whanau, the vigil
of the bright madonna. See, sand-whipped
the toy church does not flinch.

E moe, e te whaea: wahine rangimarie

Mountain, why do you loom over us like
that, hands on massive hips? Simply
by hooking your fingers to the sea,
rain-squalls swoop like a hawk, suddenly.
Illuminated speeches darken, fade to metallic
drum-taps on the roof.

Anei nga roimata o Rangipapa.

Flat, incomprehensible faces: lips moving
only to oratorical rhythms of the rain:

quite please, I can't hear the words.
And the rain steadying: black sky leaning
against the long house. Sand, wind-sifted
eddying lazily across the beach.

And to a dark song lulling: e to whaea, sleep. 1974.

See more online poems by Hone Tuwhare at: http://www.honetuwhare.co.nz/history.php

Google Videos

Google vids is really comparible with the u-tube videos I have previously posted to this weblog and because I have not searched them until today I was pleased to find this video in my first keyword search of "teaching history" + "new zealand".
Its basically a talk given about an Antartica visit to search for Meterorites and really this PHD grad of astro physics speaks so well. So I will be using this service again to search and learn visually.
The link to google to post your vids is:

http://upload.video.google.com/

From here you sign in using a google or gmail account and upload your video to google in one of two ways...


1. Web-Based Uploader
Use for files smaller than 100 MB
Upload using a web-based form
Instantly view your video online

2. Desktop Uploader
Use for files larger than 100 MB
Upload using the Google Video Uploader
Upload multiple files at once....

I'll just stop there and show the video I watched and liked.
Best wishes, Heli

The NZ History web team have compiled this profile of Sir Edmund Hillary who died yesterday. I recommend you copy and paste this link to your browser to view. ==>

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/edmund-hillary

Hillary was the first man to climb Mt Everest, the world's highest mountain. He also travelled to the South Pole and travelled the Ganges River. He was the New Zealand High Commissioner to India and was the only living New Zealander to have his face on a monetary note (the $5 dollar kiwi) for 15 years. His humanitarian work in Nepal is well respected. He built 30 schools, several hospitals and bridges...

"The work of Hillary’s Himalayan Trust, established in 1964, would become his greatest contribution to the region he loved. Over the next 30 years, with the help of hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers from New Zealand and other countries, the Trust would build more than a dozen schools, two airfields, two hospitals and several medical clinics, as well as repairing monasteries, replacing bridges, installing water pipelines and undertaking numerous other projects. These efforts helped earn Hillary the title ‘Burra Sahib’ (‘Big in Heart’) among the Sherpa people."

He is being accorded a state funeral which will be televised here and will lie in state probably at the Auckland War Memorial Museum on the 22nd, also in the Anglican Cathedral... He died in Remuera, Auckland New Zealand aged 88 and is survived by his children and his second wife, June. RIP.

For further in depth info see also Christchurch libraries profile and catalogue of sources:
http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Heritage/People/HillaryEdmund/

or Hastings Central Library for research shortcuts on this topic:
http://www.hastingsdc.govt.nz/libraries/featureEverest.htm

Or try this update from a nepal based blogger, www.nepalnow.blogspot.com...:
"Hillary schools are a beacon of efficiency and offer one of the highest standards of mass education in Nepal. The Sherpa people--most people in the Khumbu--are among the most prosperous in Nepal due to the efforts of Sir Ed's Himalayan Trust. Whenever you are in Kathmandu, give a visit to their offices in Dilli Bazaar...and leave a donation. The money will not be wasted. If you can't do that, look up or mail a donation, on Sir Ed's behalf to:


Himalayan Trust
P.O. Box 224
Kathmandu, Nepal


email: himalaya@trust.mos.com.np


There is a photographic memoir to Hillarys life, era and experiences available to view at the Auckland Museum link I regularly link to, which celebrates Edmund Hillary's contribution in many fields in my list of favourites at the right. I would expect this to only grow over time.

Here is the Link to New Zealand Prime Minister, Helen Clarks Eulogy at Edmund Hillary's State Funeral. Nice to see this site where speeches are archived.

http://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/eulogy+sir+edmund+hillary

Warm Apples and Ice Cream

Warm Apples and Ice Cream
Serves 4

Ingredients
4 large green apples
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A pinch ground cloves or 1 whole clove
1 litre/or close to a pint of vanilla ice cream
1 spray container whipped cream/ or bottle which you whip up.
Freshly grated nutmeg

Preparation
Pre-heat a medium skillet over medium to medium-high heat.

Peel and quarter the apples. Core each quarter. Slice the apples up. Add butter to the skillet, then apples. Sauté 7-8 minutes, add sugar, cinnamon and cloves and cook 2 minutes more.

Spoon the sautéed apples into dessert dishes and top with ice cream, whipped cream, and garnish with grated nutmeg.



Another idea for apples is to fry apple rings in butter in the frypan. This is a dutch method I think? Also you can make apple fritters (kind of like in New Zealand we purchase pineapple rings from the fish & chip shop, you can just make a light sweet batter for apple rings and fry in the fry pan. But just plain with butter is fine too. Heli

Day walk at White Pine Bush

Great time with my family after Christmas going to a traditional walking trip. I have forwarded the remaining photos of my family to them.

There are several walks to choose from, pictured is the second big water fall you can see here.

Tainui Reserve Walk, off Tainui Road (recommended entry) is also a great local walk I recommend. Here you can see Hikanui Pa, plus the water reservoirs. The walk has a number of loops so you can choose a short or a longer walk, plenty of nicely positoned seating, huge trees, birdlife, good for walking the dog.

Good Day out at the Beach

Above: 5 Shags