Spirit

I arrived at church today, feeling a bit flat.

Me - "God, I'm not feeling very spiritual right now..."

God - "You are spirit."

One of those "duh" moments which ended up quite profound, I think!

Hybrid hype

I took an opportunity to drive a Toyota Prius (otherwise known as a favourite tank of the eco-warrior) around the streets of Christchurch today.

After a "place the key in the slot and push the Start button" ritual, I was greeted with... silence. And a "Ready" light on the dashboard.

Move the "gear lever" to D or R, let go of the foot brake, and it starts to move like a ninja. Disconcerting at first but rather fun, although one must wonder how many inattentive pedestrians will this Prius ambush during its lifetime...

The next challenge in an unfamiliar town is to plug in the Navman. I furtively searched every nook and cranny in the cabin for a cigarette lighter - only to find none. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I actually had to read the manual - for a car!

It turns out that to keep in line with its clean, green image, there is no cigarette lighter, but a "power socket" deep inside the centre console takes its place.

Now for some sounds. There's a factory CD player and radio integrated with the centre touch-screen, and there's supposed to be a line-in for your favourite MP3 player as well.

It's a competent enough around town. Accelerate properly, and the gasoline engine rasps to life. Wait at the traffic lights and all becomes quiet again. Never in my life have I feel so detached from the car I'm driving. The steering is electric, accelerator and brake behaviours are all completely controlled by the engine computer to manage the sophisticated hybrid system. As for suspension and tyres - just don't ask.

The electric motor with a hefty 400Nm torque helps with traffic light take-offs, and you get the warm fuzzies from watching a simplified diagram of the hybrid system with animated arrows showing energy flow.

Despite all its sci-fi charm, in my opinion it's just too much to pay for a Japanese car right now. Maybe wait a few years for the trickle of Jap imports to become a flood first...

Crash Different

So you're sick of Microsoft Windows PCs and their idiosyncratic behaviour?



Think again if you think "the grass is greener on the other side" ;-)

Crazy things I'd like to do...

Here's some random crazy things I'd love to do sometime...
1. Getting outsourced to India and live there for awhile


2. Finish a Mongol Rally


3. Ride the Trans-Siberian (preferably during a honeymoon)


4. A prophetic theme camp at The Burning Man

All shiny and new again

The panelbeaters have finished with my ride on POETS day. The ten-year-old car now has a freshly painted bumper, new headlight, side indicator, and foglight.

Kinda weird and selfish to say this but it's the best accident that I've ever got myself into. Especially when it's prima facie the other party's fault, and insurance handled it all without any penalty against my no-claims bonus :)

Yay for the Yaris

After some unsolicited frontal modifications to my regular ride, I'm now driving around in a Toyota Yaris courtesy car.

"It's really quite clever", the slogan goes. Pockets and nooks and crannies galore, most of them being quite small. For example the center cup holder would barely fit a small McDonalds polystyrene cup, but would hold a ladies' cellphone rather well.

Being the gadget geek that I've gradually become, I'll have to note that the cigarette lighter socket is located quite low, so any accessories that you might want to plug in (e.g. a Navman) might be quite a stretch, if at all possible to do so. If you own an MP3 player, use a mini FM transmitter like an iTrip as the factory audio system does not come with a tape deck, but a single CD player capable of playing MP3 discs.

Thanks to the interior design the car feels more spacious than it really is. A tall seating position ensures proper posture (maybe...). The engine and auto gearbox's power delivery ensures that you blend in with urban traffic flows, but will struggle on the motorway.

Overall it is a cheap, competent, frugal and inoffensive town car.

Sailin' away

Fishin' on the lake on Vimeo
The breeze fans cool air from Lake Victoria into our faces in the middle of an arid Tanzanian morning. The locals were fishing in their traditional sailboat and were not particular camera shy about it either.

In this post I present a window into the lives of a people on another side of the world. People whose lives are not unlike you and I, and yet live an existence which boggles the minds of most readers here.

Another short African clip can be found in my old blog.

Have a beer

A collegue of mine spotted this at his local pub (The Cock and Bull at New Lynn).

I think I should go and collect my overdue royalties. The prospect of an early retirement is like good music to my ears.

The brewery is apparently based in England though, so I'll probably need to take a long leave from work to track those guys down :-)

And Mike, if you're reading this, have one on me sometime...

Welcome to the jungle

Good news is that I have found myself in Blogger beta. Bad news is that as far as I know there is no way to efficiently import the contents from the old blog to here.

So here we are :)