Dinosaur Exhibition, Te Papa

Hi there

Yesterday I went to Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand, in Wellington, to see the T-Rex dinosaur exhibit.  Goodness, those dinosaur fossils were huge!  And small.  There were tiny ones that came up to my waist.  I only came up to the ankles of the biggest dinosaur.

There was a host of school kids present, dozens upon dozens of them.  And the weird thing was that not many of these kids actually looked at the fossils that were millions of years old.  With hardly an exception they raced to the inter-active displays in front of the skeletons and starting tapping the screens.

Weird?  Anyone can do this on a home computer, surely ("Don't call me Shirley." ... no prizes for anyone guessing where that popular quote came from!).    Me?  I just wanted to peer at the real life (real dead?) dinosaurs for a long, long time.  It was almost irrelevant that the inter-active sceens were in front of me.

There is a new head honcho at Te Papa.  He says he wants to concentrate on bringing inter-active activities to the museum.  How sad.

hailstorms and swims

HI there

J and I managed 10 swims during September.  We trotted down to the beach on the 1st of October to find the sands all but inundated with people (well, there were a couple of families).  It was the Spring school holidays.  Half a dozen wet-suited swimmers were in the water and some toddlers were playing in the shallows.

J and I swam in our bathing suits, revealing bare shoulders and legs.  We tried to look sniffily down our noses at the wet suited ones but actually they went further out than we usually do, and swam with really powerful strokes and, so, I'll give those guys a point or two for professionalism.  The trouble with us is that we get carried away talking to each other during our swimming sessions and sometimes we stop swimming to expound on a theory, gesticulating wildly to prove a point.  Oh dear. 

Bright spot, however:  we did stay in longer than the wet-suited ones.

Oh, a couple of weeks ago, Wellington had hail.  I was surprised when I looked at the photo that I took from out of a relative's front doorway.  There appear to be fairy bubbles floating around.  Or did my cheap ratty camera actually capture the hailstones mid-flight?

I see that Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum of New Zealand) here in Wellington are celebrating 20 years of Weta.  Everty Saturday this month there will be talks by Weta personnel about the making of Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, and The Hobbit.

Lost in the Museum

Hi there

I went to a book launch last night.  It was an anthology of fantasy short stories, entitled "Lost in the Museum" and was (sub)edited by my friend A.J. Ponder.  The editor is actually Tui Merriweather, who actually doesn't really exist but is one of the characters in this story! 

The action is set in Te Papa Tongarewa (Our Place), the Museum of New Zealand, here in Wellington.  It's quite a fun book.  Peter Jackson's Big Baby film prop (that is now at Te Papa) has a whole story to itself, courtesy of award-winning writer, Tim Jones. 

Phillip Mann who is an Arthur C Clarke award nominee for this year has a story in "Lost in the Museum", as, too, does Lyn McConchie, a novelist with over 30 books. 

The book will shortly be for sale at The Children's Bookshop in Kilbirnie (it would range from Young Adult readers  to, I guess, 100 year olds).  The book was funded, in part, by a grant from Creative Communities, Wellington City Council.  It can also be reserved at Wellington Libraries.

Below are three of the writers whose stories are in the anthology.  Left to right:  Jenny Hammond, A.J. Ponder, Lilian Hetet.,

Below, signing session with writers and readers