Tag: easy reading

In the two pictures below, one is nice and the other one not so nice. You can see two insects: a bee on the left, and a fly on the right. In the left-hand picture, the bee is resting on a flower in a garden, and in the right-hand picture, the fly is resting on a little present that a dog left on the pavement.

The bee was attracted to the flower, and the fly was attracted to the dog’s leftovers. As soon as the dog was finished with its business, the fly came in and did its job.

A blank wall in the city has a similar effect on some young people as flowers have on bees and dog poo has on flies. Blank walls attract people who want to leave their mark, but sometimes what they leave is like the picture on the right, not the one on the left!

Here’s a wall near where I live. One day it was blank, but the next day it looked like this. Not too bad.

Then the next day, more “flies” had gathered to produce this.

Again, still not too bad. But there was another blank wall behind this one, and this is what the “flies” left on it.

I think this just looks ugly. Usually, the young “flies” come along when it’s dark and just write their name. And they don’t ask for permission.

But other people who paint on walls are more like bees. They produce something useful and nice. Recently, I was in Henderson in West Auckland, and I saw these two guys making art. They had permission to do it in a special area.

Here are some other examples in the same area. These are nice to look at, and I often wish I could do something like this.

Give me bees any day of the week.

On Saturday mornings, I have a routine. I follow the same routine every Saturday, rain, hail or shine. Today, it was all shine … a lovely sunny day.

At 7.30, I go to my letter box to pick up Saturday’s paper. The local newspaper is called the New Zealand Herald. But today, I got an unpleasant surprise. It wasn’t there! It usually is, but today there was nothing in the box when I opened it.

At first, I was angry, but then I calmed down. It wasn’t the end of the world after all! And there was something I could do about it. It’s better to take action and fix something rather than just getting angry.

So I went back into the house and phoned the Herald. I didn’t talk to a person, though. Instead, I was answering questions from a recorded voice, for example: “If you are calling to report an undelivered paper, please press 1.” So I did that.

Then I had to answer more questions, and in the end, this is what I pressed: 111111. At the end of the phone call, the recorded message said that the paper would be delivered soon, and I thought to myself: Yeah, right!

So that was the first part of my Saturday routine. The next part is walking to the local Post Office at 8.30 to pick up any mail from my post box. Usually, there’s only a weekly local magazine called the Listener, plus maybe a bill. Today, it wasn’t a wasted journey, because the magazine had been delivered. And better still, there wasn’t a bill.

I walked home, wondering if the replacement paper would be in my letter box when I got home. Actually, I didn’t think it would be, but as I approached my house, a car very quickly turned into our car park. Then it reversed very quickly and stopped outside the letter boxes. A guy got out with a paper in his hand. I stuck out my hand and told him my address. He gave me my replacement paper and drove off. How’s that for timing!

There’s a new artwork in Aotea Square. You can see it until October 5. It’s called Checkmate. It’s made up of 14 very tall chess pieces.

Here are some pictures from different angles.

I don’t understand chess, and I have never played it, but even if I did understand the game and wanted to play, these pieces are too big. Some of them are 11 metres tall!

If you can’t go and see them in person, you can watch a short video here.

Before I went to sleep last night, I set an alarm for 4.30. My plan was to get up early, have breakfast, read the paper online and then walk to the swimming pool and be there when it opened at 5.30.

But I didn’t hear the alarm. Why? Because I turned it off before 4.30.

It was raining all night, and the rain woke me about 3-o’clock. I tried to get back to sleep, but I couldn’t because an annoying bird in the tree outside my bedroom window started “singing” and wouldn’t stop. So I cancelled the alarm and got up.

When I left the house, it was still raining, but I didn’t care because I had waterproof shoes on, along with waterproof over-trousers and a raincoat. I also had a big umbrella. But I still got soaked!

Because of the rain, there were big puddles everywhere on the footpaths, and you couldn’t walk in a straight line. You just had to jump from one “dry” spot to the next. That didn’t matter, though, because I was going to get wet in the pool anyway. But that’s all by the by.

I scanned my membership bracelet, and I noticed that I had 9 swims left in my account. But while I was swimming, I kept thinking that I should have 10 left.

On my way out of the building, I asked the lady at reception to check, and I was right. Here’s what the problem was: when I scanned myself in, the scanner was slow, so I must have scanned twice. As I said, it pays to check.

I was walking near Auckland university a while back. It was between lectures, and there were plenty of people walking here and there. In front of me, I noticed this guy, or rather I noticed his backpack.

Initially, I thought the hand was making a rude gesture, but when I looked more closely, I saw that it was the wrong finger. So I had to think again.

Then I noticed the word OFF. I think the message is: HANDS OFF. In other words: this is my stuff, don’t touch it, don’t touch me, don’t try to steal from me, don’t even think about it, back off.

OK. Got the message.

I was in the city early one morning when most people were still in bed. The day was very young when I took this photo through the arch in Aotea Square on Queen Street. Through the arch, you can see an art installation.

It’s visiting Auckland from Melbourne in Australia, and it’ll be here until late April.

It’s a group of dogs. Some of them stand 5 metres tall, and some of them are lying along the ground.

They’re made of soft but tough plastic and are filled with air. It’s OK to touch them, but you’re asked not to jump on them or sit on them.

There’s music playing as you walk around the installation or among the individual dogs.

The artworks also light up and the colours change. I took the pictures above when it was daytime and when there weren’t many people around, but I went back later in the day when the sun was starting to go down and took this video. I think they would look much better and more impressive if it was completely dark.

When I was young, a public bus was a two-man operation. And yes, in those days, it was always men. 

One was the driver. It was his job to drive the bus, and to stop to pick up new passengers and let old ones get off.

The other person was the bus conductor. His job was to take bus fares and issue tickets.

In Auckland buses today, there’s usually only the driver, but sometimes there are other workers on a bus. These are the Transport Officers. 

Their job is to check that passengers have tagged on and paid. There are usually two of them, but sometimes three, depending on the time of day and how busy or full the bus is. You can watch a short video about them here.

Anyway, that’s just the background to today’s post. The other day, I was getting on the bus. It was eight in the morning, and lots of young and older school kids were getting on.

I couldn’t get on, because a Transport Officer was blocking the way. He was talking to a young primary school girl. The girl got on the bus, but as I was tagging on, I heard what the officer said to the driver. He said, “I can’t leave her here. I’ll be in trouble.”

Let me explain what happened. The girl didn’t pay and didn’t have a card. She was very young, maybe around seven, and there was no adult with her. This was a problem for the officer.

His job is to stop people using the bus without paying, but if he didn’t let the girl on the bus and just left her on the street, something bad might happen to her.

If his boss heard what he did, he might lose his job. That’s what the title of this post means, but I think he did the right thing in this case. He let her on and she got to school safely.