new hobby

after this somewhat hectic busy week at work i've been looking forward to the weekend (well techincally my days off in the middle of the week... i have to work weekends normally).

rather then spend my time off doing the same old same old i've decided i need to expand my life expereince and try some new things... after all i did come down here to new zealand to try a new go at existence.



so to start off with i've made my way to the beach cause frankly i haven't been here in far TOO long! boy do i remember how much i LOVE the beach too!

frankly there's only so much just hanging out and looking at the beauty one can do though, and i figured i might need to bring something for backup doing (aren't you impressed? me with my tiny brain figured this one out!)

after exploring the maori gallery in the museum this week i was given an idea of something i could try out...

one of the neatest artifacts i thought was maori fishing hooks and tools which gave me the idea why not try fishing?

so i brought with me to the beach my brand new fishing rod that i picked up at the warehouse (a store where the song assures me "everyone gets a bargain") to try out fishing...

one of the benefits of having a job again... i have money to buy things like this!

you know even though it's just me standing here doing pretty much nothing... i'm liking fishing... despite my short attention span (hey can you blame a dude with a brain the size of a peanut not being able to focus well?) i have two things to do!

first is to make sure that my fishing line and pole are doing their thing, and then when i'm starting to zone out i have beautiful ocean to look at...

after an hour of nothing happening though i was starting lose a little bit of heart... humans have been fishing for thousands of years, and yet i couldn't catch a single fish after a few hours!?!

don't they say there are hundreds of fish in the sea?

then suddenly there was tug on my line... having watched a show on fishing many years ago in drumheller i remembered this is what one is waiting for when they are fishing! i started to reel in my line... the thrill and exceleration from this struggle of life an death... what could it possibly be on the end of my line?

well okay so my first catch ever isn't exactly going to get me on any fishing magazine covers, but at least i caught something!!!

obviously going to have to try fishing again, and soon. i bought the rod might as well use it, and hey i had a lot of fun... almost too much in the moments of reeling in my bootfish... something deep with in my dinosaurian instincts was being fanned by the thrill of the "hunt"... granted fishing was more a pursuit of theropods of baryonx or spinosaurus, but i think i'm going to risk being a rebel t-rex and have another go... keep you posted people of the web wide world...

diverse museum

well apart from the unsettling and kinda scary event of the other night things have stuck to the nice and stable end of the spectrum...

work carries on perfectly predictable in it's uneventfulness...

that is minus the one outstanding assignment i've left uncompleted...

that assignment of course being how ms. rhonwyn told me i had to explore all the museum galleries so i could improve my knowledge of the museum, and thus guard it better...

i've already checked out both the prehistoric and modern natural history galleries of the 3rd floor, but the galleries of the 2nd still remained a mystery... till today!

taking two large chunks of time out of my patrol of the lobby today i set out intent to get the WHOLE museum under my belt...

my first break i decided i'd take on the pacific cultures gallery...

considering how small the museum is (globally speaking mind you... for a museum it's a fair sized one) they sure crammed a lot of the pacific in here!

this display area is dedicated to the various cultures that live on islands throughout the worlds biggest ocean... who knew there were so many? well not me anyways in answer to that question...

the first thing one is greeted by is a wall of boats! so many different kinds was really cool!

further into the gallery there is a dozen or so display cases, and in each on there is a single culture... meaning that there is around a dozen cultures represented in here!!!

the items and artifacts on display in these cases varies from masks, sculptures, jewelery, clothes, tools, to weapons, and even whole boats! your typical human museum fair really...

not my area of "expertise" but then again with at brain as small as mine what would be such an area LOL

entering the main chamber of this multi roomed gallery was a movie. i couldn't afford the time needed to stick around a watch the film (which probably could make me a lot more proficient in this gallery) tonight as i had a WHOLE floor to cover while also guarding so i had to press on my tour of the pacific islands...


wow there was a big stickish thing at the very end of the gallery that looked kinda important based on the display mount... have to be sure and come back later to learn more about this thing, but again had so little time just know it's here for future reference...


now when people who live on islands are typically shown on TV and in books their depicted as pretty friendly and nice people, but man based on a few of the displays of their weapons they look as scary and well equipped for trouble as a team of navy seals (man i don't want to picture military associated seals... i lived with a few when i first moved here, and ordinary seals are no fun!)

wow they have some cool but creepy statues too... this fish was cool in a spooky kinda way...
overall i think my favorite thing in the whole gallery though had to be the cool and crazy masks these guys made and used!

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now with that gallery explored i only had one more permanent exhibit to go... but it would have to wait until later in my shift. fortunately uncomplicated this plan nothing of interest or bother occurred. so off on another round of exploring i went...

this time a truly new zealand gallery... the one on the maori... new zealands indigenous people

it's a pretty big gallery too (though it only has to fit in stuff from new zealand... which means they pack a LOT more maori stuff compared to pacific island stuff)


they have some really pretty artifacts i have to say... according to one of the signs the various artifacts in this case are made of either bone (whale?!? oh no!) or stuff called green stone (i wonder if it's the same stuff that kills superman???)... again real pretty... and kinda shiny...

at first i thought these were big carvings to help remind maori children about punctuation in the form of an explanation mark, but reading the display i discovered these were actually clubs! (but they shouldn't be used on me as i just used the punctuation mark of their like in that sentence!)

these green stone tools are real important to the maori i've deduced as they appear in almost every display case... must also be worth something too, as i can't help but notice considerable amounts of security equipment in this gallery have. important to note as the security guard!

one of my favorite displays was on how they DIG up evidence of ancient maori stuff... yeah you read that right people of the innerweb... they dig maori remains up just like fossils!

well okay not "just" like, but similar enough that i really got what this display was about... fine tune digging, mapping, and collecting... takes me back to the glory days at the tyrrell when i got to dig...

man the maori have really cool carvings! really tall and intricate... i just wish i knew what they meant or represented... i'll have to come back later and spend some time figuring that out too...

come to think of it these remind of some of the cool carvings made by canadian first nations people i saw in north vancouver during my BC quest

this is also the site of a cool maori building (which i learnt is actually just a model of a MUCH bigger version of this building). all those sparkles you see in the photo are the reflection off shells that are embedded in the carvings of the building... making the eyes seem alive...

that was a cool as gallery... i just wish i had more to time to check it out (which i will make later) cause i didn't learn a lot about the specifics about the maori...

it didn't help that this gallery had a lot of real maori words for stuff in here... i have problems with human language at the best of times that alone when it is one i don't speak...

oh well ms. rhownyn will be happy that i finished my tour of the museum here today...

i even picked up a traditional maori ritual for greeting people. you simple get in close and touch noses... which as you can see in this last photo i'm doing to one of the maori sculptures to welcome myself into this section of the building. cause i intend on coming back here again soon...

mustn't be afraid...

okay people of the innerweb i don't want to sound like i'm going crazy or anything, but i think the botanic garden is haunted...

now before you label me as crazy or scared of the dark (come to think of it i am kinda scared of the dark... i should get a few spot lights today so that i can light up my home tonight!!!) here's what happened...

so like every night i diligently made sure i was home before dark (in addition to being kinda terrified to the max in the lack of light the park isn't lite at night so i'd have to find my way through the scary pitch black). as there's not much to do in the woods at night i went to sleep like every other night... only this wasn't like every other night...

now i can sleep content normally in new zealand as they don't have ANY remotely scary native animals (well out of the water anyway)... little did i know it was habitated by spooks!

at 2am i was awoken by voices. at first in my sleepy daze i thought i was still dreaming... that is till i saw the LIGHT!!!

if you don't believe me just look at this picture!!!!!!

a bright moving light... that made it's way from the dell's entrance towards ben's fabled maze...

while it moved by on the path above me i distinctly heard voices... two of them i think, and though i didn't make out most of what they said to each other (cause they were only close for a second) i could have swore i heard one of them say "otago museum"... which just makes this sounds crazier now that i think about it...

now i'm not making this up people of the web wide world! something really really weird and freaky happened last night! i know you're probably saying that ben's story about the scary maze i supposedly live on the edge of has me rattled... maybe a little... NOW...

i'm serious this wasn't something my peanut sized brain dreamed up (again i have a picture to prove i saw something!). i think there's a cemetery around here somewhere... maybe the ghosts are using the dell as a short cut...

i'm REALLY scared of ghosts... so i hope this is one of those times that i'm wrong (which is fortunately most of the time... except when i predict bad things like this...)