Blog every day of june. day 17.

Everybody’s doin’ it…

The top 100 books according to The Guardian in 2012.

Like most i’ve bolded the ones i’ve read.

Many were read because i had to – not because i wanted to…

I read Anna Karenina because it was made into a ballet and I saw the ballet.

The Guardian also published a top 100 nonfiction list in 2011. I wonder how many i’ve them i’ve read. (may be a post for later in BlogJune.)

1984 by George Orwell, England, (1903-1950)

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906)
A Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880)
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910)
The Aeneid by Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
Beloved by Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931)
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957)
Blindness by Jose Saramago, Portugal, (1922-2010)
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935)
The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955)
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400)
The Castle by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
Children of Gebelawi by Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911)
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986)
Complete Poems by Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837)
The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849)
Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375)
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967)
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936)
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321)

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616)

Essays by Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592)

Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875)
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832)
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553)
Gilgamesh Mesopotamia, (c 1800 BC)
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, England, (1812-1870)
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745)
Gypsy Ballads by Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
History by Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985)
Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952) (I have read Hunger Games, does that count?)
The Idiot by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
The Iliad by Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC)
Independent People by Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994)
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784)
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961)
King Lear by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977)
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955)
Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC)
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942)
The Mathnawi by Jalal ad-din Rumi, Afghanistan, (1207-1273)
Medea by Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC)
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987)
Metamorphoses by Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC)
Middlemarch by George Eliot, England, (1819-1880)
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947)
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891)
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)
Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300)
Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924)
The Odyssey by Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC)
Oedipus the King Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC)
Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia, (b. 1928)
The Orchard by Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292)
Othello by William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616)
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986)
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002)
Poems by Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970)
The Possessed by Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817)
The Ramayana by Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC)
The Recognition of Sakuntala by Kalidasa, India, (c. 400)
The Red and the Black by Stendhal, France, (1783-1842)
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922)
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929)
Selected Stories by Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904)
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962)
The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972)
The Stranger by Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960)
The Tale of Genji by Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (c 1000)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930)
Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500)
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927)
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941)
The Trial by Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924)
Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989)
Ulysses by James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, England, (1818-1848)
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957)

Blog every day of june. day 16.

is anyone else as ‘pedantic’ as I am about  diaries and planners?

Having spent much of the day copying appointments to the new 2012 diary I picked up for $1 in New Zealand last week I realise that I am perhaps a tad obsessive.

About a month or so ago I decided that the quo vadis week to an opening with notes format which i’d used successfully and happily last year and well in to this year suddenly no longer seemed suitable.

Instead I found myself yearning for the day to a page textagenda which i was using as a shoulder journal.

Unfortunately the textagenda runs to the uk/us academic year – starting in july so, rather than wait a few weeks before switching to the day to a page option, I bought a day to a page diary in NZ which i will use until my textagenda is ready to go…

I should point out that at work we are supposed to use the Outlook calendar which i have synced with google calendar  – this allows me to replicate the colour coding system that i use in my paper diary.

I can access google calendar on my ipad, ipod, android devices but there is something comforting about writing things in a diary.

I also have  a filofax in daily use but that is a post for another day.

blog every day of june. day 15.

So yesterday i blogged about the construction noise at Valley Hospital. When we went back to collect mum after her surgery the admin staff were handing our earplugs to all staff, patients and visitors at the short stay ward.

Tonight i see on the news that a crane fell on part of the hospital today (near the cardiac unit apparently – nowhere near the short stay unit it would appear).

Luckily no one was hurt.

Mum is behaving herself now she is at home. I forbade her from attending line dancing,

Blog every day of june. day 14.

Mum had to be at Valley Hospital at 7am for a procedure.

At 6.45 am she and I presented ourselves to reception at Valley Hospital, we  were sent down to the short stay unit where mum went through pre-admission, was gowned and questioned ready for surgery.

Mum soon dozed off and TappingBetty and I were left to amuse ourselves – difficult to do as the hospital is undergoing building works and there was a bulldozer bulldozing on the other side of the short stay wall.

Still mum slept, I played angry birds and TappingBetty read a John Grisham book.

All of a sudden mum sat bolt upright in bed, looked at TappingBetty & I, and announced “you’re not Vietnamese” then lay back down and went back to sleep.

She eventually went in to pre-op about 11 and now we wait.

The building noise is so loud that all patients and visitors to the short stay ward are being given earplugs.

We have decamped to Waverley gardens to wait. The hospital will ring us when she is out of surgery.

blog every day of june. day 13.

Yesterday Takapuna,

Today Balwyn.

Back to work, back to stress, back to physio.

Not a lot more to say.

blog every day of june day 12

My last day in Takapuna, my last day in New Zealand.

Started the day with coffee from the patisserie that does the best coffee (and hot chocolate) in Takapuna (as voted by me & my sister – and we tested and tasted many a coffee and hot chocolate…)

And the winner is….

La Tropezienne

they also do awesome food.

Then i wandered around Takapuna –  a last walk along the beach, a last walk by Lake Pupuke,

a coffee from Sierra  (2nd best coffee in Takapuna – still excellent)

before heading to the airport and an Emirates flight to Melbourne.

blog every day of june. day 11.

Finally i got to do the bus tour of Devonport.

I’ve wanted to do it for a while but the fates had conspired to prevent me but not today no way.

I was particularly fascinated by North Head and the underground tunnels – want to go back under my own steam and really explore them.

Rumour/legend has it that there are 2 Boeing aircraft hidden (lost) in there somewhere. Not that i intend to go aircraft hunting but the tunnels have me fascinated…

 

Blog every day of June. Day 10.

Today was a day of shopping, relaxing, and not having girls’ own adventures…

Started with a sleep in followed by a delicious breakfast at Caffe Massimo.

Then it was off to Takapuna Market where TappingBetty found the ultimate souvenir.

We were strolling strolling around the market, having purchased big at Tracey H’s parents’ jewellery stall when we came across a guy selling peanut butter made from Australian nuts.

But it was not the peanut butter that caught our attention it was the somewhat grubby picnic rug sitting under the peanut butter.

It was the Malcolm tartan.

We asked the vendor where he got it – he said it was from a garage sale and to make him an offer…

TappingBetty channelled our late father* and made the vendor an offer – after a bit of bargaining the rug was ours (hers).

Then it was back to the hotel to organise dry cleaning of rug before heading to Devonport and the ferry to Auckland…

* On a trip to England dad found a McCallum whisky window and had it shipped back to Australia.

Blog every dayof june day 9

Yet another girls own adventure (not)

Today we ventured to Coramandel on the ferry. It is a two hour ferry ride which got me thinking about boat & ship journeys in the books of my youth.

On the ferry there was a ‘chinaman’ – in Biggles and Billabong speak this was an oft used term. In 2012 parlance the young man on the ferry was an aspiring model from Beijing – doing a 6 month homestay in New Zealand.

He got us to take pictures of him posing by the rail with the Auckland skyline or other landmarks behind him (or have we set back NZ security by taking photos that he can send back to the chinese spy agency)

Mind you he was an unlikely (and therefore perfect) spy – he wore trendy jeans, a tourist t shirt, blazer and hat; and carried more skincare products than my sister & i combined.

But then again there was a young german family on board. Were they merely a screen and would a german u-boat appear (as in billabong to london)and have us ready to take to lifeboats (only there were no lifeboats) or perhaps we were making an emergency journey to guernsey (coramandel) from austria (auckland) as Joey & co did in chalet school in exile to avoid the nazis.

Or perhaps the young german family were really staying on waiheke island, and our young chinese friend was really doing a home stay in coramandel, and i read too many adventure stories as a child…

Blog every day of june day 8.

Another day another Girls Own Adventure.

So i caught the ferry from Auckland to Devonport. At Devenport there was a bus -destination Takapuna- waiting.

I showed my ticket to the driver, got on the bus and found a seat.

The driver got off the bus, locked the doors, and disappeared into the ferry terminal leaving me locked inside the bus.

Hmmmmm.

Locked inside a bus, no air conditioning, trying to control my breathing so as not to use up the precious oxygen, wondering if the elderly trio waiting for the Stanley Point bus would take a break form their loud discussion of roaming phone charges to notice me trying to scratch ‘help i’m trapped in the bus’ on the bus windows.

In the face of danger i bravely go insane…

How did the famous five manage to have adventures and save the world without mobile phones?

After fifteen minutes of me bravely planning my escape, a man (not the bus driver) got on the bus, started the engine and drove off.

Hmmm. Was i now being busnapped? I was the only passenger after all.

A change in escape plans was called for.

Could i overpower the driver and take control of the bus – stopping to pick up passengers a la Kramer in Seinfeld.

At a later bus stop a woman and small child joined me on the bus. Phew safe at last.

The little girl sang ‘the wheels on the bus’ for the next 15 minutes non stop.

Talk about torture she only knew 3 or 4 lines of the damn song.

But at least i was no longer being busnapped.