Today, my father-in-law was cremated. He had passed away the Friday prior.
Somehow, it fell to me to make a lot of the funeral arrangements. I was honoured to be able to contribute in some way to celebrating his life but I won't lie, it was stressful. I had to take the whole week off just to have time to grieve, process, and get on with the details.
He had only just remarried a little over a month ago. That side of his family was in such shock. One of his step-daughters was incredible and got on to doing the research straight away. By the time I arrived the Friday afternoon to come see them, she'd already done research on funeral homes. We all found the pricing structures very confusing but I'm grateful we had a place to start.
Even though he wasn't Māori, I decided it would be appropriate to have a version of tikanga Māori in the ceremony as his step-grandchildren are Māori. It wasn't full-on tangihanga, but I contributed a whaikōrero poroporoaki and the opening and closing prayers were in Māori. We sang Purea Nei as my waiata tautoko and there were few dry eyes in the chapel.
Like I say, I had assembled a lot of the arrangements, so I also put together the slideshows to show on the TVs and to be live streamed. I included a video of my father-in-law teaching his relatives how to sing Te Aroha. He was a music teacher. It became his final music lesson. The whole chapel knew exactly what to do and sang along with him.
I went to New Plymouth for the first time yesterday with my partner, a friend, and one of their daughters. Here are the highlights.
Feets standing in front of the clock tower in Stratford, taken on the way to New Plymouth. The lens was covered in rain drops.
Puke Ariki Museum: nice. Slices of local history, wildlife (shark! moa!), and a section on Dalvanius Prime. There were some interactives for kids
Feets standing in front of a recreation of a Moa skeleton.Feets standing in front of some kiwi models.Feets standing in front of a shark model, suspended from the ceiling of the museum.
Festival of Lights: peak! I loved the Pukekura Park, very pretty, enhanced by the light shows. The park itself is lovely with mini-lakes, Japanese bridges, and plenty of winding paths. Seen here: Ember, with smoke emanating from between a recreation of a campfire.
🦶🏻 Barefoot report: lots of unpaved paths with tiny stones. Feet are very exfoliated now. Ouchies.
The Ember installation in Pukekura Park, with light-filled tubes arranged to resemble a camp fire. Smoke emanates from between the lights as they pulsate between off and glowing red to resemble burning wood.
Glowing light installations that resemble plants and mushrooms.
Brooklyn Zoo (a petting zoo plus some monkeys) was fun though it seemed a bit too small. There were monkeys, parrots, some lizards and frogs, and a small farm. I 💙 kunekune pigs, though the constantly bleating goats came in a close second
Two sleeping kunekune pigs, one brown, one black and white, resting against each other on the concrete in the sun.
While we were there, we also had dinner at Sushi Ninja, an authentic Japanese restaurant with bits of everything. The prices are a bit up there but the food was delish. I had a sashimi platter, served on paua shells, then tuna katsu, salmon tataki, and a sampler of five kinds of umeshu (plum wine). Finished off with yukimi daifuku (mochi ball with ice cream).
A selection of dishes at Sushi Ninja: umeshu, tuna katsu, sashimi, salmon tataki, and yukimi daifuku.
Steve Jobs said not everybody will need a PC/laptop form factor, likening them to trucks. Rather, people will gravitate towards smartphones and tablets, likening them to cars. Not everybody needs a truck, most people can do with a car. But some of us need something heavier duty than a car so we have truck.
To be clear, in his metaphor, the Mac is a truck. macOS is the engine that powers the truck.
Once upon a time, I used to mock those old heads who steadfastly cleaved to their PowerPC Macs running Mac OS 9. "Come join us in the future with Mac OS X on Intel!" I thought. A little down the line, it changed to "Surely you can't do without the latest macOS on an Apple Silicon machine!"
Now, I empathise with them. When it comes to getting work done, if you want to protect your truck, you have to draw a line in the sand; for me, that line is currently macOS 18.
Today, Apple confirmed that the man who wanted our beefy trucks to be outfitted with puny car motors is leaving. Time will tell if they go back to respecting the big rigs or if I join the ranks of the old heads before me and stick with a good vintage.
I run a Discord server where some ex-students keep in touch, let me know what's going on with their lives, and just shoot the breeze. Right now, it's a hive of activity, which is really nice. It's nice seeing students from years gone by interacting with each other openly, freely, regardless of when they were in my class.
Mainly, they seem to just play Wordle and compare their Linux setups. Still!
Taking away the obpgation to honour te Tiriti. Abominable.
The number of teachers I know who would jump for joy. Shameful.
The number of school boards who'll drop Te Tiriti from their governance pke a hot potato. Despicable.
The fear it could happen to *any* of the kura at which we teach, even the "good ones". Terrifying.
The way this government wants to absorb the Teaching Council and thus set utterly perverse parameters for what it means to be a "good teacher". Mortifying.
The motivation I have to stay in this field. Dwindling.
Why I do it? Because if I don't, I'm worried about what kind of other person else would.
