Adding more photos as I continue to test my laptop and WordPress.
random photos
Tag: Blogging
Technology and me
I’ve been having problems with WP on my laptop … tells me I dont have the authority to post things.
Hence the strange one photo blog which you got notified about as a “test” but was not there when you clicked on it.
Sorry, but I’d deleted it as soon as it went live, forgetting you, a wonderful follower of my blogs, would be notified. As I said in the title ‘technology and me” are not comfortable bedfellows.
So, although my laptop is misbehaving it seems my phone is fine.
Here are a few random photos and I hope that soon my wonderful technology expert will sort out the wrinkles – I must try on my tablet too😏😘
7 years of blogging
This selfie was taken on a Tasmanian beach last week.
Just had a message from WordPress
with congratulations for seven years blogging right here .. so lots of topics and places for you to search for in my writings.
More blogs on the way after this current trip in Melbourne and Tasmania Australia. Back home in New Zealand next week to start on them … and also convert my new book into e-formats. (A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, Can This Travel Writer Be Green?)
Boxing Day in the summer sun – down-under in New Zealand
New Zealand’s Boxing Day in the summer sun: not all of us do the sales for dubious bargains, the weathers too great.
While I’d said ‘no more blogs for a while’ as I wrote the suicide grief book, I took time out to re-charge my creative batteries and these photos are evidence of that. The other good news (for me) is that I have finished the first draft of the 20, 000-word book so there will be a few blogs while I wait before starting the editing process. Enjoy the summer holiday sun in these pics: the gardens will be happy it’s raining as I write – but not the campers in tents!
Aren’t I lucky to live in NZ’s capital city with all this just a 10-min walk from my inner city apartment?
The longest natural sandbar in the world
At the Top-of-the-South is Farewell Spit in Golden Bay – the longest natural sandbar in the world – I join a day trip to see it.
Originally called Te Onetahua, meaning ‘heaped up sand’ – the long sandbar stretches 35 km and Paddy Gillooly, manager of The Original Farewell Spit Safari, has a family history with it as old as Collingwood. He prides himself that his hand-picked guides ‘know what they are talking about – they give exact information and must constantly read the beach, watching for quicksand.’
Called Murderers Bay by Abel Tasman in 1642; James Cook called it Massacre Bay; early settlers called it Coal Bay, before re-naming it Golden Bay in 1850s when alluvial gold was discovered. Read more I’ve written here
I watch as the lighthouse grows smaller
WordPress Wellington 2011
I was supposed to write a post tonight about the WordPress camp I’m at this weekend … but I’m tired: so here is a link to a good overview written by a fellow attendee – click on this link to read his (Cody Rapley) take on the The Morning
Travel Writing: from World Hum
This is a long piece about travel writing:
… so long it has sat in my ‘to read’ pile for a couple of months. It’s too late for me to post a comment so have decided to do it here as IT’S GREAT – and so evocative of my experiences as a travel writer it really resonated with me, that I will read it again, for sure.
If you think travel writing (not guidebook or blogs of the where-to-stay-variety) is just swanning around the world on a credit card (someone elses’ ) have a read of this – it’s Tom Swick writing (and on UTube) about the evolving role of the travel writer in the age of mass tourism Travel Writing – Not a Tourist – Features – World Hum Thanks Tom, you said it for many of us.
kiwitravelwriter reinvented herself – you can too
My recipe for ‘how to run away from home and reinvent yourself’
- Start as a child with a love of reading. This involves hiding under the blankets reading of far away places that creates a desire for travel: I imagined I was Anne Frank in her Amsterdam attic and Heidi on the mountains of Switzerland. Naturally, I was the hero between the covers of every book I read.
- Add, listening to far away, static-crackling voices in languages I didn’t understand on my brother’s crystal radio, and dream of exploring those lives, and there you have it! The germ of an idea, the yeast of a dream, began bubbling below the surface of my conciseness. The first, most basic ingredients for my developing recipe were lined up on the bench of my mind.
- Cover, and leave that bowl of imagination to infiltrate through life’s ups and downs, keep reading, keep dreaming until life and circumstances add more ingredients. These extra components are where your individuality, situation, and conditions, add to the recipe and finally, the end result! (NOTE: Unlike many recipes, this one is totally tailored to each circumstance.)
My extra ingredients included: the deaths of a 20-year old son, and my husband, recovery from alcoholism, and too many birthdays. In my late forties, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Perhaps I could play catch-up with the traditional Kiwi penchant for travel. read more here
Follow your dreams
‘I want to be like you when I grow up’ is written on a backgammon set given to me by a young American woman when I was in Greece. I have heard them so often as I travel and I agree – and I too want to be like me when I grow up. Maybe that’s the secret, maybe I haven’t grown up. Just another baby-boomer who wants it all; now. However I believe I have a better life than anyone I know. Beyond my wildest dreams actually.
I am not the only person to hear such words. Over lunch with Rita Golden Gelman (The Female Nomad. Vintage.2001) she tells me she too has had the same experiences. We agreed that rarely do our adventures and writings inspire older travellers to throw caution to the wind and join us – but many young people see us as a wonderful role model. A compliment indeed.
We offer an alternative to being captured by societal norms – life on the road. As Rita said, “there is more than one way, to do life. ( read how I have done life in Naked In Budapest: travels with a passionate nomad – see link at top of this page)
Crazy, courageous or downright selfish are the viewpoints people take when judging our lifestyle. Another one that Rita seems to have had more than me is the assumption that you are “running away”. Not so.
Although I often use the term “ I’m running away to. . .” I am not running from anything but towards something new, exciting, different. That does involve leaving the society and expectations that we have grown up with – but it’s not running from. Its making different choices. Continue reading “Follow your dreams”
I need to loose weight … so doing it in public
I’ve been diagnosed with diabetes!
This means I need to get healthier and loose weight so have decided to blog about it .. ‘they’ tell me I’m as sick as my secrets so will let it all hang out so to speak, and hope that reporting on my successes and failures online will keep me on the straight and narrow.
Sign up to follow and support me here — my blogspot blog.
Kiwi Travel Writer talks food, travel, and tips 