Notional Significance: Flyer
Before reaching the starting point of the journey, I need to take a preliminary journey, from something resembling the heart of the city to the start of the highway: the airport. That in itself tells us something about just where cities fit into the whole “National Significance” agenda. A city is never an end in […]
Notional Significance
Allow me to introduce, not myself exactly, but the little series of posts that the Wellingtonista people have kindly allowed me to publish here. “Notional Significance” will be somewhere between travel writing, history, psychogeography and personal reflection, based upon walking the length of Wellington’s stretch of State Highway 1. The concept may sound familiar. I […]
Department of Linky Love: The Examiner
It’s nice to see some solid local news reporting over at new Wellington website The Examiner. The Examiner says it aims to be “… a site where we look deeper and think harder about the city we live in and the issues that matter to us. It is also a forum for telling Wellingtonians’ stories, […]
Wellington’s new route
It’s been a long time coming, but finally the buses are running through the thoroughfare formerly known as Manners Mall. With clipped bus wing mirrors, bowled down pedestrians, and general chaos predicted by some, I decided to get down to Manners Street and check out the new bus route.
TAWA5 Best Thing in Wellington
This category is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s where we put things that we want to celebrate that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean these nominations are second thoughts. Indeed, they’re actually the some of the first things we think of when we try to define what makes Wellington […]
“Please don’t forget to tag off” finally tags off
You know when you tag on with a Snapper and the voice goes “PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO TAG OFF”? Well, duh.
Or when you tag on with less than $12 on your card — gasp! — and the voice goes “CARD VALUE LOW” in a tone that sounds really concerned for your financial wellbeing, like it wants to add “This has been happening for a while now. Oughtn’t you get some budgeting advice?”
Well, Snapper have realised that these voice alerts are kind of annoying and/or unnecessary; and that we as public transport users have learned how the magical fish box works, so they’re updating the Snapper sounds.
Here’s a handy table of the changes:
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That’s right — the Snapper boxes will now go beedoo beedoo beedoobie diddly doo.
And not only that, it’s also going to be a lot quicker to tag on. No waiting for the previous passenger’s tag-on message to play before you can tag on.
Go Wellington buses will be updated with the new beeps and sounds from this Friday evening, 9 April.
And there’s a comprehensive post about the changes over at the Snapper blog.
Fire! Explosions! Twitter!
Sometimes, we receive our news about Wellington from Twitter:
And then we follow it up with emails:
10:05 am (7 minutes ago) llew:
Quay Corporate told me that something near them is on fire — they’re very near Real Groovy
And more emails:
10:06 am (6 minutes ago) James Guthrie:
yep. 2m flames coming from a bust pipe.
10:08 am (7 minutes ago) Hadyn Green:
that’d be why power was out everywhere*.
blog it!
And now we need you to fill in the details for us!
* That explains why the bus wires were down this morning. Sigh. It’s hard to be passionate public transport advocate sometimes.
Intense, man!
I’ve been blathering about it all over the place, but the Wellingtonista has thus far remained staunchly unblathered about IntensCITY week, which started yesterday.
Downtown Wellington is full of exhibitions, posters, shipping containers, lunchtime talks and video installations, all celebrating and/or critiquing our urban spaces. The official site is on the WCC website, and brochures are available in cafes, libraries and council places, or as a big juicy PDF.
P pipes seized from dairies
Anyone else find it amusing that every single dairy in Wellington today had the Dominion Post’s “P pipes seized from dairies!” story on proud display out in front of their respective shops.
(And is there a technical term for those wire-frame things that hold the big one-page headline banner for the day?)
Sex in the city.….carparks
Today I parked in the Tournament car-parking building on Marion Street and made the mistake of walking down the stairs to the street. Along with the delightful smell of urine, the stairs were also littered with used condoms. Now, I’m really stoked that people were practicing safer sex, especially because I’m going to assume there’s a connection between the number of sex workers on Marion Street and their proximity to that building, but really, isn’t there a more ummm enticing place people could go? I’ve also seen people having sex in the Lombard parking building as well — what’s up with that, Wellington? Is it the smell of petrol and urine that’s such a turn-on? Or are all Wellingtonians just so horny that if you’ve gotta get off, you’ve got to get off wherever you are?