nothing much happened (38)

(observational notes of exquisitely ordinary moments)

something that made me go “huh!”

today i learned // if you stare for a long time at a block of yellow then shift your gaze to a white sheet of paper, you will see it, for a moment, as violet. this phenomenon—the coloured afterimage—occurs because there is energetic reciprocity between purple and yellow pigments.

something marvellous

we hopped on a plane this morning and flew to Blenheim. we picked up a rental car and headed south on state highway 1 to kaikoura.

this is a part of New Zealand I’d only ever driven through on the way to somewhere else. the drive is around 90 minutes from the airport and wanders through some incredible coastline. there’s a few stopping points along the way selling fresh crayfish and other ocean -foraged food and an abundance of seals, many of them asleep on the rocks curled up like cats.

in November 2016, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit this place. And, while this (and other parts of our country) are well acquainted with geological instability, this was different. five months after the quake, the highway from Christchurch had only just reopened and the road north to where we drove today was still impassable. the busy summer season of whale watching tours they depended on didn’t happen. it couldn’t. no-one could get here.

five years after the quake, we’re here. and I have no idea if this little seaside town has ever recovered. but I do know that one thing we can do as travellers to help with their recovery is visit. so, given we are lucky enough to be able to travel freely around our country, that’s what we’re doing.

something broken

I dropped my camera this evening on the doorstep of our accommodation. the lens flew off and the lens mount that affixes the lens to the camera is broken. I promptly phoned our insurance company to lodge a claim, but it does leave me without a fully functioning 16-50mm lens for the remainder of our weekend. It still kinda works if I hold it carefully, but the messaging between camera and lens is flaky. There’s no visible damage to the camera body, but I will send that off for a service and a thorough inspection to see if there’s any damage to the internals.