The Faraway Nearby: Diary of a Taranaki Tech Traveller

I live in South Taranaki with cows – the mooing variety – for neighbours, but technology enables me to live everywhere in the world. To borrow from a recent book title, it brings “The Faraway Nearby”.

Our indoor–outdoor digital weather station has been recording some of its highest temperatures ever. To beat the heat I walked Pearl, the dog, before breakfast. Not a soul on the streets but my phone in my pocket via RNZ App brought Morning Report’s worldwide news to my earphones as we walked.

Popped a card in the post. Snail mail still seems the way to reach out to this friend whose mother has died. I did need to use Postcode finder to get the correct address. So easy – you just start with whatever bit of the address you have and it offers suggestions. I thought I was looking for Stoddart Place but it was Stoddart Terrace – and turned out to need a Rural Delivery number, too.

Home to breakfast with the newspaper – Taranaki Daily News in print and NZHerald app on my phone. Made me wonder what the rest of the world is making of the TPP protests so used my library card to access Press Display – over 5000 virtual newspapers from 100 countries.

Today’s Washington Post had an article on page one with a paragraph on the protests. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser included a photo. No mention in today’s Guardian but UK are not signatories. I love ‘turning the pages’ of many of the world’s newspapers to get different perspectives and news stories not covered here.

Fascinating to see what’s on the front page even if you can’t read Afrikaans, Zulu or any of the other 58 languages (though if you really want to know, translation is available). You see the whole paper – advertisements, photographs, classifieds, everything. I must remind my American husband to check the Colorado papers in the build up to the Super Bowl.

Many New Zealand libraries offer Press Display for free with your library card. I do still like to get the local paper in print though – we’ll need to light the fire when winter finally arrives.

A quick txt exchange with elder daughter in Auckland to enquire about grandson’s first day back at school. She fell asleep last night listening to all he’d learned about digestion. Remembered yesterday I’d heard a radio report of interest to her so I used RNZ app again to find it then emailed her the link.

Watched some of our Monarch butterflies in flight. They reminded me of a beautiful Facebook photo of our granddaughter waking to one hatched in her room in the Waikato. Downloaded it and may even print it as I need to update our display – children, like butterflies, grow and change so quickly.

Coffee time!

Kaye Lally, Age Hacker