While the cats away.....

Georgia went to school camp this week for 3 days. It was a trip up to Waihi gold mine and she had been really excited about this for weeks. She came back on Wednesday and if you need to know anything about the gold mining industry in NZ she is the one to ask. One surprising fact was that they need to powderise 1 tonne of rock to extract 3g of gold! Georgia's trip coencided with our Tuesday day off, which means we can have the whole day somewhere as we don't have to be back at 3pm to pick her up from school. But where to go? I only wanted to drive for an hour or so, the choices seemed to be Whakatane (not a lot there) in one direction, Paeroa in another direction, there is even less there but they do have a giant sculpture of a bottle of L&P, I think of it as a shrine to type 2 Diabetes. Oh no I can feel a tangent coming on! Type 2 Diabetes is of course a growing problem, the more chemical/sugar/water combinations people drink, the bigger the problem. It became an epidemic with the stroke of a pen, when someone decided to change the threshold for having type 2 by lowering the resting blood sugar measurement from 140 to 126, 2 million Americans became diabetic overnight, and they didn't even know. The drug companies knew alright, lots more money to made now. While I am digressing here is another interesting thing, the obesity epidemic is caused in part, by fizzy drinks and ice cream, however the biggest culprit is the stroke of a pen. Someone had the bright idea of deciding you were obese by using a mathematical formula to calculate your BMI ( the formula is something like, times your height by the square root of a triangle, add your weight and the age of your Granny's budgie, then take away the number you first thought of) If your number came out at 30, you are obese. (using this formula, all athletes, body builders and Brad Pitt are clinically obese). I prefer the old fashioned method of determining if someone was obese, the tell tale signs were a garage full of broken bathroom scales and the "cafe phenomena". This is when the suspected obese person stands up after having a latte and a double chocolate chip muffin with caramel sauce, if the chair is still firmly clamped to the persons back side as they wobble down the street, then they are obese. (The next phenomena is the cafe owner legging it after them, armed with a tyre lever to try and get their chair back.)

The other possible direction was Rotorua, and this is indeed where we went (you may have already guessed this by the photo, which is the photo you always see when you see pictures of Rotura, as it is the only building in Rotorua that merits a photo). Rotorua attracts the biggest number of tourists in NZ, they come to see bubbling mud pools and steamy hot pools. When you see them you are almost taken back to prehistoric times and it would be no surprise if a Diplodocus popped his head round the corner. (thinking about this, it would be a bit of a surprise really, but at least its head is about 5 minutes away from its feet, so you would have a bit of time to scream and run away) . It was however cold and cloudy but Rotorua has a museum (hooray) the museum is the building in the photo and is an old bathhouse, it was quite interesting. You could see the history of the Spa Bath industry, there was a section on the big volcanic eruption in the late 1800's that killed 120 people and wrecked the growing tourist industry and a section on the Maori Regiment. It was also warm and had a cafe that sold huge cheese scones for $3.00. We had a bit of lunch in the French Cafe (Joyce likes to practise her French), had a walk on the lake shore and then came home. It was a good day out.