Sunshine and pohutukawa

It's warm today - windy, but properly warm - so I went to the beach for a bit this afternoon and had a swim. It was a little too rough to swim well though. And the first pohutukawa are starting to come out, which is great because I think they're incredible.

But how did the year go so quick?

Dolphins!

There was a little pod of dolphins out in the harbour this morning when we went out rowing - cue a little girly excited squealing. They don't come in that often. Apparently they were out off the South Coast last night.

Also there seem to be a lot of penguins about at the moment, more than last year anyway. I always like seeing a little head pop up before the penguin disappears underwater.

Elections and summer

I realised I never blogged the election. It happened. I was very curious about election night - the coverage was okay, I guess. I was mostly entertained by the incredibly small size of some electorates; it turns out NZ is a country where a 5000 margin is a big one, and the new PM John Key won the most electorate votes (18,000). Bless. Anyway, we have a new government now after Key managed to create a coalition in record time, very savvily bringing the Maori Party on board. That helps make what was a group of parties leaning heavily right a lot more centrist, as the Maoris are traditionally more left-inclined. Key's got the brains, but the question is whether he has the experience to pull this off. If he weren't a conservative millionaire white ex-financial trader he'd be NZ's Barack Obama ... now that election I found I did care about, very much, and I'm thrilled with the result. I just hope Dubya hasn't left the US in such a state Obama can't fix as much as he wants.

Meanwhile, it's really summer now and it's lovely. :)