Welcome Back, Little Petal!

This week's return of the Ellerslie Flower Show to Christchurch is more than 'just another show'.
The show was cancelled last year after the Feb.quake, but its return will bring a welcome burst of colour to the embattled city. A quarter of a million plants and flowers will help lift residents' spirits after a very long and trying year. Many of this year's displays reflect thoughts of the city's future.
Kate Hillier, Ellerslie event manager: "It's an opportunity for the designers to give something back, and show some inspirational ideas."
Remnants of the earthquake will loom large this year, with a strong theme of reclaiming Christchurch. One designer is using blocks of stone from a damaged city church, others are using reclaimed chimney bricks, beams and even cones used as planters.
On 22nd Feb.2011, the EQ struck as the Ellerslie Flower Show was being set up in Hagley Park. Trees toppled and silt immediately bubbled up from the ground, covering the site in grey water within minutes. In the aftermath, the huge marquees became evacuation tents and a gathering place for city workers. Ellerslie staff helped set up a temporary shelter which housed over a thousand people for the first 24 hours.

Jump forward to 2012: the 25 judges from New Zealand and overseas were on-site picking the winners yesterday, and continue this morning. There were initial concerns about whether people would return after last year's cancellation, but that's not the case. Many of this year's exhibitors were scheduled to take part last year and wanted to return because they had a sense of 'unfinished business'. There are about 90 horticultural exhibits and around 30 of these are big gardens - that's on par with numbers in previous years.
The show is open to the public from tomorrow (Wed.7th) through to Sunday 11th March, 10am-7pm at North Hagley Park.

Sex Discrimination On The High Street

A new kind of outdoor ad is being tested on Oxford Street in London’s West End.
It's an interactive billboard, which uses a high-definition camera to scan pedestrians and identify their gender before showing a specific ad. The built-in system has a 90% accuracy rate in analysing a person’s facial features and determining if they’re male or female.
The £30,000 display is set up by Plan UK, a not-for-profit organization that helps children in third-world countries. Female passersby will be shown a full 40sec. video of its "Because I'm a Girl" campaign, that promotes sponsoring a poor girl to receive proper education in a developing country. But males won't be able to see the full ad: they'll be directed to Plan UK's website instead. Men and boys are denied the choice to view the full content, in order to highlight that women and girls across the world are denied choices and opportunities on a daily basis, due to poverty and discrimination. Plan UK says the purpose of this is to show men "a glimpse of what it's like to have basic choices taken away."

The ad campaign will run for two weeks and hopes to raise £250,000 in donations during the next four months. 
But what puzzles me about this otherwise technically quite clever campaign is: why deliberately cut off half of their potential donors simply because they're male? If, as Plan UK says, the purpose is to give guys a taste "of what it's like to have basic choices taken away", it's highly likely that males will simply shrug their shoulders and keep on walking, without bothering to access the website later.
Now, if the facial recognition billboard was for - let's say - a female sanitary product, a women-only viewing might make sense, but this segregation-by-sex may well cost Plan UK some sponsors, and thus makes no sense to me...

The Greyhound of The Tasman: Awatea

Awatea, Sydney Harbour, 1936

"The Queen of the Tasman Sea" - the Union Steam Ship Company's Awatea, the fastest and most luxurious ocean liner in the Southern Hemisphere.
She was the way to cross the Tasman Sea in the late 1930s. This beautiful liner's life was very brief, but is remembered as an elegant experience…
Built in Barrow-in-Furness UK, and launched by the wife of the NZ Governor-General, Lady Elaine Bledisloe, she arrived "down under" in mid-1936 for a new express service between Australia-NZ.

1930s elegance

She accommodated 566 passengers (377 in 1st.Class, 151 in Tourist Class and 38 in 3rd.Class) to a high standard. Her speed and comfort made her a popular and well-known ship. In the summer of 1937 she made 11 Tasman crossings in 41 days and that same year she cut the times for the Akld.-Sydney and Sydney-Wgtn. passages to less than 56hrs. Her best day was 576 miles, averaging 23.35kts.
Awatea was also known as "The Greyhound of the Tasman" and in Oct.1937 set a record between Akld-Sydney of 55hrs 28min, average speed 22.89kts. To mark this, she was presented with a large stainless steel greyhound that was mounted on the foremast of the ship.
Her captain A.H.Davey was a remarkable seaman and made Awatea well-known through the maritime world, not only due to her excellent speed, but also for his skill. He could manoeuvre her to her berth without the aid of any tugs in all ports, and with amazing accuracy! This was achieved long before side-thrusters…just great seamanship.