My hobbies

I don't think my hobbies are very typical. And I need to find more — the more typical, the more chances I get to hang out with a "tribe" so to speak (her words). But writing them down all in one place helps me actually think about them, I think.

Transport, infrastructure, urbanism sightseeing - I like walking around town centres and navigating new neighbourhoods. Most of all, I like looking at new infrastructure and interesting new developments. Gimme gimme the train stations, the new convention centres, the bus interchanges, the street grids, the apartment buildings, the CRL tunnels, the list could go on. Basically this event below is my dream.

Posting/poasting - I spend too much time still on Twitter dot com. But being terminally online this way is very much part of me. I was born in 2002. My first Twitter account was made in 2010. I spent the first 8 years of my life in a blissful and palatial happiness. I've spent the subsequent 15 years after that in the squalor — rolling around in my own filth, endlessly sending inane and often heinous little messages for other terminally online weirdos, while somehow falling upwards in spite of my own efforts otherwise. In more positive recent developments, I've found myself a CMS and am Bringing Back Blogs.

Cafe-hopping – Is this even a hobby? I enjoy going to new cafes. I like coffee, I like reading… sometimes. I also like being the dickhead who pulls out his laptop for some "light work" and/or posting, until the awkwardness of hanging around this establishment — that you're clearly not financially helping — becomes overwhelming. Popular city centre options include the mighty Mezze Bar (chocolate cake!) and Bellini Bar (hot views of ferries!). Does the Art Gallery Members' Lounge count? There's technically free coffee there — that's a cool and chill place to hang. Starbucks Queen St used to count for the laptop work category of this hobby (wow, what a loser!) until they started closing at 8pm.

https://i.imgur.com/NGUA1dc.mp4

Amateur archival reading - Libraries are a super underrated part of Auckland. Massive collections across Research Central, UOA, and AUT. It's sorta sad we've built the Internet yet have no way of digitising writing from through the decades enmasse. That does, however, mean the library collections are not undergoing the [🥰] Digital Transformation [🥰] as fast as other bastions of culture and knowledge. Fine by me — it gives me an excuse to go to the library more often. I love the University of Auckland and AUT's libraries. Unlike Central City Library where you often have to request material from the basement, there's still lots of shelves around full of books and old serials. I am anticipating cracking into the serials of Pavement magazine soon. Especially late at night, there's something very liminal and suspended in time when you're wandering through the shelves of the upper floors of the UOA General Library. One curiosity below from a recent visit.