theMatthews

2011 was a fairly forgettable year at the silver screen. Granted, I only saw two films at the theatre due to the earthquakes closing our local this year. But the quality of cinema has been well below par. I’ve not seen the Christmas films - Sherlock Holmes, Dragon Tattoo, Tintin and Mission: Impossible and they may all change my opinion. But these are my favourite flicks of the year (so far).

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
A genetically-enhanced chimpanzee uses its greater intelligence to lead other apes to freedom.

Source Code
A sci-fi thriller with a soldier waking up in the body of an unknown man and discovering he’s on a mission to find the bomber of a train.

Limitless
A writer discovers a top-secret drug which bestows him with super human abilities.

Cowboys and Aliens
A posse of cowboys and natives are all that stand in their way aliens who want to take over the Earth.

Rango
An ordinary chameleon winds up in the town of Dirt, a lawless outpost in the Wild West in desperate need of a new sheriff.

Honourable mentions go to Your Highness, Super 8, Bridesmaids, Take Me Home Tonight and Arthur.

My experience of the Battlefield 3 Beta to date…

It’s been a while since my last update. I must admit that last post was made under duress. Since February 22nd we’ve had our teeth rattled a fair few times. I’m happy to say that the aftershocks have subsided a little, this doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet. Seismologists suggest we’ll be enduring aftershocks for up to three years.

On June 13 we had two major shakes. The first at 12:50pm was a 5.5 that tested our resolve. The second two hours later was a 6.3 and was the final straw for a lot of Cantabrians. I have never felt more depressed than coming home that evening to find the water and power were off again. I really thought, there is only so much one can endure.

Emily and I have coped well with the ongoing situation. We’ve done what we had to do and we’ve kept a brave face for the kids. But they have struggled, particulary Bella and Juliet. It’s almost like post traumatic stress (it might well be exactly that). When you see your kids startled by a truck passing outside you know you need to make some changes.

Right now we’re in a holding pattern. The eastern suburbs of Christchurch have been divided into 3 zones. Green zones are clear and houses and infrstructure can be repaired. Red zones are the opposite. They’ve been deemed uneconomical to restore and are basically due to be bulldozed in the next 18 months. The outlook is that some red zones will be rebuilt in about 5 years time. The other zone is orange, they’re still awaiting an outcome on their land assessment.

We’re green, so we are largely unaffected by the change. But half our suburb is red, including the kids school and our parish grounds (the church has already been demolished). We also know a lot of families and friends who are in the red zone. The outlook is that everyone will have to move. The dynamic of the city is going to change soon (it is already unrecognisable from 12 months ago). We’ve got a lot of questions such as where will the schools go? Will our children’s friends still be here in 12 months time? What happens to the land after the bulldozers come, will there be miles of empty lots or do we get some new parks? And how the hell will anyone be able to buy a home in 12 months time when demand goes through the roof?

No one has the answers right now. It’s an immensly frustrating situation to be in. Don’t get me wrong, we are in a much better place than a lot of our peers. We’re mildly inconvenienced by the change whereas others are facing an entire lifestyle shift. Perhaps the most difficult part of all this is we don’t have anyone to blame for what is happening right now. I can’t point the finger at corrupt bankers, or politicians or even blame myself. We’ve just got to grin and bear it, and wait to see what surprises tomorrow brings…

We’re back in our house now. It doesn’t feel like a home anymore. The spring is still leaking in the back garden and the silt used to create a dam is putrid. We’ve got some water pressure, but not enough to fill the hot water cylinder. The council still does not want us drinking untreated water or flushing the toilet so we’re still using bottles and buckets. We’ve got doors that won’t shut and windows that don’t open and the hole in the roof is still waiting to be fixed.

Most of our friends have fled out of town. Nearly all of the local shops are shut. The ones that open are scalping premium prices. We can only see a few signs of life on our street now. Even the street lights refuse to illuminate after dark.

Christchurch is wounded and our lives with it. The media speculates it will take 10 to 15 years to rebuild the city. The lifestyle we wanted to give our children is broken. The question is, where do we go from here?

Moments after the earthquake.

It is unimaginable. A second, more distructive earthquake has struck Christchurch, New Zealand within the space of 5 months. This quake, technically an aftershock of the September 4th earthquake, struck just before 1pm on 22nd February 2011. The quake was 6.3 magnitude and situated just 10 km away from the city centre at a depth of 5km.

The violence of this earthquake was a much greater scale. Buildings have collapsed and there is major infrastructure damage. We’re hearing the 90% of the water treatment plants in the city are too damaged to restore.

Our children were at a temporary school site near the centre of the city when the earthquake struck (their current school site was closed by the September quake). It was a nightmare 2 hours while we tried to reach them. Emily could not find an open route with so many roads and bridges impassable. I abandoned my own car a mile from home when traffic was not moving (a sewer had collapsed ahead, half submerging a car as it did) and I grabbed my bicycle from the shed to ride into the city.

My parents were nearer to the children and reached them first. They did what they could to calm them. Bella will forever remember running from her class to see the front of the Catholic Cathedral collapse. Jack was in his classroom putting his lunch away when his teacher swept him and another student out the door while the desks tumbled around them.

Our home has been turned over. The chimney fell, punching a hole in the roof and a load-bearing beam has nearly cracked in two. We can see the front wall of the living room is stressed and starting to pull away from the house. There’s also a water spring in the middle of the back lawn. The water level rose overnight to cover the entire back yard to the doorstep. We’ve managed to divert the water with a trench down the driveway.

The house is without power, water or sewage for the time being. We’re staying with friends just outside of the city who still have these basic amenities. I don’t know what the next step is. A national state of emergency has been declared. There are a number of fatalities and several hundred still missing - these are all people like us, who started out yesterday like any other day. Christchurch will not look the same, nor will it ever feel the same again.

PC gamer have just published their annual 100 best PC games feature. This year the list has been compiled by a larger base of writers. Nearly half of the list this year new entries and most of these are games that are 5 years or older. Naturally, some games have moved a lot in the standings - GTA IV dropped from #15 to #99 as did Fallout from #7 to #36.

Every year I check the list and make a note to revisit some of the forgotten classics. I also try to commit to giving one of the top ranked games that I wouldn’t usually play a chance to impress me.

Last year the second chance went to Deus Ex. When this was first released I was not into RPGs at all. I gave the game a try but never even completed the opening level. Many praises for the game sight how the first level was so wide open with choice and the rest of the game expanded on that feat. For me, I just wanted a big gun and no stats. I’m sad to say I still did not get far beyond the first level. Maybe it’s the age of the game? Surely playing in a dystopian future as an enhanced cyborg would be my thing? I’ve even been told the narrative behind the game is one of the greatest stories ever told. But I just can’t make myself like this game enough… my loss I guess.

This year I’m revisiting Bioshock - a game that came out when I was just too busy to enjoy it. See you in 12 months!

Continuing on from my first post, this is our experience following the September 4 earthquake in Canterbury, NZ.

While Emily strapped the kids in the car I surveyed the street outside our property. Although all lights were out, everything still appeared to be standing up straight. Our neighbours across the road came to check we were alright. I mentioned Jack and my growing concern about tsunamis. At that moment another neighbour bolted out of their driveway and took off up the road. I guess I wasn’t the only one harbouring fears.

We hopped in the car and as I started it I saw the petrol warning light was amber. I tutted Emily for not having the foresight to quarter fill the tank in case of such an emergency… yes, a completely insensitive response made in a moment of duress, and one that I will not never live down until the day I die!

We drove off towards Queenspark where Jack was staying. He was near the beach and Emily was trying to raise the family on her phone but could not get an answer. I had the radio on and was scanning for a station. The only active broadcast was a music loop, the rest was static. I thought it odd; surely we’d at least hear the Civil Defense emergency broadcast. I later realised I had the radio on the FM band. AM was, in fact, working just fine.

My phone started buzzing with a call from Mum and Dad checking in. They’d been rattled but had no damage. I told them of our plan. Dad mentioned that a tsunami was unlikely as we’d felt the earthquake. I told him I wasn’t taking any chances. Later Dad commented he’d felt like Harry R. Truman, “the mountain aint gonna hurt me… boy”. By now Emily had also raised the alert with her family in England and they were praying.

We’d only just set off and I could already feel the surface of the road had changed. There were bumps and dips where there’d previously been none. The street lights were out so I could only see where my headlights were pointing. With other traffic on the road there was no chance of high beams to assess the surface ahead. It was slow going.

About a kilometre away we encountered our first real damage. On the corner of the local park I could see our petrol station forecourt was buckled at an angle. The road ahead was also visibly twisted and dipping significantly. Pools of water were flowing out of the ground and you could smell the stink of sewage as we drove by. We crawled forward for the next half km unsure how deep these ruts ran.

There was a lot of traffic out now. Each car picking their way around swollen manhole covers and cracked asphalt. We passed by the river which looked murky. It was sitting above the usual high tide mark. My mind turned back to the threat of a tsunami and fear began to set in.

We finally reached the house where Jack was staying and rushed to the door together. The area was also in blackout but the roads had felt more settled around Queenspark. Our friends answered the door and called to Jack that his Mum was here. He game rushing out of the lounge and gave us the biggest bear hug. He was a little pale, but I could see straight away that going to him was the right choice. It was now just after 5am. Thirty minutes had passed since the earthquake.

I explained to our friends that we were going inland and they told us that was where the earthquake was centred. They’d had their radio on AM and by now had heard the epicentre was near Darfield, a town some 40 kilometres inland from Christchurch. Emergency services had advised there was no tsunami threat. We thanked them and got back in the car. I re-tuned our radio and we started picking our way back home.

Emily and I discussed what our next move would be. I was still stuck on the fear of a tsunami. I’d been wrestling with panic all the way to get Jack. I felt I had to do something – if we stayed at home I’d be jumping up and down at the slightest noise. I decided we’d go by home, grab some clothes for the children and swap the car before getting out of town until daylight returned. If a tsunami warning did come then I wasn’t going to wrestle with other traffic to get out of the way.

We were home and back in the other car in double-time. The RVR is our commuting car, with only 4 seats we had to put the older two on the floor in the back. They didn’t mind the novelty and I figured if we were pulled up an officer would be sympathetic. I was also grateful to have only filled the tank the previous day. I’d now assumed we’d be a few days without access to fuel.

We pulled out and made our way towards the motorway. It had now been a little over an hour since the earthquake. Reports on the radio were now of extensive damage around the city, but miraculously no deaths and only 2 serious injuries reported. As we passed through St Albans we could see a lot more structural damage ourselves. The front of several commercial buildings lay strewn across the footpaths and onto the roads. The road itself was not as bad here but there was a lot of water pooling on side streets. We passed one house with a broken water main in front of their driveway. Their car was idling in the driveway, lights on, with no way to get out.

I reached Main North Road which took us out of town. There were few cars on the motorway; I was still travelling only at 80km, scanning for any signs of damage to the road ahead. We passed by Kaiapoi which was still in darkness and ahead I could see the sky was lit above Rangiora. Assuming they still had power I took us toward the town.

Of course, one of the first venues to greet visitors to Rangiora is a big McDonalds restaurant. We could see they were open and filled with patrons in their pyjamas. We decided this was the best place to stop, grab coffee and let the kids unwind in the play area. It was just after 6:15am when we finally sat down. We’d been running for more than 90 minutes since the earthquake jolted us awake.

There was still a lot to think about. How long will our food in the cupboards last us? What’s the condition of the kids school? Is my workplace still standing? How have our friends been affected? And worst of all… was that it, or do we still have a series of aftershocks to endure?

As we sat there leaning together, enjoying a moment’s peace, I thanked God for protecting my family through this. Outside the window the sun had crested the horizon. It was the start of a new day.

More soon.

On 4 September 2010 at 4:35am a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit Canterbury, New Zealand just 40 kilometres west of our home in Christchurch. Similar in magnitude and proximity to Haiti, it was an event that could have shattered lives. Yet miraculously, there were no deaths directly attributed to the earthquake and only two serious injuries.

Over the next few days I’ll post about our experience in the Canterbury earthquake. Most of these notes were written in the days following the earthquake and I’ve left them much as they were originally written to try and convey the worry and feelings of hopelessness that we carried those first couple of weeks.

I will start by saying – for however destructive this earthquake could have been, we got off VERY lightly. The only disruption we face in our own lives is the loss of our church and school buildings. There are many families in Christchurch who lost their houses, jobs and other material possessions. We had power and water throughout the recovery whereas others are still using temporary port-a-loos 8 weeks on.

So, the Friday evening was like the end of a normal week; Jack was sleeping over at a friend’s birthday party and the girls had watched a movie before going to bed. I sat up with Bella and we watched Benjamin Button. Em was home late from work but we were all tucked into bed by 10:30.

Six hours later I snapped awake to what sounded like a freight train approaching. Before I’d even gained full consciousness the bed lurched upward and bashed against the wall. The entire house was suddenly alive and my ears were filled with a roar and the creaking of timber straining at its joists.

It took only a microsecond for me to recognise this was an earthquake far bigger than I’d experienced before. My brain screamed DANGER and in that moment a blind survival instinct took over. As fast as the electrons could carry the commands to my limbs I’d grabbed Emily yelling “Earthquake” and bolted from the bed across the hallway to where we’d left the girls sleeping.

I entered the room and Bella was sat ridged upright clenching the blanket in terror. I grabbed her and pushed her to her mother yelling over the noise to stay in the doorway. The younger two had been sleeping under the window and I threw myself over them expecting the panes to shatter at any moment. The house lurched and shuddered as though God himself was slapping the side of the building. There was no rhythm to the motion, no rocking sensation you sometimes get with smaller shudders. The earth just violently assaulted us: bang, bang, BANG!

As I lay there the panic subsided and I began taking in what was going on around us. I could hear the furniture bouncing on the floor in the living room. I could hear Emily fighting for balance with Bella in the doorway and praying aloud. I could hear Juliet and Millie telling me they were scared. The power had now died and it was pitch black. I then heard the bookshelf tumble to the ground with it’s heavy contents spilling across the floor. And I thought of my son.

In the midst of all this our boy was elsewhere. Out of reach and we were helpless to protect him. I did what any parent would do for their child in danger. I cried out to God for mercy and protection. Emily continued to pray in the doorway, for protection and for an end to the earthquake and I prayed the rawest prayer of my life for God to look after my son.

The pounding then began to ease. The room slowly stopped moving and the world was finally still again. It was absolutely black, punctuated only by the amber flash of the hazards from our car outside. In the distance I could hear other car alarms crying. I crawled off the bed and felt my way to the wardrobe where I’d stored a flashlight for such an emergency. Emily was soothing the kids on the bed while I checked we still had four walls and a roof. Most of the furniture had moved but the house was intack. Somewhere in my head I thought of water being a priority in a disaster and began filling the bath. We then agreed that we would get to Jack no matter what was going on outside. We threw on what clothes we could find and took the kids to the car.

I was also very concerned about a tsunami. Boxing Day 2004, Samoa 2009 and Chile 2010 had all raised my awareness of the threat of tsunamis. A lot of Cantabrians like to dismiss the likelihood of a tsunami in Christchurch due to the aquatic shelf off the coast of the city. I wasn’t prepared to take the chance, nor did I want to be fighting traffic should a tsunami warning be raised. As soon as we had Jack, we were getting the hell out of dodge.

More soon.

So I may not be the most prolific of bloggers. But I’ll be damned if I couldn’t walk away from this site. Where’d I go?

Sometime over the new year I was reflecting on the previous decade and trying to decide how to sum up those 10 years in a single blog post. I realised there’s been an emergence of Generation Me. With the acceptance of the internet into our mainstream lifestyles we’ve come to embrace our voyeuristic tendencies. No longer are we working to create a 15 minutes of fame. We’re now content with our 10 seconds infamy. From blogging, to YouTube, to Facebook, to Twitter. We’re laying out our virtual laundry in the vain hope that someone, somewhere, and of some influence, will be impressed enough to make us the next internet phenomena. Phew.

I realised that I was embracing this trend myself. I began collecting a number of draft blog posts that I wasn’t writing for anyone but myself. Who was I trying to impress? Ultimately, I chose to retreat from the digital cloud and focus on Real Life™. I thoroughly recommend a taste of good clean real life to everyone, it’s quite addictive.

So, we fast forward to couple of weeks ago when I caught up with an old friend. We exchange rudimentary small talk when I realised they weren’t aware of a fairly significant recent event in our lives. I now had a reason to blog. To share about the Canterbury earthquake and our experience with friends and family scattered the world over. I want to share about the other events in our lives, our family holidays, lifestyle changes, my ever expanding waste line.

I hope you life what I have to say…

Mike B, Juliet’s godfather dropped in to visit for a month between his law papers. Fun times to be had in one of the wettest June’s I’ve seen in a while.

Isabella’s First Communion

Rugby season kicks off

It’s party time!

A family day out in Christchurch. Children’s Day at the Groynes.

Pop passed away on Saturday. He’d faced a real uphill battle recovering from his broken hip in August. He’s now at peace.

Ken Matthews was a prominent figure in my early childhood. He features a lot in my memories of growing up on the farm in Australia. Then we moved away and was absent until I got married in 2001. By then I was living in England and had taken an interest in our family history. I visited the village where Pop was born and grew up. I could now see the places where is childhood adventures were carried out (such as the accidental detonation of a pit of unexploded Luftwaffe bombs near Nailsea - our little secret aye Pop?)

After Nana passed away in 2007, I knew I had to take advantage the time I would get with Pop when we returned to NZ. We only got to see him for 4 weeks around Juliet’s baptism. But it was time well spent. Pop talked of how we should appreciate our time together as a family. He was a man of little regret - but longed to be with his wife again.

And so you are. Rest in peace Pop. Thank you for all you gave.

• What’s mine is mine
• What’s yours is mine
• What’s theirs is mine

Juliet reached the age many parents dread this weekend. She’s two years old and loving it. Our little one is now older than Millie was when we emigrated to NZ. How time flies.

Her character is coming out in spades now. She has a great affection for her family, dolls and “chippies”. A strong sense in fashion. And a desire to get stuck into whatever her brother and sisters are doing.

We love you Lulu. Don’t ever change.

Moving the blog to a new home. The old one will remain on Wordpress as an archive. This here is a fresh start…