Those who have visited it in the last week or so will have noticed this, but suggestions and feedback for more improvements is invited. Several people during the last triennium urged that the website be made more user-friendly.

There are a lot of documents and other information that the council is legally required to make publicly available and these include full council, council committee and community board meeting agendas/documents and minutes.

The agenda for the first Waikanae Community Board meeting of the new triennium next Tuesday evening is here.  Most of it consists of procedural matters which for a lot of the public is probably unexciting.  But be assured there is a wish list which members want to achieve within the next 3 years, and we will be working on it! As Iride said during the campaign, Waikanae has been just a blip on the radar for not only the KCDC but also the GWRC.

Remember that if you want to bring the board’s attention to something, WCB meetings are a great opportunity. Naturally, there have to be time limits on speakers but they apply to everyone, including members. In the interests of efficiency, if a previous speaker has already made the same points as you have, try to say something that doesn’t repeat them.

Finishing off in London

By Roger Childs

Outside the four grand slams this is the most important tournament of the year. Only the top eight ranked men’s players take part in the Barclays Indoor ATP Finals. Italian Matteo Berretini was the last to qualify and joined Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas as first timers in this prestigious event. Berrettini was the first Italian to qualify since 1975.

This year’s group came from eight different European countries, so there was no American, Australian, Brit or Canadian.

Zverev + Djokovic

The three all-time greats — Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal – were the top seeds and last year’s winner, Alexander Zverev, along with Austrian Dominic Thiem, were also back to make up the eight for 2019.

Top two seeds miss out

World number one Rafael Nadal has never won the tournament and won’t this year either. He won two of his round robin matches, but that was not enough to qualify.

Zverev and Tstispas are into the semis from his side of the draw. Meanwhile in the other group, Federer after having lost his first round-robin match to Thiem, beat Berrettini in two sets, then knocked out Djokovic 6-3 6-2 in a brilliant performance before a sell-out crowd.

So the semi finals match up

Federer and Tsitsipas
Zverev and Thiem

Actually, small pieces of driftwood.

(Thanks to Margaret Stevenson-Wright)

Earlier in the year Roger Childs supplied some photos of the new Christchurch Public Library, named Turanga (“site, foundation”), which opened in October 2018 and your editors made the visit ourselves this past week. To say we’re impressed is an understatement — it is a ‘wow experience’!  For Waikanae people it will be a cause of envy (and we figure it will be for Wellingtonians, too.)

As can be seen, it has five floors with extensive use of wood decor and the ‘tree’ in the bottom photo above reflects that. There are lots of spaces devoted to social meetings, discussions and presentations and as well as paper (books and magazines) there are several electronic information sources.  Being very central on the north side of Cathedral Square it compensates to some extent for the ruin of the Cathedral.

The ground floor includes a café with nice food.

Christchurch itself now has many new buildings, most of them with inspired architecture, although there are still plenty of vacant lots and it will still be years before the city’s rebuild is complete. Some of the old ‘English’ vestiges remain, but it is becoming one of newest cities on the globe.

It’s a standard greeting that’s been used by airlines across the world for decades, but Air Canada crew will part with tradition by no longer using “ladies and gentlemen” when greeting passengers on the aircraft.

In a major change to the airline’s on-board protocol, passengers will no longer be referred to as “ladies and gentlemen” or the French “mesdames et messieurs”.

Instead, crew will use gender-neutral greetings such as “good morning everybody” in a bid to be more conscious of gender fluid passengers.

Full article