This morning it was time to try VoIP via a Telecom Hotspot to call home. I walked up to the Sierra Cafe around 7 am to use the hotspot there. They were open, but the music was playing loudly. I tried siting outside, but the road noise was almost as loud. I asked the barista if they could please turn down the music. They did...but their half volume is about a 10. I gave up.

 

I walked around the corner to see if there was a quiet spot in range of the hotspot and came upon the Mason Centre, a conference hall. There was a guy at the door who asked me if I was attending the breakfast. What breakfast? They were putting on a breakfast presentation for travel agents. I said no, but could I come in and use the chairs in the lobby cafe.

 

No problem. So I sat down and powered on. It turned out that the centre had its own Telecom Hotspot, so there was no problem connecting. As I called Ellen, I realized that, here in an empty lobby, there was still background music. Ellen said it sounded like I was in a disco and I sounded tinny. I think the headset I have isn’t the best.

 

Maybe the next tack is to pull the bongo up in front of a hotspot, close it up and pull the curtains and try in its relative quiet.

 

I’d use the e-phone card that we’d used in the past, but they seem to have changed the policy and calls from a pay phone cost 50c/min instead of 5c/min.

 

I as it was already 10am, when I finished with the Internet access, I decided to stay at Takapuna another day. Just after I paid and moved the Bongo to a nicer spot, my colleague, Paul, called. We are trying to get together to work on the future plans for our company. Now that Paul is back, Peter is off to Pauanui. Hopefully, we can meet by the end of the week.

 

This afternoon, I took a ride along the coast through the suburbs called the Eastern Bays, out to Brown’s Bay. I think they are called the Eastern Bays, because if they called them the Eastern Hills, they wouldn’t have attracted settlement. The bays are very small, the hills between them much larger.

 

I finally saw Comet McNaught this evening. It wasn’t very bright in the ambient light if the city, but the tail was huge. I couldn’t fit the entire length of it in the view of my 8x binoculars.