Hello Everyone a report from University

Greetings one and All. It is I Gowan James Ditchburn and I am here to tell you I am still alive. Well I think I am an over-long discussion with some philosophy students may make me rethink that.

Anyway this is where I live :-D. Okay it is not pretty (an understatement perhaps). This is Huia Residence a former nurses home (not nursing home) built in 1969 in the then favoured style... the same one everyone hates today.

Behold the brutalist beauty...

it holds 321 residents... which seems odd as I would have thought a brutalist architect would have despised such a humorous number and gone for something well even and possibly a multiple of 10. Then again renovations could have taken place to accommodate this number.

Now for where I learn/work/read the news (that is how I procrastinate... it is rather depressing). The Architecture and Planning building. AKA the longest running joke in the university because it is an architectural disaster.

This is literally the only image I could find, not a surprise

Now for all of you out there who love pictures of highways here is a picture I am pretty sure is taken from our studio room. Studio is our special place we share with the second year students and unlike other courses where that would mean building a stadium to house more than 1-2 thousand people all the first and second year planning students would just about form a Roman century. there is around 35 second years and 45 first years.

Can you spot Huia???

Well your probably wondering what I have been up to...

No modelling I am afraid. Although I am sure the owner of the corner shop has been stalking me as aircraft kitsets have magically appeared in her shop in recent days. including a 1/144 scale A380.
BUT
This semester I shall be making models although at a much smaller scale than what I am used to. But with access to lazer cutters and 3D printers I will be getting close to the cutting edge tech for our hobby.

So what have I been doing?

Well in halls I have made lots of friends some of whom have left us sadly because they did not pass or quit their courses. Tonight I shall take part in a quiz and I shall probably be studying (well I have to do it at some point).

In University the list of amazing things I have learnt is so long I shall not be able to cover it. For those of you who forgot I am taking a Bachelor of Urban Planning (Honours) or BUrbPlan(Hons). Yep there is no denying that the degree I hope to achieve has a ridiculously long name. As you would expect this means I have to cover a lot of things but even I was taken aback by the shear range of topics. For instance in this year alone I have an economics, a law, an urban issues (ecology), and visual literacy paper on top of my two studio papers, the introduction paper (which itself covered a range of topics) and a general education paper (I chose statistics).

Despite being somewhat overwhelmed I am enjoying every minute the things we cover are all highly relevant to the world we live in. Although at times it is depressing to hear about how many problems there are and how it is so hard to overcome them, climate change just wont go away, it is with a certain sense of pride that we carry on, knowing we will one day be at the front line combating these issues.

well that's about it from me.

Oh and if you want to have some help planning a miniature city please get in touch :-D it's what I love to do. I'll make sure your city is well laid out and would be a joy to live in! Just so you can bombard it and have tanks roll through it streets.

Off to University. the beggining of a new journey

well I'm off very soon actually. on the 23rd of February I move up into my accommodation up in Auckland and on the 3rd of March I will begin my 4 year course in Urban Planning. I'll have to update my profile about me as well by the looks of it.

Sorry for not being active recently in truth it's been over a month since I painted anything, my mind is elsewhere and Oronegro has been put on hold. I will return! that much I can say, perhaps at the university I can join a club and maybe do some painting. but not for a while will I do anything substantial that much is for sure.

apparently I am not following anyone according to blogger which is annoying as I wanted to see some of what I have missed. also I cancelled my storage plan with Google so I have no idea if or when photo's uploaded onto the extra space will be deleted. again a real shame and not one I am happy about. I hope to get to view some of your blogs again. I hope also to one day revive Oronegro perhaps in a different way, perhaps focusing more on the realistic elements than the fictional ones. But most of all I want to keep in this hobby! I have loads of models, figures and kits that need to be made and one day I will come and put them together and paint them up.

so this is not goodbye although perhaps for the short term. certainly it feels like I have said goodbye after walking out the door with all these weeks of inactivity. So to leave you I shall just put together a small collection of images that cover my time here.

Me, Miles and Trent respectively on our trip up to the Pinnacles.

me last year when I got the principals award

the Leopard 2 A6 my favorite tank, one of my favorite models also

sunrise of table mountain in the Coromandel

a recent get together of all Oronegrean forces

the fearsome blue T-90A a cool tank

some 18th century Oronegro  stuff, fun and a nice break from Modern Oronegro

the ships Anne, Paul and Peter, names shared both by some of my family members and followers of my blog

the mighty pirate ship the Abigail

named after my sister

who is also in this photo, she is enjoying her first few weeks of high school right now

My dog Oscar enjoying one of his walks. I'll miss taking him out everyday, when I am at university

one of the many print outs I did for my projects

my attempts at sculpting

The Germans

an outdoor game that I played what seems like an eternity ago

my first sculpt

one of my first war-games and one that made it onto the blog... solo play sadly as I only played 1 game with another person and I was on their side as they had no clue what to do.

Argentina! this trip is what lead to Oronegro certainly. it would not have been a South/Central American imagi-nation otherwise

some of the people who went on the trip. many of them are off to University this year also.

the Teatro Colon, very beautiful place

sunset on las Pampas

Me, in a tree, as you can see

another sunset  shot in Argentina

and one more Argentina photo for good measure.

ah the tournament grounds I made so long ago!

one of the knights

some Russian knights as well

My very first 1/72 scale model! (which I painted)

some Romans

A better shot of my first photo on the blog

my first blog photo!

 Well that's all for... well I don't really know how long. I wish you all the best of luck and hopefully the blogs I follow shall reappear on my blog roll.

So long
farewell
have fun
live well
I'm off
goodbye

I will return
in my own time

goodbye everyone, blogger let me enter a kind and helpful community and although I do not know when I shall rejoin it, let me say that each member of the community I met so far has been great to know and I regret not getting to know you all better and seeing more of your work.

but it's not like me to end on a sour not so here's some Monty Python to brighten up the mood

incidentally this is my 160th post as well