What a complete treat. Today I got to work so very much later than even I usually manage for a Monday. Even so, my bus still made better time than most cars trying to negotiate a citywide blackout that stopped all the traffic lights at intersections. I had a fabulous time after getting off my bus, being blown down Symonds Street all the way to work. Seeing umbrella after umbrella blowing insideout as people battled hopelessly against wind that loves to destroy such unsuitable shelters.

I love rainy days - sure, it's nice inside, but it's fun outside in the weather too and the blustery day made me happy. What a great start to my day.

Work's automated doors opened, and the lifts worked so, unlike most of the companies in Auckland City today, ours was business as usual. But no one had the mind to work - well, not whole heartedly anyway. There were patterings of talk about the adventures different people had on the way to the office: traffic jams, seawater crashing over the barriers on the motorway, winds buffeting cars. How lucky we were, I offered, to be in such a critical building that it was backed up with generators so that even Mother Nature could not stand in the way of the very important work of updating intranet pages.

Yeh, right.

Snug emailed to say he was being sent home for the rest of the day. Some in other offices never really got started - Christchurch, for instance; most workers there couldn't even get to work for the snow. Txt messages about AUT and inner city businesses closing for the day sending students and workers back home. We kept working - meeting - keeping those wheels a'turnin' until thank god and at last we got the call "all non-client facing workers to go home"

Yes!

So off home I went on a bus that shuttled me back out of the city. For all the news reports on television and the internet, I didn't see any "chaos" but then again, I was on a bus and no one really argues with a Howick and Pakuranga bus that wants to get through a set of non-functioning lights. Getting back home by 12:30pm and the power came back on 15minutes later - I was a happy camper to get a bonus day off work and the final episode of Firefly to watch from the boxed set.

See? this is how Mondays should be all the time!

PS: I've heard it actually did snow in Auckland. Brief flurries mid morning - I thought it was extra low mist n' cloud, and horizontal rain but for those closer, it was actually snow - a rare sight in the City of Sails, that's for sure.

Outage in Auckland [NZ Herald]
Real Snow Day in Canterbury [NZ Herald]

Please note: Telecom's phone lines remained open and didn't fall over in a screaming pile of unpreparedness. They have a backup plan for such outages that worked so well, no one even noticed. Unbundle *that* Transpower.