Telecom tree

On Saturday night, I dragged my sweetie into town to see what is known as the Telecom tree. He will loudly proclaim that it's not a tree but a crane with lights on it, but I say that anything with 37500 fairy lights on it is the ultimate in cool.

This is the first year the Telecom tree has been constructed in Wellington. Apparently there are 16 million possible colour combinations and it took a week to erect. (I forget how many people were involved - there are information boxes lit up around the base of the tree where you can find out more facts.) Beneath the tree are dozens of bean bags, so you can find a comfortable spot, lie back, and look up at all the lights. There are also boxes where you can leave gifts for charity; I sure hope they don't get 'opened' by anyone other than those they are intended for.

We tried out the fireworks setting on my sweetie's camera, exposing the lens for ten seconds before capturing the image - a tripod or stand is essential. Here is one of the successful shots:

Telecom tree

Around the base of the tree are four old-style telephone boxes. Each of these houses a free Santa hotline, where you can let him know what you want to find under your own tree.

Santa line telephone box

We also took a couple of videos. I was going to post a short one tonight, where you can see some of the colour changes, but the option for uploading video seems to have disappeared from my menu bar. We also took a longer video, about a minute long, and I'd like to experiment in iMovie to see if I can add a soundtrack to it, but that will be another night's project.