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1176 days ago

Armchair travel to many countries

Bupa Fergusson Retirement Village

Virtual reality technology has allowed residents to see the world from their armchairs.

A group of residents in Bupa Hugh Green Care Home were amazed by an immersive experience recently, donning headsets for a virtual reality tour of Egypt, India, Italy and Croatia.

The virtual travel tour is in HD, 4K and is part of a technology trial for the care home. The care home activity team talking the residents through the accompanying narrative.

The technology is from SilVR, specialising in education using virtual reality through 360º photos, sound and videos. The headset can provide a vast library selection of locations and interests to choose from.

Residents were guided through Cairo’s Great Sphinx of Giza, the Hawa Mahal Jaiur in India, and the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.

General Manager, Ian Dunthorne says the technology initiative has become popular worldwide with care homes due to lockdowns restricting travel.

“Our residents, with and without cognitive impairment, have found this to be an amazing journey. Reminiscing of their own past travel trips can trigger conversation during and after the VR as a shared experience or on their own.”

After the session, specialty cups of tea were shared from countries the residents had visited. This capped off their virtual reality travel trip from the comfort of their care home lounge.

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Poll: Could we live without public bins?

The Team from Neighbourly.co.nz

Many public rubbish bins are being removed by councils due to the large costs of regularly emptying them. Do you think we can adapt and live without them?

Type 'Not For Print' if you wish your comments to be excluded from the We Say You Say column of your local paper.

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Could we live without public bins?
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1599 votes
8 days ago

Are you a first home buyer?

The Team Reporter from Stuff

Hello!
Are you a first home buyer? Is your mortgage going up and up with rising interest rates and you’re now struggling to make ends meet? Have you lost the ability to save any extra cash?

We’re reaching out from the Tova show, the flagship weekly politics podcast on Stuff, as we prepare a special episode on the interest rate crunch and how it’s affecting Kiwis - we’d love to hear your stories.

Please comment below if you would like to share your story, or email tova@stuff.co.nz. We give you our commitment to treat your experience with sensitivity and care.

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1 day ago

Upper Hutt Rates Increases.

Paul from Trentham

Please excuse if I am posting this where is shouldn't be. Admins, do remove this if its not appropriate.

I have not done anything like this before so please excuse if my wording isn't quite right.


As most of us are aware the Upper Hutt City Council have proposed to raise their Rates by near on 20% each year over the next 3 years.

If your UHCC Rates are around $2500 per year, after the 3 years of increases they will be approximately $4300 which equals an extra $35ish per week. This will not only hit homeowners, rentals, hirage of venues etc but will be impacting the community as the costs will be passed on with such large increases over a short period of time.

As I am outraged about this, I have created a petition on change.org to hopefully be able to show the council how many are not for these massive increases in a short period of time.

If you would like to support this petition please go to the link and add your voice.

www.change.org...

Thanks in advance.