MY FAVOURITE PLACES: ANGIE JUDGE

Angie Judge is the CEO of Dexibit, a big-data the future. Here are some of her favourite stops around New Zealand.

I tend to notice weird things when I walk into a museum. I’m lucky that I get to travel the world visiting them for a living, but sometimes get caught up in my work a bit much – my phone is filled with too many pictures of things like WiFi signage and not enough breathtaking art! In New Zealand we are also so spoiled with incredible cultural treasures, it’s easy to forget how lucky we are. When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to the Auckland War Memorial Museum every week to watch the haka performed in the Māori Court. I would take off my shoes and go into the meeting house Hotunui to run my hands over the carvings. In so many museums you can’t touch anything, so one of my favourite things about the Auckland museum is the textures you can feel. Auckland Museum is unique in that it’s not just a museum – it’s a memorial too, opened in 1929 to commemorate New Zealand’s loss of over 18,000 people in WWI. Walk in the front doors on the northern side, look up and you’ll see a stunning stained glass lead light ceiling. The design incorporates the coat of arms of all the British territories during the war and the bronze wreath that accompanies it combines kawakawa with rosemary to represent mourning and remembrance. If you climb the stairs to the top, you can feel the cold Sicilian marble slabs and the bronze leaf etching of the honour roll under your fingertips – quite the contrast to the warm wood of Hotonui below. Before you go, grab a coffee at their stylish new 19`29 Espresso Bar. Over in the heart of the city between Kitchener St and Lorne St is another great sensory experience – a little known beautiful city space recently renamed Te Ha o Hine Place, meaning ‘pay heed to the dignity of women’. It was built to celebrate the centenary of women’s suffrage. Notably, this year marked the 125-year