Still no job and, although I’ve just had my third personnel agency interview in successive days with positive feedback and test results, it’s starting to piss me off. The only job I’ve (jokingly) been offered is sorting bottles of urine for some testing lab. That’s what it’s come to! Doesn’t help that Sue’s just started a month-long office job leaving me bored in the flat with only god-awful Kiwi TV for comfort.
Went to Te Papa, the free national museum, over the weekend. Throughly impressed...
I wonder what life would be like if I were Mr T? “You don’t hear nothin’ but your pea brain rollin’ around in your head!” (via Davezilla and Little Green Footballs)
Settling in to Welly. Sue and I have been badgering the many recruitment agencies with phone calls and emailed CVs and have a few positive leads. I’ll actually have to be a bit more mindful of what I write here though: in an interview at Lacey Lee on Tuesday my consultant had read this weblog and knew all about me! Bit unsettling but no harm was done and I think it helped him get a better picture of me. Sue’s got a day’s work this week and I’m crossing fingers about a few opportunities. Need...
Haven’t written in a week but that’s because we’ve been such busy bees. Napier, as I said, was a fab little town. We explored Art Deco buildings, played lots of mini golf (Sue, sadly, coming out on top by one pathetic stroke), visited the Mission wineries (partaking in an excellent Pinot Gris and Geburztraminer) and a small brewery. Left, spent one day in Palmerston North visiting the NZ Rugby Museum and arrived in our new home, Wellington, on Saturday.
Within five hours we’d found ourselves...
Can’t recommend White Island, New Zealand’s only active marine volcano, enough. The obvious comparison is that it was like walking on Mars. We were guided through drained sulpherous lakes past massive vents that shot out superheated invisible sulpher dioxide that created clouds that blocked out the sun. We saw green lakes, odour-less sluphur deposits and walked through the ruins of a mining company’s attempts to build a factory that had fallen victim to an eruption. You could tell it was a bit...
Moving on to Whakatane today after a good week in Rotorua. On Tuesday we went to the hot-water barium Polynesian spas - very relaxing, much like a really hot (44C) bath and apparantly good for you. Wasted Wednesday morning by getting up at 5.45am to see Arsenal getting knocked out of the Champions League but it meant that we could drive to Waiotapu Thermal Reserve to see the Lady Knox Geyser erupt at 10.15. Thought its regularity and accuracy was a bit strange and (sadly) it turned out that...
We had an unpleasantly stressful and eventful journey to our first “stop”, Rotorura, yesterday that included almost running out of petrol, being given a hire car with a radio/tape player that doesn’t work (for three weeks!) and broken/lost sunglasses. We’re staying at the Kiwi Paka YHA youth hostel along with a couple of coach-loads of schoolkids who generally enjoy running around and shouting at each other. Mental note to self: no more YHA youth hostels.
Rotorura’s a big town built on and...
Not much time to write (sorry). Have scanned some new photos in - scroll to the bottom of the page - and will write some explanations as soon as I can. Hopefully the filenames will give you some idea.
Where’s your Year Ending In One now, eh?!
Why do you always think of something witty and damning to say after the event? I’m unlocking the hostel door to my room at 7pm last night when this old woman with a German accent comes out of her room and says, “I would like to ask you to shut and open your door quietly please. No noise.” I shrug, she disappears and I go back down the corridor to find Sue and then return a couple of minutes later. The door swings close behind me, not noisily but...
Briefly back “home” at the City YHA in Auckland until Monday. Went down K-Road with Amy and Sue last night and discovered bars and clubs we’d aimlessly wandered past while living here which looked fantastic but which we were too knackered for. If only we’d seem them before, kind of thing. Had a lazy day at Starbucks and Victoria Park Market before we leave for Whitianga on Monday. Starting to get a bit tired of living out of a backpack and am really looking forward to working our way down to...
Didn’t get to swim with the dolphins after all but had an amazing day nonetheless. We were on a big jet boat tour and, although we found a couple of “pods” of dolphins, we couldn’t swim with them because there were baby dolphins in both and swimming with juveniles isn’t allowed. All the same Sue, Amy and I got to lie on the bow of the boat as the little scamps jumped out of the water at you, showing off, doing little jumps and spraying water at us. Apparantly they love it when you talk or...
The last thing the locals are prepared for in Paihia, the sub-tropical capital of the Bay Of Islands, is rain. There’s absolutely bugger-all to do here that doesn’t depend on sun and lots of it. So when we arrived on Saturday to be greeted by monsoon-like rains and winds it put an obvious dampener (arf) on things. Amy, Sue, Helen (who’d come up for her last few days in New Zealand) and I decided to press on regardless with our plan for a Bay cruise up to “The Hole in the Rock” despite the...
Sue and I have now moved back to the hostel we stayed in when we first came to Auckland. We’re even back on the same floor and it all feels very much like home. Only here until Saturday but we can now stay out late in the City without worrying about catching ferries home and walking up the Steepest Hill In The World. Probably. Helen’s also staying there and, with Joanna just up the road, most of the old Ponsonby gang are back in town.
Had a good last day at work: couple of drinks with everyone...
Not sure how regularly I’ll be able to update this beast in the future: finishing work tomorrow and so bang goes my 8-hours-a-day free Internet connection. Will of course endeavour to seek out Internet cafes wherever I am and keep updating but it won’t be quite so, erm, regular. Hopefully, though, this will mean I’ll get back to writing a “Travelblog” of things that happen as we actually travel, rather than what happens as we stay put in one place for five months…
Sue’s sister, Amy, arrives in...
I’m being temped out tomorrow afternoon by my consultant to North Shore hospital to “fix a website that’s been written in JavaScript rather than HTML”(?) Didn’t think it was worth correcting Barbara (an English ex-pat who in typical northern fashion calls a spade a spade) and it means I get to save the day and be a Web Hero ™ for an afternoon!
The parents have now left the country after their whirlwind ten-day visit. Sue and I took them for a bit of culture to Auckland Museum and to see Nurse...
Long time since I’ve written but it’s been a busy week. My parents flew in from home on a whirlwind holiday that includes Singapore and Australia. Sue and I have been full-time tour guides and trip planners since they arrived but it’s been fun showing them around “our” city. Had a couple of days off work and took them to Waiheke and Rangitoto by ferry and up the Sky Tower. They’ve hired a campervan and are staying on nearby Takapuna Beach (playground of the rich, apparantly) and have taken...
Sue and I have now packed up and moved just across the Hauraki Gulf to Devonport. We’re already missing our little “family” and it was really quite sad waving Helen off on her coach to Wellington on Saturday. Joanna’s living in a swanky appartment with a dishwasher and Dan’s somewhere in the North Island. Now I’ve only got Sue to torment!
Had a fun last Friday night together watching the Auckland Blues beat the Christchurch Crusaders at Eden Park before going to the Rose and Crown and the...
Nearly had a nightmare hair-cut last night. I had a feeling something was wrong when I walked into the same barbers I’d been going to for months and none of the usual male barbers were there. An eastern-european woman motioned for me to sit down and then proceeded to take five minutes doing up the hairdressing gown thing, dropping her scissors and combs. Wasn’t sure if she was on something or just odd. She began to painfully slowly cut my hair, or rather picking at it, leaving huge clumps,...
First of all I must underline how much we’re all missing our Richard. Poor Big Rich is feeling alone and neglected travelling on his own and has pointed out to me that I’m a bastard for not missing him in a written form. Fair point. So, Richard, if you’re reading this, start pulling some of the 18 year old totty on your bus and stop being such a big girl’s blouse.
Secondly, Sue and I are no longer homeless! We’re moving into the cool bedsitty flat in Devonport we visited yesterday downstairs...
Sue and I are currently facing homelessness as of Saturday. We’d arranged with Fringe Ben to move into his 12-bedroom house at the end of February. We weren’t overly concerned when he announced that because he was leaving Auckland he was handing the responsibility of the house onto his housemate, Conor. We should’ve been concerned, though, as since then Conor has also left town and the current incumbents have just let out the last room in the house, unaware of what had gone on before. ...
