Fantastic weekend on Great Barrier Island, an island just off the coast of Auckland. Started off badly when, after an extremely choppy, two-hour ferry ride on Friday, we arrived at the unsheltered port to torrential rain with no sign of our backpacks. We were all herded behind barriers, hair plastered down the sides of our faces with the rain getting heavier, children crying and people shouting: it was like we were prisoners of war!
Anyway, we all awoke in the Stray Possum Lodge in the same...
Sadly no further mice sightings but I haven’t forgotten and will set about my task with renewed enthusiasm when we come back from the Great Barrier Island. We’re staying at the Stray Possum Lodge over the long weekend - Aucklanders get a “statutory” holiday to celebrate its anniversary - and are leaving straight after work! It’s been a while since the whole gang has had a holiday together and it’ll be good to get away from tired evenings in watching Grosse Pointe, Shortland Street and all the...
I saw a mouse! Where? There on the stair. Where on the stair? Right there… Looks like we’ve got a small family of mice/rats living behind our crusty cooker and under the cupboards. Joanna, me and now Helen have seen the little bastards scrambling over the cooker rings and behind the cupboards. This is excellent news because it means I can buy a mouse trap and kill them! More realistically, given that I live with two vegetarian/non-red meat animal lovers, they’ll have to be evicted in a caring...
Look it’s me! I’ve finally managed to make my own cartoon character representation using the StorTrooper generator. Send me yours and I’ll put it up here.
I’ve also put a photo up of Rich, Dan and Stu at Kelly Tarlton’s, an underwater observatory museum with penguins and sharks and things. As you can see, they’re quite literally being eaten by a giant orca whale and are now dead. Honest.
Haven’t posted in a while and am even starting to lag behind Stu in the weblog stakes. Must try harder. Suppose it’s a combination of working hard and not doing enough fun things. Not selling this post very well am I?!
Anyway, Sue and I went to Muriwai beach yesterday to see some beaches and cliffs where a huge gannet colony roosts. It’s only about half an hour away but Sue’s map-reading left much to be desired. Well, she’s only female. At least I got to see Auckland Harbour Bridge four times...
Seems like Auckland’s finally back at work now. Stu’s working for NZ Blood, Helen’s working in a fertility clinic (sadly, she’s not helping any young men to choke their chickens…), “Young Man” Rich is at the YMCA, Joanna occassionally works at an Irish pub in Parnell and Westaff Temp of November Sue’s the receptionist at the Kiwi Dairies HQ.
Sue’s now seems to have recovered from having half the mosquito population of New Zealand bite her last week. Rather stupidly (given her propensity to react...
A brief explanation of the photos:
This is the view from our hotel window in Bangkok. It was weird to see how the towers and skyscrapers were surrounded by shacks and huts with a freeway flying above it all to separate rich from poor.
This is our BUNAC group in front of one of the many temples in Bangkok. This was the day after we’d been to Pat Pong and it was ridiculously hot and sticky, hence our tired, miserable faces.
Bangkok has countless temples but this is one of the more sacred. Sadly...
First day back at work in the “real” new millennium. Very hard to get back into the routine this morning after a fantastic Christmas/New Year. Christmas Day itself wasn’t quite the anti-climax it threatened to be. It was in fact Sue who masterminded the whole lunch (eaten at five!) which included a Kumara mash (Maori vegetable, bit like a potato), an enormous turkey and no sprouts. Rather stupidly, Helen decided to buy me a super soaker with which I’ve annoyed everyone with with my hilarious...
The Internet’s full of strange people who put strange things into search engines. Here’s me thinking I’m reasonably interesting when I get a few visits in my stats only to discover it’s because people stumble on my page from Yahoo looking for things I’ve innocuously mentioned. Some top reasons for visiting my site are apparantly:Ladyboys(mentioned from when I was in Thailand)Schoolgirls(from a photo of Kel and Lou in fancy dress as schoolgirls)Kate(as if there aren’t millions on the...
MSN Messenger is a fantastic thing. Just by leaving myself logged in at work I’ve got back in contact with three lost mates whose Hotmail addresses I’d put into the system and found they were online too. Up pops a little window and I’m chatting to people on the other side of the planet. Amazing.
Something else that I’ve just discovered is travelblog.net, “a new weblog dedicated to breaking out of provincial mindsets.” In other words, a weblog for and about backpackers and travellers, with links...
Just finished reading The Stars’ Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry. Began with usual public school setting, class issues and young boys’ feelings but developed into a much darker story about jealousy and revenge. Began reading it on Sunday, lazing in the garden in the sun, and couldn’t put it down. Thoroughly recommended.
Dan’s suggested going to see Unbreakable tonight but, given that everyone’s largely skint and knackered, we’ll probably save ourselves for Fringe Ben’s party tomorrow night. We’ve...
It’s all winding down over here in the run up to Christmas. Everyone’s talking about their “summer break”, planning beach holidays between Christmas and New Year. I suppose it makes sense: take your annual holiday around the public holidays and then have more time left for the rest of the year. Just doesn’t feel right. Sue and I are going up to the Coromandel - a Pennisula in the Bay of Plenty - for a few days before New Year on our own. Well, when in Rome and all that…
Saw Charlie’s Angels on...
Sunburnt. Not hugely, because I did put sun cream on, but enough to get the nickname “beetroot” at work. The ozone layer’s so thin here that even when it’s cloudy you can get burnt - must remember to “slip, slop, slap” (slip on a shirt, slop on sun block and slap on a hat…)
Had a great weekend, however. We all went up to the Bay of Plenty on Saturday morning and stayed at Tauranga. Went hiking up Mount Maunganui, swam in the hot thermal pools, parasailed in the sea and drove around lots. The...
Hurrah! I’m back designing websites! Executive Taskforce want me to stay on until March and are paying me lots of cash and letting me re-design their corporate websites. Said yes, obviously. Sue’s now on a fixed term contract which makes things a lot more “secure” and we can start saving for travelling next year. Weather’s still bonkers: the sun’s shining, it’s lovely and hot but it’s December!
Had my first pint since leaving Britain, last night. And it was Kronenbourg! Fed up with “handles”...
New Zealand’s such a great place with lots of things to see and do but it’s easy to forget that the population’s only about three million people and so things aren’t quite on the same scale as back home. A case in point was Rainbow’s End, the “largest” theme park in the country. What they neglected to tell us what that it’s also the only theme park and about as big as one of Alton Towers’ car parks. It was great to be able to walk straight on to every ride but it was hard not to laugh at the...
Saw my first Premiership football last night: missing seeing football in the papers and on TV every day, even if Arsenal are doing crap at the moment. Was at the Cavalier, our nearest pub which is a ten minute walk away. We’re bang in the middle of cafe and restaurant land but in the arse end of nowhere as far as bars and pubs are concerned. Can’t really complain, though, because Ponsonby’s quite a funky place to live and there’s an off licence at the bottom of the road.
Might be going canyoning...
Had my first full week at Executive Taskforce and it’s going well. The work’s starting to build up and I’ve been given a few mini projects to complete which suggests they want me to stay longer. I’m still hoping to get some sort of website work after Christmas, but this’ll pay the rent in the mean time.
Had another fantastic weekend: Sue took me to Rangitoto Island on Saturday for my birthday “outing”. It’s a dormant volcano on the other side of the harbour and the island’s made entirely of lava...
Had an excellent weekend without even stepping into (and out of) a plane. Because of the weather we had to abandon any hope of skydiving, nevertheless, we instead went jet-boating up the rapids on a river at Taupo, went paddling in hot springs and saw the exploding mud pools and geysers of Rotorua and then went on to go lugeing. The last was by far the best: a gondola takes you to the top of a big hill onto which has been carved little roads on which you ride a buggy which freewheels all the way...
Sorry I haven’t written in a while but, since I left you, the job situation’s sorted. I start at “Tempforce” tomorrow doing databases. It’s not the web work I was looking for but they’ve promised to find something more exciting when my mini-project’s up. Also encouraging is a few design companies emailing me to say that they’d like to look at me in the new year. Sue’s muscled her way in to a receptionist job working for Kiwi Dairies, I think. Money at last!
We went to Waiheke Island on Sunday, a...
