Archive for August, 2009

Can you believe that smile is 30 years old!

This weekend saw Shona turn 30. Happy birthday Shona! To celebrate the two of us and a couple of our friends, Tom (Rick Astley) and Sarah hired a chalet in Ohakune and planned to do some skiing. Okahune is a small town 287km north of Wellington (about a 4 hour drive on a good day) and a regular stop for anyone wanting to ski on the impressive Mount Raupehu.

All four of us were insured on the rental car which meant we could all take it in turns to drive and break up the journey. The first leg of the journey was driven by Sarah, before I took over about 2hrs in. Thats when it struck again. What am I talking about? The Curse of Shona’s birthday, that’s what I am talking about! To understand I will take you back to 2006 on Highway 31 between Canberra and Sydney. We had planned to spend the weekend in Sydney to celebrate Shona’s birthday and on the way Shona was pulled over for speeding on a road wih no one on it.  Now 3 years on, the curse struck again only this time it was me. I was pulled over for going 70.21 mph in a 62.14 mph zone and the present I received was an $80 fine and 20 demerit points. I didn’t go as far as saying ‘it’s a fair cop guv’ner, just write the ticket and I shall be on my merry way’, but that was the jist of the conversation. The policeman in question did have a sense of humour though because as I gave my occupation as an Application Developer, he did say ‘Well you will know how to pay this online then’. Good one. Happy Birthday Shona.

Winner! We found a geocache.

Anyway, onwards with the journey. Our next stop was in Sanson where we stopped and had a coffee in the local Church. And it is here where I discovered Geocaching. I had been playing with Rick Astley’s iphone when I discovered an app called geocaching. I innocently asked what it was for. Rick looked at Sarah with a look of horror, and worryingly Sarah came out with ‘well you are going to have to tell them now’. Rick’s face started to blend in with his red hair and I began to wonder if I wanted to know the answer now. As Rick went on to explain, geocaching is (from website) Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache. Got it, good. Not that embarrassing, in fact part of it I think is pretty cool. It worries me that users of the website refer to the normal public as ‘Muggles’ but other than that it is a pretty neat secret thing to do. The fact that Rick regards at as his dirty little secret provided me with plenty of good banter for the weekend. In fact Rick took us to one geocache on the second day of our trip, it was near a large carrot.

Looking Good

So on to Ohakune. Ohakune is smack in the carrot growing centre of New Zealand and is basically a town set up to cater for people who want a place to stay when they are skiing. It is full of accommodation and restaurants. Our accommodation for the weekend was to be ‘Rocky Mountain Chalets’ see here . Really nice, reasonably priced. I find myself saying a lot of complimentary things about most accommodation in New Zealand. I have lost count of the times I use the sentence ‘Well the people are just not trying to rip you off here, are they?” This was another of those occasions. We didn’t really spend much time in Ohakune over the weekend but we did spend both evenings at the Clyde Street Bistro. The setting and food were superb and on the first night when the waitress asked if we would mind waiting 30 mins for our main course, we were happy to wait. However, this turned from 30 mins, to an hour, to an hour and a half. We were in good company though and keeping entertained…. one bottle of wine turned to two and it was at this point (with an early start to head to the ski fields) that food would have been a very welcome sight. Food arrived about an hour and three quarters after we sat down, and thankfully was excellent. So we were encouraged to return the following evening, in the hope the food would be a bit quicker arriving. It was, although the problem was on the drink side. Clearly concerned for our weekly alcohol unit intake, when bringing our bottle of wine to the table and the waitress was about to pore, Rick noticed there seemed to already be a third missing from it. The waitress was obviously in a bit of a daze and just brought us the bottle from the fridge used to pore glasses of wine. Unfortunately for her we were not the table to be scrimped on for alcohol content – this was Shona’s 30th after all.

View at the top

On the Saturday we woke early with sore heads and hit the road for our first experience of skiing. Destination: Whakapapa ski field. Only Rick had any skiing experience amongst us. We had kindly been lent some ski outfits by another couple who ski a lot more frequently. So we looked the part if nothing else. As we had no previous experience we had booked a 2 hour lesson when we arrived. Lesson one is stopping. I picked it up quite quickly but Shona had a few teething problems and was beginning to get embarrassed by not being able to stop. This was soon relieved when a tall chap in our group lesson disappeared off accelerating down the hill at a rate of knots and slowly disappeared into the low lying cloud. The instructor had no intention of going after him and simply shrugged his shoulders and continued with the lesson; he obviously prefers the ’sink or swim’ method of instructing. After the lesson, the most amusement came as we all looked on as Sarah careered off and headed straight for a rock face. None off the group saw this until we all looked up and saw Sarah laying on her back. In an act of chivalry (or so I thought) Rick skied over to her, but instead of helping her up, just pulled out his camera and started taking photos to send home. Our Ski pass included a chair lift ride to the top of Mount Raupehu. If you ever get the opportunity to go, do this. If not only for the view, but also for the hot chocolate served in the cafe at the top – it was absolutely magic! I loved skiing and will definitely be going back (even though my calf muscles are now killing me). I think I will manage to convince Shona to go as well.

The 'Special School' go horse riding.

On Sunday, after Shona had opened her presents (I got her a dSLR camera if you’re interested) we headed off on another first for me. Horse Trekking. I have never sat on a horse before. I have many reasons for this, the main one being that I would feel sorry for the horse carrying my weight. Our guides were ‘Lazy H’ – a very nice couple who ran the business from their home and we arrived as they were just finishing saddling up the horses. I will admit now that if it wasn’t Shona’s birthday, and there wasn’t another bloke present (damn ego!), I would have bottled out on sight of the horses. After sticking my hand up to the question ‘who is the least experienced’ I was mounted first onto my horse ‘Bronson’. Apparently he was the most gentle one. Once I was on the horse, the guide shouted ‘we ride Western Style here’. I replied “Do we! I ride any style this horse wants me too”. The trek took us over some classic New Zealand landscape i.e. hills, steep ones! The horses were fresh and wanted to canter at any given opportunity. I was, as they say, ‘bricking it’ and when just before the end of the ride Bronson decided he wanted to head down a sheer drop, I decided that was enough and asked to get off.

Happy Birthday

After the ride the other three had a conversation about how nice the views were at the top of the hills. I didn’t see them. The whole way round I was so busy concentrating just on holding on that I forgot to look at the views. I can’t see my self doing this again in a hurry.

All that’s left to tell you about are the Kebabs we had for Shona’s birthday meal. There is a kebab house in a place called Bulls which serves up some delicious Kebabs that are well known and a must stop for anyone travelling through. What a treat for Shona’s birthday, no one can say I didn’t treat her!

So the Ashes is finally over. Thank goodnes for that, I can finally turn up for work without looking like a Zombie. So in an effort to fill the massive gap left in my sport viewing life we headed off to the TSB Arena to watch some basketball. This was the first time I had ever been to watch a professional basketball game. The Tall Blacks were playing their local rivals Austrailia (also known by their nickname the ‘Boomers’) in the second part of the two match Oceania series. The Boomers had won the first game by 7 points, so for the Tall Blacks to take the series they would need to beat the Boomers by a greater margin.

After mustering all of my self control to refrain myself from standing up and singing Jerusalem during the Austrailian national anthem, the Tall Blacks treated us to a Haka (recently voted the number one pop culture icon in NZ, see here). Not quite as impressive as when the All Blacks performed it but still good to see.

Photo Courtesy of Rick Astley

As anyone who has read my blog before will know, I have now been to many sporting events during our time in New Zealand. The one thing I will never get used to is the selling of items of food which vendors have the audacity to call a hot dog but which is really deep fried pork on a lollipop stick with a layer of batter around the outside. This was the worst so far. In a classic Catherine Tate style, “Listen to this, it was a sausage! On a stick! With batter! And they had the audacity to call it a Hot Dog! A Hot Dog, well I said to Shona, the dirty b***ards.”

Anyway, what a sporting week the Australians have had. Not only did the Wallabies lose to the All Blacks at the weekend in the Rubgy, then the Baggy Greens lose the Ashes to the mighty England cricket team, but now they also lost here at the Basketball as well. This was all the more remarkable as it was not only by the highest ever margin (100 – 78) between the two teams, but the Tall Blacks hadn’t beaten them for the 7 years previous.

Let’s spare a thought for the Aussies.

Thoroughly enjoyed the game and would definitely do it again. Below is a small highlights package of the game (weirdly in Russian).

Here is an article featuring Shona at the Wellington Board Game society (the Paul mentioned in the article was me) . You can see the back of Shona’s head in the picture http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/the-girls-guide/2774475/Welly-round-up-and-CF5 .If you don’t follow the link at the bottom here is the video, very funny.

The ‘A’ league is upon us again, and local team The Wellington Phoenix have signed up a couple of Englishmen for their forward line. One of the new players, Chris Greenacre signed from Tranmere Rovers, scored on his debut this weekend. Here is how he described New Zealand in a recent interview, “it’s like England’s Lake District but better”. Thanks Chris!  In response to Chris’ naivety I will be interspersing this blog entry with ‘interesting’ facts about New Zealand. These will be in Italics.

The top of Te Mata

Well it is official we have now been residents of the southern hemisphere for over 6 months (see mum, I told you it would fly by!).  I know it is a cliché but it does feel like only yesterday that we boarded flight NZ38 to Auckland travelling via Hong Kong. I remember the questions buzzing around my head when we were flying over.  Are we doing the right thing? Why are we doing this, we haven’t even been to New Zealand? Will I get a job? Can we afford this? What is the beer like there?

From the beginning Shona fully immersed herself into the New Zealand way of life and began to enjoy the benefits of living in Wellington. For me, it has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Looking back to when we arrived (what you might call the honeymoon period) I remember thinking everything was brilliant. “Look at that mountain, brilliant!”, “Look at that tree, what a tree!”,  “Look at that field, I know there is nothing in it and it is just the same as every field in England, but it is brilliant isn’t it????”.  Then began a period of what I like to call the ‘let’s compare everything to England’.

“The world’s first commercial bungy (or bungee) jump took place in Queenstown, NZ in 1988.”

So, you can’t compare the beer. Beer in New Zealand is pretty rubbish. The brewers obviously try hard, but what they end up with is usually just something that is just fizzy and sweet.  When it comes to choosing a beer, all you have to choose from are beers which are either fizzier or sweeter than the one you chose before.  Saying that, you do feel a bit of an idiot when you complain about the state of beer in this country to a Kiwi. “Now listen, usually I like my beer served warm. You got that. Warm! Good. More than that – it has to be flat! None of that fizz. Got it? This cold fizzy stuff is shit”.

“Many of New Zealand’s stone fruit crops, such as peaches and apricots are grown in Central Otago.”

In my ‘let’s compare everything to England’ period,   I found myself getting quite down.  According to wikiAnswers,  3 out of the  6 most stressful things you can do in life are ‘Moving House’, ‘Changing Job’ and ‘loneliness’. I am not counting the last one, but I did not expect to feel the level of stress I felt over the other two. I became resentful towards Wellington, which was simply idiotic, I love it now! This is such a cool city. I could not recommend it highly enough. Every night that Shona works late, I find myself heading down to the harbour and looking out across the water. To my right are a load of sailing boats moored in the harbour, a little further is the stylish/fashionable Oriental bay and the impressive Mount Vic behind it. I can see Lower Hutt city and street lights from Petone  in the distance, across the other side of the harbour. To my left is Wellington CBD and the lights from the few office blocks which light up the hills behind them. Behind me is Mac’s brewery and then the faint noise that emanates from Courtney place (the home of lots of bars and restaurants).  I find myself spending hours taking it all in. It is pretty spectacular.

It's Teletubby Land!

This weekend saw Shona and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. The 5th wedding anniversary is of course known as the ‘Wooden Anniversary’ where traditionally partners give each other wood (please insert your own joke here, because I have been told that it would be too crude for me to actually write it down myself).

“The Institute of Geological & Nuclear Sciences locates about 10,000 to 15,000 earthquakes in New Zealand each year. Most are too small to be felt and we only know they occurred because they are recorded by seismographs. Each year New Zealand has about 100 to 150 quakes that are big enough to be felt.”

What better way to celebrate our anniversary than with a trip to Napier in the Hawkes Bay region of the North Island. Hawkes Bay is famous for its wines, in particular its Pinot Noir. Napier is famous for an earthquake which hit the region in 1931 and levelled most of the city centre.  The town centre was then rebuilt with Art Deco style architecture.  Shona had visited Napier before but this was my first trip.

“New Zealand’s largest lake is Lake Taupo, extending to 616 square kilometres (or 238 sq miles). This makes it almost identical in size to the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia and slightly smaller than Singapore. Lake Taupo formed in the crater left behind after a super volcano erupted 26,500 years ago.”

The weather over the weekend was superb. Well superb in this should still be winter. After deciding which one of the two possible routes we would take to Napier, we left Wellington on Friday morning and drove over the Rimutaka Range before stopping off at the White Swan hotel in Greytown for a spot of lunch. It was very nice. We sat out the front of the hotel basking in the glorious sunshine (wearing shorts and flip flops!) reading the papers and enjoying a lovely lunch. It could have been August in England.

“Name: New Zealand – Aotearoa. Aotearoa is the Maori name meaning ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’”.

Driving conditions were very pleasant. The roads are pretty much empty once you get out of Wellington and its surrounding areas. Constant reminders were played on the radio that today at 34 minutes past 12, the time/date will be 12:34:56 7/8/9. However the radio ‘highlight’ came when we were urged by a very softly spoken woman to e-mail in our problems so that we can be prayed for, or as the woman herself put it, “to download God”. Not sure I have got the bandwidth….

“Nearly all Wellington residents live within three kilometres of the coastline, and the city has 102 parks and playgrounds”

So on to Napier.  Napier was very quiet while we were there. We ventured out on both Friday and Saturday evenings and the town was largely empty. Saturday, I did get to hear a couple of fisherman berating the fact that the local rugby team were playing Wellington at home and thus the bait shop was closed so that its staff could go to the match. Definitely a highlight, I am sure you will agree! My favourite place in Napier was the bar of the local Cosmopolitan club. I ordered my chosen ale from the bar, “a pint of Speights, please” only to for the barman to say ‘certainly sir, if you would just care to go to the fridge around the corner and select yourself a glass, I will pour that for you’ …….”Lazy bastard, do you want me to wipe the bar down after you have poured it as well?”

“Population: 4,100,000 Humans – 40,000,000 Sheep – 9,000,000 Cattle. About 80% of the population lives in cities.”

London Pride - Makes you proud

If you do go to Napier, pay a visit to nearby Havelock North.  I really liked this little town, it had a village feel to it. You could tell the people that lived there had plenty of money and looked after their town. There is a nice little English pub in the centre where I managed to get a pint of London Pride (not proper London Pride – it had a fizz to it).  Havelock North is close to Te Mata peak which from the top you can see all over the Hawkes Bay region.  When we got to the top we saw a guy strap a parachute to his back and jump off.  Very much a New Zealand thing to do.

“New Zealand is part of what is known as ‘The Pacific Rim of Fire’ – it’s most active volcano is Mount Ruapehu in the central North Island.”

I don’t have much more to say about Napier. It is very quiet in winter and not all that much to see (I still liked it though). The town is very pretty to look at, but that is about it. If you do visit you will find yourself spending more time out of the town looking for things to do than you will be in it. Anyway, the next trip is to Mount Ruapehu at the end of the month for some skiing.

As it is six months here is a quick check of the old objectives. Remember these?

1) To be able to spend more time with Shona (’er in doors)

Shona has started to enter the busy period for her work now, so we don’t spend as much time together at the moment. Still on the plus side it gives me more time to spend practising on Tiger Woods Golf on the Nintendo Wii, as I write I am on the cusp of winning my first ‘virtual’ amateur tournament. I will keep you informed……

2) To visit every corner of New Zealand

Haven’t seen as much of the South Island as I would have liked but I still think we are winning this one.

3) Lose some weight (about time)

Next.

4) To slow down. (This is going to be hardest to try and quantify, but I’ll think of something)

I am keeping myself busy playing the Wii.

5) To go and watch as much live sport as I can.

Well I have seen the All Blacks now. Hopefully I will get to see them again in September in the Tri-Nations. I will try and get to see the Wellington Lions play and then I will have completed the set of big teams in Wellington along with The Hurricanes, and the Wellington Phoenix.

6) To play more golf! (may conflict with point 1)

Well I have played enough to get my New Zealand Handicap. Entered my first competition at the club and finished 3rd last. I am blaming excess the night before. This had nothing to do with ability you understand that right? Don’t you?

Just like the Lake District - Only better.