Dunedin: Easter Holiday, April 2019

19 Fri-
Our Easter holiday started with a stopover at McDonalds in Omaru, en-route to Mt Cook / the Hooker Valley track. Once there though we found it was closed off! We walked to Kea Point instead. The weather was really beautiful. It would have been perfect for a nice long walk. At the visitor center I found out the walk was closed due to the west coast storm from a month ago that hit the region badly. In this case it damaged the track and even jeopardised the swing bridges. Such a shame.

Next we drove towards Lake Tekapo and visited its observatory on the hill. It was $8 entrance fee for parking but it was something we missed out on before. The views were nice. The observatory itself wasn't open for tourists though. There was just a cafe open.

views from the top

Lake Tekapo town in the background

More views from the top

More views from the top

The cottage we stayed in at Lake Tekapo was nice, it was a 1 bed studio but very good. We inquired at the hot springs in town for something to do tomorrow. We got captured on the google street view car too. It was the car in front of us at the town center, and then again at the entrance to the hot springs. If you want to get a feel for what it was like on the day, with the glorious sunshine, follow the link at: Google Street View This link works 20/07/20. It should show as April 2019.

20 Sat-
Today we simply went to the hot springs. It was actually okay. It had two saunas and about 3 decent sized hot pools. Well, more like warm pools, but it was still nice. We stayed from 10:00am until gone 2pm. Firstly though the cafe/ reception area had a spread of food out for its guests as they were officially revealing their new range of locally blended coffee. The spread had decent cheese with crackers, sandwiches and orange juice.

Stock photo

21 Sun-
We packed and left by 8:30am. We drove up to Christchurch to have a stop over at Samurai Bowl, a ramen restaurant. We went there before and loved it. The same today too. Everything else around was closed as its Easter Sunday. Next we drove onwards to Maruia Springs, arriving around 3pm. Things hadn't changed much, other than the hottest outside pool now has a mosquito net covering it. We booked ourselves in for the dinner. I had Lamb chops which was nice, Sabine had roast duck which I tasted and was also nice. I had the cheese board afterwards and Sabine had the Pumpkin Pie.

My Lamb dinner

Sabines Duck dinner

Sabines Pumpkin Pie

My cheese board

22 Mon-
We woke up at 5:30am to enjoy the baths. The breakfast was okay, but not as good as Christmas 2017.

We left at 9am. We had a few pit stops driving south to Wanaka, arriving at 6pm. A 9 hour drive pretty much.
The place is very nice indeed. very spacious. I phoned Grandma this evening.

Driving south

23 Tues-
We had a lie in. We eventually went to Puzzle World for an hour. Sabine thought it was shit so we left. Its catered more for kids to be honest, and we still saw everything and did the outside maze. But I guess we could have paced ourselves because we did nothing this afternoon.

The maze at Puzzle World

We eventually went to town and ate a huge pizza though. This place makes their own garlic bread too, just like a fresh bread loaf.

Stock photo of their Garlic Loaf. This was huge for only a starter!

Sabines veg pizza

My half/half pizza

I looked at the stars tonight again from the back garden. They were incredibly clear and bright. I got a little weirded out when I saw a red light darting about the sky. Sabine came out and told me it was just a drone. She was right.

24 Wed-
We drove into the Haast Pass, revisiting the Blue Pools, Fantail Falls and Thunder Creek Falls. The weather was nice again.

Sabine had an interview with an industry in Italy. I had to be in the same room as her, just out of view and deadly silent so not to disturb her. Godddd what an awful interview! Such harsh, unjustified questions! We went out to the pizza restaurant as yesterday (Its called The Cow) and laughed it off.

25 Thu-
We hung out in Wanaka this morning, then headed down to Te Anau.

The drive down, before Arrowtown

We tried to go to Arrowtown but there was absolutely no parking. Way too touristy. Such a shame.
The weather was glorious too.

We bought a lunch and ate it at a picnic area we had to ourselves by Lake Wakatipu near the road (but not really) that heads south.

Not bad for a picnic area hu?

Back on the road again

The weather at Te Anau was crap and stayed that way for the rest of the day. Nothing was open as its ANZAC day. But one pub was. We ate here for both lunch and dinner. Our AirBnB is massive. Its a three bed bungalow all to ourselves.

26 Fri-
Sabine booked us on a boat trip today, from Manapouri across on a boat to the other side of Lake Manapouri, and from there on a bus journey to Doubtful Sound, where we had another boat trip to the Tasman Sea, and finally back again the same way. It was pretty good, and a long day.
We ate dinner at Te Anau but it was a bit meh.

Doubtful Sound river mouth

Doubtful Sound

We packed after watching tonights anime. Early start tomorrow.

27 Sat-
Today we packed early and left for Milford Sound at 6am. We arrived at 8:30am and had a breakfast bun each. Our boat left on time at 9:30am. Going along, it stopped close to a waterfall. The crew placed a trey of cup glasses on the Bow of the boat, and let the waterfall fill them up. That was fun. On the way back it stopped at another waterfall and got us wet. That was the waterfall that dad got a decent photograph of back in the day, which was framed and on my bedroom wall for years.

 

The car journey back to Dunedin was okay. We left at 12pm and was stuck behind a camper-van that refused to let people pass by, but other than that it was fine. We were back home at 6pm, and got a Chinese takeaway.

Dunedin: A Weekend in Auckland (Feb 2019)

After work on Friday 1st Feb, Sabine and I flew to Auckland for a long weekend. Air NZ uses this awful safety instruction video which is a rap song gone wrong. Not much else to report other than we used super shuttle from Auckland to the apartment. We went back to the same apartment complex as our first time in Auckland.

2 Sat-
We had breakfast at the waterfront. A lady working with the ferry services interviewed us about what we think they could do to improve their services. She gave us $30 as a reward. Woah. We went shopping. I picked up the Evangelion movie series Blu Ray disks which was cool, I guess. Sabine bought more 'Kiwi Craft' jewellery. We went for lunch at another Japanese place. This had amazing takoyaki and a damn good ramen also. We came home and watched Netflix which the apartment had. We watched Avatar the last Airbender, the panned movie. Wasn't that bad really. This evening Sabine surprised me with tickets for the Aladdin play thats in town. No ordinary pantomime, This was Disneys real deal. And my god the sets and performances were spot on. Just as good as The Lion King from London. The best bits were the cave and flying carpet scenes. The genie was fantastic! Afterwards we ate at the New York pizza place called Sals.

3 Sun-
This morning we breakfasted at a restaurant sorta tucked away in a laine. Reminds me of Brighton. After that we explored the rest of that 'laine', it was still quite, but a small group of people were singing. I don't know why, but I found this to be atmospheric. We went for a walk around Queen Street. Sabine liked hunting for more 'Kiwi Craft' jewellery. I bought a typical NZ styled 'whale bone' pendant to add to my NZ necklace. We bought a Totoro pillow from the Japan mart. We came back and packed, then ate at the Tepanyaki restaurant. Netflix was fun to use on this visit. I may get my subscription service back at some point. Our Shuttle service to the airport was on time. The plane journey was on time and fine.

Aladdin

The entrance to the Teppanyaki restaurant, Daikoku on Quay, Auckland

Mt. Taranaki

Somewhere on the east coast of the South Island

Dunedin: Life in New Zealand. Part 15

Lime scooters were officially allowed to have their company in town from mid January 2019. Basically an overnight life changing scenario, where these scooters were not there one day, and EVERYWHERE the next, on a permanent basis. These things litter the streets everywhere they are allowed to operate. All for the sake of picking one off the ground and using it to travel some distance for a price. But their business model is shoddy because they are allowed to litter the streets with thousands of them. The company, and subsequent others, started in America. The money doesn't even go to NZ. It goes directly to American corporations.

Not my photo. Just imagine the odd one parked or dumped in the middle of the foot path and that would be about right.

The trend continues with e-bikes too. An NZ owned company started up too, so at least this is more ethical, I guess.

an e-bike dumped on the footpath in Auckland

On the 24th January we went to this weird art exhibition in an empty warehouse. It was hosted by the same artists that did the winter festival. It wasn't much cop, but still something to do.

We went to a coffee shop which we haven't tried before. It had a coconut smoothy which was amazing. the salmon bagel was delicious too.

Our washroom tap started to leak. So that was an interesting journey trying to buy and install a replacement myself. But we found a tap from Bunnings that wasn't that expensive. However we originally went to the specialist store where they had an updated version of the actual tap that was broken, but it was extortionately expensive. Installing the new tap only needed a bunch of spanners, patience, and a YouTube video.

I decided to take a chance and buy the most inexpensive can of baked beans from Pac N Save. Turns out it has the exact same taste and texture as the most expensive on the shelf; that being the Heinz UK recipe. I have to note that the normal range of baked beans in NZ has a more sweet taste, so I was really wowed to find a decent UK standard normal one for the fraction of the usual price.

Dunedin: Working for the Otago Uni's Mail Room

Oh boy I really need to catch up with this blog.

In early 2019 I started working for Otago university, in their mail room. This was the universities' mail delivery service across campus, with rates to rival the public post office, and had special deals for students. I would catch a bus from Abbotsford very early in the morning to start work at 8am. Usually on the bus too and from work I would read one of my brothers short stories. If everything ran smoothly, New Zealand Post would arrive with their deliveries for the university before I started work. Often times it was bang on when I walked through the door. There would be deliveries for students and teachers alike which would need sorting through before 9am. All these parcels would be pigeonholed into their respective areas, and from there would be sorted into bags and boxes for our internal delivery starting at 9am.

The team would drive the delivery van in weekly rotation and would drive all around North Dunedin for the entire morning, dropping off mail to different buildings. The campus isn't housed in just one site, this university is mainly dotted around in different buildings across the northern side of the city. Deliveries would include the hospital, dental school, all the halls of residences, and the library. After lunch there would be a second delivery for the hospital, dental school and library which would take an hour. For the majority of my time working in this role, I was either the designated van driver or van assistant. I found driving the van a daunting task at first, but it didn't take long before I started enjoying it. The afternoon session would be fairly quite, and I would help with creating spreadsheets for auditing. The real downside to this job was the radio. It was on all day. Including in the van if I wasn't driving. If I was driving I would make a point of either not having the radio on at all, or simply listening to Radio Hauraki which played Indie or rock music. But the others listened to radio stations that played really crap 80s cheese music. During my time there I reckon these stations only had a playlist of 300 songs. Now I was forced to listen to this garbage for 8 hours every day for months. What's worse is that the buses always had the radio on too. I would go mildly insane at it, and as the weeks went on I decided to wear ear plugs too and from work to shut it out. The good things about the job was the deliveries and the sunshine. Afternoon deliveries were always just me in the van. There was a few weeks where I used this time listening to the new Bis album.

We were only a small team of 3. I got on with everyone and things were far more relaxing than working at the DCC.

I started working in this role in early 2019 until May