The Vodafone Warriors vs The Paramata Eels - Friday Night
Well it all started when I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to go watch a movie. But instead of a movie we ended up watching a rather sad match between the Warriors and the Paramata Eels. We got grassy seats, beer and good company and settled in to watch the game. You could hear the beating of the drums of a clan of warriors in preparation to crush the opposing team with pure braun. Clearly, the support base for the Eels was lacking and the entire stand was black. As they say in the NZ Mastercard advert that all kiwi's blood is black, that relates more to the All Blacks, and not the Warriors, but their official colours are black too. There were 39 000 people packed into the stands and it was looking good for most of the match. Fortunately, we has some comic relief in the form of Claire, Kim's friend, and the staunch Maori supporter behind us that kept yelling "Come on Warriors, bring 'em down." The Warriors gave the Eels a good run for their money and for a good long time we believed that they were on a roll. We were, so to speak, having Eel on the menu. Except that comment about the roll. After being in the lead for a good 40 mins, the Warriors started to get slower, and make more mistakes and well..the eels had roast kiwi-bird on a roll with a delicious win of 12 / 10.
The All Black Debut Match - Rugby World Cup - Saturday Night - pretty late.
The following night, we all convened at the Rika's house, to watch the first All Black game against Italy. We were all reved up and ready to go, with the anticipation of an exciting game ahead of us. Italy, having a good idea of the All Black power and strength should have been awake. Clearly they had only heard about the Roman Greats. Julius Caesar, Achilles and all the other Roman Soldiers and even possibly gladiators. No they seemed to have been living entirely in the great empire of Rome and to an extent, became very much like Americans who generally don't leave their state and have no idea about other places. Alright, so now we have established that although the Romans are known for their greatness, they didn't quite know where New Zealand was, and what kind of team they were facing.
Right, so we had our beer, some chips and dip, good company, a big screen tv (with struggling reception) and the game began. The All Black traditionally (Haka) asked for assistance from their predecessors and ancestors and watched as the very sleepy, pizza eaters appeared in front of them. The Italian Team brought all their equipment, pillows, duvets and settle in on the green grass into a dreamy sleep while the All Black took this to their best advantage and scored about 3 tris in a matter of 6 minutes. Somehow,
when the sleeping ITs were thinking about defence, there alway happened to be a hole! All Blacks pummelled the crap out of the Italians and only later after the second half started did Italy, try to stop the All Blacks. It was a
s if they had finally woken from their state of relaxation and thought about winning for the first time. By this time,
the All Blacks were so far ahead it didn't really matter how many tris they scored because there was just not enought time. The game was pretty boring and I was just wondering who let those blerrie smurfs onto the field. It looked more like a light practice for the All Black team. At least my bosses will be in a good mood on Monday.
We went snorkelling this weekend. Very freezing. Have you ever had an ice-cream headache without the ice-cream? Well the minute I put my face in the water my forehead went numb. You could have given me brain surgery and I wouldn't feel it. Fortunately we had wetsuits, thank goodness! Then we stopped off at this historical town and had devonshire scone tea! Yum, the scone was the size of my head.
Then we went to the SA shop, bought biltong, koeksisters and boerewors and then I realised that I left my bag in Puhoi! Hence another drive back there. When the guy said come back again soon, we never thought it would be that soon. Anyways the place is 100 years old next week. Today is shit weather and so I stayed in bed on my nice matress and then I got brekkie in bed and now I am going to relax and read book, since I can't afford anything else today!
Ok so, we have been in Auckland for four months and it is finally starting to feel homey. We have moved into a little flat on the main street and we have been living out of boxes for the past 2 months. Over the week I have been making frequent visits to The Warehouse, to buy storage goodies. So last week, I went out and got a little trolly with racks for the bathroom, which now has all my goodies neatly packed in one space. Then yesterday we went to go and get shelves, this is the miracle cure to minimal space! We finally have somewhere to pack our towels and our books and all our clothes since the cupboards only have hanging space!
So we have also put up paintings on the wall and also added a few trinkets to make the house feel homey. I have all my sheep parafernalia and things like table clothes and things.
On the side of jobs. Leon and I are relatively happy. I have a fabulous job in a Publisher, where on the odd occassion things get totally out of hand, but at least there is a heap of chocolate and biscuits to give energy where due. We work on Kiddies books and I have gotten a few projects which make me really happy and I am well on my way to where I want to be.
Leon is finding it to be a bit frustrating at work due to the simple things that IT professionals just simply don't see a need for until it's too late. This is a world wide phenomonon. They forget to write a functional spec for the current project, so now they have run into a heap of problems. But Leon just carries on in his smurfly way, taking joy out of Fooseball, which he is almost always the champion in.
We have been rock climbing every week basically since we got here and have made plenty of friends through there. We also have added Jin to our climbing adventures and he is a very smiley Korean guy with a heart of gold.
On our way back from the Warehouse, we stopped to have a drink with my dear frend Collette, and we happened to be there during the SA - NZ tri-nations rugby cup. We had a few drinks and some good laughs and then she kindly gave us a lift home, with four shelves weighing 8 kg each, thank goodness for that since we would have had to lug them all the way up Queen Street.
We were supposed to have a picnic today but unfortunately most people cancelled, so we are meeting the last person for coffee later on. Leon is out getting sweaty, dirty and exercised in the Woodhill Forrests. I wonder what colour he is going to come home in.
We live in a really amazing place.
Look at this. It is only a short drive away from our apartment. Great for picnics or a coffee with a view. We love this place. It is one of our favourite places to go for the weekend. One day we'll get it right to rent a tandem bicycle and cycle along the beach for an hour.
Leon brought home a bunch of 100% Kiwi music from one of the girls at work. She gave him the cd and since she is from Dunedin, a small very celtic village, she added Marcus Turner. He is not very handsome but at least he has a fun -loving sense of humour. Here is one of my favourite songs. It is a children's song but it is really sweet and it cheers me up when all my friends and family are far away.
Have a listen and let us know what you think of it.
So it's winter. It's cold and we are all freezing our asses off. We have winds that add to the chill factor, and every 5 seconds. we look over our shoulder expecting Santa to be flying right behind us, in a big red sleigh with Rudolph right up in front, with a red nose, from the cold he got in this wet cold weather.
Ok, so it's June and you must think we are loosing it. Well, we had a Christmas party this morning because, well, it's cold and wet and we think that it would be good to have a Christmas party when the conditions are right. My friend, Kim, is from Norway and where she is from it really is a white Christmas. We have, in New Zealand, a wet Christmas and it is white in certain areas, but who actually goes out in search of cold?
We went round this morning for a Christmas brunch, Norwegian style, just like Kim likes it. We had to eat with our knives and forks since Norwegians even eat watermelon with a knife and a fork. They are very skilled at cutlery usage!
Kim baked some sweet bread, and we had a variety of foods including pickled herring (Rolmops) and pates and salmon, ham,salami, beetroot and cheeses and then we were told that they would eat an open sandwich, with the ingredients on it, WITH OUR KNIVES AND FORKS!
It was a really great breakfast, since we were starving and we ate till we were stuffed and then we talked and listened to Swedish Christmas carols. Kim had decorated the table in Red, with little shiny xmas trees everywhere! She had a few candles and it was really good.
I was going to bring my Christmas stocking which I found in our boxes that finally arrived, but she said Santa was on leave, so he wouldn't be filling my stocking, no matter how many letters I wrote to Santa asking for all the things we need. I kept my eyes closed and kept wishing, but clearly he is sitting on some beach somewhere, drinking cocktails as he takes 364 days of leave, lucky bastard!
So on Friday afternoon we get a whopper of a telephone bill. I have the feeling we are going to be poor forever with the Kiwi companies rooking us for every cent we earn. So I was upset. I felt like we were never going to be able to afford anything, this bill coming directly after we bought a car and then had to get it serviced since the mechanical warrantee comes into effect. Ouch!
We had planned to go to Castle Rock on the weekend, but now I was feeling pretty poor and very unwilling. But we did want to go on a road trip with our new car and we also wanted to test things like petrol consumption and space handling and even the radio (which is a Japanese piece of crap with limited radio capabilities.
Our friends, Shane and Kim, suggested we go to Castle Rock , since it isn't very far from Auckland (+- 2 hours drive) and it was cheap ($27 per person to sleep in a dorm) and the climbing was across the road and they had set it up really nicely.
There were climbs with all sorts of difficulty and since Leon and I had not climbed rock for quite some time, we were taking our time on the less difficult climbs.
The weather was perfect. You know those days where the sky is the crystal clear blue colour and there is not a cloud in sight. Others had arrived on the Saturday and spent the entire time inside and at the hot spa, because it was pouring and the rock was wet. We arrived on the Sunday and the rain was nowhere to be seen. Problem with rain in a cow field is, that it is in a cow field. I haven't gone playing in the mud as much, anywhere else. And oh, yes, the cow pats. Leon seemed to think these cows were not getting enough fibre. We have wellies for wet and mud, but they were sitting in our shoebox home in Auckland, nice and clean.
We all did a few climbs, we were quite lucky to have brought our climbing stuff with us on the airplane since we would have died without it. We have been climbing twice weekly at a rock climbing gym and that is where we met Shane, but that is another story for later...
Back to Castle Rock, Kim is not a happy climber and so she decided to be photographer and ground inspection, as she went for long walks, while we climbed. At about 2pm, I decided to go back with Kim to make lunch and we were supposed to bring it to the boys. We casually ate lunch and contemplated the hot tub, and we chatted and drank more juice and then some climbers came back since it looked like rain, but our boys were not part of the returning crowd. The boys had told the other climbers that they were in fact, getting lunch served to them, and that they didn't know where we were and then they thought that we were hot tubbing and ignoring the fact that men need food to pretty much do anything.
After taking the boys lunch, we all went back to the lodgings. Now we returned to a bunch of hippy climbers, doing stretches in the communal lounge with INCENSE smoking in the air, and they wanted to know if we were going to join them. Kim and I, promply grabbed some beer and speedily hurried off to the hot tub. We waited for the boys and drank beer for about 3 hours and after turning into wrinkly prunes, we got out and walked back under the light of venus (she doesn't shine so bright) and the moon, which was so bright that everything else was black. We got back to find the boys watching climbing movies and they had already devoured a steak between the 3 of them (there was another friend called Luke). Kim had made a pasta bake the previous night, but being men, they had to have steak, mind you, Luke is from the UK, so meat is a rare commodity, and since he is going back home in a few weeks to study medicine, I guess it's ok to buy and eat a whole NZ steak.
We ate our supper and then watched the rest of the climbers, who we think were not well, playing weird az games like, "let's see if I can wrap a broomstick around my body" and, "let's walk on plastci cups with our hands and see how far we can place them without touching the carpet". These people were rediculous. We all finally got to bed, after the rush to use the only bathroom between 15 people, and then went beddy-by in the garage that had been converted to accomodate more people at a really low cost. Not to mention the lady has difficulty keeping track of the people so there were just enough beds. Next morning, we got up, it felt like early, but it was already 9 am. We had to check out at 10, so we ate breakfast, managed to get Leon up although, he tried his hardest to get me to come lie in with him, got packed and set off for another attempt at climbing the walls again. I feel pretty good since we moved up a few levels and I did 2 harder climbs than the day before. Very pleased with myself.
You really learn to love the wettest, nastiest, holes in the rocks, because those are the goodies.
We drove back and Leon and Shane played Playstation for about an hour and then Luke came to fetch his stuff, which we'd left outside and was currently being rained on.
We had a great weekend!
We now live in Auckland, on Queen Street, which is the main street in Auckland. We have access to heaps of good things. Here are a few pictures of our flat. We live on the 13th floor. It is our shoebox home. Remember when there was an animation, can't remember the name but there were mice that lived in a tin can, well we feel like those mice. We didn't have anything to sit on, no bed, no nothing. My boss was feeling generous and offered a few things for us. She gave us a matress, a tv and a microwave to use and so we would sit on the floor and watch tv with only each other for warmth and that squishy feeling you can only achieve on a couch. We have good friends though, who have donated a couch for us to get when we are able to fit it through the door.
We live in a 2 bedroom flat, which is pretty small. We have a nice view and we can even see the sea from our flat. The sun comes into our bedroom where we currently are sleeping on a matress. To add exciting insult to injury, we got all our stuff after about 3 months of waiting! Now we sit with the problem of a seriously tight squeeze between the boxes and us.
So, when we opened up our boxes there were these squeals of delight as slowly but surely i found things I missed or forgot about, like my shoe, my clothes, toys, cds, ink, paintbrushes, drawings, scuba stuff, skydiving stuff, gadgets, camping stuff and other wierd things that value but can't remember...We are so happy to have our own stuff.
My fridge has magnets again and I have sheepy stuff around me again and my photos and my paintings. Finally things are getting more and more like home. We really like it here! But we miss all our friends and hope that they all come visit us.
So, I have converted.
I am now a Vox user, I was forced into it by a friend of mine, no names being mentioned, Barret, ok? I have an interesting weekend planned so we'll put new pictures up once it has happened.
Wait for it...
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