Cricket, Sausages and a few Salads...

Today I attended a cricket match and I have to admit that, as I suspect, cricket is not really what I'd consider a spectator sport! It wasn't actually the Blackcaps -v- England that I was watching but rather the two teams were made up with my work team mates :) I wasn't playing, instead being one of the official supporters... there were quite a few of us in that role - always important. It wasn't the sunniest day ever but it was still relatively warm so rather pleasant.

We'd all been invited to a BBQ in a colleague's house, where were told there'd be "sausages and a few salads". It was a while before we got to eat but as we sat there munching on our salads, sausages, burgers (veggie for us veggies), pasta and fresh potato salad, somebody rightly pointed out that if this was "sausages and a few salads" then she looked forward to being invited to a slap up dinner. Seriously, it was great. Freshly made guacamole on arrival with a glass of some lovely Astrolabe (white savvie) and lots of good conversation and then a lovely meal. Our car departed with a slice of vegan chocolate cake for me and a slice of carrot cake for the driver. The front seat passenger managed to resist the temptation to take any cake!

Karori Wildlife Sanctuary

Today is Waitangi Day here in New Zealand which basically means we got the day off work. A bit odd having a day off in the middle of the week but that doesn't mean that it wasn't greatly enjoyed :)
We headed out to Karori Wildlife Sanctuary which was fantastic. We got a talk from one of the volunteer workers at the start which was fairly interesting. I think what interested me most was the testing that they did with fence before installing it... all 8.6km of it. Basically by placing it near a dump they were able to determine how high it had to be, how much roof on it was required and how much floor (if that's the word to use) was required. All this to to stop cats, possums, weasels, mice from jumping and climbing over and rabbits from burrowing under.



There are loads of trails throughout throughout though we stuck to the easiest as I rather sillily had worn my birkenstocks rather than trainers. But next time :) Speaking of next time it won't even cost anything to get in now for the next year as annual membership is only $42! Great value if you ask me.

Go Dustin!!

It's not often that I really care who represents Ireland in that bastion of new singing talent, the Eurovision, but today I saw an article on ireland.com that Dustin the Turkey is Dublin's entrant. Go Dustin!!!

Brr...

Lovely weather here this weekend. I'm just getting in to this warm, sunny, not too much (never say never when talking about wind in Wellington) wind weather. That was yesterday. Today it's grey and windy and cold. Looking at metservice.org.nz it's 14 degrees celcius (nothing to write home about in the middle of summer) but observed wind chill makes it feel like 11 degrees. Damn cold walking home work. Not sure it'll be much better tomorrow but looks like it might be picking up after that. Fingers crossed!

So many ads...

Lying on floor here during yet another ad break in Harry Potter - The Goblet of Fire. According to imdb.com this movie is 157 mins long. Here it started at 7:30pm and won't finish until 10:45pm... that's 195 mins! That's almost 20 mins of advertisements during one movie. Oh well, at least there are some totally unreal ads to amuse myself with (though most of rubbish... hence this blog entry).
Having said that that beats last week attempt - 3 hrs to show The Prison of Azkaban which is only 140 mins long!!

The Bag

Today I caved and bought The Bag. The Bag is something that I've been looking at every time I pass this bag shop on Lambton Quay for over a week now. In fact, I do believe it'll be a fortnight tomorrow that this sorry affair began. The bag was in a sale. It was half price. But I still felt it was too much. I went back regularly checking to see if it had been further reduced. No. Today I checked out some other bags (I specifically want something for hand luggage for my trip back in March) but no joy. Popped in to the shop again. Even put my MacBook in it... perfect size. Sigh. Hummed. Hawed. Brought it up to till and asked if there was any chance it would be reduced further. He looked at tag and said nope, it's half price already. We're losing money on it already (not sure if I believe that!) I mentioned that I'd been looking at this bag for a while now to which he said, "I know" :) Anyway, I bought the bag. Here it is...

The holiday...

I don't know where to start on this.
The Cook Islands consist of number of islands. Big coral reef. We spent first and last night on Rarotonga (main island with the "international" airport) and intermediate 5 nights on Aitutaki (aparently that's also an international airport... em right...)
Rarotonga resort... so so. Room first stay bit shabby. Second stay - definitely better. Large resort.
Aitutaki - beautiful from the air! Not much to do there but relax. It's lovely...

Aitutaki resort... so so so lovely :) Met at airport. Given bit of run down on resort on arrival there (involving 20 sec boat journey across to resort as it's on its own little island). Escorted to bungalow where luggage waiting. Bungalow on beach with view of water - v lovely.
We got some lovely sun and we get some rain. But it was pretty much always warm and as we were just there to relax it wasn't really a problem.

Bit of snorkelling combined with lagoon cruise last full there. Warm but not too sunny so no sun burn. Fantastic... even if I was a bit, well, hesitant, in the water! The coral was beautiful and as for the colour of some of the fish...
Our last day on the islands (back on Raro now) was a Sun so went to a CICC (Cook Islands Christian Church) service. Not like anything I've experienced before! Singing. Conducted in Cook Islands Maori and English. Members of congregation preach or talk as well. And all the guests, that was us tourists, invited in for a big spread in nearby hall afterwards.
Everybody is just so friendly over there... half the time I couldn't tell if everybody just knew everybody or everybody just talks to everybody... i believe it's the latter :)