Thursday, 27 December.  Today I went up to Whangaparoa to have lunch with a friend and his Mum.  She’d been given some garden centre vouchers for Christmas so we took her down to her local to help her pick out some nice indoor plants.

I’ve known the people I visited since I was 12, so we were discussing old times and how things had changed and this led to a discovery that on the street where my friend used to live another friend’s house had apparently gone – moved, demolished or something, so on my way home I was keen to have a look.

Being as it was on my way I also stopped by the reserve next to the house I used to live in for a wee trip down memory lane to soak up the amazing view and take a photo for the blog.

Click for a larger view in Flickr.

Wednesday, 26 December. Today was spent relaxing with my nephew. Still raining so couldn’t do anything outside, but I did manage to get outside between showers to check out the frangipani to see if it was flowering yet.

I bought the frangipani about 8 years ago but it didn’t seem very happy so I gave it to Mum who treasured it and placed it in a great spot at her home where it got maximum sun and attention. Now that Dad has moved to a smaller place he has no room for it, so it has returned to me – but now it’s quite large, very healthy, happy and about to flower which I’m very excited about.

Tuesday, 25 December, I drove over to Dad’s new place for Xmas breakfast at 8:00, the whole family was there, even my nephew from Christchurch. We had breakfast first and then presents, that took all morning and at mid day we set out for an Aunty’s place for Xmas lunch/dinner.

After pudding (around 5pm) my nephew and I walked back to my place where we chilled out watching movies and eating chocolates. What a lovely relaxing Xmas Day we had.

Monday, 24 December was the day I got absolutely drenched trying to get back to my car with all the Xmas groceries from the supermarket in jandals. The last time I tried to get anywhere in heavy rain in jandals was on the treacherous Queen Mary museum in Long Beach where I nearly crashed through a huge plate of glass (read more here) at least it brought back a host of cool memories from my trip to the States back in March. Luckily the jandals I have now have plenty of traction and there was no sliding at all. Surprisingly the supermarket was nowhere near as crowded as I pictured it.

The most annoying thing about the rain was we’ve been expecting heavy torrential rain since last Monday, but it never eventuated which was most annoying coz every day I’ve put off watering my garden coz I knew it was going to rain – but it never did, my poor plants were very thirsty and almost dead, so I gave in and watered them and that’s probably why it finally rained – and now two days later it’s still flipping raining.

The evening was spent with a group of friends, we’ve been getting together on Xmas Eve for nearly 10 years now – loads of great food, wonderful company and presents.

After dinner to make room for desert a couple of us always go for a walk round the neighbourhood to look for Xmas lights. This year the local shops had massive blue light displays at the roundabout which was very cool.

Sunday, 23 December was a great day. I had lunch at Dad’s new place in the “Lifestyle” village. (apparently it’s not a retirement village) I noticed he hadn’t connected up his stereo so I helped him do that so there would be music on Xmas Day.

In the evening I went round to a mate’s place to pick him up to go see the lights on Franklin Road. But on the way there I noticed an amazing sunset starting to form, so I had to drive extra fast to get to his place so I could watch it from his balcony (he has an amazing view). The sunset was so spectacular that we put going out to see the lights on hold while we sat on his balcony enjoying a glass of red wine while soaking up the glorious sunset. This was particularly lucky because a storm is supposed to be on its way so I was expecting it to be raining while looking at the lights, not basking in the warm glow of a sunset.

Eventually we made it out to see the Xmas lights on Franklin Road. There was a big queue of cars forming near Fanshaw St so I parked by the skateboard park instead of joining the queue. This turned out to be a very wise move, coz it forced us to walk past the Telecom Xmas Tree which I hadn’t planned on doing. BUT that turned out to be the highlight of the night, it was truly spectacular. I’ve driven past it before but never actually stopped to look at it and certainly never realised you could lie down underneath it looking up at the lights which was AWESOME.


Franklin Rd was great, I’m so glad my mate wanted to go see it, coz I’d already been but it was too late when I went and many homes had their lights turned off. This time the crowds were huge and all the lights were on, music was playing, choirs were singing, a girl was playing a harp and it truly was magical. After that we went back to my mate’s place where I could watch the city lights while sipping on mulled wine and eating Xmas mince pies.

Saturday, 22 December started off quite relaxing, but then my brother phoned and that’s how I found out we had purchased the same gift for someone. There is no way they could use two of the same thing so I decided I would take mine back to the shop and hopefully get a refund.

The worst of this whole ordeal was going back to the mall, especially since I was so pleased with myself yesterday knowing I wouldn’t have to go back there till well after Xmas. The mall was exactly as I expected it to be, cars parked on the grass where they shouldn’t be due to a lack of parks, which is hard to believe considering just how many parks there actually is and the mall was filled with screaming pushy children and people who have no idea about, at least trying to walk on the left.

But luckily someone was pulling out of their car park as I arrived and I got a park easily and managed to get to the shop I needed to get to without too many bruises from pushchairs and trolleys. Getting a refund was also very easy and all up I was probably in and out in less than 15 minutes.

Later on I went to St Lukes to see the Hobbit in 3D, the super high frame rate version. It was very impressive, the 3D made it feel like I was right there and the super fast frame rate sure did make it look extremely vivid and clear – like an HD TV playing a Blue Ray movie compared to a normal DVD played on an old CRT TV.

The photos are from my last trip to Wellington a couple of weeks ago. The trolls were in Te Papa, Gandalf was outside the Embassy Theatre and Gollum is hanging from the ceiling of the domestic airport.

Friday, 21 December started out with a full day of Xmas shopping. I started my holidays early this year, so that I could get all my Xmas shopping done in one day before the madness truly set in. This was a great idea, I went to Albany and everything went well: parked near the door, relatively low crowd level, calm and relaxed sales people available to help and I got it all done by 3:00 so the drive home was also very easy.

After that there was just enough time to wrap the presents before friends from England turned up for dinner and to see the lights.

It’s Wednesday in Wanganui so I’m half way through my week here and I’ve gotta say… I’m loving it here. The weather has been awesome and it’s such a pretty town.

After work today I managed to make it to the Durie Hill elevator before it closed (unlike yesterday when I missed out by 10 minutes). The best part was the tunnel you walk through to get to the elevator. The elevator cost $2 to ride one way and was over in less than one minute, the lady controlling the elevator had it all set up quite homely as it is her office and that’s her job all day long.

The view today was different from yesterday, I couldn’t see Mt Taranaki at all this time but Mt Ruapehu looked a lot bigger and closer.

After that I walked back to the hotel along the river bank. Just before I got to the very cool looking bridge to cross back to the other side I found the most amazing kids playground. It had a huge castle with stairs that you can climb up and pretend to be “the king of the castle”, a train station with a real train that goes through a tunnel, a pirate ship, dinosaurs, dragons, awesome swing things, slides, a flying fox that I really wanted to have a go on and the whole area was huge.

Today was another beautiful sunny hot day here in Wanganui. After work I had a massive walk to a place called Durie Hill which has a tower you can walk up for a great view of the city. The tower can be reached by taking an elevator built into the hillside, one of only two such elevators in existence.

I made it to the elevator at 6:10 pm and unfortunately it closed at 6:00 so I missed out on riding the rare elevator by ten minutes and had to walk up the hill using the stairs which was quite a workout, but the view from the top was worth it.

Once I made it to the top of the hill I walked up the spiral staircase inside the tower which made me quite dizzy but once again it was well worth the effort, I could see the ocean and two very famous mountains in the distance: Mt Taranaki and Mt Ruapehu.

After my big huge walk I decided I deserved a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant, so I got changed into posh restaurant type clothes and went to dinner. While quietly minding my own business and checking Facebook the lady at the next table let out a fairly loud belch, I couldn’t believe my ears, she said oh goodness excuse me and then her male companion (probably her husband) let rip with a very low rumbling and rather long fart. He also said excuse me and she blamed it on all the meat they’ve been eating. It took all the willpower I had not to burst out laughing or turn round to see what these charming people looked like.

Today didn’t start off too well, the flight to Wanganui was delayed by an hour, but at least I discovered this before I left home for the airport and could make the most of the delay at home rather than at the airport.

I’ve never been to Wanganui before so I’m a little bit excited to be here. Flying into Wanganui was awesome!!! The airport is right by the ocean and the water was an amazing blue and turquoise colour, just like a tropical paradise. At one stage of the landing I thought we were going to land on the beach, it was so cool.

Because I was arriving an hour late I was a bit worried about setting up the training room with all the laptops etc in time for the first session, but the wonderful people had set everything up for me and all I had to do was turn everything on. They even had a welcome lunch and cake waiting for me. So in the end the first session was only 15 minutes late.

When I left Auckland the weather was awful, cold and raining, but when I arrived in Wanganui it was sunny and hot – yay! This meant that after I’d checked into the hotel I could head out for a walk to see the sights. I found a lake!


The lake was lovely, there was ducks, swans, coots, pukekos and best of all… baby pukekos, I’ve never seen baby ones before.

On the way back to the hotel I even found a 4 Square store, I haven’t seen one of them in a long time.

As I turned onto the street the hotel is on I saw a crossroad sign which told me I’m somewhere between Palmerston North and New Plymouth and that reminded me of a Christmas family holiday when we drove to Nelson. We stayed in both those places, which made me think… maybe I have been here before!