On the way home from the Albany Mall on the 1st of December I spotted an amazing Xmas tree in the distance and thought WOW I didn’t realise the Telecom Tree would be so big I could see it all the way over here. But as I drove closer towards Takapuna I realised it wasn’t the Telecom tree it was the Smale’s Farm Xmas lights. So I took a wee detour so I could get a better look.

Every single tree and every lamp post has been decorated with lights, plus there is the huge main feature (above) which is really quite something to see and well worth stopping off for a look if you’re anywhere near there in the dark this Xmas.

Here I am in the departure lounge waiting to board the plane to return to Auckland but where is the plane?

According to all the flight info boards the flight is on time, but that just cant be possible.

With four minutes to spare I am boarding the plane now. Won’t be long now but not on time. Never mind… I’ve had a lovely day in Wellington & the weather down here has been perfect.

This made me laugh on the way to the bus this morning! I noticed that Baby Jesus was missing from the nativity scene outside the school I walk past every morning on the way to the bus stop. I guessed the baby bit hadn’t been found or perhaps was kept safe overnight, but it’s still missing and it’s been several days now since they erected the scene. Maybe the sheep ate him, they look very shifty if you ask me!

I have put my Xmas tree up. This is the first year the tree won’t rotate, last year the turning motor started to give up and made weird noises and at times the tree would not be moving and this worried me. So I asked Dad if he could disconnect the turning motor and just leave the fibre optic motor connected, he did just that after I took the tree down last year, so I was a little weary how it would be this year.

One good thing about the tree not rotating is that I can at last put real lights in the tree, which I have wanted to do for a long time (I’ve had the tree about 10 years), but with it turning that was not possible, which means in the day time there wasn’t much light in the tree, the fibre optic looks best when it’s dark.

So with all that in mind I set off a couple of weeks ago to buy lights for the tree. BUT I had no idea how many to buy, 100 didn’t seem enough, plus I really wanted a set of blue lights, so I ended up buying 500 lights, 250 coloured lights and 250 blue lights.

After getting the tree up and discovering the fibre optic lights still work wonderfully I started to add the new lights. After putting the first set on the tree I had a mild panic attack thinking 500 lights might actually be too many. Not sure what to do I just kept going, coz I started with the coloured set and it took so long to put them on I didn’t want to take them off, plus I didn’t want just blue lights either.

Of course I do have a choice I can just have the blue lights, or just the coloured lights, or just the fibre optics, but actually with all the lights on it looks fabulous and with the room lights off the fibre optics show up too and the tree looks awesome – way better than I ever imagined it could be.

I’m down in Tauranga for the week having a lovely time really enjoying the weather. Normally when I go away for work I walk around the place taking photos and generally playing tourist – but this time I got to meet up with a friend I used to work with back in 1986 in the ANZ Bank. Thanks to Facebook we have recently reconnected and have met up a couple of times.

My friend lives in Tauranga so I’ve been lucky to have someone to meet up with for lunch and after work. Last night my friend suggested we go for a walk up Mount Maunganui before having dinner, which was such a cool idea coz last week while thinking about my time in Tauranga I was contemplating climbing the Mount as it’s something I’ve wanted to do most of my life but never have. And when I say most of my life I really do mean that, my Grandmother lived in Mt Maunganui and as a very young kid school holidays were often spent down here.

I should have known to dress for a big hike when she sent a text message telling me to bring my camera and a bottle of water, but oh no, I dressed appropriately for dinner! As I drove towards the mountain I started thinking oh dear the Mount looks a lot bigger than I remembered it. But I made it all the way to the top. I couldn’t believe how many people were running up and down the mountain it’s obviously a very popular thing to do after work and I was the most over dressed person on the mountain. So I’m really glad my friend suggested it, coz if she wasn’t there, there is no way I would have walked up the Mount.

At the bottom of the Mount I noticed the sign telling people the beach is open but to watch out for oil, because of the recently shipwrecked container ship. I was actually hoping to photograph the ship while down here, I did see it, but it’s too far away to photograph without a decent zoom lens.

And on my first night here I discovered a shopping mall on the main street of downtown Tauranga called Goddards – how cool is that, but no I’m not related.

Lately I have had some major dramas at my local Countdown supermarket. The problem is always caused by the same thing – yoghurt coated raisins which I buy every week from the pick and mix bins. The problem with this started several years ago when they decided to do away with individual codes for the different pick and mix items and just have two simple codes: pick and mix OR chocolate. My guess is this saves them plastic bags and does away with the need for a pen to write the code down for the cashier – you can chuck all your different types of lollies such as milk bottles, snakes, jellybeans, sherbets and yoghurt coated raisins in the same bag, cool – NOT!!!

Usually it’s not a problem but every now and then a cashier would look at my raisins and decide they are chocolate and so I would get charged 10 times as much as I should be and I never noticed till one day I was looking at my supermarket receipt and spotted a charge for chocolate which didn’t make sense as I hadn’t bought any chocolate. I thought I better watch them next time I buy the raisins and sure enough the next time the cashier did the same thing, so I corrected her and she said sorry and went through the big ordeal of reversing the charge and finding the correct code and weighing them all over again. This takes time and people in the queue behind me start glaring at me for holding them up.

After this started happening frequently I asked a supervisor what I should do to stop this happening, she said to tell the cashier as she puts it through its pick and mix not chocolate. This didn’t seem like such a hard thing to do but sometimes the look or tone from the cashier would tell me that clearly I thought they were stupid or something and this too became an unpleasant part of the shopping routine.

But the final straw came two weeks ago when the hideous OLD cashier woman said: “oh ok if you insist but actually these are chocolates”. I said: “no they’re not they are yoghurt coated raisins, not chocolate.” She said in a very patronising voice “oh whatever, don’t worry I’ll put them through for you as pick and mix but they’re not, they ARE chocolate.”

I couldn’t believe how nasty she was and worse I couldn’t believe how she was accusing me of lying and obviously trying to rip the supermarket off. Our argument continued for several minutes in the same manner till I demanded loudly to see her manager, the manager heard this and came rushing over. The cashier told her there was no problem everything was ok and sorted, I told her it was definitely NOT sorted and demanded the cashier tell the manager exactly what the problem was. She sarcastically said to the manager: ” this gentleman is upset coz he believes these are pick and mix, so I have put them through as pick and mix for him but I have told him they are actually chocolate.” The MANAGER put her hand on my shoulder in a comforting sort of way and said: ” that’s ok sir, don’t worry about it we have charged you the pick and mix price BUT they really are chocolates.”

At that point in front of all the customers after many years of being patient I finally lost it and yelled at the manager and demanded she follow me to the pick and mix section, where I showed her that they are NOT CHOCOLATE. She looked shocked apologised most profusely and explained they must have just changed. More yelling took place as I told her NO THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PICK AND MIX. Then I calmed down and explained to her how sick and tired of this whole issue I am every time I come to the supermarket, how I’ve tried everything to not have this problem, how I’ve written on the bag in huge letters this is not chocolate and reused the same bag every week, how I’ve tried everything and yet your cashiers are rude and ignorant and have no idea of how to treat customers and on and on and on I went. Finally I ran out of steam and she said she was sorry once again and didn’t know what to do about it, she wouldn’t charge me for the raisins this time I could have them for free. Whoopee Do a savings of $2.00

I told her I don’t care about the money that’s not the issue here the problem is with the way you people – suddenly I stopped and said “thank you, I give up!” We walked back to the checkout in silence I paid for my groceries and walked out. I don’t ever want to go back there again, so in the last couple of weeks I have been trying alternative supermarkets and because all the supermarkets near me are Countdown branded I have the same problem everywhere. Then on Thursday night I found supermarket heaven!!!

Albany New World is FABULOUS. They have:

perfect sized trolleys that you don’t feel stupid wheeling around with hardly anything in

huge wide aisles

Very friendly and helpful staff who actually take you to where something you are looking for is located, not just grunt and point in some random direction

good prices

two people at every checkout one to process your shopping and one to pack it

individual codes for every single item at the huge pick and mix, plus a working pen and a little set of scales for weighing your stuff

Fly Buys points on everything you buy

BUT best of all, a fun self serve check out with no rude old lady arguing with you about what is chocolate and what isn’t. The computer even agreed with me, they ARE yoghurt coated raisins!!!

So goodbye big corporate nasty Countdown, I don’t care that I have to travel a bit further to do my shopping from now on, I don’t even care that some things may cost a little more but so far they haven’t, in fact three of the things I bought were a lot cheaper. This morning I went past a New World supermarket nearer my house, so I popped in for a quick look and in the short time I was there one guy asked if I was looking for something special, two people smiled at me and the cashier was very happy and friendly and yes they had yoghurt coated raisins with their own code, bags and a pen!

On my way home from shopping this morning I decided to visit my old supermarket. The supermarket above (like so many others) used to be a Foodtown and it’s the one my Mum and all my friends’ Mums used to shop at when we were growing up.

After living away from New Zealand and returning home it’s also the supermarket I would use to do the weekly shopping back in the 90s. So going back there today I thought would be a fun thing to do – I was wrong!!!

I just couldn’t find anything, it had really narrow aisles and it was full of retired people who take up the whole aisle while taking ages to decide on a product. It seemed dark and cluttered. As for the service I received at the checkout – it was awful plus she over charged me for my pick and mix. Trying to drive out of the car park was also a major mission so I will not be going back.

As I was driving home I had a nice thought – I wonder how many people living in Auckland can do their weekly supermarket shopping in the same place they used to shop at over 30 years ago. Especially people living on the North Shore, most Aucklanders don’t actually come from Auckland, or if they do then they usually don’t live in the same part of Auckland. Plus with so much change over the years it’s amazing if the same shop is still in the same place. Then it struck me as – maybe that’s sad that I’m still here, but then I thought no – it’s cool, I’ve moved many times, I’m just drawn to the Shore and will probably always return here no matter where my life leads me.

Victoria Park Tunnel

Originally uploaded by beejayge

Today I got to walk through the brand new Victoria Park Tunnel – a new section of Spaghetti Junction designed to allow 3 lanes of traffic access to the Harbour Bridge when heading north instead of 2 lanes.

The tunnel opens to cars next week so today people could walk through it which was very cool.

Update: only 138 sleeps till Las Vegas.