Archive: Month: January 2025

The other two New Zealanders (Nahum and Walter) on my team who work for Vibrant Planet live in Wellington, so, I headed up to see them. Nahum I knew from Ruby circles, Walter I don’t think I’d met before. Janet was over visiting from the US, so, we had a very enjoyable few days hanging out, doing some work, having some food, playing games (Janet’s extremely good!). Good times.

Then Maaike and Anna came up and we hung out with Glynn and Jayne & visited Thomas & Adeline. Wellington is in a bit of a state at the moment, as there have been just massive job cuts in Wellington from this government. I think it’s something like 11% net job losses in the last 12 months. Pretty crazy.

And a nice walk with Nick once back in ChCh, haven’t seen him in an age :)

Oh, and Donald Trump got elected for the second time. Well, ok, the election happened back in November, but, he has taken office. Musk is in and running around causing absolute mayhem… honestly, it’s a total shit show. Here in NZ David Seymour is cutting school lunches (more on that in a future post) and they’re just absolutely uncaring heartless mean cruel people. It’s honestly disgusting. Tax breaks for landlords and let the most needy go hungry. Sickening.

The wonderful Kate & Mark organised a trip for us all to Lake Daniells up in Lewis Pass. It’s a place we’ve been a bunch of times before, as it really is ideal for young trampers. The hut also has the best toilets of any DOC hut I’ve been to. No kidding, they’re really good!

The kids did well, no real complaining and we made decent time. Even went for a dip in the lake. It’s ridiculously shallow for a really long way!

We’d booked the entire hut out, and there weren’t any campers, so we had the entire place to ourselves. Quite rare and really lovely!. Marshmallows were toasted, drawings were made on the massive blackboard which is there. Ice-creams were eaten on the way home. A lovely weekend.

Had a fun play about on the beach with Ian and Ali and Amelie. They have a Blokart which is a kind of land yacht. Super fun.

Had a nice catch up with Glynn who’s in town with his family. Always delicious food when we meetup (and they’re cooking!). My offering was Pimms.

And a couple of outings for Anna and her friend Thor, as Thor (and Mikkel, Berit and Freyer) are heading back to Denmark for a year, perhaps more. They’re certainly going to be missed.