It has been a pretty sociable week really, Mhairi has been meeting up with lots of her friends from ChCh, before heading off on Friday morning.

This pic is of Marcel Mhairi and I.. we had quite a few adventures together… The Heaphy Track, Kaikoura, the disastrous (ish) Mt. Owen trip amongst others. Marcel and Mhairi had a pretty awesome time travelling around the North Island together back in January.. I think they pretty much did everything!!

On Tuesday a bunch of us headed go-karting at Supakarts… and it was lots of fun.

It was quite different to the times I’d raced back in Ireland.. they gave you penalties for hitting into your opponents (whereas back in Dublin that’s all part of it!) I was *way* too clean a driver! I definitely should have hit into a few more people :) hehehe, still, lots of fun. It was teams of two – and each driver got 60 laps.. I’d recommend it for sure.

There’s a 30 sec video (5 megs) here

Well, my friend Eoin wrote the following e-mail the other day

You know the way you were one of the first to get a blog? And
now everyone seems to have one…. Well, I think you should
stay ahead of the curve, buy a microphone, and record a
podcast! It would be cool, kinda like Alistair Cooke’s Letter
from America, only from New Zealand and not by Alistair Cooke ;)

Well.. my first attempt is ready now.. you’ll need to download IPODDER and then subscribe to my podcast rss feed which is here https://blog.psdavey.com/old_blog/podcast/podcast.rss

If it doesn’t work – giz-a-shout..

Has been a mental week .. and I don’t see it stopping any time soon. Work is extremely busy (and, for the first time, a teensy bit stressful! I’m having to do some *real work*) which is a total shock to the system ;) No, it’s all good, but handing off projects etc. to other groups so that they can maintain what I have built – is a little challenging.

Mhairi and I have been sorting out travel plans – and, once again, it has all changed!.. but this time it’s set. You can see the map here (must put it on the main page somewhere I guess) The difference this time is that I’m flying into Sydney (not Melbourne) and cutting out Singapore and flying straight to BKK.. other than that it’s pretty much the same.

Hopefully no more changes now!! Went to see the fantastic four.. which was O.K. but not great.

Got up snowboarding with Mhairi and Dave Aubrey to broken river on Saturday.

I was really feeling confident about making turns on steepish ground. Not, of course, that it was always well placed confidence.. I took a couple of head over heel rolls.. and my bum has been less bruised at times in its life! but all in all good times. I was quite impressed at how quickly (first time) mb got the hang of the infamous nutcrackers Though as it got icier during the day it didn’t help too much.

So, a couple of things happened this week that I’ve not mentioned yet.. firstly my sister Liz had another baby.. hopefully she and Tim (who live in Minneapolis) won’t treat Ciara quite as badly as they do Fiona (in this first pic)

So yes, it’s quite exciting to have another niece. That makes two nieces and one nephew that I’ll not have seen until I get home. I’m really getting very excited about travelling now – I will totally miss NZ, and will be back in Febuary, but yes, looking forward to seeing the family (a lot)

That pic is of Liz and Fiona and Ciara..

So yes, the bad thing of course was the 5 bombs in London.. Luckily, it seems all my family and friends there escaped completely.. but it is shocking all the same – sometimes home feels quite removed from NZ, but things like that bring it all back..

On a happier note – Mhairi has arrived for 12 days (of training for her next adventure race ;) I think she’s really enjoying seeing all her friends back in ChCh again.. it’s certainly great having her visting!

WARNING.. THIS POST CONTAINS NUDITY

So, My friend Domhnall has been visiting with his girlfriend Linda – both of whom I hope to catch up with in OZ soon enough. It was unfortunate that the timing clashed with Lorcans trip – ahh well! Good times though… headed out and played pool on Friday night. I seemed to do well against everyone – except Domhnall.. which is kidna annoying seeing as I play all the time and he doesn’t… :)

Then on Sat – we headed up to Arthurs pass to climb at castle hill.. unfortunately – as has been the case for the last week or so – the weather wasn’t good enough.. still, here’s a pic of Domhnall..

and one of Linda…

We headed up to Maruia Springs that night – to stay the night.. it was a really lovely place to stay the evening. I’d tried to … use my gentle persuasion on the receptionist to get us a cheaper room. See it’s all studio units.. $150 for a 2 person room.. the conversation went something like this:

Maruia:Hello, welcome to Maruia Springs, how can we help you?
Irish Cheapskate Hello, just wondering how much rooms are
Maruia:$150 for a 2 person studio room.
Irish CheapskateWow, that’s a little more than I was expecting.. see I have a couple of backpacker (not exactly true, they’re both qualified doctors) friends and I was hoping to show them Maruia as it’s so much nicer than Hamner Springs (always slag the competition off) and, if it was possible for us all to fit in one room – we have sleeping bags – then that’d be just wonderful…
Maruia:I’ll have to ask about that one…

In the event, we were going to get a $15 discount per head if we took one room – an ‘executive room’ – whatever that is… we ended up getting two seperate rooms.. which was a good move.

I do love the place though – if you’re staying the night – then there’s 24 hour access to the pools – so we brought down a couple of bottles and settled in. It was a really lovely evening.. then a quick(ish) game of scrabble.. which Linda kicked ass at.. (even with me knowing all the sneaky 2 letter words!!)

The next morning Glynn, Domhnall and I took a quick dip in the segregated (naked) baths… it was *slightly* embarrasing taking this picture.. I didn’t care (and neither did the others – who’s permission I have to put this up).. but at exactly the moment I was taking it… in walks a cleaner … it was *slightly* embarrasing to say the least – standing in the doorway taking pictures of the lads..

Back to ChCh, out for the last test match (All Blacks won the series 3:0).. and then many many pints.. haven’t been out drinking until 2 in a long time.. I know.. weak.. but there you go! :)

Linda and Domhnall left today for Queenstown – where they will be spending the next week learning to snowboard.. hope they get a good dumping of snow! Great to see the Big Man again though.. looking forward to Perth now..