A quick pic from the river crossing. If you’re wondering what I’m wearing it’s in order to ‘blend’ over here… Kiwis all wear ‘PolyPro’ and shorts. It’s a poor-mans thermal underwear.. But quite warm, retains heat when wet, and dries incredibly quickly.

But it does come in pretty weird colours :)

So what did I do this week.. hmmm, work was grand, phisio was fine too! – ACC have said they’ll cover it all (really is a great system!), so that’s all good. Had a table quiz in work on the friday night pretty tricksy questions… What’s the longest palindrome in the english language? Starts with RA. Answers on a postcard… ;)

Saturday – went on a river crossing course which was great fun, pretty much the same I think, as the one Glynn and Maeve went on a while ago – they just teach you how to cross a river (methods of linking up etc), things to look out for (i.e can you back out – is there space to get out the other side, is there a margin of safety – and also – is there badness a bit further down the river (e.g are you crossing upstream of a waterfall)). All things to consider :)

But great fun, and a really sound bunch of people too, really looking forward to getting into the college club a bit, they do mountaineering too, so lots to join in on.

Sunday – well a great start to the day when my brother Chris rang saying that ‘Oops, we accidently had transferred the tax-back you got into Dad’s account’. Harumph, see I put in for tax back when I left Ireland, and my friend Liam got 800 euro back or something, so I was expecting about the same, but never heard anything, so pretty much gave up on it. So, yeah, pretty much a bonus of 862 euro or something. Which is definitely nice.

So I went to the Katmandu sale… (patagonia / great outdoors chain of this part of the world). And bought myself some semi-rigid boots which should be well capable of taking crampons, well, actually they’re really quite rigid, but they’re not plastics… so I think they should be fine for the stuff I want to do, though will be asking around a bit – they have a returns policy here..

Then just went out climbing for a single pitch, have to get back training again, been too long out of it, though I guess I’ve just been keeping busy with squash, still, time to get back into it (now that the weather has turned bad ;) me smart.

Maeve turned a 1/4 of a century, had a really cracking dinner here for it – loadsa vino (Glynns sterling choice – he’s currently in OZ climbing with Domhnall) They had an amazing itinerary mapped out so I’m really looking forward to hearing about it.

Well, excellent weekend, and productive too :) Friday night was a bar-b-q and complete meat-fest. It was given by Maeve’s boss’ partner (Shane) out on his farm in the countryside.. it was a really excellent place. A lot of the furniture around the house had been made by Shane, and it was really impressive, beautiful native wood too. It was a fairly late night, though I headed for bed, before Glynn found his way to the (freezing) pool for a midnight (5am) swim…

It was great though, because two of Shanes’ friends had flats to let.. so I got their numbers and checked it out on Sunday… I think I would have preferred the first one, but seeing as I can’t move out of here until 9th April I was quite sure they’d find someone in the meantime… so have taken the second place – With Jim and his flatmate from the Coramandel Jim is a plumber, the other flatmate is a concrete cutter. I suspect the atmosphere will be relaxed ;) Quite looking forward to it. It’ll also be around about 1/2 the cycle in the morning, and that’s just going to be great! So yeah, ’tis all go here!

Good week all in all, played squash on Monday, but gently enough! and so was absolutely killed by my opponent!

Saint ME day was good fun, Maeve definitely looked the part

Just a few social pints for me.. shame it was a weeknight! I think – you – well I – appreciate Ireland all the more when away from it! – it’s kinda funny that millions of people all over the world are going to have many pints this evening because of our little country. St Patrick, I imagine, must be turning in his grave.

Thursday got to the phisio. Will find out in a week or so if ACC covers it… hopefully as then it’ll be nice and free… Have to go back on Tuesday and Thursday too.. but it’s feeling a lot better already, just strained, nuffink’ major.

Off to a bar-b-q this evening, friend of Maeves in her workplace, should be fun :)

Slight pain with the kite-surfing.. Sam is away for the next 6 weeks.. and they don’t seem to have time any more to do it midweek.. kinda annoying.. will give them a call tomorrow and see what can be sorted out, hopefully something can, have been looking forward to it for a while!

So, Friday – off up to Auckland, trip up was easy, electronic checkin system is quite a handy thing. Got the last bus from the airport to our hostel, and had a wander around (and a horrid pint of ale in ‘Shakespeare tavern’ or some name like that. Ick. The Skytower was lit up in bluey/purple. Which was quite impressive. Which I also do not have a picture of.

Here’s a picture of it the next day – when we went out to Kelly Tarlton’s underwater experience thing! It was actually quite cool. Kelly was some big underwater buff and wanted to let other ppl enjoy what New Zealand had to offer under water, without actually having to get wet..

It was actually pretty impressive, the highlight being a maybe 100m moving walkway (though you could go around and around) through perspex tunnels. You get an idea of the – resourcefulness of this country through how they made the thing… Japan said they were the only ones with the technology to bend the perspex into the cylindrical shape.. they didn’t have the cash. So they bought massive sheets of perspex from Germany, had it shipped over, made moulds, heated it – and bent the things. And it all worked :) But yes, definitely worth a trip.

Then mini-golf, 1:1 which was a relief ;) Good close matches!

Finally, back to Auckland, and off to dinner, Muscles and Frites in a local Belgian Pub, washed down with Leffe Brun, a quite excellent start to the evening. And then …. to Billy Connolly.

I won’t be so foolish as to try and repeat any of his jokes. It was a real – well – Billy is definitely one of my heroes, after reading his biography and the amount of – well – well what he had to go through to survive – and then to come out and make thousands of people laugh for 2.5 hours straight… Amazing. Classic set – just a stool and a glass of water. Amazing, I would go again to see him anywhere, it was completely worth flying to Auckland just to see him. He got a reasonably bad review by a lot of people.. but I think that’s just ‘cos they weren’t ready for his – language… c’est la vie. I do think though, that comedy is one of the greatest things ever! I love the Monday and Wednesday nights in the International Bar have had some of the best nights there… I mean it doesn’t really matter what sort of a day you’ve had, get to some good comedy and it’s all just good! :) Love it.

Sunday – headed up the skytower. This being New Zealand – the home of extreme everything you can bungee from it.

We didn’t. Nice enough view from the top. A friend of mine – Susanne – gave me a BBH card (Budget Backpackers Hostel) card before I left (which she picked up on her way back through NZ), and it’s been great, I’d recommend getting one actually, they give you all sorts of savings – obviously in hostels (around about $2-3 per night) but on so many entrances too – $5 off the return bus trip, $5 off the skytower, $5 off Kelly Tarltons I think it was too, it’s been great :)

Finally back to ChCh, an excellent weekend.. I really hope I get to see the Big Yin perform again, as it was completely excellent.