So, up at 05:50 on Saturday, which was quite early enough for me.. it was off to the West Coast. Pretty much back to the pancake rocks Glynn and I had travelled to a few weeks ago.

Only this time there were a few differences. Firstly – it was with Dave, Chris(toph) and Joe – Dave being the only kiwi.. Chris – a PhD student from Germany (who works in Daves Electrical engineering group – kinda – well that’s the excuse to come to NZ for three months a year and go climbing ;) And Joe – a caver from the UK over here learning how to setup and run a vineyard.

And the other major difference was the car. The Car. Just to get ya’ll started here’s a picture of the car taken on the way home, from inside.. see if you can spot what’s not working.

So, off to the West Coast it was.

Made fine time, and headed to our first cave at about midday. I will get the names and edit this sometime, but for the moment – First Cave will do.

It was – well, scary and cool. Seemed to have been formed by river erosion, and yet it was also a blowhole. Scary ‘cos every 30 secs or so there was a huge WHHOOOMFF for want of sound effects. I mean BIG. Getting down into the cave through a tiny hole with that going on was interesting to say the least. And of course the pressure in your ears is going mental. Coupled to that I was learning how to use Ascenders, and Breaks and all sorts of other caving things (ok so it was actually fine but I have to build suspense here). When we got down into the cave (absailed in – about 10m) it was a very short trip – maybe 100m) to this

We were basically standing in the back of the cave made by a blowhole. And it was *really* doing it’s thing as a North Westerly has been blowing for the last four days, so the sea was really rough.

here is a video of the blowhole cave in action. It’s 2.5 megs.. not too big. You can see in the video that the cave goes completely dark when the waves are pouring in.

So that was the first cave…. hint if you’ve not worked out what was wrong with that picture – the dial in the center is the speedometer

Then a quick trip back to the Pancake rocks, which were active this time with lots of jets of water all over the place, pretty cool. Onto the second caving trip, I decided not to bring my camera down for the rest of the caves, probably should have, as I’ve no pics now! – but still, this one was a lot colder, lot muddier, but good fun! The impressive thing is finding the caves in the first place. Most of the time we had to walk through the bush (with no markings to speak of for two of them), Dave has a pretty excellent memory and sense of direction (thankfully!)

Many pints that evening – and – at last – there was a pool table and plenty of people to play with (Flying Kiwi tour bus was there – $1400? for three weeks of food, accommodation and bus..) Have missed playing pool!..

Oh yes, we did go to find another cave before doing the second one, but the road was flooded (turned into a lake). It was kinda ‘interesting’ as when we drove through the first (not so flooded part) the water started coming up through the bottom of the car ;) heheheheheheh, mind you – seeing as the car cost $200 to begin with you can’t complain, and it really did have some abuse this weekend.

Right – the final cave – this one called Golfcourse. Pretty interesting as we had to walk for an hour through bush to get to it, and then starts with a 10m squeeze down between two walls (you have a rope to hang on to, but mainly you just body-jam your way down), then inside the cave there were a couple of iron-runged ladders to use in a couple of places. Complete with horror stories of the things breaking (breaking *anything* is seriously bad news in a cave.. really hard to get anyone out). Called golfcourse because in the main streamway you walk up (and it’s cold ;) there are pools of water, some pretty big – maybe 2m max in diameter). And some of them are *really* black water.. i.e. deep, probably connects with lower stream systems. Things you do not want to fall into… Not at all.

So, finally back to the car

And ready for the drive home, which is where I am now. An excellent weekend, saw some pretty cool things and had loadsa laughs…

Oh, and if you didn’t work out what was wrong with that picture – well – the speedometer isn’t working, the car is moving (you can see the landscape is moving) but the speedometer registers nothing. It decided to stop working on the way home. Still, an excellent car, self draining too ;)

So a pretty good start to the whole call-centre-experience, training until Thursday – and then went onto the phones today. But it’s pretty easy really – they let you work with an experienced person up until the point you’re ready to take over, and then they stick around until you’re confident.

Nice cycle to work though

Off to the West Coast tomorrow morning (6am) with the same people (well one) that we went canyoning with back in January. Promises to be another cold experience! This time no wetsuits.. so that’s interesting! ;) Hehehe, still, as long as it doesn’t rain too much we’ll be grand. Hopefully we’re doing this cave :

If you’d like to do a vertical cave then the Cataract Pot/Myopia trip is an awesome easy vertical cave with a 40m pitch next to a water fall and a couple of other pitches – I’d be quite keen on this. It’s easy to rig and I have enough rope. The cool thing is that it’s a through trip – ie, down two pitches then a look around the bottom then up the waterfall pitch and out, it only takes a couple of hours.

So we’ll see.. that one sounds like fun though. Oh, and went to see Big Fish last night, and it was absolutely excellent!

So a few changes to the website.. note the *new* reverse-page *feature* ;) Any more suggestions welcome!

So today in work learned that a bird watching society in Auckland is winding up. Now societies aren’t allowed to make money.. however, over $3 million had been given to the society in gifts etc, and in the rules of the society upon winding up the company, any leftover monies were to be shared out equally amongst the members.

There were 30 members. So.. $100,000 just for being a member of a bird watching society. Not bad eh ;) Not naming names but I believe when the people who found out in the companies office (where I work) that this was the case, they tried to become members (wouldn’t you?!) unfortunately no dice…

It is actually quite insane the amount of havoc one could reek if one wanted to ;) I mean for example every company is given a company key – a mechanism to change data on through the companies website for anything pertaining to the companies set up etc. For example (and this has happened once) a disgruntled employee obtained the company key (a mechanism for changing the company data) – and then went and resigned all the directors!! :D Hehhehhe, ehem, sorry, I mean that’s terrible of course, but still, kinda funny – and the thing is that we can’t just put it back together.. they have to write in and do all sorts of stuff… It isn’t super easy to get the key – you do have to confirm that you are authorised etc, but still.. it is possible

However, for the most part (99%) the system is not abused so it is actually very effective – it’s quite interesting really to see the different systems. You can incorporate a business online for $60. Not too bad really. They can e-mail / SMS you when you need to file your annual returns etc, it really is quite efficient. Must check the Irish governments website sometime and compare…

Glynn missed his flight out of Bangalore.. so got as far as Singapore and may have to wait a week for a flight. Still, I guess he’ll enjoy Singapore!, shame, now we are going to have to wait another week to see Big Fish (Tim Burtons latest offering, which I’m quite looking forward to)

Lazy weekend, registered for kite surfing which should be fun. Headed off to see a bouldering competition in castle hill, but it rained so no show.

Pretty close and loud (and wet) thunderstorm on Saturday night – haven’t had one of those since getting here.

Oh – and while I try not to watch tele, I make allowances for (admittedly crap) remakes of… Battlestar Galactica. They’ve remade it. But it’s still pretty cool. I mean any series which starts with the human race being annihilated down to 50,000 people has gotta be good? right? ;) No, but seriously, I lived in fear of the cylons (and my brothers), so it’s good to catch up with them again.

So, interesting last couple of days in the new job, doesn’t look like it’s going to be like what I thought Call Centers would be like.. at least there’s no selling involved.

Glynn is in India, which sounds like a bunch of fun, but it’s kinda good too, as I feel slightly less unfit now that this

isn’t happening this week. I dunno, when you get past 100 situps in a single sitting (ba boom) it’s too much! Mind you, I guess it’s good for those overhangs.

Me, well – I’ve been playing a bunch of squash, almost every day this week!. Oh, and good news for next week, looks like caving could be happening on the West Coast / Nelson with Dave and maybe a few of the others we went Canyoning with back in the beginning of January.. who knows.