Stew and Juliana are two friends from the Canterbury University Tramping Club and they’ve been going out for ever and finally decided to tie the knot. They chose an entirely beautiful place to tie said knot – up at the Cheeseman ski field. It was quite a low-key event, but really beautifully done.

Here is a picture of the bride walking along a narrow path to where the service took place and a picture of the happy couple.

One key difference from Ireland is that the celebrant is the legally registered entity, not the place. This means that you can get married anywhere. This also means it can be a lot less expensive to have a wedding as extortionate prices can’t be charged by a limited number of (monopolising) venues. So… yes… a brilliant wedding – simply done but really great.

We stayed the night (drinkin’ and dancin’) and then back to Christchurch to meet some friends of Maaike’s who had arrived from The Netherlands.

I’ve said it before, and I’m quite sure I’ll say it again, the Dutch have an excellent sense of humour (at least the ones I have met). Ruud and Noor were absolutely great fun, we were merrily slagging eachother off after about, oh, 5 minutes of conversation – just like it would be with the Irish. Great times – would love to see them back here again.

And yes, the Dutch go in for double vowels a lot.

Apologies for the lack of posts. I’ve been busy!. Not so much in the play sense, but in the working sense.

I started work at Egressive a few weeks ago and have been busy ever since. It’s a great company with really nice people in it. Course I have to say that ‘cos they may easily have subscribed to the RSS feed to keep tabs on what I say ;) hehehe, no, kidding aside it really is a great place.

Dave, one of the directors, is as much a programmer as a .. well.. evangelist? .. for Open Source and Free Software. It was definitely one of the aspects that drew me to the company. Since starting I’ve been mainly doing support work for their clients. The framework that Egressive uses is Drupal, which is an Open Source CMS.

Anyway, this is all very heavy for this little blog! Basically, it has been great to learn and be stretched again. Of course, I do miss the flexibility that I has in my old job of being able to take lots of unpaid leave, but being kept interested does make up for things.

So, it was a good move, I’m definitely happy and on my way to becoming more and more comfortable with Drupal. Still heaps and heaps to learn. Which is great.

This was entirely Maaike’s idea – and full credit goes to her for picking it.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain were in town, and I would highly recommend going to see them if you get the chance. They’re absolutely talented, and extremely funny. I haven’t laughed so much at a concert ever!

Firstly we had to get past the protesters (no pics unfortunately). They had banners saying “Say no to Uke’s” and “Keep NZ Uke Free, Think of the children”. Fantastic.

Anyway.. here’s a short video (not from NZ) which will give you an idea of what they are like. They came back for about a 20 minute encore.

This video taken by the lovely Dom & Val 2 hours drive north of Christchurch in Kaikoura. Kai meaning “food” and Koura meaning plentiful (I think).

Basically the continental shelf goes from being super deep to super shallow – and this creates a massive upwelling of yummy foody stuff for fishies… it’s the place to do whale watching and dolphin swimming.

Had to be up and out reasonably early this morning as it was the longest day (30km door to door – but mercifully flat)

There were lots of wild horses about this morning and I must say, I was a little scared when they all spread out behind us and followed for a wee way.

The first stop was after 15km, and that was for lunch at Anne’s hut. Or, what’s left. I’m assuming it was simply someone forgetting to properly put out the fire (or something), but the entire hut was burned to the ground. There was a smaller (4 person) biv there, which they really don’t advertise… I suspect because they don’t want two groups getting there at the same time and being caught short.

It really was quite a long day, though for me at least it felt probably easier than the first day. There were a few streams to be crossed, but really, it’s a simple tramp which anyone could do.. perfect if you have the time.

Above we passed the “high point”, Anne’s saddle at 1136m. Last time there was snow.

All the way Maaike brought “Lenny”… Now.. there’s a good story here. Maaike’s sister (Femke) is having a baby. Maaike feels slightly far away and so decided that Lenny the sock bear, would have a chat with the unborn (via email) telling stories of life in NZ etc… and the adventures Lenny has.

Here he is, knackered at the end of the day, and then being slightly terrorised by me. Ah well, all good life lessons I’m sure.

And a picture of our excellent hut for the second night. Had a lovely bay windows to relax in. Really lovely place.

On the Sunday it was up and out.. not too early.. but not too late as the weather was due to change. Unfortunately we didn’t do a car shuttle (as we were on our own) which left us a 15km uphill rainy struggle to get back to the car. I’d brought my bike to commute on, but we tried hitching, and within 10 mins were lucky enough to get a lift with a lovely lady who was back from Show Day in Christchurch (the reason for the long weekend).

All in all an excellent weekend, and the blisters have almost healed.