11th March, 2016

Hello again, dear readers and my apologies, once again, for the delay in getting digit to keyboard. Indeed, I have even had complaints! (Thank you, Kathy). Well, here I am again, now in Sydney, but ready and willing to cover our visit to Auckland and a tiny bit of New Zealand.

It was an early start by taxi to the airport in Melbourne for the 3 hour 20 minute flight to Auckland, but all went well and we were picked up at the airport by Val’s younger, older brother (see the Melbourne post for the syntactic difficulties discussed there), Vijayan (Viji) and his wife Radha, who whisked us off to their house in the suburbs of Auckland.

It was nice to see some green again after the khaki brown of Melbourne and Victoria (and the endless brown of Western Australia).The weather was a nice 25 to 28 degrees, the sun was shining and you could have been forgiven for comparing it to a nice summer’s day in England (though possibly not Scotland!). On previous visits it has sometimes felt that you were stepping back in time by about 30 years (no bad thing, I hear some of you say), but this time it was obvious that there had been a huge amount of development in recent years. One sign of the times is that some of the signs at the airport are in Chinese, a reflection of the increasing tourist interest from China as well as the investment from there in NZ. Lots of houses being built everywhere we went and lots of traffic on the road. Admittedly we did not stray far from Auckland. You have to remind yourself that the total population is still only 4.5 million in an area bigger than the UK with 65 million (NZ is 990 miles long and about 10,000 sq miles or 10% bigger than the UK).

We had a nice quiet day with a family dinner that evening with Radha’s sister Leela, her husband, Lindsay and their Mum (Auntie!).

12th March, 2016

Viji and Radha took us out for the day with our first stop being the site of the new house they are building out by the coast. Foundations have been laid and they are hoping to move in by September. They are within a very short walk of a lovely beach…..

We had picked up some oysters en route and set off for a favourite picnic spot a little further along the coast for a spot of lunch. It’s a tough life! I would point out that yours truly is not a great fan of oysters, largely because I simply don’t see the attraction (they just taste a bit fishy with a dash of lemon and are over in a second). Anyway, I did have one and a photo was duly taken as below – note the brave smile. If you want to see true oyster lovers, see Val and Viji tucking in. Val did manage to get her feet wet!

That evening saw us tuck into even more excellent food as our hosts took us out for a lovely meal in Auckland (no oysters!).

13th March, 2016

The morning started quite early as Radha had kindly recorded the England – Wales 6 Nations game which, due to 13 hours time difference, had been on the TV at 5.00 in the morning. There is a real advantage about being in NZ – they LOVE their rugby and I was in a house that also LOVE their rugby (and sport in general) so the TV was properly tuned to all the right channels. You all know the result, but I did get nervous at half time when the commentator advised that England had never lost and Wales never won when the difference at half-time was 19 points. So the last 15 minutes when we went from 25-7 to 25-21 were distinctly unnerving. Still, all well in the end (and Spurs won!).

Viji had to take a couple of days out to fly to Nelson on the South Island for business (Nelson is almost opposite Wellington on the North Island, which pleased my sense of history no end). However, we had a busy day ahead of us as Val had tracked down more old classmates/former members of the Secretaries Society of Malaysia and it was off for lunch at a Chinese restaurant.

Radha then took us to a lovely park called One Tree Hill and Cornwall Park (they are combined). The former has an obelisk to commemorate the Maoris and there did used to be a tree, but it was attacked by a Maori activist in 2000 and had to be removed (some wags now call it None Tree Hill). Fabulous views though!

14th – 15th March, 2015

Not much happening on either day, though Val and Radha went shopping and I watched the Rugby Sevens finals from Vancouver – this is a very civilised country! I was also able to get stuck into my book (Dictator, by Robert Harris – the last in the trilogy about Cicero, highly recommended as is anything by him (Harris) (though a lot of what Cicero wrote is also highly recommended!)).

We had a lovely dinner at Leela and Lindsay’s and Val cooked Chicken Rice the next night (and I made a fruit salad – nod to Caroline on that one). Also included is a guest appearance by Tiga, Leela and Lindsay’s dog!

 

16th March, 2016

VERY early start for our flight to Sydney. It had been a really, really lovely stay and so nice to catch up with Viji and Radha. Can’t thank them enough and we only wish we could have stayed longer. I have to say that if I had to settle anywhere else in the world, it could well be New Zealand. It is such a lovely country. I shall return!

Sydney next up!!!