Well, this one is going to be a little more brief. The last post took me 2 hours and I don’t fancy a repeat. Thursday and Friday I did a bit of catching up on life.
On Thursday I did some washing etc, where I had another Minties moment – one of my pens went through the wash and leaked. If anybody knows how to get pen ink out of clothes I would be most greatful for the advice. Then in the afternoon I made curried carrot and apple soup for my small group, which I went to in the evening. Somehow I managed to go to the supermarket 3 times over the course of the day. I’m not sure if that is a record or not.
On Friday I ran some general errands, picking up some material for togas for Anna and Me for Danny’s Toga themed bus trip on Saturday. I also picked up my Buzz the Big Quiz pre-order, which we made good use of in the evening. I’m not sure if I should be glad or not that I couldn’t answer the question “Which is the smallest teletubby” correctly… We found out later that Nick would have got that one.
Saturday I tidied my room and took all the clothes which are now to big for me to the clothing bin. Now I have space in my cupboards again. Saturday night was Danny’s bus trip. We got Spags before-hand. Anna, Andy and Me walked into Spags in our togas and the others all left very soon afterwards. (We were late and they’d ordered for us). Somebody at the next table asked us if we’d scared them away. 🙂 I am going to try to get some photos, but don’t have any as yet. I do have one of me trying on my toga on Friday, but it didn’t really look like that for long on Saturday night… I was attacked by Kristyn and somehow ended up with a much more risque “toga” and was dubbed “The Roman Pimp” by people we ran into. I was originally going for Latin Mafia, so possibly not too far off the mark.
We went to 5 bars all over the place and eventually ended up in time where we went to Iconic and danced for a while and eventually went home via KFC, where I attempted to convince the person serving me to sell me a vegetarian salad. I bought it with chicken when they wouldn’t drop the price to remove it. The whole night was a lot of fun.
On Sunday morning I biked over to Danny’s to pick up my car and then went to church. Then round to Mark’s again from whence Andy, Mark, Nick and me went to Cave Stream. The water was quite high, significantly higher than when I went through in March. I was glad I had my wetsuit… Nick ended up not going through as he had no change of clothes. Ran into Matt and Robin there as well. We got through safely eventually, albeit with a few bumps and bruises for some. Quite an adventure. I didn’t realise before we went that I was the only one who had done it before, so the others didn’t really know what they were in for. Twas described as “Cave Raging Torrent” by Mark. Stopped in Springfield to consume hot food and beverages. I had a lamb, rosemary and kumara pie – delicious.
Upon return I was invited to go swimming at QEII, where I eventually arrived at about 7:30 – I drove longer than I swam. The pool closed at 8. Nick, Danny and Dave arrived before me and Dave challenged me to catch up with how far they’d swum which I did eventually, although only had time to swim 700m. The 50m pool takes a bit more effort than the 23m pool at work.
Today I’ve cleaned the toilet, done the dishes, had lunch, uploaded my photos and updated my blog. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’ve been busy all day.
Well, where do I begin. I’ve been on holiday since Friday, going back to work on Wednesday.
Firstly, I heard some great news the day before my holidays… As of 6th of June I will be a Software Engineer! So a whole bunch of new challenges and learning opportunities at work. I’m quite looking forward to it actually.
Now, onto my break. On Thursday night I went to the Mall and then to the movies to see Inside Man with Mark and Rachel, which I enjoyed. On Friday I had a bit of a lazy day. Cruised round to the Pink Palace around lunchtime because there was no food in the cupboard (partially) and found a few people trying to decide what to do with their afternoon. We ended up going to Subway for lunch and then a walk up the hill from Sumner with a few discussions on dancing and boom, headshots… (Clip is from Pure Pwnage episode 5). The territory was perfect.
Then in the evening we congregated at my place for some Singstar, as my pre-ordered Singstar Rocks game had arrived. I don’t think my singing is actually improving.
Then, on Saturday I drove to Queenstown. I had a couple of hitch-hikers between Christchurch and Ashburton and locked my keys in my car with the lights on at the juice factory just before Cromwell. The AA came and rescued me in due course. Definitely a Minties moment, but my Minties were locked in the car, so I consoled myself with the Nectarine juice I’d bought instead. Eventually I arrived at Louise’s place in one piece, although a little tired from the trip. We then went to church for the Easter vigil service and then on to Little India as we were a little hungry. Then we rang up Tony (my brother) to wish him a happy 17th birthday. (I hope I didn’t get that wrong) **I did and I’ve fixed it now.**
On Sunday we got up early and went to Warbirds over Wanaka, where I took a lot of photos. I have culled the photos I took on my holiday down from over 300 to 112 to ease the viewing experience for you, but that’s still a lot.
It was a great show, but we both returned to Queenstown very zonked from our day standing in the sun. Ran into Andy there as well. Having recently acquired his PPL he was a little jealous of the planes that the pilots were getting to fly. There were a few interesting things other than planes too… The World’s fastest Indian, a sister and some crazy Germans for example.
On Monday we decided to sleep in, but were woken up at 6am by Louise’s friends who wanted us to come out into town with them… They had been out all night. We managed to get rid of them eventually. Once we got up at a more reasonable hour, we were considered going mountain-biking up Coronet Peak, but that was finished for the season and the weather was a little inclement, so we went ice-skating instead. We went and had dinner at the pizza restaurant at Q-lounge (I think that was what it was called) followed by some pool (Our dinner special included a free hour). Louise knew the chef, so we got to try some delicious banana chocolate dessert pizza. Incidentally, he had been woken up at 10am by the same mob that had turned up at our place at 6. Somewhere in between a Sombrero had been acquired.
On Tuesday Louise had a lunchtime meeting at work, so I went and got some Subway and ate it on the waterfront in the sun where a Jazz band just happened to be playing. They were from here. Then we did some shopping and went to Fergburger for tea. We both got the big Al which is the biggest burger they had. It was huge. I was going to take photos, but by the time I thought of it, my hands were a little saucy… Then we went and saw Happy Coupling by the Court Theatre. (Not sure how long the link will last). I really enjoyed it and was laughing out loud for a lot of it.
Apart from the above, we also filled in a bit of time watching DVDs etc.
On Wednesday I headed back to Christchurch. I went up the Crown Range first to take some photos, because the views were amazing when we went to Warbirds, but we couldn’t really stop because of the traffic.
My timing for the trip was a little constrained as I had to be in Ashburton between 5 and 6 to pick up a TV I bought off Trademe. I thought I’d do the walk to Rock Peak from the top of the Crown Range and thought the stated time of 1 hour was well within my time budget. That was until I realised that it must have meant an hour each way, and I ended up running significant amounts of it. I also dropped my sunglasses about 10 minutes before the carpark, so on realising this when I went to drive off I had to run up and down again. Another Minties moment.
Anyway, I made it to Ashburton in time, with very few stops on the way. One very brief one at Lake Pukaki, which was like glass and one in Geraldine to find a map of Ashburton.
To add to the fun, I thought my stereo had broken as the speakers were popping, so the only sounds I had for the trip was the interminable dinging of my speed warning bell (It comes on at approximately 103-104kph). When I went to fix the stereo the following day, I found I had just inadvertently pushed the “loud” button on the stereo. Another Minties moment. Got back to Christchurch just in time to get some Noodle box and go to Mark’s place where they were watching The Grudge which was not great or even good. I’m going to stop this post here because it’s getting long.
Will update my blog with the events of the last week tomorrow (with photos). I’ve been to Queenstown, Warbirds over Wanaka and more. Also played first soccer game of the season yesterday. We won 4-2! Went to Cave Stream today.
I’ve put up the photos of the rafting bit of the rafting trip, now that I have them. You can see the raft I was on upside down there just by clicking on the thumbnail below. Also a few pics from Dave’s camera of when we played playstation outside have been added to the appropriate folder as well.
I forgot to mention this last night. Yesterday morning I arrived at work to find the following email from talishka@ukr.net:
Dear Luuk
If you wish to return your ICQ number 5152468 with all data and contacts, address answer to this email.
That you have believed in gravity of my intentions I send to you a part of the list of your contacts.
…
Deleted list of contacts
…With the best regards, Talishka
Understandably I wasn’t too impressed with this, so I wrote him back a very subtly worded email:
Dear Talishka,
You are a dick. I don’t care. I don’t use my ICQ account anymore anyway.
Cheers,
Luuk
and then proceeded to retrieve my account (Method omitted), and emailed him again:
Nice try
Then I sent this email to his ISP (with accidentally included grammatical and extra word errors)
Hello,
Today I received an email from “talishka@ukr.net”. In this email I
was told that my ICQ number had been stolen. I have since retrieved
the number, but would like to complain about about your customers use
of your service and request that you take action to prevent this from
happening again. The contents of the email is below.Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Regards
Luuk.
I also changed a bunch of my passwords for good measure. The wisdom of antagonising hackers is somewhat questionable, but I do not negotiate with terrorists, especially n00bs.
I don’t know what has happened, but I seem to have somehow started neglecting my blog and have fallen into a fortnightly update cycle. I am going to improve on this. To the update:
Last weekend I went to Amy‘s 21st and into town on Friday night, played paintball and saw Ice Age 2 on Saturday and went to the food festival on Sunday. All of the above were a lot of fun. 🙂 What? You want more details? Oh, alright then.
Amy’s 21st was a bbq with good food and great people and some interesting stories. Town was fun, with some good pool and some dancing, all on one bottle of bundaberg.
Paintball involved me getting shot a lot and shooting lots of people. Possibly the most fun I’ve had playing paintball. I think I got shot at least 12 times. This was mostly due to my cavalier atitude to ducking and hiding. I was in a charge and shoot mood and was enjoying the running and jumping. Went to Macdonalds straight afterwards all covered in paint and looking feral. Then home for a shower and on to Ice Age 2, which was great. This was followed by a visit to coffee culture where I had a banana buzz smoothie with a shot of espresso, which was kind of a mixture of items on the menu, but tasted great. Then I went to Borders, and as always, was sucked in and walked out with 4 books. – 3 cookbooks and Stardust by Neil Gaiman which I have now finished and really enjoyed. Then to Amy’s place for tea and then home to recover from the weekend thus far which also included making and consuming lots of smoothies.
On Sunday I went to church and then went round to the Pink Palace and dragged Mark and Dave to the food festival, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. We did almost have to be rolled home though. $15 entry fee and then more free samples than we could eat of everything. I might put up some photos of the seminar I did there if I get them off Dave. – Done. Some food festival photos in photo album. Click thumbnails to take you there.
Then home for fantastic homemade by Mike pizza and smoothies, which I did somehow manage to fit in. Then watched The Italian Job on DVD.
Ok, so that was one weekend…
I think the previous weekend was one of general relaxation, but that is probably because I am tired… Please remind me if I did something significant.
In other news, I had a job interview at work today with a view to me changing departments. Lots of probing questions. Work in general is busy this week, which is great. I like being busy. This is partially because it is a short week. I’m on holiday from Friday till Anzac day, which I’m looking forward to. Plans for the break are currently sketchy. I do plan to go to Queenstown for a few days and Warbirds over Wanaka. Who with is somewhat unorganised at the moment.
Now past bedtime. I’m off to sleep. Apologies if I’ve missed something, and feel free to let me know.
Almost forgot. Went and took photos of the sunset and moonrise last full moon at Sumner with Hobbs and Mark. Photos here. HIgh variance in quality due to low light and no tripod.