My Easter Holidays Part 1

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.