Christchurch

I flew down to Christchurch yesterday. Due to some international law/foreign policy mishap, Rama will be joining me later. In fact, at this stage i still don't know when he's flying into Christchurch, so it'll be a bit of an adventure.


Anyway, i get 1 day to explore Christchurch on my own. It's a nice English town, fashioned to be a replica of a nice English town. There's a river - Avon - and English-looking buildings. Very quaint. In fact, i had a nice romantic walk by myself down the river yesterday - it was very nice. Truthfully, other than "nice" and "quaint" i can't think of any other way to describe X-church.
Oh, they have a tram - that's the scenic attraction. Since i've taken trams since I was a kid in Minsk, that didn't particularly appeal to me. And the churches are nice too - but i think i've seen enough in my lifetime.

BUT! Christchurch is right next to the Banks Peninsula - and that's where i went today. Took the Gondola up to the top of a mountain (same as a Heavenly gondola, even same Doppelmayer company makes it) so the ride itself wasn't much. The scenery, however, was astounding.

I rented a mountain bike at the top and wanted to take a leisure road down. small note - just like cars, bikes are reversed too - the brakes are swapped. that accounted for one of the first falls.

New Zealanders take their mountain biking seriously. What i thought would be a leisurely stroll turned out to be a fun experience. Somehow i ended up in the section for downhill riding - and it's marked just like ski slopes - blue/black/double-black diamond. I kid you not - i came up to one of them, laughed and turned around. Thankfully, i met a local who took me down an "easier" route, which resulted in only a few falls and tumbles and shaved off a couple years off my life.

Absinthe

Well, some call it "the green fairy", others (Poe/Van Gogh/Hemingway) refer to it as "inspirational". So hen I saw "absinthe drinks" on cocktail menu at a restaurant last night I was rather excited.
I was a little skeptical at first, but the waitress showed us the bottle - sure enough, made in France, looks green, smells of cough syrup, 60% alcohol. Just like the real thing.
We had a "fruit juice with absinthe" concoction - good, but too many papaya seeds. So the next one was "ask the bartender to mix it with some chocolate liqueur" (to hide the smell/taste). That was a little better. 2 drinks down, and still no green men showing up.


Such a find was to good to pass up, so after dinner we went to a nearby bar that had absinthe. There, the bartender offered us 3 options:

1. Absinthe cocktail
   
2. absinthe from Czech, 75% alcohol-by-volume
3. absinthe from UK (?) 89% a-b-v

The answer was clear - a little green bottle was presented to us, 2 shots of 178 proof absinthe poured.

Well, boys and girls - turns out absinthe is not exactly a "shooter". It's more of a "sipping" drink, illustrated by the painting above. Here's what I learned:

1. Singes your throat on the way in
2. Hits you with a shovel once it reaches your stomach
   
3. that's about it.
   

Can't say that I enjoyed my shot of absinthe, but the experience was educational. I did feel pretty drunk after one shot, but I'm sure everclear would have the same effect. And I didn't write any poetry. Or paint anything

Guess I'll need to find a store that sells it and experiment later.

Meat on a Stick

Since it's one of my last nights as an "expense account" tourist in NZ and I'll be eating "backpacker food" for the next week, I decided to front-load on meat and go to a Brazilian churrascaria, aka "meat on a stick" restaurant.


What a wonderful idea! Continuing my quest for "help with NZ sheep overpopulation problem", I had some lamb-on-a-stick. And other random food-on-a-stick (beef/chicken/pork). Unfortunately, no fish-on-a-stick - that is relegated to fish sticks, the staple of graduate student food.

well, isn't this post rather inane? Anyway, I re-affirmed the "stupid ugly obnoxious American" stereotype quite a bit today, asking for everything possible "on a stick". You figure that if you go to a fancy restaurant whose gimmick is "food on a stick" they'd serve everything that way, but they don't. No dessert on a stick - rather disappointing, actually. And the best part of eating in NZ? No tipping. It's already included. sweeeet.

Rotorua

My attempts at enlisting someone to drive me around failed, so I overcame my fear of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, got off my ass and rented a car. I wanted to go to Rotorua, to check out Maori culture "stuff" and (if there was time) to do some adventurous activitity.

On the way to Rotorua i drove through Hobbiton and a few other random towns.
North island isn't particular spectacular from the road (at least not central part). Looks like generic (but pretty) farmland.

Rotorua is famous for 3 things

1. it's north island adventure capital
2. geysers and other smelly thermal phenomena
3. Maori culture

Since I only had a day and I'll be doing adventure stuff on the south island for a week, I wanted to mostly see the Maori stuff.

I chose to go to the Tamaki Maori Village cultural experience show- it was billed as the best one, and it came in a form of "show and a dinner". My ticket there came with a "free trip" to a Hell's Gate thermal park- so i checked that out.
Hell's Gate was cool - but mostly a tourist trap. It's fun to walk through a bunch of sulphur lakes, smell the rotten eggs and watch little sulphurous lakes bubble up. I think i've seen thermal springs before, but it was still pretty awesome - the thermal park area is quite large.
The site used to be sacred to Maori, and there are a few legends (mostly unhappy maidens jumping into pools of boiling water) associated with the place.
I especially liked the clever signage.

The Tamaki Village tour was very interesting. You take a bus to the village (completely recreated), pick a "chief" and enter the village. You are greeted by a Maori warrior who challenges all visitors, exchange pleasantries (rub noses) and go inside.



The village is a "living museum" - it's completely recreated, it is run by a company (2 Maori brothers started it) that employs young Maori that "work" by acting like the ancestors. You arrive by bus, they do the "welcome dance", then you walk through the village where you see them perform "daily routine tasks", then go into a "meeting house" for another round of "song and dance", followed by a traditionally cooked feast (hangi), and a short visit to the "museum shop".

I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. The experience is both fairly educational - and at the same time extremely contrived. Definitely a tourist trap, but a really well made one. Most importantly, it didn't feel patronizing towards the performers. So of course, i didn't see the "true" Maori life - just recreation. It felt a little funny to see people perform their natives customs for you, then sit down next to you and answer any questions.
As is said, though, it wasn't particularly patronizing - the performers (or employees?) seemed like they were having fun. Most importantly, although contrived, it's a great way for Maori to recreate/preserve (although possibly rewrite) their own culture - all the "villagers" were young Maori who looked liked they wanted to learn more about their culture.

Anyway, overall it was fun. Aside from welcoming us with a 'warrior challenge', they showed us a few traditional games and dances - all targeted to make people better warriors. Interestingly, the whole practice of spinning poi was not just ritualistic dance, but was also an exercise to strengthen arms/wrists. Maori men would spin poi made of rocks, instead of the soft balls modern hippies use at burning man :)

We saw a haka - a dance Maori do to psyche themselves up before battle, or to celebrate afterwards. Mostly it involves stomping around, making scary faces and chanting. Pretty mezmerizing, actually. The coolest thing is that one such 'haka' has been adopted as the fight song for NZ national rugby team. The one thing i've noticed is the fierce association of Maori (at least the ones on the tour) to NZ. Seems like a much better deal than tthe disenfranchised Native Americans got in US. So that's really cool.

Anyway, at the end there was a "hangi" feast - cooked in the traditional Maori way, in the whole in the ground, on the rocks under some sand. Not a bad way of cooking, really - dig a hole, put some hot rocks there, throw your food in, cover with sand and walk away for 3-4 hours. And, as they say, if it comes out undercooked - just throw it in the microwave. for a few minutes.

so that's my Maori experience. keep in mind that all the punditry is not meant to belittle or patronize anyone, i'm just trying to sort out my thoughts.

more pictures and videos of the haka are here

RamaRama

Apparently, some people are a lot more famous than others.
There's a whole town named after you-know-who 50km south of Auckland

Driving (for real)

I got over my fear of driving and rented a car to go to Rotorua (more in a separate post)

Turns out the key to driving a right-hand drive car is simple: get an automatic.
I got a Nissan Pulsar (tiny 4-door compact car). Thankfully the signals/wipers were on the same side as my Integra, so that really wasn't a problem.
So really, driving is a non-issue, aside for these few things:

1. You always invariably approach the wrong side of the car the first time
2. You always grab the non-existing seat belt on your left
3. I kept trying to rest my left hand on the "window"
   
4. You keep drifting to the lane on your left. Good thing they have sound strips that alert you when you do that
   

Other than that, it's all cake. I ended up doing about 600km in one day (arguably, i didn't take the shortest road) and it was fun.
Roads in New Zealand are fairly slow, the "highways" are just 2 lane roads (one way each way) but they are fairly empty (at least at night).
Oh, and they don't believe in stop signs - there are roundabouts everywhere. Since I didn't know the exact rules of "right-of-way" i always had the right-of-way.

Hobbiton!

So I actually didn't see any hobbits. But i did drive through Makamata (which for a brief period was renamed to Hobbiton). There's a tour that takes you to the movie set where the "city of hobbits" was filmed.
However, the tour takes about 2.5 hours, i'd have to wait for another hour until the next tour would start, and i didn't have that kind of time.
Since i don't particular care about LOTR lore, i just had a gratuituous picture taken by some retired russsian tourists from SF (coincidence?) and moved on to Rotorua.

For the record, this is my obligatory homage to hobbits and LOTR stuff. I think i'll concentrate on adventure/scenery from now on.

Zorbonaut!

This wekeend i made it to Rotorua, both the "adventure" and Maori culture capitol of North Island.
So of course i went zorbing.
It's a rather ridiculous experience - you climb inside a giant ball and roll downhill. The zorb is a "dual" ball - there's a big bouncy outside ball and a smaller ball inside where you hang out.
My particular flavor of adventure was a "hydro zorb" - that's where you get in a zorb ball that has about a bucket of water inside, and you are not strapped in. As a result, when the ball rolls down you feel like you are in a giant washing machine. It's quite hilairious, the ball rolls down the hill in a zigzag so you slide all over the place.
The best "zorbing"experience, apparently, is when you are in the same ball with someone else. I tried convincing the 3 college freshman from University of Delaware that were "next" to climb in the ball with me, but somehow i didn't succeed.
Anyway, this is arguably the most ridiculous and stupid thing i've ever done, and of course, i loved every second (out of about 45) of it.

And Graham, this one was for you!

Russians everywhere

My grand plans for Saturday (either drive around the country or go kayaking in the bay) never really materialized, so i just wanted to take it easy, have dinner at some cafe, read my lonely planet and plan for the drive to Rotorua on Sunday. Another side plan was to go to the sun office and drop off some interoffice mail.

The evening turned out to be a lot more entertaining, as usual. All the cafes mentioned in "lonely planet" were closed, so i made my way to the Viaduct (where the office was) thinking I'll get dinner there, since Viaduct is also party central and places there are open late.

As i was walking into a restaurant, I heard people talking Russian at one of the tables by the entrance. so naturally, i turned around and met the two girls sitting at the table. Interestingly, when you travel alone your level of shyness goes down - eating dinner by yourself is not fun, so one tries to meet people.

I invited myself to join them, and we talked for a while. Being from San Francisco goes a long way in meeting people - even if they don't like America, everybody loves SF.
The funniest thing in talking with Russians (and they are real Russian, as in not "Jew from Soviet Union Russian") is waiting for the "jew" question. Since I obviously look Jewish, at some point the "real Russians" have to ask me (in a very polite and humble tone) if I'm Jewish. That always cracks me up. My stock answer to that is "hell's yeah I'm Jewish. and don't be ashamed to ask if i am - the whole reason i left Russia was not to be ashamed of being a Jew". This happens every time - and i love it. Feels like the ultimate f-u to the "collective Russian antisemitism" to proudly declare that I'm Jewish.

Anway, side observations aside, it was a jolly good time. They immediately invited themselves over to come check out SF, i politely offered my "tour guide" services but implied that they have to buy their own plan tickets. The other funny (and mostly true) stereotype about Russian girls is that they are gold-diggers (динамистки) - so i acquired the "rich American uncle" status fast. I'm quite aware of this favourite national pastime (getting others to buy stuff for them), so i quickly assumed the "cheap Jew" character. Anyway, i obviously did buy them a few drinks ($20 won't break me, and it beats sitting around alone).
Ironically, the other stereotype that Russians can drink a lot didn't hold true with one of the girls. After two glasses of wine she was out - it was quite hilarious to watch her on the dance floor, she kept dancing with an imaginary pole and trying to take off her dress. (Side note - it is summer, so a lot of women wear skirts or dresses. I've actually forgotten that women do that, since nowhere enough girls in SF ever wear dresses. Turns out that looks quite nice. and pretty. I'm becoming a big skirt fan).

Long story short - one of the other girls was at the bar and somehow managed to pick a fight with some random girl that was totally wasted. So the bouncers kicked both of them out of the bar, and we had to leave as well. Bouncers here are actually quite polite, unlike the usual power-tripping jackasses in NY. There has only been one instance of a bouncer being rude to someone when i was going into a bar here.

so that was it. the Russian girls (there were 3 now, another friend of theirs showed up) had to take the "drunk"one back to her place. they invited me to "take a cab over there and back to party more" with them, but i politely refused. Perhaps I'm cheap, but ferrying some drunk girls around and paying for cab fare while listening to them talk about their ex-husbands or boyfriends is not my idea of fun. Hugs and promises of visits to SF all around, and we parted.

And now the funniest thing - I still wanted to drop off my mail at the Sun office, so I went there. The office is at the Viaduct (same party central), and all my way to the office i kept hearing party music. Sounded like there was a huge party at the office!!!
Turns out the office building is across the street from some giant club, and here i thought Sun people in NZ knew how to party. Ironically, my ID didn't seem to work so no sending interoffice mail for me.

Clever marketing

So at home i drive an integra. "Acura" integra. Except for really, i it's only an Acura in the US. and i've always joked that i drive a Honda (since acura is just an upscale division), but it only sunk in here.

Since NZ is right-hand drive, there are a ton of "authentic" Japanese cars out here. For example, there are a ton of Nissan Skylines (which you can't get in US), it's a sporty Integra equivalent; and all the Lexus IS300s here go under the Altezza brand.

Anyway, there are a ton of integra's here, but since they don't have to be retrofitted to be left-hand drive and can be shipped directly from Japan, here they are just Hondas. Turns out "Acura" is just a clever marketing gimmick to sell cars in US. I've seen quite a few RSX/TSXs here, they all have a nice Honda sticker on them. Same with a Honda Legend. Rustan would be very very disappointed.
Nice to know that US is such a big consumer society that companies create separate brands just for us.

Shochi

went to dinner with coworkers after work to a japanese yakitori place. Turns out yakitori is "meat on a stick" - what a novel and convenient concept. Tasty, easy to eat. sort of a miniauturized kebab. What a lovely concept!

Anyway, after dinner we were going to get dessert so J. ordered "shochi". we all nodded, figuring it'd be some sort of ice cream or similar. he stressed "shochi with ice". we nodded. in a few minutes the waitress shows up, bringing 6 glasses of water with ice. We look around thinking "hmm, who ordered water? shouldn't you have brought water at the beginning?".
I grab a glass, take a sip and bam! learn a new japanese word. Turns out "shochi" is just a clever way of saying "vodka with ice". nothing more.

After the yakitori place we popped into another bar called "viper room" around the corner, where we were supposed to meet a few people i had met at Globe the night before.
Viper room was a nicely decorated bar, totally empty (maybe it gets going at 2am?) with very tasty cocktails. I have a drink, remark at the design, and J. says "have you been to the bathroom yet"? Intrigued, i check out the bathroom, realize there's nothing fancy there, but on the way back notice a row of small room with couches off to the side of the corridor on the way to the bathroom. with little "viper room #n" signs. hmmmmmmm.
think about it.
think some more....

So really, I don't know what the club was all about, but we got a little confused and left. maybe there was nothing sketchy about the "private" rooms, but we didn't want to stay and find out. so we left, effectively emptying out the entire bar - there was noone else there but us.
so i guess i had my introduction to K. road, the "underbelly" of Auckland.

Globe bar

I finally realized that I haven't hung out with other fellow travellers yet. Figuring that i should get used to the "hostel" mindset, i went to the "biggest" hostel bar in Auckland called Globe bar. It's attached to some large backpacker hostel.
So thursday night i went there after dinner. I brought a few postcards figuring that i'd sit there quietly, have a drink, write some postcards (those of you that got beer-smelling postcards now know why) and go home.

Ha! Turns out Globe on thursday is the location for the "gay chicken" contest. While watching dudes pretend to kiss each other is not particularly exciting, watching the girls go at it for a $100 bartab prize was rather entertaining. I met some girls from scotland while writing postcards, and one of them "made it" to the "finals". So much for the stereotype of British girls being "prudes".
Oh, and I met two jamaican girls, one of them turned out to be a nurse. Seems like i'm destined to meet nurses wherever I go.

Skype

I've been using Skype to talk to my parents and coworkers and friends while i'm in NZ.
At work, there are us from Sun and another team from Openwave working on the same project. We are all sitting in the same large room at the client site. And there's nothing funnier than watching a bunch of people in headphones talk into their laptops like some crazies. Me included.
it is pretty sweet though to be able to call up Jesse when i have a work problem and talk it through. For free. From another part of the world. from 21 hours into the future.

Tongariro Crossing

For the rest of the weekend, i decided to go to hike the Tongariro Crossing. It's billed as the "finest one-day hike" in the world (or at least New Zealand).

This presented a few logistical challenges - i'm in Auckland, and Tongariro is 5 hours south in the center of North Island. And i'm a little afraid of driving, plus i didn't feel like driving back after just having hiked a challenging mountain for 9 hours.

So of course i took the bus. This is a true testament to my love of resource optimization. Here's the rough plan:
1. take 8pm bus on Saturday to Taupo (near Tongariro), arrives at 1am
2. wake up at 6:30am to catch a shuttle to trailhead
3. hike 7-8 miles
4. hang out in Taupo, waiting for the bus back
5. take the 2am bus back to Auckland
6. arrive in Auckland at 7am Monday
7. shave/shower and go to work.

A little crazy, but that's how I like it.

Anyway, the bus ride was fairly ordinary. Not particularly comfortable, i was really afraid it'd sleep through my stop but thankfully i didn't. Took me a while to find the hostel i booked (it turned out to be a shithole, but i only had 5 hours to stay there so i didn't care).

I was initially a little intimidated by the hike - it was supposed to be reasonably "hard", and i wanted to do a side trip to the summit of a Mt. Ngauruhoe and it didn't look like i'd have enough time since we didn't get to the trailhead till 8:30am and the shuttle was supposed to pick us up at 4:30

The scenery really was out-of-this-world. I'm not going to try and rehash the excellent description found here, so i'll just add my observations.



I was actually a little disappointed by the whole hike. Maybe it's b/c it was the first solitary hiking experience and i'm not used to that. I really wanted to hike up to one of the side mountain summits, but when i got to the trailhead for mt. ngauruhoe it was 11am and the marker said it's a 3-hour round trip. I looked at the map's suggested hiking times, did the math and figured that I wouldn't make it in time for the bus back. So i chickened out and kept walking on the main trail.
The trail is in a few sections - some climbs into the old craters, walk through the craters, climb some more. Turned out not to be too challenging after all, except for this little section of hell:

This little vertical climb up was a pain-in-the-ass. literally.

So here's the sad part - turns out i'm a lot faster than the average hiker, so as soon as i finished that climb section i realized that i was half-way done and it wasn't even noon yet. which meant i could have done the side trip. I briefly thought of going back to do it, but then figured that i wasn't up to climbing 2000m on rocks again.

The trail was packed with people - mostly german tourists. But I managed to find quite a few former Eastern block "comrades" from Czech Republic who are working in NZ as seasonal workers on a farm and paying for travel that way. We had a jolly good time trading war stories about growing up in a communist state.

Btw, the hike itself really was scenic, magnificent and the usual superlatives. Apparently, that's where Mordor was filmed for LOTR. The coolest part was the Red Crater:

You can insert your own clever freudian comment. Meanwhile, check the usual gallery for the rest of pictures.

I met some really nice french people on the bus ride back, and some Israelis.
I got back to Taupo around 6. Turns out there's a big lake in Taupo (similar to Tahoe). Since i dind't have a hostel reservation anymore, i "showered" in Lake Taupo (pretty chilly) after the hike, got a big fat dinner at a restaurant near the lake and watched the sunset. And tehn spent the next 5 hours killing time waiting for the bus ride back - taking the 2am bus back turned out to be a silly idea.

Sailing on America's cup yacht

John Stanford and I went sailing on the former America's cup yacht in the bay.


Beautiful day, great weather. The trip is about 2 hours, you get to man the winches (toughest part is hoisting the sail up) and skipper for a little bit.
A good description of this trip is here

We sailed around the bay, then under the harbour bridge. That part was trippy, the boat is about 2 meters shorter than bridge so it felt like we'd get caught. In addition, the bridge is home to a bungy-jumping station, so the whole time we were sailing someone kept falling off the bridge.

There were about 30+ people on the boat so it was a bit crowded. We didn't do any particularly hard maneuvers, so i didn't get the full "racing" experience, but it was defintely nice enough to just be on the bay and haull ass. That boat can really move!

The mechanices of the boat controls are pretty awesome too. There are 2 sets of cranks, with 2 people manning each one. They are tied to a set of winches, and there is a complex gearing system so that you can go from a 1-1 to 32-1 rotation ratio. Apparently, the "real crew" can hoist a guy up to the top of the mast using a winch just in a few seconds.

Then agian, these things are at least $7mil to just build, with about $60mil you have to pour into research.

Update on driving

My friend Marina (in montreal) introduced me to her friend Amanda who lives south of Auckland.
She was kind enough to meet up, so we had a fun dinner and went to a local bar called Lenin.
Their gimmick is a bit of Communist imagery (some "переходящее кразное знамя" gratuituos red flags), and their logo is a red flag with a martini glass and an olive instead of a hammer and cicle. In addition, it's right next to the "Minus 5" bar, which is an "ice bar" - you pay $20 to get in for 20 mins, the bar is made interely of ice and you drink from ice glasses. Great idea, but since Lenin has the windows into the ice bar, there really was no need to pay $20 for a drink to try it out.

Anyway, Amanda was a lot of fun, and after a few of my "must be hard to drive on the wrong side" jokes offered me to try and drive her car.
Well, turns out it was standard (ie stick-shift) transmission. So not only did i have to deal with driving on "wrong" side of the road, I had to remember to shift with my left hand. Let's not forget that i'm not so good with driving stick to begin with!
The funniest part is that noone ever tells you that blinkers and windshield wiper controls are also switched - so all the time instead of turning on the signal i'd turn on the wipers! Needless to say, Amanda almost had a heart attack!

so there it is - i've driven on the wrong side of the road (for about 10 minutes). it was fun, but i'm pretty sure i'll be getting an automatic transmission when i rent a car for when Rama and I travel in south island.

Work routine

So, it seems that i've settled into a nice work routine.
The customer site is about 15 minutes walk from the hotel. Turns out Auckland is rather hilly (and hot), so for the past couple days my coworker and I have been trying to optimize the walk to work for "shortness and flatness". This involves walking through a park, jaywalking and cutting through a few sketchy alleys. But it's worth it.

A few side notes on Auckland and New Zealand:

1. Cars are right-hand-drive. That means crossing a street is a challenge, since instinctively you always look left instead of right. Makes for a lot of funny moments.
   
2. It's hot here. And the ozone hole is right above you. As a result, you burn. I need to learn how to use sunscreen.
   
3. Customer is not king. I'm staying at a fancy Hyatt. However, either people here are too laid-back, or not so keen on service and IT. It took them 4 days to get my broken Internet connection fixed (ie get a new modem. instead, they offered me a new cable, a power transformer, and some chocolates). Then it took them about 5 days to fix my toilet (it was 2-time use. after 2 flushes you had to call housekeeping to get it fixed again). I'm still waiting for my "you have new message" voicemail indicator to be reset (i'm pretty certain there are no voicemails)
4. Food and drinks are expensive. When you translate it to $US, you get SF-like prices. For example, cocktails at a reasonable bar are about $10-15NZ each (that's $7-12US)
   
5. Nobody jaywalks. very inefficient

Anyway, these are potentially biased - i'm staying in a fancy hotel, i'm hanging out with older out-of-town coworkers. Perhaps once i discover non-fancy local places things will be different.

So my daily routine:

1. go to work
2. come back, jog around town (sun sets really late, around 9pm). Auckland has a ton of parks, and the big one (Auckland Domain) is very close to the hotel
3. Have dinner with coworkers
4. Drink with same coworkers

So far, it's been fun.

Waiheke Island

Waiheke island feels very much like Marin Headlands. Warm, sunny, with a great veiw of the city.
On the ferry I met a few other fellow travelers, so we explored the island together. The initial agenda was to "find a closest pub and hang out", but after taking a few shortcuts we ended up doing about a 5-7 mile hike around the island.

All the pics from the hike are here.

Since i am in new zealand to work on sheep deployment software, i figured i'll get an early jump on work by interviewing the end customers. Here's a pastoral scene from a customer interview.


At some point i tried kayaking, but it was low tide and we didn't get too far:


Instead, we participated in the national pastime with a few locals:



And then we rode the ferry into the sunset:

First day in Auckland

You can see all the pics from Auckland


Landed and found all the bags!

We landed around 6am, so my new friend Jen and I decided to explore Auckland together.
After dropping the bags off at my hotel (turned out her hostel was right next door) we walked down to the harbour. Auckland is called the "city of sails" - so yes, it's surrounded by water.
First impression - Auckland was a ghosttown. Noone was up. It really was only 8am, so I guess Aucklanders to love their sleep.

My hotel (hyatt) is right next to Albert park (there are tons of parks in Auckland). Right next to it is this statue:



At some point I found the Sun office. It's right next to the harbour, and i'm sure the views there are spectaculuar. However, i won't be working there - i'll be at the clientside which is a bit more uptown.


In the end, we just got on a ferry and went to Waiheke Island. It's 45 minutes away and very picturesque. Here's a view of the city from the bay:

Takeoff

So i am finally flying to New Zealand. It started out as a joke at work - "if you work really hard and won't quit, we'll send you to New Zealand"; but suprisingly materialized. I now love my job again.

The flight itself proves to be fairly enjoyable - I have a direct flight from LAX to Auckland on Qantas. Big-a@@ plane, i get an isle seat, and meal is very acceptable. Score!
You get an option of watching about 5 movies (anchorman, huckabees, vanit fair, etc) but instead i spend the whole time reading the lonely planet book preparing for the trip.

Oh, and on the flight I met Jen - who's also traveling in NZ for a few weeks before starting grad school in Brisbane Australia. Since both of us have a free day in Auckland we decide to hang out together.