So long Polytech! So long Wellington!

OK guys, I finished my last day of work at the Polytech forever on Friday... I have really enjoyed my time there, and met some great people! I'll be coming to visit everyone again I'm sure!!
Back to last Friday: Myself, Brian and two lovely French gals, Fanélie and Benedicte, got up at 0530hr to head to the top of Mt. Vic in time for the sunrise.. We donned our "running" gear and ran the massive hill to the lookout. 0624hr came and, as expected, the sun rose over the surrounding hills bringing warm sunlight into the valley and harbour below, where Wellington is situated. It was such a beautiful sight, I have not seen a sunrise in a such a long time.
I didn't particularly feel like going to work after that, and since Brian had finished on Tuesday I decided I'd call in sick and hang out with him and the girls instead. Later, we headed to the botanic gardens and sat admiring the view over the city for a good few hours.
Both Brian and the girls were leaving that Sunday so we decided to all get together at Pablo and Rob's place and cook a multicultural feast Friday night. Brian cooked haggis again, the girls brought wine and made lovely a entrée goat's cheese and paté on french-style bread. Myself being Australian couldn't really come up with anything truly Australian apart from shrimps on the barbie or pie floater, so I went with an old favourite of mine, cheese and chives baked potatoes (Thanks mum!). Everything was delicious, and later on the girls even made us all crêpes... Fantastique!! Out that night and on the piss to some of our favourite pubs including what has very quickly become my local, Irish pub Kitty O'Shea's.
The next day Brian and I walked upto Wellington's only wind turbine on top a hill in the suburb of Brooklyn. I'm not sure why there aren't more turbines in NZ's windiest city!?! Then out on the piss again Saturday night for Brian's last night and back into Kitty's for one last hurrah! We lost Brian just after 0500hr so we all decided to go to bed. At 0930hr, I was awoken by Brian who climbed up the ladder to my bunk and then proceeded to punch me right in the balls! Bastard!! I believe he was still quite drunk, as was I... Not to worry... I still was nice enough to take him to the Interislander ferry terminal that afternoon. You owe me a drink buddy!!! Hahaha.
Monday night was another fairwell with Melina, a gal from Germany, leaving for the South Island. So a BBQ was organised, but not before I was again woken from a rather nice sleep this time with Mel refusing to stop jumping on and poking me until I got out of bed. Can I not get a decent sleep in this hostel?!? :P
This Friday, I went to Pablo and Rob's flat for some drinks. Erica has just moved here from Adelaide, so she came over aswell and we had a good old yarn! It was really nice (and also a little weird) meeting up with someone I know from home over here in NZ.. Familiarity and all that jazz...
Saturday, I met up with Sash for our weekly joke exchanging session. Funny times, funny times... During this time were approached by a couple of people from Oxfam wanting to produce a 4-tier human pyramid to promote their cause (not sure how that works).. I thought I'd oblige by forming part of the base... The problem? They somehow only ended up with 7 people willing to participate, but decided to go ahead anyway. Needless to say, we looked a bit silly. Good to see Oxfam following their tasks though to completion...
A bit later on Wayne, Gaz (2 English dudes from the hostel) and I ventured to the Westpac Stadium to watch the Wellington Hurricanes and South African Bulls compete in the Rebel Sport Super 14 Rugby competition. The Hurricanes thrashed the Bulls 17-9. And what about the Hurricanes' theme song? "Hurricanes.... Hurricanes...." hehe, I guess you had to be there to find that funny!
A bunch of us went out Saturday night but just after midnight myself and Rob decided to chill out and instead hung out at the local coffee shop with the mostest, Espressoholic on Courtenay Place, with a flat white and chatted into the wee hours.
Rock climbing was on the agenda again for Sunday. Suze, Mike (Suze's workmate), Rob (a climbing virgin) and I gave it a crack this time. That was my exercise for the week right there!! That night all my hostel crew cooked up a storm on the BBQ. Wickid!
Today we played a bit of 2-on-2 basketball with a German guy name Phoenix whom we met on the court. Then I browsed, with a Swede named Hannes, the Museum of Wellington: City and Sea - Basically a detailed history of the windy city, including the story of the inter island ferry, Wahine, that sunk in the Wellington harbour on 10 April 1968, killing 51 people, after it was forced onto the rocks of Barrett Reef by 100mph winds.
Well that's my life up to date. Oh, one more thing, I'll be leaving Wellington on Thursday, heading to Taupo for Easter. After that, who knows where I'll be going, but this means I will now be starting my travels around the North Island!!! Yay!!! "Bout bloody time" I hear you say.. So next time you hear from me, I'll be somewhere else in Kiwi-land. That's quite sad, but I guess that's the nature of travelling. I'll have to make sure I finish off the actual touristy stuff here before I leave.. And lots of photos!!!!

In the mean time, here are a few photos depicting my antics in this post...

Photos:
1. Looking spunky at my desk on my last day at the Poly
2. On top on Mt.Vic with (from left) Fanélie, Brian, Benedicte and someone else
3. As morning breaks
4. Friday feast at Pablo's - Brian, Fanélie, Andre, Lou and Benedicte
5. On the piss in Kitty's - Friday night - Pablo, the girls and me
6. Me under the Brooklyn turbine.. In case you can't see the turbine, I'm indicating its location by pointing..
7. On the piss at Kitty's - Saturday night - Brian and me
8. Pablo and Rob! Hooo-ahhhh
9. Ah, drunken photos ey?
10. The semi-pyramid
11. Hurricanes fever! Paul, Wayne and Gaz!
12. Biggest hot chocolate ever...
13. Climbing the wall.. Headless?!
14. I found this post-it at the museum.. Cool!

More mayhem in Welly

Since the last time we spoke I have participated in a few activities which are either a little out of my comfort zone or just a little out of the ordinary for me. As an example, on Tuesday a couple of weeks ago Brian, myself, Pablo and Lou (Pablo’s flatmate) decided to go fishing off Oriental Parade. Oriental Bay, for those who don’t know, is the bay where the artificial beach against Wellington city has been created. Sufficed to say we didn’t catch anything.. In fact, we somehow managed to lose a hook amongst the seaweed!! There were a few fish around though – about the same size as the hook we were using.. Ah, fun times.. Later that night, Brian, being from Glasgow, cooked us a traditional Scottish haggis! Sheep’s lungs, hearts, kidney, liver all minced up with spices and then cooked inside a sheep’s stomach – essentially a sheep that’s been seasoned then turned inside out.. To be honest, that sounds utterly vile to me, but it was actually really tasty! Sort of like meatloaf. You have to try haggis if you haven’t already, you won’t regret it!!!
After a big night of partying on Friday night, I headed to Te Papa museum on Saturday to finish off the bottom 3 floors. On my way back I spotted a 65-year old deaf and mute man who was showing off his motorbike which he has ridden through 36 countries – a total of 235,600km! He was asking for donations to fund the next leg of his trip however, being the stingy backpacker that I am, I couldn’t spare a single cent.. Besides, you don’t see me asking strangers for petrol money so I can drive to Gisborne for the weekend now do you? :P
Sunday came and it was an absolutely marvellous day so Brian, Suze and I took Tana on a road trip to Martinborough, a couple of hours east of Welly, for some wine tasting and basking in the sun. We found some really nice Wairarapa wines and just had a generally relaxing (if not tiring) afternoon walking from winery to winery in this small country town.
The next Thursday I went indoor rock climbing with Sash and a couple of his mates. It’s been a couple of years since I’d done any sort of climbing (the last time being with Mikie back in Adelaide – how’s Melbourne treating you dude?) so I tired fairly quickly but still had a lot of fun. I’ll get back in there hopefully before I leave Wellington.
That Friday was another slightly out of character day for me in that I went sailing with Brian, Pablo and Lou. Again, those who know me know I’m not all the big on large bodies of water and this time we weren’t just floating in a sea kayak on a completely calm lake. This time there was wind, there was tipping of the boat, there were some very white knuckles holding onto the railings on the opposite side. And that was just in the first couple of minutes.. After that I became a little more comfortable with the way the boat (seemingly to me at the time) almost tipped onto its side as we raced along with about 10 others to win a bottle of rum. I ended up really enjoying the experience once I had learnt to trust the expertise of our skipper, Ken. We didn’t win the race, but got sufficiently wasted that night anyway..
After sluggishly awakening late morning, Brian and I made our way down to Queens Wharf to watch the annual Chinese Dragon Boat races that are held in the harbour to coincide with the Chinese New Year. Teams from regions all over the country came to compete and they seemed to enjoy themselves – I think we were a bit too hung over to pay attention to which team was which so we instead just walked around the surrounding stalls and festivities. Later in the night there were a bunch of circus performers doing trapeze, rope and fire acts – they accidentally messed up one of the stunts and one of the guys burnt himself on the flaming rope.. Ouch! The mistake aside, it was fascinating to watch their mastery of their acrobatic skills.
A few hangovers and some unspeakable nights later, we arrive at this weekend just gone.. Saturday brought wind, rain, St. Paddy and SummerSet to Wellington. Big St. Paddy’s celebrations going on all day all over the country, people out drinking from 10am – I could only imagine what it would have been like for Adam and Eva in Scotland!!! SummerSet was a concert held in the Basin Reserve near my Adelaide Road flat. From 3pm to 11pm, there were DJs from NZ and the UK, along with locals Shapeshifter and Fat Freddy’s Drop pumping out their own style of drum‘n’bass and dub, respectively. An awesome day was had with a lot of crazy dancing to top it all off.
Back at work today in what will soon be my last week at the Polytech before my contract expires and I am again unemployed. I’m actually really looking forward to not having to work and just chilling out (having said that, I’m quite chilled out here at the Poly anyway – I’m currently competing in a table tennis championship, and losing quite respectively I feel)! It’s getting to that point where I’m ready to move on from Wellington because not only is work finishing, but a few people that I’ve come to enjoy spending time with at the hostel are now leaving very soon too - Brian is also leaving on Sunday, for the South Island.

I’ll try post a little more frequently in future just to keep you in the loop... And no Gabrielle, NZ hasn’t fallen in a hole – it probably just got a little drunk and slept in..

Photos:
1. Fishin wit da boyz
2. The motorcycle traveller pointing out his route across the globe to interested onlookers
3. Just read the description........ in the Te Papa museum
4. Brian, myself and Suze getting drunk off free wine in Martinborough! Yay!
5. Me after the first few moments of pure terror..
6. Da boyz again - Awesome fun!
7. Me (middle) and some randoms having a go at the circus ropes
8. The water feature in the centre of Cuba Street - pretty cool!