New And Improved Zealand

How can something be both "new" and "improved"?

New Zealand is so called because the first guy to bother naming the Islands as a whole was Dutch (I think). It might have been that Tasman chappie, but he named is Neue Seeland which means New Sea-Land. So there.

I thought I would try to summarise the things I liked about the place while I'm still here.

Things I like about New Zealand: the air, the Winter light, the countryside, Speight's, Marlborough Sounds, the birdlife, the temprement of the people (I have not met a single hostile person outside of Auckland), the sense of humour, Speight's, the South Island roads, the views of the Southern Alps, the lakes, the weather (even in Winter it's pleasant when the sun shines), Hubbard's Breakfast Cereals, cheap rental cars, Mount Cook, Milford Sound, Picton (I know it's only a port but I really liked it there), NZ postage stamps - all different shapes, the rugby (I'm not a major fan but it's such a civilised game), the harmony in which they largely all live within their surroundings, the value of the NZ$, Speight's.

There were some things I disliked, and these are only my opinion: Auckland (no soul), Export Gold (this is Wifebeater by another name - nasty), Onehunga Bay (this is not even opinion, this is scientific fact), Auckland Central Backpackers (one huge knocking-shop for kids with no windows in the rooms), NZ's own Marmite (they put SUGAR in it! Ack).

That's it.

Popular posts from this blog

Little Britain

Auckland is not the place to spend much time. This is what my Kiwi friends advised me long before I arrived. I thought that as I'd experienced many unpleasant places in my life (e.g. Woking) then this would not be as bad as they made it out to be. They were right, of course. As soon as I landed here 5 days ago my friends whisked me off to the North of the North Island to see a place called the Bay Of Islands. This is almost like an archipelago of inhabited islands and the day after the rain finally stopped we took a boat cruise out into the bay and saw some dolphins. This was lovely and being winter time and very far South the light gave everything a strange luminous quality. Unfortunately we had little time to spend there as one of my friends had to return to Auckland for his flight out. We came back and I have been here now for about 3 days. This is more than enough. It's problem is that it has no charisma or charm. Yes, there are decent places to stay, eat, sleep b...
Read more

Half Time

I am coming back to England this Friday, bringing a temporary end to my travels for the time being. The reasons I am coming back are few, though the main one was a good job offer. The overlords at Barclays made me an offer that I could not really refuse. Plus on this contract I will still be able to get to Australia at the end of the year as I had originally planned. Yes, as a whore the money swung it. But as I thought about it more advantages came to mind. For a start I would have more money to use when I got away again, which would be good. On my current budget I would effectively be broke by the time I touched down in Australia and have to get a job there quickly. This way I do not have to worry about that so much. I would also be able to get a motorbike licence and set about procuring the documents necessary to import a bike back in to England from India. I have a half-baked idea of buying an Enfield bike there and riding it back to the U.K. I would also get to see my frie...
Read more

Father Holiday

Happy holidays to you too. It's not called Christmas over here. Not even Xmas. I made my phone call in Bangkok and promptly started my trip home to Blighty. I don't know why we call it Blighty, we just do sometimes. The same way that we sometimes get annoyed when people say that our food's crap. Up yours and all. I'm flying home for Xmas so that I can slip slowly into insanity among my family. Well, part of them anyway. It should be fun and to catch up with old friends should be good too as most of them are close together. The second reason I'm flying home is because of a job interview. You can take the boy out of Barclays but not the Barclays out of the boy and after sending through my CV and a half-hearted cover letter about 2 months ago I was contacted by a nice lady in the Singapore office that I visited some 8 months ago. After much ado it turns out that there is a job opportunity there (I get nervous when jobs are described as "opportunities") that w...
Read more