Second Lake

Those are some of the photos I took at Rotorua or Second Lake as it's translated into English. I've got a tonne of photos from a certain movie set but I'm not allowed to show you those as I signed a big legal thing saying that I wouldn't. If you really want, I'll take pictures of the things I bought there so you can see those. They are pretty.

After the movie set I went to Te Puia for a tour and a Maori cultural evening. I saw geysers, the haka and a poi dance and I ate a hungi. The next day I did the duck tour and went to the Polynesian Spa which is apparently one of the top ten spas in the world.

Between my panic attack and sitting reading the Wikileaks book, I'm fairly sure I weirded out the other passengers on my flights.

In other news, I'll be back on the radio on Wednesday, 9-11pm Kiwi time. You can listen here if you fancy. I'm unofficially calling my show The Mixtape. The theme for next Wednesday is bands I've seen live. It could be an interesting mix!

I've also applied for my classes for next year. We'll see what I end up on. I also need to fill in my dissertation proposal form. I roughly know what I want to do, I just need to get round to filling in the form.

Finally got round to booking my bus tour for Easter. I can't confirm a seat on the exact date I want until nearer the time but theoretically I'll be leaving at some godawful time on the morning of April 15th and we'll take the interislander and arrive in Picton around lunchtime. I'm flying back from Queenstown on May 1st. It was a choice between paying more money and being very scared on a turboprop or staying on the coach and going through Christchurch. I decided that I feel more uneasy about earthquakes than I do about flying on iffy planes. But then again, I've been on more flights than I've experienced earthquakes. I slept through another one the other night.

I'm going to Reading over the August Bank Holiday and to Lincoln in September. I'm not sure when I'm going back to Norwich. I expect someone will invite me to something up there at some point. Hopefully we can figure out a promising date for my do at The Bicycle Shop that Lauren has offered to organise. Hopefully people will turn up. Lauren has promised to nag Kav, Christina and Tom to come. I may suggest that someone brings a Scrabble board. If nothing else, unless there's something major going on, Inigo will be there.

Diiiiiiiiiiiiirty

OMFG! Lush UK now has a whole new range of Dirty products!

For those of you with no idea what I'm on about, Dirty was a range that was sold by the Lush sister shop Be Never to Busy to Be Beautiful until everything turned to custard at the end of 2008.

Lush NZ doesn't have them yet. I know this because I was in Lush today.

It's my birthday next month. Just sayin'

Here is a picture of me on top of Mount Victoria and one of Wellington harbour.

I don't know why it's put the photos like that!

Herrow :3

It is I. I fail at updating this, it seems. I guess between eating pineapple lumps, trying to book gigs (nearly got one!) and pissing myself laughing at Uncyclopedia, there's no time for blogging!

Not a vast amount has happened in Kiwiland since I last wrote anything. Michelle and I went out for dinner to La Casa Pasta on Monday because neither of us fancied dinner at Vic. House. It cost just over $20 or about £10 as we call it.

On Wednesday we went to see HIStory which is a Michael Jackson tribute show. The tickets were free and the guy was pretty good. Before that I'd gone to an earthquake meeting for international students. It was taken by an Irish woman. She thought I was Irish. Weird accent is weird. Before that I went to my first tutorial/seminar. It was weird and awkward because some gobshite started effing and jeffing at the tutor and I was the only person who seemed to know anything about American politics in the 1890s. And before that I went out for lunch at Molly Malone's with my buddy Steffi and her boyfriend Chris.

At some point I'm going to make a spreadsheet of numbers to be rung if it all turns to custard in Wellington. I'll send that over to the parental unit and hope that they don't lose it. I've decided that I'm heading to Kelburn Park if things go wrong because it's A) Near me B) An open space C) High up and D) Near a civil defence centre.

In other news, Fuji have decided to send me a new camera. They sent one that takes AA batteries but the nice man in the camera shop decided I wouldn't like that so he's sending it back and asking for a lithium battery instead. He reckons I'll end up with a slightly better camera than before. Win? I certainly hope so as next week I'm going to Rotorua! I'm going to visit Hobbiton and a Maori centre on the Friday. Not sure about Saturday but there's a good chance I'll take the gondola up and then luge back down :)

In other other news, I've applied to write for the student newspaper but they fail and haven't gotten back to me. I do, however, have a training session with VBC tomorrow. It's from 2-3pm NZDT, which is 1-2am Friday on GMT and 5-6pm Thursday on PST. Any other timezone, you can work it out yourself.

In further news, I think I've figured out what I'm going to do over Easter. I shall book it in the morrow. It involves Cairns, Brisbane and Sydney. Yay!

Oh, and for those of you who haven't heard, I'm heading to Lincoln in September for Weekend at the Asylum, a steampunk event run by the Victorian Steampunk Society (just Google this.) I may well be an airship pirate.

Oh! And Michelle has invited me to a waffles, booze and stuff night on Saturday. I shall bring my unopened Kiwi cider, see what it's like.

British things :D

So, Friday was the 6 month anniversary of me leaving the country. Doesn't really feel like it lol.

In other news, yesterday I went to town with Tracy, Lucy and Michelle and we went to the 'big' New World (supermarket.) I had been forewarned that this branch had lots of British imports. They weren't kidding.

I ended up with the following items:

A mug

A box of Twinings

A pack of Galaxy

3 bags of Scampi Fries

A bottle of Irn Bru

A bottle of Coke

A bottle of cider

As they were imports they were way more expensive than normal but tbh I was just really excited to see British stuff. They also had Walkers crisps and Marmite crisps but they didn't have the special RND crisps. I have requested that we don't go back there unless I get an urgent need for Irn Bru or something lol.

Also, we had hash browns at brunch today. This made me very happy.

I felt another quake the other night and I've not felt two. This site will keep you informed, just look for stuff that says Wellington/Hutt/Petone.

Lack of sleeeeeeeeeeeep...

Yesterday I had my first earthquake (it was ok, it was over before I realised what was happening) and my first fire alarm. It was at 5:30am. I was not impressed. Michelle was even less impressed as she had a 9am class!

That's all for now, I think!

Fran Roberts, music PR intern

'tis true. I'm going to be booking shows for this lady here. I'll crack on with that this evening. It's written on my table o' time under LATE.

LATE = anything after 7. I figured if I'm meant to be dealing with people in the UK, it'd probably help if I did it at a reasonable time for them.

Er, wish me luck. I really don't want to screw this up...

Things and stuff

This stupid blog won't let me name the entry what I wanted to grr. Here is an update of the last week.

Sunday:- Michelle arrived! We went out for lunch with her parents and her sister Sarah (Sarah is doing a teaching course here.) We went to Petone (pee-tony) which is the town next to Wellington (I think.) After lunch we drove up to Makara (makra) where we could see the south island! We were then dropped off back home in time for the BBQ.

Monday:- The RAs woke us up by setting the fire alarm off at 7am. We then had to do boot camp (a Vic. House tradition) which involved stupid games on Boyd Wilson field and carrying settees and mattresses up and down hills. I was unimpressed. At lunch time we had the civic welcome which is basically all the first year houses sitting in the civic square and yelling stupid chants at each other. In the evening we had vitesse datant aka French night aka speed dating aka human bingo. I won a bag of Jaffas and a little cup for coming in first place ;-) Afterwards I went to the Big Kumara for a couple of pints.

Tuesday:- I managed to finally get enrolled (albeit on a course that doesn't exist) and in the evening we went on a ferry ride around the harbour. In the rain.

Wednesday:- Pretty much dossed about all day and then did Operation Orientation in the evening. Pretty sure we came last but it was fun and we went on the cable car :D I met a girl from BSE :D I've noticed that there's a lot of ex-Brits here ie people who grew up in the UK and then moved to Kiwiland at a later date. People still keep getting confused by my accent. A worrying amount of people think I'm either a Kiwi or a Yank :|

Thursday:- I went to campus coaches at lunch time and then onto the faculty orientation. In the evening we had sexalogical (cross-dressing sex quiz.) I won best dressed boy and got a back massager of dubious shape as my prize.

Friday:- Went to the big play out in the morning (think assault courses, bouncy castle Twister, and human foosball.) Went up to uni in the afternoon to sort out my courses, bought duck wrapping paper for our door and the student notes for my classes (ordered the books off the internet...) In the evening we had the Zombie Ball. I had to leave and come back because stupid country is stupid and doesn't accept my drivers license as ID. The music wasn't my kind of thing, there were $9 bottles of Bulmers, it was due to end at 1am but ended at 11:30pm due to noise control/lack of people. The union bar has only just reopened, apparently it wasn't very popular (something I've noticed from other unis with multiple campuses.)

Saturday:- Went in to town, found a nice shop where I was told to bring my camera and receipt in during the week and they'll talk to Fujifilm for me :) in the evening I went to see 'A Winter's Tale' performed in the botanical gardens with Michelle, Sarah, and Sarah's friend Rachel. I was quite surprised when the actors came on stage to see that my campus coach, Oscar, was in the production.

Sunday: Today has been a fairly chilled day before tomorrow, took the house photo. Asking Lauren if I can apply for an internship with her.

I think that's it...

Just to remind you all...

As I'm sure you're probably aware Christchurch, or ChCh as it's known here, got kicked in the balls whilst it was already on the ground. Obviously, in a country this small, a lot of people have been affected by it and there are people in my halls from the area who have friends and family down there. I'm very lucky as I live on the other island but we do still have earthquakes. If you hear of a quake in Wellington, then panic. In the meantime, if you're feeling generous, please donate some money to rescue & rebuilding efforts. I went shopping earlier and plonked my change into a collection box. I wanted to donate blood but I'm not allowed to.

In other news, things seem to be going ok with the whole room share thing although we've not got a lot in common. Michelle's parents have invited me to visit over Easter so once I know what my timetable is like, I'll start planning what I want to do for the break. I might go down to the south island for a week and then stay with her for a week. Michelle's mum's birthday is the day after mine!

There's probably loads of crap I need to update you on but for now, up there is a picture of me on Monday at the beach party at The Big Kumara. I went with some other people from Vic house and the guy next to me is William. I can report that Isaac's cider ($4.50) is quite nice.

Facebook stalking ;-)

After working my way through the list of recipients on the welcome email who don't have name based addresses, I have finally found my room mate. Unfortunately, all I can see is her profile pic. There are two girls in it, so one of them is her. It's between dark curly hair or dark straight hair. That'll do.

Am feeling a lot better after managing to keep some bread and rice in me. Met some more people today. Hopefully tomorrow will be alright *nervous*

EDIT: Quick perusal of her friends list seems to indicate that she is the girl with the dark straight her. The hoodie with 'Shelly' on it kinda gave it away.

frdhyu

Dear father, this is going to be another 'depressing' post because I'm ill.

Today I have spent most of the day in bed. I got it together enough to walk up the big fucking hill to enrol. Then I realised I'd left the form behind. The people were pretty much like 'Go home, get some rest, come back on Monday.' They can tell I'm ill because I'm wearing a hoodie in blazing sunshine (yet they can't tell my accent, they all seem very surprised when I tell them I'm an international student :S)

In other news, just got a message from Lauren saying that she'd like to organise my returning thing in Norwich at The Bicycle Shop and what did I make of it?

If the truth be told, I have no idea what I make of it. But she's good at organising things, so it's mighty tempting.