Plan B, of course, was to ignore the alarm and get up late. Then change room [again!] and do some laundry and then have a shave and then decide to cut my hair and then go for a shower. And so at midday we headed down to Net Club to upload some photos. Quite how Net Club can have 30-odd computers and no USB port is a mystery. As the owners are Korean I declined to raise this with them.
My Mum has been busy on my behalf: posting off my Immigration Visa Application ([Skilled Independent] Residency) for Australia -- I have been approved by the Australian Computer Society; and paying in various monies from various sources (mostly rebates) but also a final payment from my last employer, Tornado. Which is a good thing as, since we left, it has been sued by Cable & Wireless for £2 million, been up before the court and sacked all its employees. Oh dear. RNS says the next round in the court is on the 27th November. It must be said that a good deal of this was quite predictable, the attitude and antics of the board being what they are (were?).
That news didn't take two hours to assimilate but something did as we left Net Club shortly after 2. Outside everything was a go-go. We asked back at reception as to what was happening [today] The Santa Parade? The Chilli Peppers? The ...
Stupid question, huh? Guessing it was the Santa Parade we headed back down Queen St, I to see the parade not realising Helen was heading back to the swimsuit shops. A few confused words later we headed off to swimsuit shop #1 and I watched the parade outside.
The Santa Parade has precious little to do with Santa, more to do with the sponsors, Farmers, a sort of BHS low end dpeartment store, who plastered their name all over. In a May Day setting (ie. it was overcast, grey, a chill wind blowing the rain straight up the road) the Carnival style procession ran (sometimes literally [to catch up]) down the hill round the harbour and back up a parallel street. Austin Powers to Clean Up the City, exploding volcanoes to a (quite impressive) Japanese display of 100+ people coordinatedly moving and chanting, Coca-Cola (!) to kids looking very cold in a vintage car. There was a Chinese dragon in the distance and a giant cornflakes' Skippy. We got to see all this because the other swimsuit shops were on the other side of the road/parade.
At half four, swimsuit in hand we chanced upon a coffee shop and tucked into some nachos. As luck would have it, it was a brewery too! A nice glass of Mac's "Blonde Mac" (coriander and orange wheat beer). I can't taste the coriander, though. As we sip, England's cricket team are making a traditional post-Botham attempt to win the Ashes. Fortunately, for them rain in Adelaide has stopped play. The local TV station is playing a classic catches competition (cf. goal of the month) -- at least that pretends that some of England's wickets were hard to get...
We set off for tea and start a conversation about how we're not making good use of the day by not getting up early enough -- currently the alarm goes off and then the snooze button is pressed a dozen times. My sentiment is that we should just get up when the alarm goes off and not mcuk about, so I say The trick is, not to press the snooze button
[quick as a flash, Helen replies] I didn't. I pressed the off button instead. We then slept for an hour and a half!
I think one of us was off-message.
We tried Planet Hollywood (15% discount for YHA members) and had a reasonable meal with wine (you would hope so, at that price, NZ$ 100). The pudding, Hot Fudge Sundae was an enormous bowl of ice cream, drenched -- even by my gut bucket standards -- in caramel and chocolate sauce. [Of course I finished mine.]
Plan A, tonight, is to follow the African style and wake with the sun. No curtains for us!
City YHA, Auckland S36.85673 E174.76274 Elev. 104m.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.