Good news

Ok, first things first………….we have a home! We’ve moved in and everything. The actual process of renting somewhere was real easy. All we needed to do was go into the real estate office, hand over a ton of cash and sign a lease then hey presto! It’s ours for a minimum of 6 months. We have only been in the house/apartment for 2 days but so far I am absolutely over the moon with it. The only real issue is that, like most Kiwi homes, it doesn’t have central heating! Apparently Kiwis buy separate electric or gas heaters and move them into the rooms that they are in. We do have the added bonus of under floor heating in our bedrooms and bathroom (although it doesn’t seem to be working in the bathroom) so if it gets really cold in the winter we can always make a tent out of duvets and sleep on the snug warm floor. The front room and kitchen are open plan but split-level and are both frickin freezing! The kitchen is south facing and gets a bit of sun throughout the day but not enough to warm the whole huge room. We have bought ourselves a little electric fan heater which so far warms up the front room quite nicely. It’s still fairly mild here though so we will see what happens as the temperature drops as winter descends. The other cool thing about the house is that it has it’s own Joseph Fritzel style sex dungeon! In the walk-in wardrobe of our spare bedroom there is a little door which leads into a little dark room under the front room. I tried to play hide and seek with Kate but she knew about the sex dungeon already and found me easily. Might have to jazz it up a bit with some whips and gimp masks but it is awesome!

Met a few of our neighbours too. We have an English couple next door to us. Bloody travel half way around the world and end up with bloody English neighbours! Well, they seemed quite nice in the very brief interaction we had with them as we were busily moving our gear in. The other neighbour gave us a welcome we won’t forget in a hurry. The day after we moved in we had to go to Warehouse to pick up a few bits and bobs and when we got back to the house there was the guy from a few doors down standing stark bollock naked in the car park with a beer in hand! It was midday! He saw us and ran back indoors but to be fair if I was as gifted in the groin area as this guy was, I don’t think I’d ever wear clothes either. He was mahoosive!! I practically had to rugby tackle Kate to the floor to stop her chasing after him! Well, not quite. We both just stood there laughing. I thought it may have been a Kiwi thing but as he ran into his house I heard him and a friend laughing and chatting in very English accents. Looks like we have moved into Albert Bloody Square! The best thing about the new place though is that, unlike living in Biff, I haven’t hit my head once!

Other awesome news is that Kate has been offered a job. She had interviews with a jet boat company that organise trips on the Dart River and they phoned her last night to offer her the job. She has to ring them this morning to confirm she’s gonna take it. She is a bit concerned that it is only 3 days a week but I think that’s perfect as it helps pay the rent and frees up plenty of time to go skiing and stuff. I’m actually quite jealous and wished I had applied too. We are here on holiday after all and I don’t wanna be working all the time. Especially since I now know Kate will be off for 4 days a week, probably skiing her ass off, while I be stocking shelves at Warehouse. We’ll see. We also applied to be volunteers for the NZ Winter Games. A sort of warm up to the Winter Olympics that they are having here in August. It means we could be up there helping out as marshals, or helping set up the courses or even filming it for TV. Could be fun and could get us up close and personal with some pro riders and skiers. Kate has already considered helping out on the 2 days that I’ll hopefully be working. I have my interview for Warehouse on Tuesday morning. The lady who called said she was keen to see me quickly but what with moving into the house and it being Easter (Stupid Jesus), I had to wait until Tuesday. Wish me luck. I haven’t heard back from the camera shop so not really holding out much hope for that and the jobs at the ski resort still don’t hold interviews for another couple of weeks. So all I can do is sit and wait for now.

The rest of our time this week has been filled with a few activities. We played extreme mini golf which was fun. It was indoors which helped on a particularly wet day and very different to any mini golf I had played before. On some holes you putted your ball through a hole before seeing it then travelling on a little chair lift or gondola before being deposited on another area of the course. It was super cheesy but killed an hour or so. We have found a cool little pool bar too called Harrys pool hall. It’s has overpriced beer but cheap pool and awesome laid back music. We had a few games the other day before sitting in front of its awesome open fireplace and reading the local papers while listening to MGMT and Café Del Mar. Reminded me a lot of the type of music Big H would listen to. In fact it would have been a very Big H type bar if they served nice food. A big slab of his awesome lasagne would’ve gone down a treat as the snow/sleet/hail fell outside. Could be a big business opportunity for us mate!? We also discovered that Q town has a bit of a Texas hold ‘em scene and a lot of the bars offer tournaments on various nights. We entered one the other night and did ok. Kate out lasted me and in the end the girl who knocked us both out ended up finishing in 2nd (winning a $40 food and bar tab). Not bad considering she works in a flippin casino! We had intended to go back again the following night but Kate wasn’t feeling well but I hope it’s something we do often as it was a lot of fun and we got to meet a few of the locals.

On the one half-decent weather day we have had this week we went and played Frisbee golf over in Queenstown gardens. It’s free if you have your own Frisbees, which we had bought the day before. Queenstown gardens are a massive park which is on a peninsula that juts out into the lake looking back towards the town. It has some amazing trees there including a huge pine forest. The Frisbee golf plays through most of the pines. All you do is stand on the tee and hurl your Frisbee towards the target which are either posts or metal baskets. I did quite well managing sometimes to fling my disc over 70 metres! Kate did not so well sometimes managing to fling her disc under 7 metres and even managing to somehow end up with her Frisbee behind her on occasion! Needless to say she needs a bit more practice.

Yesterday (Good Friday) was a gorgeous day here with clear skies and quite warm so we decided to head up Bobs Peak on the gondola and ride the luge runs they have up there. It was awesome! You have a chair lift that takes you to the top of the runs where you sit in little go-kart type things before hurtling down 2 tracks. You have to ride the more mellow scenic track first to prove you can control your speed and that your not gonna fly off the course and crash causing sudden and very painful death before you can ride the extreme course with its banked corners and hairpins. It was great fun once you got the hang of driving them and it wasn’t long before we were flying around the banked curves on two wheels whooping and hollering at Japanese tourists in our way. In the afternoon we went for a walk along the Frankton track which is a 8km path along the lakeside that connects Frankton to Q town. We only headed into Frankton and back from our flat but when the weather is nice we’ll walk the whole track.

Another awesome discovery is Nashi pears. We have had these a few times but I have always forgotten to blog about them. They are fruit which is a cross between an apple and a pear. They are lush! So refreshing and light. It’s like biting into sweet crispy air. Shame they don’t have them back home. Or if they do, it’s a shame I don’t know about it.

Anyways, I’m off out for a run along the banks of Lake Wakatipu. Chat soon.

Peace

D

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