There And Back Again.

Might I recommend something for tired minds.

A trip south. A trip to a breathtaking country. A trip to New Zealand.

We arrived in Auckland around 9:30pm local time but it felt as if we completely skipped a day. Wide awake at night and unable to keep our eyes open in the afternoon. But that's jet lag for you. A small price to pay to breathe in life .. as it were.

The people are very friendly. Very proud. And make their guests feel respected, safe and at home. Most of the time we were situated in the city centre itself but we did manage to take two day trips out. One was to the Island of Waiheke and the other 3 hours south to Rotorua.

I think in spite of my previous posting regarding a visit to the Shire ("let it go, Clint" someone commented ...) the highlight of the trip was a visit to a Maori cultural site.






We were greeted by a charismatic Maori who passionately shared with us his heritage ... and had a wicked sense of humour to boot. Top stuff.

Some of the booty we returned with included 3 lightsabers (yup. they sell them there ... ), a Kiwi bird (not real, of course), some fine white wine from Waiheke Island, hard to find DvD's and a plethora of memorabilia.

It's good to be home though. Rested. More experienced. And somehow ... at peace.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

take a deep breath

After writing my version of the Jo'burg chronicle's - a chapter lasting almost six years - I have returned to the Mother City. [ ... meaningful pause] I think the only way to truly appreciate where you are is to have some frame of reference - many many years ago my art lecturer (George - a short and bearded man that always seemed to wear a pair of blue garage overalls) at Rhodes University sat us down and shared this with us: To taste life one needs to develop tastes that are on both sides of the spectrum. Truly decadent and downright awful. The decadence would not be understood if decadence was all you ever had. Granted - I'm still in the honeymoon phase of breathing in this city, and by NO MEANS do I want to create the impression that good 'ole energetic Jozi is 'downright awful' on the contrary BladeRunner City was fantastic - but man the air certainly seems sweeter when you're driving 10m from the Ocean. It's as simple as that for me. Stay tuned for
Read more

Bon Voyage!

Image
I'm off to New Zealand on Sunday. I don't think the idea of international travel has really sunk in yet. We had the usual trouble with booking flight tickets this week ... first we were set to leave Sunday ... then we weren't and the flights had changed to Thursday ... then 12 hours later we were on a different Airline and it was back to Sunday. But I'm not complaining. It's tremendously exciting. I owe all this excitment to Mandy. She did so well meeting her targets at the office that every year we're treated to an International flight somewhere exotic on the house. Last year was Cape Town (a bit close to home but boy what a beautiful place). The year before Mexico. But on Tuesday I should be sipping XXX lager in Auckland, New Zealand. The City of Sails. One of the more important things on my growing itinerary list of 'Things We Must Do!' is to take a 2 hour trip south and sit down amongst the rolling hills of the Shire where Bilbo Baggins celebrated hi
Read more

Why "The Woodshed"?

Because everybody deserves one. Let me explain. The notion of The Woodshed was first introduced to me in John Kao's 1997 book Jamming where he discusses the art and discipline of business creativity. Something that's very close to my heart. In Chapter 5 he discusses the need for clearing a space for creativity and introduces the reader to Charlie Parker's woodshed. Or, more specifically, whenever the great sax player needed to work out new musical concepts, he would withdraw from the usual people, places and things and "go to the woodshed". This may seem an odd phrase, but if considered for a short while you will find that you've probably been to your woodshed without even knowing it. When I was 7 yrs old there was a river a block away from our house in East London. I would run to it every other afternoon and spend the day either trying to catch crabs, doing homework, building bridges or playing in the mud with my Star Wars collection. The spot at the river
Read more