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Published: February 21st 2010
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Skytower
Walked past this sausage smoker every day on the way to work. Called "Aspiration" with the sky tower in the background Well after settling into the flat it didn’t take us long to all get jobs. I found myself a job in a bar in a seafood restaurant that was on one of the floors in one of Aucklands historic registered buildings; the old Ferry Building.
It was a bit of a trek through town to work; about 35 minutes walk each way, but at least I was working and able to pay of Tim the debt that I had incurred.
We spent the whole 4 months in Auckland working 5 days a week and trying to save up some cash for the rest of the trip. This didn’t quite go to plan and we managed to have some fun whilst living there.
Most nights we would all be working and so not all be back at the apartment until late on. We managed to borrow ourselves a Playstation, rob a DVD player and got ourselves nicely set up in the apartment. Any days that we had off together were well spent to start with; enjoying getting drunk at home and using the entertainment.
The weather started to pick up after about a month in Auckland and gave us
Tiger Woods
Down at the driving range at Ellerslie Racecourse the opportunity to start doing more outdoors activities. By around September it was nice enough to go to the park during the day and get involved in other activities in and around town.
One day off we discovered a golf driving range and pitch and putt that was in the centre of a horse track called Ellerslie Racecourse. We went down to the driving range and also had a few rounds on the pitch and putt at various times over the 4 months. It almost certainly did not end up getting silly at any point on the golf course or in the driving range! (some possible running slogs and general tomfoolery on the course may have occurred).
We spent a few hours one day at a place called Mission Bay where there was a crazy golf course and me and James found a table tennis ‘stadium’ that had around 50 tables in; another welcome distraction from work.
Apart from all of the golfing that was occurring we also used to go and chill out / sunbathe in a park on a hill called Mount Eden. We could see this from our flat window and was only a few minutes
Mt Eden
Some greenery in the city, up Mt Eden, an extinct volcano near our house walk away. It is an extinct volcano, one of a few around Auckland and loads across New Zealand. You can drive or walk up to the top and then walk down into the crater which is now a grassy hill in the shape of the volcano. It was a really nice place to hang out and had good views over Auckland city.
Tim’s birthday was on the 18th of October and so we booked off the night and went for a meal at the top of the Sky Tower which is the tallest building in Auckland and in the Southern Hemisphere. It has real good views over the city (not surprisingly) and the restaurant was around the edge on a revolving platform. That was cool because you could see every side of the city without having to get up from the table. It also made it a bit of a challenge finding the toilet because that was in the middle part that didn’t rotate. There was a definite tactic of holding it in for 20 minutes until another toilet came close. We spent the rest of the night out in town in a few bars, backpacker bars and also
Work Lit Up
My work building lit up with projector lights nipped into my work for one. There was a special 3 day projected lightshow on the same night and it was being projected onto the building that I worked in. It was a quite impressive display of video and styled outlines of the buildings architecture; see photo. Me and James bought Tim a Zippo lighter engraved with “Auckland, NZ, 18/10/09” on one side and “25 Year Old Bastard” on the other.
The only real time that we left the city limits was when we went camping for a night with the intention of going surfing. We wanted to try a bit of surfing and so planned to head to a place called Tauronga because James said it was known for it. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a campsite close enough to beach so the nearest place up the coast was called Whangamata, pronounced ‘fongamatar’. The name of the campsite in lonely planet was just DOC, which we found out when we arrived, stood for Department of Conservation. The campsite was in the middle of a conservation forest area and there were no other people around. We weren’t really camping hard core as we brought our mattresses and duvets so it
Watching Islands
Definitely not posed for was basically a bed outside, they didn’t completely fit in the tent and so we slept half outside and half in, which was nice actually.
The next day we planned to go surfing but when we found the beach, it was probably the flattest sea I have ever seen. So surfing was off but we found some sand dunes to throw ourselves off and sun bathe.
A few other random events that I can remember: -
1)Tims favourite biscuits are Tim Tams and on a packet that he bought, he entered a competition, and won. He had the choice of a years supply of Tim Tams or a holiday to Fiji… obviously he went for the years supply… and the first batch arrived a few days later.
2)One day at work there were some people gathered for some sort of talk in the private room. I went to have a look to see what was going on and found out that the Prime Minister of New Zealand was strolling around.
3)Work paid for us to go to a wine convention. We got given a glass on the way in and then got to go around the exhibition trying
Tims Tim Tams
Best day of his life. Tim gets his first shipment for 6 months of Tim Tams. Another due in March whatever we fancied. Delightful, although they all tasted the same after about half an hour.
4)Our local supermarket was called ‘Wang’
And on the 29th November we left Auckland and headed North for the summer, which is where I have just written this.
Thanks for reading
Craig
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