Holiday
Now Playing: Keane - Try Again
So it's back to Auckland for the first time since Christmas Day. It was great to get out of the city for longer than a couple of days, the first time I have managed that for quite some time. Throughout the week the weather has been a bit so-so, but we had enough fine spells to ensure that we had a really great time.

Going up north late on Christmas Day proved to be a really great idea, as it meant that we easily missed all the traffic of the next couple of days. In fact the roads were the quietest I have seen for some time whilst driving up there. We didn't get annoyingly stuck behind some truck through the Dome Valley, and ended up making excellent time up there. For our first night Leila and I had the place to ourselves, which was pretty cool as we knew it wouldn't be like that for the rest of the week. After an incredibly hectic Christmas Day it was good to really relax and know that we would be able to sleep-in in the morning.

And indeed we did sleep in on Boxing Day morning, which was really nice. It has been a really satisfying feeling every night to not have to set the alarm for 7.30am the next morning. Boxing Day was meant to have perhaps the best weather of the week, so once my parents were up at the beach house we wasted no time in getting down to the beach so we could truly enjoy the good weather. I found my wetsuit, and although it was a bit short for me (I hadn't worn it for over five years) being in a wetsuit made a huge difference between the sea being cold but bearable, and it feeling totally freezing. After a few minutes in the water the coldness generally went away (at least for a while) and I managed to do some body-boarding for the first time in many years. Although the waves weren't great, largely to due to westerly winds throughout the week, they were good enough to get some good rides - even if there were sometimes quite long gaps between the waves. So we enjoyed the sun, enjoyed the water and had a pretty awesome day down at the beach.

On Wednesday Leila and I decided that we'd have a day trip up north. I have wanted to go to Matapouri for a long time, as I have many memories of going there when I was much younger, crawling across rocky ledges and building amazing sandcastles beneath Pohutukawa trees on the beach. It took about an hour and a half to get from Mangawhai Heads out to the Tutukaka Coast. Although the tide was annoyingly too high for us to get around to the rocky ledges and the amazing rock-pools that I remember so well from many many years ago, we did have a really great time just lying on the beach and reading for a few hours. After a while we wandered back to the car and drove around the corner to Woolley's Bay, although it was a bit windy as the weather was starting to close in. Then driving from there to Sandy Bay (just around the corner) Leila noticed that her wallet wasn't in her bag where it should have been. So then we all panicked for the next hour, searched both beaches where we had been - amidst the weather that was definitely getting worse not better - but finally we called in at a local shop at Matapouri and someone had handed her wallet in. It was such a relief for us to find her wallet, as losing something like that can be incredibly annoying to replace everything and the kind of thing that can just take the edge off the day. After finding her wallet we drove from Sandy Bay to Hikurangi. The road was sealed the whole way, but very very windy. At one stage we had been winding this way and that way for about 20 minutes when we came across a road sign saying that the next 3 km would be quite windy - we wondered what on earth the last 20 km had been. Eventually we came to Hikurangi - which proved to be the most boring and run-down little town I have seen for a very long time - before continuing on through to Whangarei. We had a nice coffee there, then I bought a couple of DVDs with the money my Nana had given me for Christmas, before heading back to Mangawhai.

On Thursday we had a fairly quiet day. I read through a couple of the books I had got for Christmas, played some sims, and generally had a nice and relaxing day. It was the kind of day you think about and can't really remember anything in particular happening, but at the same time that's probably a really good sign that it was a day how holidays really ought to be. We got down to the beach for a bit of beach cricket, but other than that it was a pretty quiet day - largely because the weather was still not particularly great.

On Friday Leila's family came up from where they were camping at Tawaharanui for the day. We had a pretty cool day, having another swim and generally having a fun day. Once again the waves weren't huge, but when I first got into the water there were reasonably good waves with amazing frequency. I literally got about 5 rides within the first 5 minutes I was in the water, although by the time everyone else was ready and in the water the waves calmed down and weren't particularly great for the rest of our time there. However, they were still fairly reasonable and we all got quite a few rides. It was good to catch up with Leila's family for the first time since Christmas Day, and to listen to all their stories of how annoying their camping neighbours were being.

Then yesterday we came back to Auckland. Before then we managed to have yet another swim, and the waves were fairly reasonable once again - possibly the best they were for the whole week. However, the sun was dipping behind the clouds all the time, and there was a pretty nasty wind - which meant that by the time Leila and I got out we were pretty damn cold. After that we organised ourselves and then came back to Auckland to pick up Amalia. So overall it was a pretty awesome holiday, a nice opportunity to be out of Auckland for a few days and very good to be able to do some body-boarding for the first time in many many years. Being able to do something I used to enjoy so much again was really fantastic, and I'm looking forward to the chance to get some more body-boarding done again during the rest of the summer. It will also be fun one day to teach Amalia how to catch waves, to judge the best moment to paddle into the wave so that it's not too early for catching, yet again not too late so that the ride you'll get isn't as exciting as it could be.

So it's now the last day of 2006. At some stage in the next couple of days I'll attempt to put together some sort of "wrap up" post about the year, which has turned out to be a pleasant, but very bizarre year in many ways. It will be interesting to think of the year as a whole, that's for sure.

Christmas
Now Playing: The Pogues - Fairytale of New York
So it's Christmas. The day of so much anticipation has finally arrived - the day that always seems to be a surreal kind of dream, comprising of presents, lots of people, lots of food and so on. I have had a pretty cool day so far, flitting between houses picking up Amalia then dropping her off again. She has had a pretty awesome day so far, being totally buried by so many presents from everyone.

Leila and I are off to Mangawhai Heads until Saturday. It will be truly awesome to be able to have a relaxing holiday for this time, and to get away from Auckland properly. Hopefully the weather will be good enough for us to be able to get down to the beach regularly over the next week. Even if it doesn't we have got a pile of DVDs, books and computer games to keep us busy for a very long time indeed - but they're things that I could be doing back in Auckland so I very much hope to have the opportunity to go bodyboarding for the first time in YEARS and to play some serious beach cricket.

There's no internet up there, so I won't be updating until Saturday at the earliest. Merry Christmas to everyone, in particular to Ella and Pete on the other side of the world. I hope that you guys enjoys your Spanish Christmas - you were missed today - and that you try (at least make some attempt) to not drink too much of that cheap Spanish wine!

The Last Day
Now Playing: Goo Goo Dolls - Dizzy
So here it is. The day I have been waiting for, for quite some time now. Yet it feels anti-climatic for now in so many ways. One of my bosses hasn't come in yet, as he has millions of things to organise before his last real day in the office before he leaves for Singapore. My other boss has disappeared off to the Manukau City Council to give them a calendar from the company - a personalised Happy New Year and thanks for giving us a pretty massive job. So here I am all by myself in the office, feeling a million miles from anything unusual - but with a very slight bubbly sense of excitement. I took a look back at my blog entries from December last year and found out that I have been working here, in one way or another, for over a year now. I guess when I got a phone call at Natalie's place some time in December last year from my boss wondering if I would be interested in helping them out with a bit of fairly basic data entry for a big job they were doing I never quite thought that this is how it would end up. I suppose there was always that hope beyond hope idea that one thing might lead to the next and the next, but I generally put that out of my mind fairly quickly so I didn't get over-excited about getting my first "real job" quite so easily.

A year later and it's pretty amazing how well things have turned out here. The surroundings that felt unfamiliar but exciting this time last year - as I was just starting here - now seem amazingly familiar and I feel really comfortable in my job here. The amount of stuff I have learned this year is unbelievable in many ways, that I can now be quite confident in my planning opinion on something, and that I know how to understand and read a District Plan (although they always find a way to surprise you). I know when something's missing, when an argument is strong, when something just doesn't quite seem right, and much more. Next year will again be interesting, as I can continue my development as a Planner and really start to stand on my own two feet. While it's really sad to see Pete leave for Singapore, it is an opportunity for me to step up and take a rather more senior role with things, which of course is where I want to be headed.

I do feel quite lucky I've ended up working here. It's a small, personal company and I feel like I get along really well with everyone. I am living pretty close-by, and the work is varied with a little bit of many different things, rather than hundreds of resource consents to process - which is probably what I'd have ended up doing working at a council. So all bodes very well for next year, and in many ways I feel that I have taken the hardest step in my career path - the first one - but that it's turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. That has to bode well for the future.

Anticipation
Now Playing: Keane - We Might As Well Be Strangers
So after lots of waiting tomorrow is the last day I have at work for the year - for three whole weeks. I have Amalia for the whole of this coming weekend, which should be fun as we can share the whole Christmas anticipation excitement together. It should be a really fun Christmas day then on Monday, as we do the whole family Christmas thing. Now I'm past the whole "excitement over presents" thing at Christmas, there are funny little things that make me enjoy and look forward to Christmas these days. There's seeing all my family together and having my Nana happily enjoying herself with Amalia; there's the way that everyone just seems really nice and happy for that day; and that so much effort has gone into making this one day great, but that it always seems to turn out to be totally worth it.

My Christmases have definitely been re-excited in the last few years because of Amalia. I guess that would happen to most parents - they get excited for their kids more than themselves - but it I never really considered that before Amalia came along. I think that it was her first birthday that really hammered home how much I more I got excited about her milstones than my own. As we have our birthdays just over a couple of weeks apart - Amalia before mine - there's always the possibility of easily comparing the two. I know that my 22nd birthday passed by almost without me quite noticing it, largely because Amalia was only a couple of week old and we were all still in the whole aftershock thing of the huge event of actually having Amalia. Then last year I found myself enormously excited about her first birthday, whereas mine was just like "oh well ... another birthday... yay". While I might make this sound like a negative thing, it's actually purely the opposite for me. As a kid I adored the excitement I would have before Christmases and Birthdays. I would look forward to April 27th and December 25th from months beforehand. I would be excited on the first day of April and the first day of December because these were always my favourite months. Getting to an age where these days are no longer as exciting was a bit depressing in a way, as I wanted to have that same sense of excitement yet again - to enjoy the moment I remember so clearly from the day I turned 11 when I kept on repeating to myself "I'm 11, I'm 11... I'm really 11!!" just so I could make myself believe it. Enjoying Amalia's birthday because of the excitement it brings to her, and enjoying Christmas in the same way is a fabulous opportunity for me to once again be tremendously excited about these days - even if it's now her birthday that makes me happy when April rolls around rather than my own. I can see myself in the future waking up on the morning of her birthdays going "she's 3 (or 4 or 5 or whatever).. she's 3.... she's really 3!!" and being just as excited about it as I was those years ago when the idea of me being a whole year older was just so unbelievably exciting. It's a genuine excitement too, not one that you end up kind of putting on for your own birthdays once you hit the ripe old age (ha ha) of 24, one where I am enormously excited about this being her third Christmas and the first time she's really got fully excited by it all, or in April when I am genuinely excited about her becoming another year older.

The thing I'm most looking forward to this year is not my own presents - in fact I know what most of them are going to be - but rather the enormous smile on Amalia's face when she opens up her presents and how she is amazed by Santa being nice enough to make all these presents for her, the way in which she will be so grateful and genuine in her thankfulness for the presents that I have given for her. This is what now makes Christmas for me, the anticipation that I have for seeing my little girl so happy and excited about "the big day". It's fantastic to have this knowledge that I will continue to be excited about Christmas for a great number of years in the future, and about a birthday in April as well - even if it is Amalia's rather than my own.

Counting Down the Days
Now Playing: Coldplay - Clocks
I find myself feeling like a kid again - not counting the days until Christmas, but counting those until holiday times. I guess it's a combination of many things that make me look so much forward to these upcoming holidays. For one, it will be my first decent break in about a year and a half; secondly, with everyone else I know ending up on holiday recently it's been a little depressing to have to keep on waking up early each morning and head off to work. Finally, I think the craziness of getting everything done at work in the last month or so has been building towards this week, and all our timing of everything has been with this coming Friday in mind. So I do have some sort of excuse to have such a single-track mind at the moment.

In a way it's almost like how you look forward to Christmas holidays at school. I remember at Primary school even though we 'only' had six weeks of holidays, it would seem like absolutely forever as they lay before you on that glorious last day of the year. I would always enjoy that last week of school immensely - on the Wednesday there would generally be the 'end of year trip', often to Long Bay or Parakai Hot Pools, or some other place like that. We would have a giant picnic, flood the place with kids and generally just have an awesome time. Then, finally, on the last day of school, we would pack up the classroom for one last time. This was awesome fun, putting all the tables together in the middle of the room with everything else, creating an enormous play-area that you could sneak in and out of playing tag with your friends and so on. The walls would be stripped bare of all the artwork that everyone had created throughout the year, and you'd end up with a massive pile of things that needed to be taken home. After clearing out the classroom we would always have one final assembly - but instead of being in the hall it would be outside by the dias in front of the office. Every classroom would line up around this dias, excitedly anticipating that moment when we'd finally be off for the year. I don't quite know why they always had these end of term and end of year assemblies there rather than in the hall, but because of their uniqueness it would always add to the excitement. We would sometimes sing "We're going on a bear-hunt...", or hand out particularly special certificates to people. One of the main excitements of the whole procedure was the handing back of money which people had handed in throughout the term. In those days we were all young and honest enough to hand in any money we found lying around, and if it wasn't (legitimately) claimed by the end of term you got it back. One time my best friend Nick and I searched and searched around school for any loose change we could possibly find (I think we found about 65c after about four days of intense searching) just so that we could excitedly go up to the office lady and get it back at the end of term, rather than being one of those envious people listening to others get their names read out and hurriedly rush up to get their 45c (hey this was back in the day when 50c bought a cream doughnut). Eventually we would be able to all leave, and we'd excitedly rush off to our parents, anticipating our seemingly endless holidays ahead.

That Friday afternoon, at the beginning of holidays was always awesome. It was a particularly exciting time at the end of the year, starting off the Christmas holidays. I would have all my exercise books from school, any artwork that had been stuck up on the wall in our classroom throughout the year, and anything else I had managed to acquire during the hectic last week. Often I would have this surprising energy to achieve something amazing during the holidays - to write a big long story with Ella or to draw something amazing. I would think that all this time I had ahead of me really did have a purpose, and that I would fully utilise this time to get done all those things I hadn't been able to do. There was always the added excitement of Christmas not being too far away (we generally seemed to finish around December 18th) and life seemed utterly fantastic.

While my excitement about the upcoming holidays hasn't quite reached my primary school levels (are we ever as excited about things as adults as we were as kids?) The feeling that going "back to work" is a heck of a long way away makes me feel vaguely reminiscent about distantly past holidays. It's a nice feeling.

The Last Week
Now Playing: Snow Patrol - Wow
So this is my last week of work for the year. It's been pretty insane lately with huge amounts of stuff for us to finish off, but the end is now in sight. There's actually a feeling that the millions of little things might actually get done - at least to a possible extent - and that the holidays are now pretty close. My chances of updating lately have been few and far between. Generally I have a bit of a slow time somewhere in my work day and that's when I find a few minutes here and there to write something in this blog, but as I mentioned above it's been pretty flat out in the last few days - and hence no updates. This one will be quite short too, but I guess at least it's better than nothing.

I had a fairly normal weekend - with Amalia on Saturday and then a very quiet day on Sunday. I took Amalia down to Pt Chevalier beach on Saturday with Leila's family, which was really fun although ended up a little (somewhat predictably) crazy as Amalia jumped into the sea with all her clothes on. Luckily the beach wasn't far from home, so I could quickly get her all bathed once we were back home. While Pt Chevalier beach is hardly Auckland's best - a rather dull harbour beach with about 5 cm surf - it has one enormous advantage in that it's incredibly close. There's a playground at a really nice park right next to the beach as well, which is a good bonus.

On Saturday night Leila and I went out, with Amber, for the first time I've really been "out" into town with Leila for quite some time. We had a pretty awesome time, enjoying the 1980s and 1990s retro music of Degree Bar - and chatting about how this time roughly three years ago the life of my sister was changed forever as she somewhat randomly met her future husband Peter. It's kind of funny that a place I had been to many times before they met there, and many times since, now seems to be particularly known as "the place where Ella and Pete first met". Even besides the associations we now have with that place (on top of the whole Ella and Pete thing Leila and I spent a fairly decent portion of our first date at Degree Bar too) it's a pretty fun bar, although some weird fancy dress stag-do kind of overwhelmed the place whilst we were there. After staggering out, and briefly stopping by at Soul Bar where I got a rather interesting drink containing Vodka, Limes and some interesting Hazelnut thing (which actually turned out to be bloody fantastic) we popped in to Suite Bar (a small place at the bottom of Hobson Street) to say hi to Sue-Li's (another of Ella's bridesmaids) boyfriend Nick. He whipped us up some truly fantastic drinks, and we merrily chatted away the night about all sorts of interesting things. Going in to see someone you know who works at a bar is always a bit strange, as you don't want it to seem like you expect them to give you free drinks while at the same time you don't want them to feel stink if they don't. I think things worked out quite well in this regards, as we came to some sort of middle ground with some fairly healthy discounts, and I didn't feel too bad about it all as hopefully we gave Nick a bit of a break from things and we were able to have a chat with him at a couple of stages.

Sunday was predictably quite quiet, although I didn't feel anywhere near as bad as I had the Sunday after our Pirate Party two weeks earlier. I think the ploy of going to sleep in my own bed, and with a drink bottle by my side, very effectively kept away any thoughts of a hangover. Nevertheless, Sunday was the kind of quiet day that every weekend should include once in a while: I watched about 10 hours of cricket on TV (although both teams I was supporting ended up losing badly) and just had a really good chance to relax.

So now there are three more days of work to go before the end of the year. It's actually quite exciting in a way - yet a tad sad at the same time as Friday will probably be the last time I ever see Peter, one of my bosses. He's off to Singapore in January to live for a few years, and although he will remain part of the company and involved with what we're doing, it will be sad to see him go and things won't quite be the same.

Almost There....
Now Playing: 3 Doors Down - Here Without You
So I have a week and a bit before my holidays. Work is so crazy-busy at the moment in getting everything together by next Friday that while I know that glorious time is not too far away in some respects - it feels ages and ages away in others. Lots of things to be finalised, 150 odd photographs to be taken all over Auckland for another project, tables to be reformatted, tonnes of proof-reading to be completed and so on. Sometimes it feels almost impossible that we will get it all done in that time, but as every day passes and I chip away at things more and more I amaze myself at how much can actually get done.

After feeling a bit "blah" about work for a while a couple of months back I seem to have had a greatly renewed interest in things lately. I think I've made a deliberate effort to raise my game, to take on a role that is no longer the "new guy on the block", but rather one who really knows what they're doing, is confident in it all, and who is ready to take on more responsibilities. I was somewhat freaked out by acting that way before, but now that I've kind of forced myself to be more confident about everything, it seems to be paying off in an enjoyable way. I'm trusting my instincts, as my knowledge expands I can realise when something's missing or where a bit more information is needed. Making sense out of District Plans can be an absolute nightmare at times, as every one seems to be different and to say what they mean in the most complicated of legal-speak. I find myself going "OK... so I think I finally get this, but why the hell couldn't they have just said it this way!" I've taken the advice of my bosses onboard, to take a little bit more time to double check that I've covered all parts of what I'm looking and to make sure that there isn't some sneaky thing hiding away in Chapter 14 or something like that. I've even had the confidence to call councils to talk to their duty planners about certain aspects of plans that I just can't seem to make sense of on their websites. Today I had a classic conversation with someone from the Tauranga City Council:

Me: Hi there, I'm just calling regarding a couple of aspects of your District Plan that I need a bit of clarification on... Pensioner Housing and building coverage.
Council Planner: Sure how can I help
Me: Well in regards to Pensioner Housing do you have any special rules about housing for elderly? Many other councils often do.
Council Planner: Ummmm.... no, not really they're just normal residential activities.
Me: Ahh... well that explains why I couldn't find anything in the plan about them. How about building coverage... is there a maximum amount of a site than can be covered by a building in the residential zone?
Council Planner: Ummmm... no, there's no building coverage restriction.
Me: Ahhh... well that explains why I couldn't find it then.
Council Planner: Yup, guess that's a breath of fresh air.
Me: Ah yeah. I suppose so. (Thinking in my head well not really, why couldn't the plan say that, why do you have to be different to every other council in the country... why can't it just make more sense!!!!!)

Often I find myself frustrated that District Plans seem to be so overly complex, that all 90 odd city and district councils in the country have plans that are often incredibly different to each other for basically no other reason than they had a different planner write them, that the whole thing is just not more user friendly. But then I think about it in another way: because it's so messy and complex everyone needs a planner like myself to make any sense of it. Slowly but surely I am beginning to figure out how these strange creatures known as District Plans operate, and the fact that they're so convoluted in their writing and so seemingly contradictory, means that the average person will need someone like me to make sense out of it all for them. Most councils have their plans online these days, so theoretically everybody could be a Planner and find out all the information they need for themselves. Perhaps if it was easier I'd find myself out of a job.

Maybe those District Plans aren't so bad after all....

Summer Time
Now Playing: Evermore - It's Too Late
I never know whether to be annoyed with Auckland's weather that seemingly too little of the year creates those beautiful summer days where there's not a cloud in the sky, a light breeze blowing to keep things not too hot, and that bright sun beating down that just makes you want to head straight to the beach; or to be thankful that at least it doesn't get unbearably hot (well generally except for a week or two at the end of January and start of February). I think in the end I feel both - that we're reasonably lucky not to get temperature extremes in Auckland too badly, but still frustrated that if there were more days like today and yesterday, and the day before, it would be so much nicer living in Auckland - especially in winter when the cold and rain gets rather depressing.

Summer has always been my favourite time of the year. I think I've mentioned this quite a few times before, but there's something about the warmth, the sunshine, the annoying cicada calls, the long evenings, the beach cricket and the BBQs that just seem to be how life should be. I am actually really really looking forward to this summer - for many reasons. As I mentioned a couple of days back it will be the first time in a few years that I'll truly have a decent length holiday throughout summer. Furthermore, Amalia's getting to the age when she should really be able to enjoy it with me. Last summer provided the first real opportunities to take her to the beach and enjoy the surf, and I enormously look forward to being able to do that again. The times I've taken her to the beach in the last few months the water's been a bit cold to really get in there and swim with her. It will be great when I can actually feel warm enough to jump in there with her. Last summer I also seemed to spend half my life driving between home and Whangaparoa Peninsula. While I didn't mind at the time, it will be great to not have to drive 40 minutes each time I want to see my girlfriend. Sometimes it's those days you just lay around doing nothing in particular, or just wander along a beach or go to a park that end up being the most satisfying.

When I think about summer I often remember two of the best holidays I had as a teenager. In the days before we had the Mangawhai Heads beach-house we would generally shift our holiday locations around quite a lot. There would always be the trip to Thames for Christmas and/or New Year's, but in January we would usually head off to some interesting corner of the country. In 1995 it was the South Island, in 1996 Lang's Beach (qutie near Mangawhai Heads actually), in 1997 Great Barrier Island and in 1999 to Gisborne and East Cape. Although they were all great holidays, it's the 1996 and 1997 ones that always seem to jump into my mind when I think about the quintessential summer holidays of my childhood.

In January 1996 we did something for a holiday that we'd never done before - we rented someone else's holiday house for a week. Generally in the past we had spent a lot of our holidays driving around some wacky part of the country taking in the sights and sounds of new places. It seemed quite an exciting thing to do though, to be able to settle down in the one place for a while and take in its surrounding quite properly. One of my main memories of this trip was the sadness that we had to leave Blossom, who was just a kitten then. This was the first time that we had left her for more than a day or so, so I know that both Ella and I (who were rather besotted with her at that stage) were both enormously looking forward to seeing Blossom again once we got back to Auckland.

The place where we stayed was located between Waipu Cove and Lang's Beach. It was a farmstead really, with a huge property that went right down to the water. The view was to die for, looking straight across at Bream Head and Mt Manaia, and out to the Hen and Chicken Islands. The house was a bit old fashioned in the bedrooms, and I think the bed I slept in was either really high or really low - in any case it was strange I remember that much. But anyway, that was rather beside the point as the living room had a window literally the size of the whole wall - from floor to ceiling to make absolutely sure that you could enjoy the view to its fullest. I spent a great deal of that holiday just gazing out at the sea.

The weather for that whole week was pretty good, if I remember rightly. The forecasts were for a huge cyclone that was lying off to the east to come in and hit the coast pretty hard, but it stayed away the whole time confusing weather forecasters everywhere. What this meant was that the surf was truly awesome for the whole week. Lang's Beach is generally a pretty tame beach - not even warranting lifeguards - but this week the surf was massive. One day the Fitzgibbon family (friends of ours through my mum's book) came down to visit for the day (they lived near Whangarei) and we all spent just about the whole day riding our bodyboards on these giant waves. It was one of those times when the waves just seemed perfect - large enough and holding up enough to give you a good ride without totally dumping you. After that day at the beach I was somewhat annoyed to find that I had missed out on Chris Cairns playing one of his greatest innings, but on the other hand I had had an awesome day at the beach so I couldn't complain too much.

Having a huge property to explore was also tonnes of fun, and Ella and I would in the evenings often wander around the place just to see where we would end up. Wandering towards Waipu Cove I remember we got down fairly close to the sea, and stood there watching it pound against the rocks for a while. Heading the other way there was a field full of giant meadow type flowers and grasses. It seemed all rather fantastical. I also spent a good deal of that holiday working on one of my make-believe cities, which I used to create roadmaps for (I was destined to be a town planner from an early age). A reasonable chunk of that city was created in the evenings up in that beach house, between staring out at the view and being amazed by how many dead flies seemed to be sitting on the window sill (amazing the little things you remember). I also remember reading a book while we were up there about some sort of escape from a prisoner of war camp during World War II, although it was one of those annoying ones where the escapees ended up always being caught one after the other - although to be honest I don't remember too many more details. The day we left seemed quite annoying, as we spent an awfully long time cleaning the place up. But on the other hand by then Ella and I were incredibly keen to get back to Auckland to check up on our kitten Blossom. It was a good holiday all up, one that was a little different but seemed the kind of summer holiday that you should have.

The next year my Mum, Ella and I went to Great Barrier Island for our summer holiday. I can't quite remember why my Dad didn't come - perhaps he didn't want to fly there like we did for some reason. But anyway, to avoid the very long boat ride we flew there, which in itself was pretty exciting for someone who had only been on a couple of flights before. The plane trip over was quite an experience, in a very small plane that seemed to travel quite low compared to what I was used to. I watched as we flew over all these islands in the Hauraki Gulf and slowly made our way out to 'the Barrier'. I was somewhat embarrassed to find out that the mountains visible from Auckland that I had always though were part of Great Barrier (and had gladly told other people) actually turned out to be the northern tip of the Coromandel Peninsula. Nevertheless, it was quite exciting as we finally approached our destination. We landed firstly at a small airfield in the north of the island on a grass airstrip - a first for me - before taking off again to land in Claris. We then somehow made our way to where we were staying, near Medlands Beach. Settlements on Great Barrier Island are very different to how we would think of a settlement here - as there's nothing unusual in large paddocks between houses or areas of bush between one part of a settlement and another. Claris is actually surprisingly large and takes a good 5 minutes to drive through, even though it only has a fairly small number of houses. The roads on Great Barrier were pretty shocking, with only small areas actually sealed and most of the cars being rather run down and crap.

Our accommodation was a fairly small unit about 10 minutes walk from Medlands Beach. I know this because we made that walk quite a few times, especially down to the beach early in the morning before my mum could be bothered driving Ella and I down there. It seemed like an eternally long walk down a dusty road - but once we got there it was totally worth it. Medlands Beach is quite possibly the closest place to paradise I've ever been to. An enormous, perfectly white sandy beach stretching into the distance at both ends - and just about totally deserted. When Ella and I got down there in the morning fairly early there was literally nobody else anywhere on this enormously long beach. We would build sand cities - complete with little houses, roads, shops, golf courses and everything, that would end up covering masses tracts of the beach. I got amazed by the size of them myself at many stages, stepping back to truly appreciate the 30 odd metre long creation of mine.

There was a girl called Penny who lived at the place where we were staying. I forget exactly how old she was at the time, from memory slightly older than Ella at the time so perhaps around 12 or 13. She was obviously fairly bored quite a lot of the time being isolated from many of her friends, and befriended us. The three of us would go down to the beach and work on our giant sandcastles. One day we dug a hole easily big enough to fit the three of us in, and deep enough to reach the water from fairly high up on the beach. At the time it was probably the most impressive sandcastle structure I had ever built, and it took us most of an afternoon to complete. In the end we made massive dribble towers all over its sides, and were thoroughly amazed by it all. Penny came with us on a few excursions when we hired a (totally crap) car so that we could explore the island a bit more fully. We went over to Tryphena on the other side of the island, which was interesting but not nearly as picturesque as far as I was concerned, as it's on the sheltered side of the island so had lots of inlets and harbours rather than my preferred big sandy beaches. Penny taught us the words to "this is the song that never ends... coz it goes on and on my friend" in the car on the way back from somewhere on one of the days, which ended up driving my mother totally insane. At the end of our trip we met up with her family, which was quite nice, but slightly odd as here was someone who we had got along with really well for a week but were most likely to never see again.

Great Barrier Island is truly an out of this world place. There are so few people on the island that it's almost a shock when you drive past anybody on the roads - in fact it's such a big deal that everybody waves to each other, even though you're a complete stranger. It's certainly not the kind of place where I would like to live, the isolation would totally get to me and everything is really expensive to buy there as it has to be shipped over from Auckland, but it's an awesome place to visit. The huge sandy beaches that are totally abandoned... that's what paradise is surely like.

It's difficult to say which of the two above holidays I enjoyed the most. They were both really awesome ways to get out of Auckland and really enjoy the summer, and in many ways they are possibly the two holidays that really confirmed that I am a real beach person. The happy times that I am recreating with Amalia at Mangawhai Heads and Auckland's west coast beaches is a way for me to relive and share the ways in which my summer holidays - exemplified by these two holidays in particular - added to my own childhood. Amalia truly loves the sand and the water, in a way that I myself have always done so, and one of the most amazingly fun things I can do with her is to share these happy times at the beach.

And Today in Joshblogosphere
Now Playing: Audioslave - Be Yourself
Lately my blog seems to have got into that annoying old pattern of always playing catchup. When it feels like either there are quite significant gaps between entries or lots going on in my life, I always find myself struggling to barely relate everything that's happening, and often don't really seem to have the chance to fully reflect on it all, and to write about more interesting things, or to recall some interesting memories that a particular moment inspired me to think of. These are all the more interesting blog entries out there that when I sit down in front of the computer I always hope to relate - but end up finding myself barely hanging on to the most basic purpose of this site, to have some sort of record of my life. I guess on the bright side at least it's doing that lately.

I guess at the moment life feels like it's slowly transitioning from one phase to the next. I guess with all the big events of a couple of weeks ago, and with holidays and Christmas approaching that's rather unsurprising, but in many ways it feels like more than just that. Perhaps it's the very initial stages of planning to move out of home (again!) that's making me feel like things are - if not already changing - then at least laying the foundations for it all. In some ways it's a bit depressing and frustrating that my mind seems to be running ahead of reality with regards to the whole moving out thing, as I'll be unlikely to really afford to move out until April or May next year, and by tricking myself into thinking that it's going to happen sooner than that I'll end up all impatient about it - which is probably not exactly ideal.

Maybe it's just that time of the year. With Christmas and holidays approaching everyone, myself most definitely included, seems to be looking ahead and planning Christmas Day or what we're going to do after Christmas, even planning where to go on New Year's Eve. The fact that it's all still a couple of weeks away seems to just be an annoyance, more time to get through until then, more waiting to be done and (at least at work) a crap load of stuff to get done.

Perhaps it is work that's also making me feel like this. Next year there will be some pretty big changes here in the office, and a lot of thought and preparation is now going into it. Some really big projects which we've been working on since I first started with the company about a year ago are finally drawing to a conclusion, and it feels refreshing that we're almost there, almost done, but frustrating that there's still those last pieces in the puzzle that need to be placed - as well as a crap load of reformatting and proof-reading.

Overall, it's obviously a combination of everything that has led to these last couple of weeks feeling quite odd. It is starting to sink in that Ella and Peter are overseas, and although I didn't think that I'd miss her much for a while because I'm used to not seeing my sister for a week or so on end as we haven't lived in the same house for quite a few years, I am finding myself missing her more than I thought would be the case. It somehow won't seem quite right on Christmas Day for her not to be there. But on the other hand I'm hearing regularly from her and Pete which is good, they've got their own blog going (click on "Petella" in the links at the side for it) to keep everyone updated with what they're up to. They seem to be having a great time.

I think this transitory feeling will pass fairly soon. Once Christmas, New Year and holidays roll around everything will be markedly different to my normal pattern of life, and that will be exciting and at the same time relaxing. After that work should feel like a fresh start next year in many ways, as the changes will have happened and I'll have some more responsibilities which will be challenging but interesting I am guessing. And then after that we probably will have to get stuck into sorting out a place to move into, which itself should be quite interesting and exicting. The transition should grind on eventually...

Two Weeks To Go
Now Playing: Hootie and the Blowfish - I Only Wanna Be With You
So there's now less than two weeks until the end of the working year for me. The start of blissful holidays where I don't have to set my alarm for 7.30am each morning and then frustratingly clamber out of bed when I'd really rather just head back to sleep for a while more. This will be my first holiday of significant length since July last year, when I went overseas. It will be the first holiday of more than just a week and a bit that I haven't gone anywhere overseas for many many years. During university holidays tend to recreate themselves as money earning opportunities - the chance to finally get away from scrambling through the last couple of days before pay day each week and to finally have enough money to get through Christmas and actually buy a few of those things you've been wanting all year - oh, and also trying to make a stab at saving at least part of next year's university fees. Actually having a break seems to end up at the bottom of the list on quite a few occassions. Apart from last summer, when I think I had about 4 days off over new year's at most and the year before when I had no break, I have generally been organised enough to have about a week off over this time of year. But this time it will be great to get three whole weeks away from the daily grind - and with the nice knowledge that my salary is still going to find its way into my account at the end of it all.

I had a pretty crazy weekend actually, especially yesterday when it seemed like we were going from one exciting thing to the next throughout just about the whole afternoon. Saturday was pretty much a quiet day, I collected my contact lenses and then made the fatal mistake of tackling St Luke's shopping centre at about 2pm on a Saturday, two and a bit weeks before Christmas. It's never a good sign when there are seemingly more cars circulating, looking for a parking space, than there are cars actually parked. While that may have been a slight exaggeration, it took us forever to finally make our way across the car park (after a few fruitless loops) to an area not quite so heavily patrolled by other cars, and eventually we found a car that was leaving so we could nab their spot. I got myself a haircut, and then Leila, Amalia and I wandered around for a bit, found some nice books at Whitcoulls and actually ended up making a quite significant dent into my Christmas shopping. I'm quite amazed with myself actually, as generally I'm the person who leaves Christmas shopping until about December 22nd, before belatedly hitting the shops and just grabbing something as fast as I possibly can. I think this year, as the first time Amalia's really got all excited about Christmas, everything seems more exciting to me as well. I can't wait for Christmas day to share Amalia's excitement, and by buying her presents and seeing Santa at the mall with her, it makes it a bit more real and seems to bring it all a bit closer.

Yesterday was a pretty crazily busy day by the end of it. We had a fairly quiet morning - Amalia got stuck into playing playdough for a while as we arranged how the day would pan out. One of the bridesmaids at Ella's wedding - Sacha - had a baby boy Alexander on Tuesday, so Leila, Amalia and I went to see how they all were. We met up at St Lukes, which this time around wasn't too unforgiving in the parking department and we found a spot just about straight away. I felt pretty insane going to Auckland's busiest shopping mall twice on the one weekend not long before Christmas, but that's just the way things turned out. We all met up for lunch, admired the cute tiny little bubby, and Amalia had a good chance to play with Sacha's almost 4 year old daughter Olympia, who was Amalia's fellow flower girl at the wedding. We had a good chat, and all agreed that now Ella's overseas we probably all need to make a bit more of an effort to ensure we don't drift apart. It seems that Ella was the centre of gravity in a way for quite a few people, and now that she's on the other side of the world all the rest of us will need to make a bit more of an effort to ensure that we all remain friends.

After doing a bit more of a shop around St Lukes (argh I spent way too much money this weekend) we headed out to see my Nana. Leila met her for the first time, and everyone had a pretty fun afternoon. Amalia was quite keen on playing in the driveway with the tennis ball, as everyone else did their best to ensure she didn't throw it either onto the road or over the fence. From there we continued on to the party at Sharon's. Originally the word was that it would be a fairly small and low-key get-together, though in the end there turned out to be quite a lot of people and a tonne of food there. Everyone stuffed themselves, Amalia found a new love in playing basketball and was so excited when I lifted her up to dunk a hoop, and overall it was just a really fun time.

After all that I was pretty wasted by last night. But I guess that's nothing too uncommon after an Amalia weekend. It was really great to have her for the whole weekend for the first time in a month. That longer continuous time really makes it feel natural for her to be around and with me - which is the thing I miss the most when I only see her for little bits of time.

OMG a Blog Entry
Now Playing: Dido - Slide
Well it has been a few days since my last update. Various things have conspired to prevent me from updating - life has actually been rather busy for once.

On Wednesday I flew down to Nelson for our work get-together. Paid flights, food, accommodation etc. Yeah it was a pretty sweet deal. Although I've now been on quite a great number of flights (probably easily over 20 now) they still seem really fun and special to me. The thrill of the engines roaring as you speed down the run-way is enormously exciting. The acceleration, watching the runway out those little windows speed past at an enormous speed will quite possibly always get me excited. And then the almost surreal feeling of lifting up, watching the ground disappear below me. I have spent a great deal of this year looking at google earth, so I'm fairly used to seeing the world from a plane's point of view, but it was pretty cool going down the North Island spotting the towns below me and being able to pretty accurately guess what they were. Raglan, Kawhia and its harbours, the outskirts of New Plymouth and Hawera I could distinctively make out from the plane - although after then we headed out to sea to cut the corner to the top of the South Island. Annoyingly I had forgotten the digital camera so I couldn't take any nice photos of the trip down.

When we arrived in Nelson we headed in to town to meet up with the other people who work in the Nelson office of my company. It was good to see them all again, and meet a new guy who only started in October. Last time I was in Nelson I was very much the new person, having not even officially started in a salaried role. It was good this time to feel more experienced and settled in, confident with my role in the company and all that. We had a really nice lunch at a nearby bar, a few more chats about where the company is going in the next while, and then headed off to the Nelson director's house. This was the second time I had been there, after my trip there back in March, and I once again really appreciated the awesome view from his place - down across Nelson and Tasman Bay, all the way over to Motueka (although it's far enough way you can't see it at all). Sitting there having a BBQ that evening, looking out across the sea, was an incredibly pleasant experience I must say. After dinner we headed out for a few drinks, although I did manage to remain fairly sober - especially when compared to my three bosses who were there with me. It was a rather amusing evening, and we had good times chatting away with each other.

On Thursday morning I managed to sleep in a bit, which was really great, and then walked through a bit of Nelson down to a nice little cafe by the beach for breakfast. I had another awesome meal - I really have been spoiling myself food-wise lately - and my 2nd and 3rd coffees for the day in an attempt to fully wake me up. On the bright side I was a lot more woken up than just about everyone else there, as I found out that a couple of my bosses had actually continued the night's partying after I went off to bed. After a few more chats we headed off to the airport to catch our 2.30pm flight. The weather on the flight back was probably a bit better than it was on the way down, and I could look across to see Mt Ruapehu quite easily. Through good luck rather than good management I ended up in the window seat of the right side of the plane to be able to look across to land - rather than straight out to sea. The world from 16,000 feet up (which was about the height we were travelling at I think) always amazes me in many ways - the fact that I'm able to very slightly make out the curvature of the earth, that there's a good chance I'm able to see in the very distance clouds that might be many hundreds of kilometres away.

Eventually we made it back to Auckland. It seemed slightly bizzare that I had been all the way to the South Island and back in little over a day. It was good to see Leila again that evening, and we made up for our time in different islands by having a very nice dinner indeed at a classy restaurant in Ponsonby that night. It felt good to be a classy type person going to restaurants and flying all over the country - even if it was for just a couple of days.

Christmas is getting closer really fast now. Fortunately I have been smart enough to get stuck into my shopping fairly early for about the first time ever, and actually most of it is just about done now. Amalia's really starting to get excited about it all this time around, excited that Santa Claus is coming and is going to bring her presents. Putting up christmas trees over the last couple of weeks has also enhanced that, and it will be pretty cool on christmas day as she really goes nuts enjoying herself. It almost makes me feel like a kid again myself.

Arrrr!
Now Playing: Zero 7 - In The Waiting Line
Well I had a pretty good and interesting weekend. My Friday post did seem rather depressing and doesn't really reflect how I feel about life in general, it was just a way to describe how I felt at a certain point in time, the feelings that I had and so on. I actually thought it turned into a fairly good post, in the same kind of way that it's often a sad book or movie that you remember best, and which has the most effect on you.

Anyhow. On Friday night Amalia stayed, which was really cool. As my parents went up to Mangawhai Heads on Saturday morning, Leila and I had a good time just by ourselves with Amalia throughout Saturday. We took her around Western Springs Park, which is always fun. We explored off the main pathways a bit, finding some of those nice little spots away from the crowds which are probably my favourite bits of the park. The spots I remember being totally fascinated by as a kid because I could remember vaguely being there before, but I could never quite figure out how to get to a lot of the more "out of the way" paths. We climbed around on the rocky outcrop at the far end of the park again, which was also lots of fun. I took a bit more of a hands-off approach with Amalia - still standing there to catch her if she lost her balance in any way, but giving her the chance to find her own footings across the rocks. There was another girl up there, I think she said she was 6, and she was really chatty with both me and Amalia. She was really impressed by Amalia's climbing ability, and talked to her in a really awesome way - not all condescending like it's so easy to do with a 2 year old, but at the same time simple enough so that Amalia could understand what she was saying, and make her own responses.

After taking Amalia back to Natalie's, Leila and I got ourselves organised for the evening. We had originally intended to invite Amber around for dinner, perhaps something like pizza and a few DVDs as we wanted to have a chat about possible future living arrangements when we put together a flat some time next year. However, earlier in the day Amber had called us to say that she had become aware of a party happening on Saturday night that was actually just around the corner from Leila's place - at her cousin's or something like that - and asked whether we wanted to go. The party had a theme too: "Pirates and Prostitutes" which sounded rather interesting indeed, and after confirming with Leila that she had a pirate hat (so I wouldn't be forced into buying tight leather pants) we decided why not.

So we stocked up on booze (as you do) and headed off to the party after picking up Amber and having dinner at Leila's. Everyone looked fantastically hilarious in their costumes, and I thought we might end up being the most over-dressed people at this party. Fortunately, we quickly discovered that this was not the case, as just about everyone had dressed up nice nad sufficiently (or specifically not sufficiently in the case of the prostitutes). There were swords and red-and-white striped clothes everywhere, pirate hats and even a soft-toy monkey attached to some guy's shoulder. It was pretty fun actually, everyone who didn't know anyone else would just go "arrrrr!" at them in true pirate style, and there would be this mutual acceptance. I wondered what the neighbours would have thought was going on, hearing "arrrr!" repeatedly shouted out throughout the night. Amber's elder brother Rowan managed to dress himself up to look like a splitting image of the ugly stepsister in Shrek 2, while some of the other costumes were also totally fantastic. It was a very merry evening, although unfortunatley everyone couldn't be convinced into singing "What shall we do with the drunken sailor" all together, which was a pity as it would have been fantastic. Eventually Leila and I stumbled back to her place and some sleep.

Frustratingly I seem to have a really nasty habit of sleeping shockingly the night after I've been out. This always means that I feel totally dead the next day. I mean sure some of this would have to be attributable to a hangover, but I was mainly just feeling tired rather than everything else. Eventually Leila and I built up enough energy to go to a local cafe and have something to eat and drink. I felt amazingly better after that, so we went for a wander down to Coyle Park, right at the end of the Pt Chevalier peninsula, a really nice spot totally surrounded by water just about. We watched the giant pine trees sway in the wind, and talked about the time when we were younger that other trees had been brought down by storms. I distinctly remember getting a whole massive pile of firewood once from there after a big storm - enormous clumps of pine cones - and being really quite excited by it all. It was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon, and the weather was nicely warm in the sun without being harshly hot sunburn material.

Tomorrow I'm going to Nelson again - for a day! Another work get-together, which should be pretty cool as I get to see the South Island again, if only one little corner of it. The weather it meant to be good over the country so hopefully I should get some good views of the North Island from the plane. If I'm really smart I will try to remember to take the digital camera so I can get some shots for my next post... which may well be Friday.

Sadness
Now Playing: Coldplay - Amsterdam
Last night, while waiting for Leila to comb out her hair, I lay in bed and read a few more pages of the book I have been reading lately, The Time Traveller's Wife. I will write more about this book at some stage, probably when I get around to finishing it, as it's a really fascinating book to read and one that really makes you think about life. But anyway, I was at part of the book where the two main characters' daughter manages to time travel back to meet her former self (I know, it sounds really odd, but it does kinda make sense after about 200 pages): a 3 year old meeting her 7 year old self. In the book the 3 year old character goes "Mama Mama... look, a big Alba" excitedly pointing at herself, and then later on excitedly points out all every last little thing she knows to her elder self, so excited about having this amazing friend who's herself, but at the same time not herself.

And I just thought exactly how Amalia would do that. How she would come up to me and say "Daddy... look a big Lala". Amalia has a way of making sense out of things, where she creates them all as family members. If there's a bit spoon and a little spoon they are "the mummy spoon and the baby spoon" or a "daddy spoon and a baby spoon" (which seems to come up if the spoon is particularly big). For some reason thinking about Amalia at that moment made me really really miss her. It was a bit of a strange time for that to happen, as I she had stayed the night at my place only the night before, and theoretically I should have been missing her heaps on the Wednesday during the day when I hadn't seen her since Saturday morning, but no here I was barely 12 hours after I'd seen her last missing her like crazy, hoping for Friday to just disappear away as quickly as possible so the evening would roll around and I'd get to see her again. It was a strange feeling too, one of deep frustration that there was really no solution to feeling like that. Quite often I think that my feelings are often very "meh" to things, that I don't get worked up when I should, that I don't feel sad enough or happy enough when I probably should, but this was such an exception, and such a deep feeling of frustration that this situation will inevitably happen many times again in the future.

I guess I can't complain too much, as I have an access situation that works very well indeed for my current life. I have Amalia stay with me for the night four nights every fortnight, while in addition to that I go to see her at Natalie's once a fortnight for the evening. Obviously this is how things will inevitably be, and I do normally accept that because it works for everyone and there isn't really an alternative. Yet deep down, in a way I guess I probably share with most parents who live away from their kids, I always have this feeling that I have to make the most of every moment because of their scarcity. This turns out in a good way on many occassions, as I go out and do things with Amalia that possibly wouldn't happen if it was just normal for me to have her all the time. I possibly appreciate every moment I do spend with her more than would be the case if there was seemingly limitless time we had together. But at the same time this sense of having to make the most of it eats away at me - I feel bad about going on my computer when she's here because I feel like I'm missing out on valuable time with her, I don't want her to be grumpy when she's with me because it seems like wasted time that she could be all happy and we could be having great games and cuddles. It's almost like holiday times, you cherish them because they're special and not how things are usually - but boy do you ever wish that it could always be holidays.

So I lay in bed feeling rather sad for a moment last night, before Leila managed to cheer me up, not sad or angry about how things are because I know that everything is in a situation that is probably best for everyone, but just sad that I feel like I'm missing out. That every month older Amalia gets is less time that I spent with her when she was two, was less time that I spent with her when she was at this amazing stage. I got annoyed with myself slightly at being so sad, and did the normal thing of "well it isn't really that big of a deal is it?" But then I realised that it was, that I could feel OK about being sad because this was something most definitely worth feeling sad about. Not angry or frustrated at anybody, not really hoping for things to be particularly different, just plainly sad that I'm missing out on something my amazing little girl would be doing at that very moment.

The Pointless Blog Entry
Now Playing: Jack Johnson - Flake
Quite often I find myself wanting to write a blog entry, yet uncertain of what to write about. There's something in me that really doesn't want to go more than a couple of days without a post - seeing too many gaps in that top left hand corner calendar is a bit annoying, it just seems to look nicer when it's covered in blue dates. But at the same time it's often really difficult to sit in front of the computer and go "ok... I'm going to write about this". Especially when my day at work hasn't been particlarly interesting or different (and even if it had been I probably wouldn't really be able to talk about it in much detail), nothing massive has happened outside work, I haven't had a particularly interesting dream of late, or I don't have some sort of link to this interesting past memory of mine.

Fortunately I find myself in that position rather less than in the past. Ironically, it seems that the more I do write in this blog, the more often I update with the goings on in my life, the more I actually seem to have to write about. I think it's because I find myself thinking about it more often, sitting there throughout my day going "hey... I could always write about that in my blog later on". It's like a self-perpetuating cycle of cumulative causation (I wish I could lay claim to inventing that phrase), that the more I write the more I feel like writing, and the more interesting stuff that I do have to write about. Anyway, from a seemingly mundane day I have come up with a couple of things that when I look back upon this day I will possibly remember.

In the first, at work today we had a meeting with one of our more important clients. It was quite important for me, to get to know them a bit more myself as I will be taking on more responsibility with regards to them in the future. But anyway, Auckland's weather being Auckland's weather and not quite believing that tomorrow should be the first day of summer, it totally poured down today. So we found ourselves on the motorway in the middle of this rather nasty traffic jam, in the pouring rain. It was total chaos, as we had to get across about four lanes of traffic in the space of a kilometre or so - cars were indicating this way and that way, trucks were doing that scary things where you get a massive one on each side of you and it feels like you're in a tunnel, people were cutting off other people, it was nuts. Fortunately I wasn't driving, and I could almost sit back and experience it all like it was some sort of weird movie, where total chaos was evolving all around but instead of being freaked out by it you could just sit there, removed from it all, and almost enjoy the weirdness of it. We did end up safely making our way across the motorway, and getting away from the chaos. Lunch and the meeting ended up going really well, which is definitely a good thing for me, and the rest of the day was also pretty smooth. There's a lot that needs doing in the three and a bit weeks before xmas at work, which in a way is a good thing as my days tend to drag when there isn't always something more for me to do.

The second weird thing that happened today was while I was driving from work to pick up my mum from her work. I was slowing down at a set of traffic lights that had turned orange and red a long way ahead of me when I noticed something that didn't quite seem right ahead of me. I was due to turn left at the lights (although I was quite a long way back from them) but ahead of me one car went straight through a rather orange light while at the same time a car that was coming directly opposite (towards me on the same road) went to turn right across their path. I'm not sure whether the right-turning car had got themselves a green arrow, or whether they were sneaking around before the light turned red (probably the latter), but they seemed to be awfully close to each other, and then a millisecond later I noticed it was too close, the turning car clipped the one coming straight through, although seemingly not really that hard at all. The problem was that the turning car had its angles thrown off completely and turned right around into the front car that was waiting at the traffic lights from the street on my left to turn out. There was a pretty serious bang between the two, and I was worried for a bit as nobody from either car had got out. The guy who had gone straight through was immediately on his cellphone, and then eventually the people from the other two cars got out, looking OK if a bit shaken. The damage didn't seem too bad, although looks can sometimes be deceiving and it was a pretty big bang. Yet once again to me sitting there watching it all unfold, it just seemed enormously surreal - like the whole thing was a stunt from a movie and was all happening in slow motion. I remember about 4 distinct thoughts that would have happened well inside the second or so it took for the whole thing to unfold: going "wow that's close"...."shit they've clipped each other".... "oh it doesn't look too bad just a slight touch".... then finally "ah crap he's gone into that other car waiting at the lights". It is interesting how in situations like that time really can seem to slow down for us, that we create all this opportunity to take in more than we thought possible in a really short moment, to react and get the most out of that split second. The problem with seeing an accident like that is that it does make you paranoid about driving for a little bit, as you can see how that car coming down the road could smack into you as the result of only a slight change in angle for their wheels.

Summer tomorrow! (Apparently)

Holiday Deja Vu
Now Playing: Gorillaz - Dare
It seemed quite appropriate that the last time I would spent with my sister for potentially a few years was at Mt Ruapehu, and that that's where she decided to get married. Back in August 1987 that was where we had our first family holiday (well, the first that I can remember). This was well back in the time of three term school years, and would have been only a few months after I first started school. Ella wouldn't have quite even been two years old at the time.

Anyway, my first memory of this trip was us all getting ready and packed to go. There was a line of bags all down the hallway to the front door, all ready to be chucked into our good old oranga Honda Civic for the journey. I was so excited to finally go to the snow, after seeing it on TV and in books I had this mythical image of it being the soft fluffy stuff we expect it to be.

Our first night we stayed in Taumaranui, at the first ever motel I had been to. I remember being amazed by this little mini-house that was ours for the night, and jumping from bed to bed trying not to touch the floor. My parents have told me that Ella was even more excited, and didn't get to sleep for ages and ages. At some point in the middle of the night she was found crawling through the cupboards in the kitchen. I also recall there being a train line next to the motel, and my mum saying how this huge noisy train went through right on midnight.

The next day we headed off to the snow. There are quite a few photos of a very exicted me standing by the side of the road which approaches Mt Ruapehu. From memory the thing that above all else got me excited was the anticipation of finally touching snow. Finally we made our way past the Chateau and started to go up the mountain. After a while we pulled over into a carpark, and then I finally got to touch my first bit of "snow". In reality it was hardened cold ice, but I was excited enough not to let that bother me. From memory I think we then caught some sort of bus up to the top of the road, probably because the road was too slippery for cars without chains. My next memory is of going up the chairlift - sitting next to my dad and just staring down at the snow. I had been on Gondolas before in Rotorua but this was really really exciting. As we made our way to the top, my Mum and Ella were on the chair in front of us, and I remember them diving off in a rather odd way. Apparently the exit area was iced up pretty badly, and my mum had slipped, then Ella's face had been pushed into the snow and was all bloody. Everyone else seemed pretty stressed out, but I was just amazed by all the snow aroune me. There were people skiing everywhere, and someone jumped over a big rock not too far from me, which I thought was sooooo cool. After that I remember going into the cafe area and burning my tongue on a hot chocolate.

I don't remember much more from the trip, except that a couple of days later we were driving across the Desert Road, and I looked across at Mt Ruapehu and marvelled at how cool it looked. Possibly this memory might have been from a different trip about a year later when we went to Palmerston North, but I'm not quite sure. In any case, although I had actually been to Rotorua a couple of years earlier before Ella was born, this trip to Ruapehu really felt like the first holiday I went on. It was the first time I remember staying in a Motel and it was the first time I had seen and touched snow. It was great!

Back to Reality
Now Playing: Coldplay - What If
Getting back to reality after a holiday, or after some big event, is always a bit odd. I remember as a child always having weird feelings after returning home from our holidays around the country. On one hand it was good to be home, back in familiar settings and so on, but on the other hand it always seemed so tiring and like a rather large let down. It was like all the excited energy you had spent throughout the holiday time was finally catching up with you, leaving an enormous sense of exhaustion. I hated unpacking my bags, and at times would find myself a week later with my holiday bag still lying on the floor somewhere in my room only semi-unpacked.Coming back to Auckland after spending time in Australia or Canada was particularly weird, as the whole country would slowly regain familiarity, and for a few moments I found it odd that the cars were driving on the left side of the road after getting used to the opposite during my overseas trip last year.

In a slightly weird way I actually found being back in Auckland yesterday with normal surroundings and my normal bed extremely comforting. Perhaps after so many big events occurring over the weekend and so many things changing all the time it was good to have some solid and concrete surroundings where everything seemed normal. Even waking up this morning with the knowledge that I needed to head back to work today wasn't particularly unpleasant, but almost nice that this is something normal. I think perhaps we appreciate big events most by contrasting them with the normality of everyday life, and by being comforted by the familiarity of everything it has started to allow me to really think about the weekend.

So much of the weekend seemed so utterly surreal to me that I wonder whether I have truly understood everything. It's quite a typical feeling for me, that if some big events take place they seem so different to normality that my subconscious almost dismisses them as something dreamlike, something surreal. I find myself not really feeling ultra-happy or ultra-sad at times when I probably should. I find myself almost having to yell at myself what's actually happening because it seems to take a lot for myself to actually believe it. I suppose on the one hand this is a fairly useful trait, in that I'm unlikely to flip out in a situation and go completely nuts; but on the other hand it is disconcerting because my conscious mind knows that it's real and I find myself worried about how I will react when it finally hits home. On top of this I worry whether I come across as really "meh" about everything because I'm not having the same emotional reactions as would seem "normal". I'm not crying when my sister leaves to go overseas for a couple of years at least, I'm not shaking with joy and ultra-ultra excited when amazingly good things happen - and I worry whether people think that's because I don't care as much as I should. I find it seemingly too easy to get through things, and wonder whether I've really dealt with them properly; while on the other hand when great things happen I almost feel like I have potentially missed out on the emotional high that I should have gained from it.

Wow...
Now Playing: Evermore - Unbreakable
Lying in bed writing this blog entry at 9.30pm on Sunday night after a pretty insane weekend is like the time in battle when the dust settles, and everyone looks around to try and figure out what actually has happened. In the middle of it everything was all happening so fast that all you could really do was react and go with the flow, but finally there is a chance for reflection, to have a little think about how things have gone. To realise my sister is now Mrs Ella Trafford, and that she's halfway to Bangkok. I guess there are two ways that I can go about writing this entry: there's the mega-long post explaining each little part of the weekend in sufficient detail, the way it probably should be done. But that feels so daunting, like it would end up as one of those never-ending posts that I would get through to about Saturday night by the time I got totally exhausted and went to sleep. Then there's a bit more of a measured approach, where perhaps I just outline what happened on the weekend and then slowly fill in the gaps about the detail in the days to come. Not quite sure how it will turn out, but anyway...

Leila and I drove down on Friday morning. Natalie had taken Amalia down to National Park the night before. It was a fairly interesting, if rather long, drive down. There was a massive cycle race in Taupo on the Saturday, so we avoided there going via State Highway 3 and 4, through Te Awamutu, Otarohonga, Te Kuiti, Taumaranui and finally making it to National Park. I quite enjoyed the different roads, having probably not gone that way through the North Island since driving to Wellington back in January 1995. On the frustrating side, the further we headed south the worse the weather seemed to get. The trip did seem to take ages, as this rather concrete deadline of "the wedding is at 4.30" loomed large in my mind. But we did eventually have plenty of time, picking up Amalia and heading to the Chateau with plenty of time to spare.

It was quite exciting being in this giant hotel - which seemed like a pretty massive rabbit warren with hallways this way and that way. I eventually found our room, just across the hall from my parents which was good as we could now get things all organised. The next hour or so seemed to take forever, getting this organised and getting that organised, but always checking the watch to see how much longer it would be until the magical 4.30. We headed down to Ella's room to see how her and her bridesmaids were getting on. Everyone was all dressed up, Ella in her wedding dress which helped to make things rather more real. Amalia got changed into her flower girl dress, and enjoyed herself immensely playing around with fellow flower girl Olympia.

At not too long after 4.30 everyone was ready to go, and Leila and I scampered ahead of the bridal party so that we could take our seats before they made it downstairs. Unfortunately in the rabbit warren of the Chateau we couldn't find our way downstairs, and madly raced around this way and that way, before bumping into the photographer who showed us where we needed to go. For some reason the staircase downstairs came off a room, rather than off a hallway so we had wandered past it about 4 times in our panic. But anyway, we finally made it downstairs and took our seats at the front. There was a nice number of people there, large enough to feel like everyone had a good number of friends and family, but at the same time small enough to feel personal. The wedding room place was part of the main lounge, which led to the rather strange situation of random strangers being in sort of the same room as the wedding. After not too long the little flower girls came bouncing down the steps, followed by Ella. Now everything did seem very much real, and the following ceremony seemed to pass in a bit of a blur. I remember feeling incredibly excited about it all, knowing that this was one of the really really big events for our family, but at the same time thinking that it was all somewhat surreal - like the kind of thing that you've seen other random strangers do a lot of time before, either on TV or at a park and other places like that. I almost had to pinch myself to realise that hey this is my little sister over there in that wedding dress. Freaky!

After the ceremony we had a few drinks and nibbles while waiting for dinner to get ready. It was pretty cool wandering around the main room of the chateau, admiring the massive chandeliers, the enormous snooker table, the fireplace, the artwork and the amazing comfyness of the couches. Amalia had a ball playing with Olympia, and sampling the nibbles. Eventually dinner was ready, and we headed into the dining room, seats all carefully selected (apparently Ella and Pete spent ages sorting out who was going to sit next to who). Amalia got a pretty cool meal fairly quickly, which was nice of the caterers, then there were a couple of really great speeches, before the main course arrived. It turned out to be the most fantastic steak I think I've ever had, amazingly tender eye fillet cooked to absolute perfection. There were also some really interesting potatos that tasted divine. After that there were a couple more speeches, I said a few impromptu words which turned out pretty well as I hadn't expected to say anything in particular, and before we knew it quite a few hours had passed. I then took Amalia up to bed, and she unsurprisingly went out like a light. Strangely enough, although I was pretty exhausted on Friday night, it turned out to be quite difficult to get to sleep. I guess the whole huge excitement of it all got to me slightly, and my head was just racing way to much to be able to settle down. I wasn't particularly stressed out about it though, just slightly annoyed because I was tired, I should be able to sleep really easily.

On Saturday morning we woke up reasonably early, then had great cuddles with Amalia in our super-super-king sized bed. Then we headed downstairs for a buffet breakfast. Yummy, as much scrambled eggs and bacon as I could ever want. Amalia made her way through an enormous pile of fruit, as well as having a piece of toast, before Natalie came to pick her up. She had had such an awesome time, playing with Olympia for about the whole of Friday night, and then again on Saturday morning while having breakfast. After finishing breakfast the weather had amazingly cleared, and we headed up to Mt Ruapehu to take a look around. I absolutely love going up mountains, seeing the totally different landscape and enjoying the massive space around you. There always seems to be something very refreshing about being able to see so far, like you feel above everything else and able to really see what's going on around you - in a figurative as well as a literal sense. It was quite windy up the mountain, but absolutely nothing like the last time I was there. Leila and I had a good chance to take a bit of a wander around, although it was across rocks as the snow was long melted at this height, leaving the whole area looking like a moonscape.

After working up a bit of an appetite with our up-the-mountain voyage, we then headed back down the mountain for - my stomach cringed - a buffet lunch. All this amazing food within a day, it almost seemed wrong that I couldn't eat three times as much food to really get the most of it all. But that's generally how I feel at buffet places, wishing that my appetite was way bigger so I could make the most of all this fantastic food. Then it was goodbyes to everyone, and Leila and I headed north. It was pretty much back the way we came, through National Park, Taumaranui and Te Kuiti. But this time we turned off at Waitomo Caves to check out the world famous glow-worm caves. I had been there a few times before, but not since a 7th form geography field trip back in 1999, so I certainly felt like it was worth another go. The journey through the caves was pretty interesting, we had a good guide who could answer a few curly questions I posed about the impact of so many tourists going through the caves, and why the stalagtites and stalagmites now grow much slower than they did in the past. The glow-worms were typically fantastic, although we didn't seem to spent quite so long in there as we did last time I was there (perhaps we got a special guide because we were a school group... who knows). But it was pretty awesome all the same. After that Leila and I headed back to the main road and found ourselves a motel for the night. It was good to have a bit of relaxation after such a full on couple of days.

This morning we finished off our journey back to Auckland. We managed to avoid Hamilton, which was fantastic, by going via State Highway 39. It was good to skip Hamilton, as I always find myself enormously frustrated by the place, as the main road seems to take the ugliest and longest possible route through what is, quite honestly, not that a great a place to start with. But after finally getting through the Waikato, over Bombay Hills and back to Auckland. We then went through Manukau City to the airport, stopping for a while to watch the planes take off and land. There's always something pretty majestic about planes being able to fly, that you know how and why they are able to but it still doesn't quite make sense that such a massive hunk of metal can stay up in the air.

We eventually caught up with my parents, and Ella and Pete at the airport. It was rather mixed time, excitement for them that they are heading off on this amazing voyage, but also sadness for everyone that it's going to be so long before we all see each other again. Airports are always such mixed places - the happiness of the arrivals lounge where people haven't seen each other for months or years; but also the sadness of the departure lounge, where we were, from people heading off in the same way as Ella and Pete were today, or perhaps for even longer. We waited around (seemingly forever) for their plane to take off, and watched them disappear into a dot in the distance. However, it still hasn't really made it real for me. Somewhere in my subconscious I have this deep feeling that they're still living a few minutes drive away in the place they've been for the whole year so far, the place where my relationship with Leila really began. I suppose that some time in the next few days or weeks it will finally sink in that my sister is now married, and is now on the other side of the world. I will subconsciously expect Ella to come around for dinner on a Tuesday night, be surprised that she hasn't, and then remember everything that's happened this weekend. I will half-smile about it, but at the same time feel somewhat sad. In many ways my little sister is very much no longer little, I feel happy for her that she's found herself in such an awesome situation but also half-wishing to return to the times when she was just down the hallway from me, when we would invent make-believe worlds together and build huge Lego pirate bases.

Oh yes, I'm gonna miss her.

I'm A Polar-Pop Bear.... Polar-Pop, Polar-Pop!
Now Playing: Snow Patrol - Gleaming Auction
I'm not quite sure why, but last night that whole "I'm a polar-pop bear...." song just found its way into my head, the old advertement tune for Polar-Pop ice-blocks. When I was a kid Polar-Pops were like the ice-block that were everywhere. Popsicles were a bit cheap-and-nasty, smaller things with annoying paper-like packaging. Polar-pops were fully plastic in their packing, seemed larger than Popsicles, and were generally everyone's favourites. There was the lemonade Polar-Pop, which was quite nice, but rather boring - in taste and in colour - and then the shockingly red raspberry polar-pop, which left your whole mouth pink at the end of eating it. To a 7 year old, having your whole mouth a bright pink colour is totally fantastic and I loved those raspberry flavoured Polar-Pops, even though they always ended up being really really sticky if you forgot about the wrapper and put it in your bag, or some other annoying place like that.

At primary school generally my Dad would drive over to pick Ella and I up after school. However, in the summer he would walk over, and we would all wander home together. Sometimes we would detour through Fowlds Park, which was a rather long way to go, but was quite fun as there were a whole lot of monkey-apple trees there which we would pick bunches of and then throw at each other. Being not particularly sporty, Ella was never too pleased with this part of the journey home. Once we had made it out of Fowlds Park, it would be back up Western Springs Rd, past the annoying dogs on the corner that would bark their heads off at us whenever we walked past them, and finally home. Other times we would go back the shorter way, past Simas dairy and on our way home. On really hot days Ella and I would plead to get an ice-block at the dairy before we made our way up the hill and home. Then we would have a competition to see who could put off finishing their ice-block the longest - with the ultimate achievement being able to still be going on it when we reached home. On a hot summer's day there's quite an art form to keeping your ice-block going for as long as possible without it melting all over your hand, a fine balance between licking away the melting juice but not too much so that it would get to the point of falling over, forcing you to take a big bite to save the ice-block. My dad would generally give in pretty quickly, munching away at his ice-block while Ella and I would laugh at him saying that he was going to lose for sure. Then it would be down to Ella and I, battling it out for ice-block licking supremacy. We shared the spoils of victory around, but generally she was young enough to make such a mess that I my ice-block would last longest of all. We avoided Trumpet-type ice-creams because they really just didn't suit the purpose of being ultra-cold, generally going for a Polar-Pop, Fruju or Traffic-Lights block. My dad loved his jelly-tips, which probably explained why he kept on losing.

Generally during the summer we would also make our own ice-blocks, putting various types of juice into these little containers that went in the freezer. Then we would try other things too: freezing yogurt was particularly nice while milk ones were also pretty good. The only annoying thing with these ice-blocks is that they always seemed impossible to get out - you'd run hot water over the bottom part to loosen things, but even then either the block would disintegrate into the sink below, or it would be rock solid and you'd have to just about break your wrist trying to yank it out. But generally they were pretty nice too, and probably a bit healthier than those Polar-Pops we were having.

All this ice-block talk seems to reinfoce that summer appears to finally be here. The weather is still incredibly indecisive, as at the moment we're getting pretty cold mornings followed by really sunny, but still not exactly hot, afternoons. Everything of late has built up to this coming weekend, and the time after that in many ways feels like a lifetime away. But in reality there is still another month before christmas, another month that will be very busy for work as there are a large number of things that really need to be finished off by the end of the year. But on the bright side, it'll be a good month. Decembers are always fun, if a little hectic as everyone gets themselves sussed for christmas.

My sister's getting married tomorrow... YIKES!

Crazy Times
Now Playing: Keane - We Might As Well Be Strangers
This week continues... in it's crazily busy and millions of things to do fashion. Ella and Peter came over for dinner last night, and stayed the night as they have now cleared out of their flat. Today they head down country to get the wheels in motion for Friday, and everything really starts to feel a lot more real. It was nice having everyone around last night, the whole family together for one last time before Ella's OE. It felt happy and sad at the same time, anticipation of Friday but a tinge of sadness that it will be a long time before this all happens again. Our house is now filled with heaps of random boxes for me to sort through, to find what stuff I think will be useful for when I eventually am able to move out of home.

Things are crazy enough for me to feel a bit overwhelmed by it all, let alone Ella. Last night on the couch Leila, her and I had the chance to just relax from it all for a while, and contemplate it all. When so many big things happen at once, it leads to such an overwhelmed feeling - even if they are all good things. I guess throwing two of the biggest steps in your life together within the space of three days is always going to be pretty huge, so I was very unsurprised when Ella said she was rather overwhelmed by it all. I remember a few years back thinking how it was quite interesting that I had my graduation and my 21st birthday within a couple of weeks of each other, and how that felt like it was two rather large events lumped together. Most things seem reasonably well organised though. Today I will be able to pick up the final pieces of furniture from Pete and Ella's place, which will go a long way towards helping Leila and I into a flat when we can afford to do so. This will lead to a fairly major reshuffle of my room, but that's probably a good thing as we'll end up with much more drawer space and therefore hopefully fewer clothes on the floor (floor.... what floor?)

I guess this blog has got rather more mundane and boring over the last couple of weeks, yesterday's interesting writing entry apart. I think this is largely because there has been a rather lot going on in my life, from the annoying illness last week to the crazy organisation of this week, that I've felt almost compelled to write about it. While I don't generally find these entries quite as interesting to write as the ones the dredge up interesting old memories of mine, or interesting insights into things, these mundane entries are often the ones I find most interesting to read a couple of years down the track. It will be then that I will find myself thinking "how did that crazy week before Ella went overseas quite turn out again?" And I will be able to check it all out, to refresh my memory and to have a reasonably good record of what went on. Which in the end has always been the primary purpose of this blog - no I'm sorry readers it's not really for you, it's for me!

Writing
Now Playing: Evermore - Morning Star
I haven't been to a movie in ages. Also, because I've found myself getting a bit "out of the loop" with regards to what movies are out at the moment, or indeed what movies have come out any time in the last few months I'm not really sure what's good, what's bad or anything. I used to be pretty up with the play, spending large chunks of my life checking up on The Numbers and other similar sites. I even got really hooked on a discussion forum related to The Numbers about two years back. I knew everything that was coming out, from the blockbuster to the tiny little arts film, I knew what was going to probably do well, what was likely to flop and so on. But that was over two years ago, and since then it just hasn't had the same interest for me, the forums became rather boring and neglected as people left to do other things with their lives, and although I get interested during the blockbuster seasons to check just how well the latest big movie is doing, it's not quite the same obsession anymore. Which may in fact be a good thing, although it does mean like I said before, that I'm not quite up with the play.

So yesterday I though I'd play a bit of catch up. November-December is generally a pretty good window for good movies, along with May-July, as that's when the big American studios are willing to risk their big budget films. So I had a good look over at Apple's Movie Trailer site to figure out what films look like they might be worth seeing in the next few months. Surprisingly, although there weren't many films that jumped out at me (probably due to a surprising lack of sequels), after a bit more looking around and just trying random ones there turned out to be quite a few pretty interesting films coming up soon. Looking through such a wide range of films, about all sorts of weird and wonderful things got me thinking of how do people think up of all this? All these well constructed stories (well... some of them) showing off the amazing imagination of writers. Talking to Leila about story ideas that she's had, reading a few more books lately and now watching a wide variety of different stories in the form of movie trailers really got me thinking about all the story ideas I used to have, and how when I was much younger I used to love writing fictional stories. I don't think I would ever seriously start writing again in the way that Leila does, but it's all brought back an interest I used to have many many years ago, that almost felt like it was lost.

Like most kids, the first stories I ever wrote were in those funny exercise books with the thick 13mm lines and the blank space in the top third of the page so that you could illustrate the story you were writing. I would write about the holidays I took, the places I went to, the new toys I had and so on, like most 6 year olds. Then at the end of my J2 year I started writing about Star Wars after seeing the films for the first time. My stories stretched longer and longer, finally making it to the bottom of a page and then onto the next page. By the time I was 8 writing stories at primary school was my favourite thing to do: my best friend Nicholas and I would write our own versions of our favourite books, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I remember being really annoyed when I discovered the chocolate wasn't actualy spelt "choclate" because it meant I had to go back and change about a hundred words, squishing in this extra "o" everywhere.

But it was in Standard 4 when I really started to go nuts for story writing. We had a really cool teacher for the first part of that year - Mr Murphy. Mr Murphy was great in that he didn't treat us all like babies and actually looked to create some sense of time management in all of us. So instead of breaking up the day into time blocks where we would all do maths for a while, then all go do something else, he would put together what was termed "contracts" for all of us. We would all have a list of what needed to be done by the end of the week, perhaps a couple of lots of maths, some handwriting and a bit of story writing, but we would be free to do that whenever we wanted. I'm sure there remained some structured time, but overall we had the freedom to decide when we would do the stuff that needed doing. By the end of the first term I was onto my third story book, and I had done 3 pages of maths - probably not what he had in mind! While I did write a whole variety of different stories, a lot of the time was spent working on two in particular: "I Spy...Who" (which was later renamed "Mystery on Mars", and "Lost in Space". These were both fairly similar stories, about expeditions into outer space, coming across all sorts of weird things and fighting to stay alive in new unchartered hostile territory - kind of like Tintin crossed with Star Wars as there would always be a mystery that the main character (always me) would need to solve. I wrote a few stories about cricket matches I went to that year, but largely it was all about these two super stories. Even though we double-spaced the lines in our 1B5 exercise books, by the time I reached by 4th book for the year, and counted out that both stories were at least 50 pages long, I knew I had created a bit of a monster. There was the triumphant switch from having to write in pencil to being able to write in pen like a big person, which would only come if your handwriting was deemed neat enough, which occurred about halfway through my third book from memory.

Sadly, about halfway through the year Mr Murphy left and another teacher, more normal in her time keeping, took over. I still worked hard on my stories though, even (shock horror) bringing them home to work on after school. A couple of years later, once I had learned how to use word processing, I tried to transfer Mystery on Mars (the longest of the two) into a word document, but bits were missing, I found myself changing the story heaps as it went along, and eventually those exercise books have seemed to totally disappear. Frustratingly at intermediate school and high school we never seemed to have as many opportunities for story writing, and even in the times we had I found myself more interested in designing cities and making up fantasy cricket scores than writing fiction anymore.

But boy did I love it back in Standard 4!