Back in NZ

Since tomorrow night I head away on my next big adventure (a 2-week trip around Patagonia) I thought I had better get this blog updated. Here goes a quick(ish) wrap-up of the last 9 months or so!

January

We arrived back in the country on the 1st January and had a few days with mum and dad in Hamilton before driving back to Wellington. 

 

It was great being reunited with 'the girls'. We are down to two as unfortunately Amy Adams didn't survive the year... That wasn't totally unexpected as she was the last surviving member of the previous generation.

Our tenants took very good care of the house and left it in great condition. They didn't really do anything in the garden for the 10 months, but again this wasn't totally unexpected considering they had a 6-year old as well as a brand new baby (who apparently came very close to being born IN our house which I would have found a bit weird...). As it turns out, the chillies in our greenhouse thrived with the neglect! Not only did we have the previous season's crop perfectly air-dried on the bushes, we also got a heavy new crop.

 

 It was lovely being back in Wellington. Very few places on our travels rivalled it as a place to live (although San Diego and Vancouver were up there!). It might be a cliche, but you really can't beat it on a good day...

 

 

Another thing hard to beat is a day at the cricket. Especially the Basin Reserve, and especially when you get a selfie with Trent Boult after he took 4 wickets during the day!

February

The most exciting thing that happened in February was that Will became a NZ citizen! Call me biased, but I think the country is extremely lucky to have him.

This also meant he became eligible for a nice new shiny New Zealand passport.

The other major event in February was that I turned 40. We celebrated that, as well as Will's new citizenship with a party at the Wilton Bowling Club. I'm going to get pretty excited about all my future '5' and '0' birthdays as each one means going up a new masters badminton age-group!

March

I can't remember much of note happening in March, so I'll post a couple of pics of one of my favourite places in Wellington: Otari-Wilton's bush. My time away from home left me with a new appreciation for this place, and I go walking there several times a week. I have realised how lucky I am to have this amazing place literally a 3-minute walk from my front door.

 

In general, my year off work left me with a serious walking habit which I am keen to maintain. In the past I would walk to work once or twice a week, usually only on fair-weather days, and usually only during the summer terms, Term 1 and Term 4. This year there has often been only one or two days a week I don't walk to work, and I have maintained it throughout the whole year. It takes around 37 minutes and is a lovely way to start the day. Below is the view I get from the top of the Wadestown hill, just before I start the zig-zag short-cuts that take me down to school.

April

April was all about badminton. This year I was selected in the top Wellington masters team which plays in Division 1. However, I managed to arrange a swap with another player so that I could play for the second team and be with my friends. Between the weekly trainings and the four weekends of matches you spend a lot of time with your team-mates, so I wanted to be playing with people I get on well with. Plus, the level of badminton in Division 2 is still very high.

The main event in April was the World Masters Games which were held in Auckland. Luckily it fell during the school holidays so I didn't need any time off work. The badminton was held over 10 days, and with over 28000 athletes from all over the world participating, reasonably priced accommodation was at a premium. Luckily my mate Ric and his wife Graz helped us out. I taught maths with Ric at Bearwood College in the UK for several years, and he recently moved back to NZ, settling in Auckland. Not only did he let me stay with him and his family for 10 nights, he also put up three of my team-mates which was incredibly generous.

 I spent a couple of nights at home in Hamilton before the games, then mum drove me up to Auckland. It was a rare chance to treat her to brunch at a Mission Bay cafe and grab a selfie on the beach before she dropped me off at Ric's.

 

 

It was lovely being able to spend so much time with Ric and Graz, and also their two children Toby and Anya who were pretty little last time I saw them! My good friend and previous mixed-doubles partner Geoff had travelled over from London for the games so it was great being able to spend so much time with him as well. Anya thought 'Geoffie' was the best play-thing around!

Toby spent a lot of time hanging out with me, but I think my apple watch and Pokemon enabled iPhone were the biggest reasons for this! They are both very cool kids, which isn't surprising really considering their very cool parents.

Anyway, back to the badminton... First up was the team event where I was playing for the 'Tigers'. Our team was made up of Geoff, Wayne from Manawatu, Pam from Waikato, then the rest of us from Wellington. The team event was great fun and we did well, just missing out on the play-off for the bronze medal. It was pretty tough on the body with 6 matches a day for several consecutive days.

Then it was the individual events where I was playing mixed-doubles with Geoff and women's doubles with a Canadian woman called Mai Dang. Geoff and I won a few games together, but Mai and I weren't so successful! At least the individual events were a bit easier on the body with only a couple of matches per day. You were given a session time for your match, then you had to keep an eye on the game board for the playing order. Once you rolled around to the top your match was on the next available court.

There was quite a bit of hanging out at the badminton hall, but luckily there was also some top-notch badminton to watch, especially in the elite competition. Indonesia sent over a team containing three previous Olympic medal winners. One of these was Tony Gunawan who won gold in the men's doubles at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and is considered one of the greatest doubles players of all time. However, my favourite was Trikus (Tri Kusharjanto) who won silver in Sydney in the mixed-doubles. He was a real show-pony and played up to the crowd, entertaining us with outrageous trick shots.

I had a bit more downtime during the individual events, and with my WMG pass I got free entry to some of Auckland's attractions. I went up to the top of the Sky Tower for the first time, and also enjoyed an afternoon at the Auckland Zoo.

Mum and dad came up for a day to watch which was lovely. I am very lucky to have parents who are so supportive and will make a real effort to come and watch my matches whenever I'm within a couple of hours or so drive away. 

One of my oldest friends, Trudy, also popped in to say hi on one of the days. We used to play badminton together for the Bay of Plenty Under-14 team! It would be awesome if she decided to get back into it one day and we resurrected our old doubles partnership...

I don't think we've changed THAT much over the last 30 years or so!!!

It wouldn't be a badminton trip without a fair amount of socialising...

I think my proudest moment over the 10 days wasn't to do with badminton, but instead was beating Geoff at mini-golf! Him and Rich and I have bit of a tradition of sneaking in a game while away on a badminton trip, and this was the first time I've ever managed a victory. Granted, it was only by one shot, but a win is a win! I've still got the score-card, I might get it framed...

So, that was April, and my first ever World Masters Games. It was an amazing experience and I am seriously considering Kyoto, Japan for the WMG 2021. I got back to Wellington on the Sunday, and on Monday I was back to school for a rest!

May and June

I can't remember much from May and June, so it can't have been that eventful. I had a badminton weekend away in the bustling metropolis of Fielding in May, then another weekend away in the big smoke of Auckland at the end of June, but otherwise it was bit of a blur.

July

July was my 3-week school holiday, and after the madness that was the April holidays, I was excited to spend it at home. Will was away for the first week at a conference in Berlin. A couple of days before he was due back, mum and dad flew down for a few days. They love to be put to work, and did a great job of decimating the hedge between us and our neighbours which had grown as tall as the roof in places!

The July holiday was also all about pilates for me. While I was away travelling last year the membership options at my gym were restructured. Now, if you buy a premium membership (which is similar in price to what I was paying previously) you get unlimited access to the pilates and hot yoga studio attached to the gym. Now the yoga doesn't interest me, but I LOVE my pilates, especially the equipment classes on the reformers. I've been doing a Saturday and Sunday morning class regularly throughout the year as they are the only ones I can make during a working week. Being on holiday for 3-weeks though, I went a bit nuts. I managed to fit in 16 classes during the break. It's a great workout, my core has probably never been as strong as what it was at the end of the holiday! I also managed to catch up with a few friends, including Lucy and Elvie who I both used to teach with before they left to have babies...

August

August was notable for a trip to the local wildlife sanctuary, Zealandia, on an absolutely perfect winters day. It is a 30-minute or so walk from my house, then I spent most of the day literally walking for miles around the tracks.

At the end of August we also had our final masters badminton weekend in Rotorua. For reasons unbeknown to me, the male contingent of our team decided to grow 'choppers' for this final weekend. They looked quite the sight...

September

September involved more badminton. The Masters Nationals were held right at the start of the month in Dunedin. I took a couple of days of unpaid leave and flew down on the Wednesday night. It happened that that weekend was Founder's Weekend at school, meaning I had the Monday off, enabling me to fly back on the Monday night. I tend to take any opportunity to play in Dunners as my very good friends Rich and Rach live down there. It was a great opportunity to stay with them and catch up for a few days. Rich and Rach live in St Clair, and the Dunedin badminton hall is in St Kilda, so it was a nice 30-minute or so warm-up walk along the beach to get to the hall. Rich would kindly pick me up after my day of play, thus managing to avoid walking up the very big hill that they live on!

The badminton went well. Like at the World Masters, my women's doubles wasn't great, but I did quite well in the mixed. My partner Stephen and I just lost one match (to the top seeds and eventual winners) but since only 1 pair from each box went through to the semifinals, that knocked us out. There was a photographer taking pics throughout the competition so I ended up with a rare shot of me in action.

Saturday was Rich and Rach's wedding anniversary, but they didn't seem to mind me tagging along and crashing their meal out! I also crashed their Father's Day celebration the following day which was a lovely brunch with their two kids.

One weekend I had a big day getting all of my seeds ready for the new growing season. I managed to sow 31 different varieties of vegetable (and a few flowers), including 12 different types of tomato.

A couple of weeks later and they are coming up nicely... Only the butternut squash and various chilli and capsicum seeds are still to germinate.

Our tamarillo tree has had another good season. I do love them as a fruit, and homegrown ones taste pretty amazing! This is a tree which Will grew from seed. The tree's are quite short-lived so every couple of years Will gets another one on the go.

Continuing on the garden theme, I recently enjoyed a nice walk in the Botanic Gardens after my Sunday morning pilates class. It was a week before the 'Tulip Sunday' event, but was still pretty spectacular.

So there you go, I'm now all caught up! The next post will be from South America, a trip that I am super excited about!

Last night in Japan

Our shinkansen from Osaka arrived at Shinagawa Station, Tokyo, around lunchtime on the 30th December and we walked a couple of minutes to the Airbnb apartment I had booked for our last night in Japan. 

 

That afternoon we did one of the more obscure tourist attractions in Tokyo: We went for a walk over the Rainbow Bridge. This is a suspension bridge that spans Tokyo Bay and is nicely lit up at night. It is just under 800m long, and the roadway, which has a pedestrian path alongside it, is over 50m high. It is certainly an impressive structure.

Once we reached the start of the bridge, access up to the walkway was via an elevator. At this stage you need to decide whether you want to walk on the north side or the south side, as there is no opportunity to change once you are up there. We opted for the north side to make the most of the nice views looking back to the Tokyo skyline.

It was freezing cold up there! Luckily there was one of the magic hot-drink vending machines in the elevator lobby so Will and I could purchase our respective hot chocolate and coffee. The cans made excellent hand-warmers until we found a nice place part-way across to drink them and take in the views.

It was the perfect time to be walking the bridge as we got to see the sun set and the city gradually start to light up.

Once we reached the Odaiba side we went for a walk along the waterfront and got nice views looking back to the bridge.

From here it was onwards to the Diver City shopping centre to check out the gundam that takes pride of place in front of the mall. It was pretty cool, I mean what's not to love about a giant robot??!

We were lucky to see it, as in March this year it was dismantled and will eventually be replaced by a different model.  There is a nightly show where the robot 'comes to life', but we didn't have time to wait for it as we had to get back to the mainland for a dinner date. Judging by the video, I don't think we missed too much! The area around the shopping centre was nice with the Christmas lights still up.

Once we were back in Shinagawa we met up with a couple of friends of ours who happened to be on a family holiday and were staying literally a couple of minutes from where we were. Chris and Sarah were gap students in 2007 for a year at Bearwood College in the UK when I was teaching there, and we got on really well. As is the tradition with our 'gappies', Chris was a valuable addition to our staff touch rugby team! In fact, dredging up a couple of photos from the archives, it looks like we won the competition that year. The after-match celebration would have been pretty epic, as most parties at Bearwood were!

 

I hadn't seen them since then, and in that time Chris and Sarah had got married, had a baby, and found proper teaching jobs in their native Australia. 

First up was a cocktail in the top-floor bar of their posh hotel.

We then headed out for an excellent meal at one of the local restaurants. We had a very entertaining waitress who found us bit of a novelty and spent most of the evening in fits of laughter. There were a few language breakdowns, but she did manage to heed our request for a 'big beer'! It was a really nice evening, and a lovely way to spend our last night in Japan, and in fact our last night away after 10 months of travelling! Let's hope it's not another 10 years before we next manage to catch up...

The next morning it was packing, and praying that we weren't going to exceed our luggage allowance! We seemed to have accumulated quite a lot of new stuff in our 10 months away... We would never have fitted everything into our bags had we not left quite a bit of stuff in the UK with Will's mother. Will had a couple of European conferences in June/July and was going to make time to spend a few days with his mum. He was going to be travelling light, so could bring our left-behind belongings back with him then.

We had timed our 14-day JR passes perfectly so we could take the train to the airport as our final trip. We departed Tokyo early afternoon on the 31st December and arrived in Auckland at 5:10am on the first day of 2017. With 10 months of travelling and 11 countries visited, 2016 was a pretty epic year, and one that I will remember for a long long time.