Poland

So here I am, last time I was here was at least twelve years ago. A lot has changed! Modernisation has come, big shopping centres, malls, new subways, sky scrapers, etc. Of course there are places that mix the old with the new, where crumbling, old, neglected communist era building are just down the road from new giant sky scrapers, and shops..

Fashion has come a long way too, people dress here pretty well, reminding me of Japan. I don't think I have seen an obese person at all! Hopefully with all the new modern things, people won't change their diets and become Americanised.

Still some people find it hard, but others find themselves well. You can clearly see the contrasts, and that's interesting. Those that aren't progressing stagnate quite clearly, while others cash in.

I'm here for a of couple weeks, so will update with photos, and any other interesting facts I find :)

Plane Ride

I flew United on an old 747, no individual screens, old movies, no free alcohol. What can I say? I am a bit disappointed :( However the pasta meal was great. It was some cheese filled pasta shells in a really nice tomato purée. Also I didn't realise we travelled at over 1000km/h, somehow I didn't quite think that old massive 747s travelled with that speed... Anyway, after this trip I will have accrued enough mileage points to get a free return flight anywhere in the US & Canada, so I'm not really complaining too loudly ;)

The plane was completely full, so it was kinda busy the whole flight. I tried sleeping, however didn't have much success. Thankfully I had an aisle seat, so didn't quite have the cramped feeling of being stuck. But I did get the feeling that I have massive shoulders, or that the aisle was too small, or that people are fat. That's because I would get bumped almost constantly, and I was sitting as close as I could next to the person sitting next to me.. So maybe it's a combination of the above?

Meh, now to throw in some photos of some snow capped mountain/ranges when we had only just left San Francisco :)

Up, up, and away..

Tomorrow I head off on a two week trip of Poland, visiting family and friends. It should be a good time, hopefully I have the right clothes, and wont have to experience really cold temperatures :)

I wish anyone else on Christmas trips safe travel, and a happy, stress free period :D

Did I just find that in my oatmeal??

So the other day I was making some porridge. I used the rest of the container of oats up, added some milk, some cream (yes I added cream :P) and proceeded to heat it in the microwave. A couple of minutes later I was munching away after adding some half spoon fulls of brown sugar. Then in the course of eating, I took a spoon full and proceeded to feel something hard. Luckily I didn't harm my teeth, but I spat out the object and found that it was a screw!

Now finding a screw in your porridge is definitely perplexing, especially when it is 7am in the morning and you are still getting over that weird dream, only to again think you are having a dream.. >.< The only logical explanation I can come up with, is that it came from the oatmeal container. Naturally denser, heavier things, move to the bottom, so when I emptied the container everything that was at the bottom was moved to my bowl. It could not have been in the milk, as it doesn't float, nor could it have been in the cream for that same reason (I didn't finish either). So then you might say it was in the mircowave or the brown sugar. I checked the microwave for missing screws, and found no holes for them, which makes sense, as you don't put metallic objects in the microwave. The amounts of brown sugar that I put on my porridge could not have hid the screw, so thus leaving the conclusion that it came from the oatmeal container! (Oh and I had a clean bowl, so it wasn't there before I poured the oatmeal in, ruling that out as well)

I am going to send it away to the manufacturer, so I will keep you posted if I hear anything back.

Ten Months +

So, California has officially taken second place in the "where I have lived the longest for" category. But honestly, this last month or two especially, has flown by really quickly. I have been quite busy with work, planning my Christmas trip, and swimming. I am also amazed that I am only two months short of completing a year overseas, away from everything that was 'home'. When will I be back? Who knows? I guess I should know by April, but yea...

At the moment it's winter here, and well it really isn't that much of a winter. For instance it might get a bit cool (down to 0-4C) on a clear night, otherwise with cloud cover it's a bit warmer. There is some rain, but it isn't anything to want to get away from, and the wind, is just a breeze. There is nothing like a biting cold southerly wind from Antarctica, with a wind chill factor below freezing here - which I strangely miss. As I guess it's just not that challenging...

Thanksgiving, San Francisco, Ice Skating, Karaoke

For Thanksgiving I went up to San Francisco to Ms H.'s 'uncle's' place. There we ate a huge 10kg turkey, and gorged ourselves on pumpkin pie, cheese cake and ice cream chocolate mudd cake :D Then I joined in the traditional Trivial Pursuit game, which was published in the 1970s, however I still managed to score 4/6 pieces that you are required to get - yay for being smart ;)

Fortunately the days that I was up there, the San Francisco weather was like Wellington on a nice Autumn day - still, sun shining, a bit cool but nice. So we took a stroll in the Golden Gate Park which was needed after all that eating.

The Friday night I was there we learned that there was an ice skating rink setup in downtown San Francisco. I had been ice skating twice before I think, so was a little hesitant of what skill I would produce. Fortunately I am coordinated and managed to glide round without much problem.. Well the only problem I had was stopping, where I managed to do some theatrical spins, stop and continue, all without falling over :D

Later on it was some karaoke! Sure of course it wasn't my choice, but I enjoyed it :D They did have a Crowded House song, which along with the fellow kiwis who met up with us, was sung proudly :]

Las Vegas

Vegas, bright lights, kitsch, money, alcohol, clubs, guys pushing girls to your room - that is Vegas. Well Vegas really is a weird place. You have a full spectrum of people: you have the very rich (pompous even) people who fly in on their own jets, to the hard working individual out to have a good time, to the guy who is struggling to feed himself because he has a gambling addiction.


One side of the 'strip' is very new and well kept, while another side definitely does not look or feel as sharp, or as safe. However wherever you go, you hear the jingle of slot machines, which sums up Nevada in my opinion, i.e. Nevada is a gambling state bent on enticing anyone to 'gamble'. What I found funny was that right when you get off the plane, you can go and play on some machines hehe..

Anyway my visit to Vegas was with a group of misfits. People from work, friends of friends etc., and we all packed into two rooms at the Excalibur. Needless to say my sweet accent helped to get free room upgrades :D

On the Friday night we tried to go to a club called LAX. When we got there a bouncer approached me and said for my group to cut the line I would have to slip $150 under my ID and still each pay the $25 cover D: "What?"- I thought! Needless to say I declined and then a person from the club approached and said we could get in right away, only if we got a table and everyone spent like $100! Of course we realised that for that kind of money we could be having a much better time somewhere else. It kind of soured the night, and made the next place we went to feel not as good as it could have been.


On Saturday we went to look at the different Hotels and ate a very tasty buffet Dinner at Treasure Island. It was really quite good I though, especially with the selection of what they offered. I'm sure that I got my $26 worth from it! ;)

After that it was off to Stratosphere, a sky tower look alike, but it has thrill rides at its top. E.g. we went on Insanity, which was ride in which you were seated at the end of a crane type arm, which went out over the edge and proceeded to spin you round and you ended up looking straight down at the ground, which was about 300m below.


For dancing we went to Rum Jungle, which I highly rated. It had lots of dance floor space, the music was good, they had 'dancing girls' and acrobats which actually did entertaining feats.

The Sunday was spent gambling and playing roulette. I started with $20 and ended with $50, with my last bet being silly and costing me $10, but I thought that was a good result from playing about thirty minutes worth of roulette for the first time :)

Hoover Dam

So on the Friday, I went out to the world famous Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas. It really is a very large concrete block, and I can understand how it was a marvel of construction when it was built.

For those that don't know, the bridge resides in two times zones. Pacific standard time, and Mountain standard time, as it is cut in half by Nevada and Arizona (the Colorado river is the state line). Because I walked across it, I now can say I have walked across a time zone :D

I took the discovery tour which took you underground to one of the tunnels they built to channel the Colorado river around the site, when they were building it. We also got to see the massive generators that they use.

Interestingly due to heavy traffic and security concerns over the bridge, they are building a rather large bridge across the canyon. It will have a massive arch and I think will complement the dam, as it itself doesn't seem like an easy feat of construction..

Sharks Game!

Last night I went to an NHL ice hockey game between the San Jose Sharks and Phoenix Coyotes at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. I must say I wasn't sure what to really expect and went with no expectations what so ever. The amount of flashy stuff they had was cool, lots of light and sound, in addition to a good game.


The opening couple of minutes was exciting as there was a big hit - a Sharks player slammed a Coyotes guy into the glass and the Coyotes guy didn't take too kindly too it. A fight ensued with them swinging a couple of punches.. a helmet flew off there, a glove there.. all the while the referees were standing around. Once the fight hit the ice, the referees jumped into stop the fight. The Coyotes guy was ejected from the game and at this point I thought things were really exciting :D

Well for the first period the Coyotes dominated territory and shots on goal, however the Sharks looked dangerous on each attack they had. After some sort of penalty, the Sharks were defending a power play late in the first period. They managed a counter attack and scored a short handed goal - the crowd erupted - i.e. watch the video.


The only thing that surprised me was how many actual stoppages there were in the game. Each break between periods was twenty minutes, plus the time stopped when there was an infringement, so an hour game took two and a half hours to play..

Anyway the sharks scored another goal in the second period to lead 2-0. In the third they scored again, another fight broke out and yet again another Coyotes player was ejected. From that point the Sharks completely dominated and scored two more goals, finishing the game 5-0, with me thrilled to have watched an exciting game :D

Jumpy Jumpy..

On Friday I went to Sky High, a trampoline activity place. Here they have a whole floor full of trampolines and even on the walls in which you jump about on! What fun, why doesn't New Zealand have any place like it??

Of course while attempting flips, I managed to arse up and land on the padded metal bar (yellow things in photo) - making my side nice and tender in the process. I just had too much forward momentum when I completed my flip. Instead of jumping up after it, I jumped forward and yea well managed to land awkwardly..

The place also had a foam pit, which was nice, however it was a bit shallow :/ and I kind of jarred myself at one point, as there was a lack of foam to pad my fall..

But anyway, I rate the place a 4.5/5 in terms of entertainment, because you pay by the hour ($9) and you get a really good sweat on in the process, with a half star off for the safety features for the uncoordinated being under my preferred standard.. :D

Images from the previous week...

Halloween Partay

So in the weekend there was a Halloween party. Costume was the only thing that was mandatory to bring :D Being the creative genius that I am, I decided to make a very distinctive Cookie Monster costume. Well I was going to be a kiwi (the bird not the fruit!), but the requirements to pull that off were are lot harder, hence the saviour that was the Cookie Monster find at Walmart.

Walmart was the place of purchase for this kids costume which I modified. Needless to say with the facepaint and costume on, people at the party did not recognise me at first.
The place of partay was well decorated with Halloween themed objects, like spider webs, spooky stuff, and pumpkins. The other participants at the party were well dressed, and the hosts were very generous with the refreshments available. All in all I give this party a five star rating. If you did not manage to make it, well then that's just too bad.

Tarantula!

So this morning, in the carpark at work I happened to almost run over a tarantula! It just happened to be crossing and luckily I had enough skill to avoid killing it.

The tarantula was probably the size of my palm and was leisurely crossing the road. I thought it was quite ironic that it was strolling down the same walkway that people take when they go for walks around the site hehe.

Had someone been there that knew about them, I would have been tempted to pick it up and give it a stroke :)

Giant Pumpkin

On Saturday I went to Half Moon Bay for the annual pumpkin festival. Half Moon Bay is situated on the west coast, and the in between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. For about 10km it was bumper to bumper traffic to get into it. So it wasn't such a good idea to go in the afternoon..

Anyway my goal for this excursion was to get a photo with a giant pumpkin. Every year they hold a pumpkin weigh off, for the right to the title of largest pumpkin. This year's pumpkin was like 1500lbs, so about 680kgs. Unfortunately due to the traffic caused late arrival I didn't get see anything else pumpkiny, like pumpkin carving, or a pie eating contest. Also the amount of arts and crafts reminded me of the Martinborough wine festival. So there was some interesting photography, sculptures, etc.

Building in the Sand

So on Saturday I went up to Ocean beach in San Francisco to build some art in the sand. Well Ms H.'s sister asked if we could help out for an event with construction, architectural, etc companies in helping make a creation in the sand with a local school.
So after thinking the San Franciscan weather might be pretty bad, I was pleasantly relieved to find that it turned out to be a beautiful day. The sun was shining, hardly any wind above a slight breeze. So it was an excellent autumn day to be spending time at the beach building.

I didn't realise that the process of making sand creations involved sooo much water and stomping. Basically, to make a structure that wouldn't crumble easily, you had to pile on sand, dowse it with water, and stomp on it to make it compact. The providing enough water was a hard task, however my group was big enough to form a chain down to the water where we just passed buckets up and down for at least half an hour..
I was getting a bit bored until I was able to take on a piece of the project and make a keyboard, as before there wasn't much room to do any creative work.

On the horizon through for the duration of the day, a whole American navy fleet was coming into San Francsico. So I got to see destroyers, transports and the like, but I missed the aircraft carrier (if there was one). Overhead the Blue Angels were spinning and diving and roaring past. Apparently they put on a good show, however most of their flight was obscured by a large hill, as they were doing it over the city, rather than Ocean beach, so I can't comment.
In the end I was pleased enough with my work and enjoyed the day, even though my neck maybe took in a bit too much sun. Just completely randomly, I had a conversation with one guy who said he had a good time in Rotorua in a local pub with all the locals, who were trying to hook him up with some Maori women.. hehe..

Carter's Commercial

So to the people from NZ, if you manage to see a Carter's Building advertisement with a guy playing a tune with his hands, then I can tell you I have met that guy. He just happens to work with me. He was saying "Yea, they saw a video of what I can do posted on google video. So they emailed me to see if I wanted to do a commercial for them... They paid me in NZ dollars too.."

Hehe, funny how small the world can be at times.. Oh he was also interested in knowing how the ad was going, whether people liked it or not. So email me/comment here if you have anything to say about it :)

Davet Matthew's Band Concert

On Saturday I went to the Dave Matthew's band concert at the Shoreline amphitheatre in Mountain View. It is one of Ms H.'s favourite bands. They play a mixture of jazzy, bluesy, rocky stuff which I would class as relatively easy listening. I would have photos, however they said no cameras allowed, so I left mine in the car, only to find out there were hundreds of people who didn't get caught/listen and were clicking away, much to my envy. However the photos probably wouldn't have been that great, as we were positioned quite far up the grassy bank (I did take cellphone photos, but they weren't posting quality)..

The amphitheatre itself is massive. A giant quarter circle like slice, positioned at the base of a hill. The bottom half was seating, while the top half was a grassy bank. The amount of people there was probably at least 15000 I think, so car parking was a massive undertaking. Thankfully, they had lots of free parking for the event, even though it ended up being a slight walk..

The concert itself was good. I enjoyed it, even though I didn't really know the songs. It was relaxing to just sit and take it in..

San Francisco Again

So this last weekend involved a trip to San Francisco. Went out on the Saturday, only visited two places. Went by the City Hall which looks pretty cool at night. Needless to say the photo with the flash unfortunately turned out the best as my low light arm shaking skills were quite obvious in the other photos. The night itself was pretty low key. We tried to do some karaoke, however it was being dominated by drunken people and thus the wait was excessive. So we went to another place, which had an interesting décor. The ceiling had lots and lots of disco balls, while the walls had lots of mirrors cut into odd shapes, etc.
The next day was crossing off one of the things that I haven't done in San Francisco yet - riding the cable car. After waiting like 30 minutes with all the tourists, we managed to secure some outside rails. This is pretty cool because you just hang on to the rail as the cable car whizzes up and down the street. The cable that the cable car uses to propel itself isnt visible like the one in Wellington, rather sensibly it is found in the road.
It can be a little nerve-racking when you're going past another cable car, as they pass quite close to each other, particularly if it looks like the other person in the car hasn't pulled themselves in enough. But yea the day was very nice, a warm Autumn day, and the whole ride was very pleasant :) I recommend it!