Category: Wellington

I’ve been super busy and tired this week: going out a lot and doing a lot of stuff at work and trying to get ready for all the houseguests I will have for the next six weeks, starting with Abi’s visit which begins on Tuesday. Hence I cannot think of a smooth writerly way to…

The fun time I had on Thursday has continued on for the last several days, I am happy to report. It’s really getting to be summer now (i.e. it’s only rainy and windy twice a week instead of every day) and it’s almost Fringe and there’s a lot of stuff going on around town. It’s…

Friday I happened to be in town in the late afternoon, walking back to Courtenay Place from the train station since it was a nice sunny day (for a change) and I was enjoying myself very much, toodling down Featherston, sticking my nose in various shops, looking forward to picking up my library books. I’d…

My work mates, you see, invited me out for a big night out this past Saturday, the express purpose of which was to look cute and flirt shamelessly. I had some doubts about this from the get-go; I had a new skirt I bought in Melbourne (that I hadn’t been able to wear because it…

I am sitting on one of the nice suede couches in the flat’s lounge in my red racing-stripe yoga pants as I write this, having just snorfed down a big bowl of veggies and couscous with orange sauce and slurped up a delicious cup of tea. My face is mint green with pore-clarifying face-mask (hate…

Excluding that first hostel I stayed at in Auckland, New World was basically the first place I went in New Zealand. That first evening after I’d arrived I walked about a half an hour to the nearest store to pick up dinner and traveling snacks, listening to the unfamiliar trilling of the pedestrian signals, navigating…

Espressoholic This is my default café when I’m in town (well, at least on Courtenay Place). I went there the very first week I was here and I think at least every other day when I was at the Lodge; now that I live in Berhampore and work in Newtown I only go on weekends,…

Sunday morning I take a walk to the beach, just about forty minutes from where I live. The rest of the weekend has been very social and tiring and I’ve hardly been home; when I wake up I spend some time in bed, just looking at the stuff in my room, watching the glow of…

I’ve been taking a decent amount of pictures since I arrived but it’s only when I go to Deirdre and Nahum’s that I can download pictures, so we’re not really talking real-time documentation of my Big Overseas Experience up in here. Most of these are from at least a month ago, and a lot has…

Here are some of my crappily-taken pictures for your crappily-taken-picture-viewing enjoyment this weekend. Of all the people I know, I am possibly the WORST person in the world to go to a beautiful place and report back about it because a) I always forget the camera and b) if I don’t forget to put it…

This morning I turned my alarm off and slept for another hour, then realized how late I was and ran for the shower. I put on jeans and an old black sweater I’ve had for years plus my new retail-therapy shoes and packed my lunch bag with a fruit leather, a granola bar, my lunch…

I make it a point to leave the Maple Lodge every day, sometimes for hours at a time. It’s really strange to have no responsibility and no structure, really difficult to imagine that just six weeks ago I still had a job and a bus pass and I had to be places at specific times.…

Ladies and gentlemen, we have survived Week One in Wellington and we are feeling much better about the entire thing than we were the other day, when we were sick and cold and alone and wandering around sadly in the rain and dreaming about snorkeling in Fiji and being forced to speak, apparently, entirely in…

Well, okay. Here I am. It’s hard to believe. I am feeling very strange and separate right now so I guess I’ll just tell you what the last couple of days have been like. After spending a night in Rotorua I went to Napier, based solely on the fact that there is an aquarium there.…