Derek

Long Delayed

Monday 9/7/01 2211hrs

Been a while since i've updated cos i do not have internet
connection readily..been writing on paper though..so here
goes....

After leaving Courtenay Place, we finally found the giant
supermarket Shun Yin was tellin us about. The WareHouse is
like Carrefour, w/o the food...and New World is a giant
NTUC here... In between there's this tacky Chinese
groceries store name erm...Mr Chan's....

So Yoke Leng carried out with her shopping and after much
deliberation, bought her blue sweater top, while I finally
bought my shower basket and wahsing powder!! phew...

Dinner was eastern fare this time...rice with steamed
cabbage and roast chicken. The people here dun have the
habit of pouring gravy over their rice so you can imagine
how dry the rice were....

More banter with my buddy Dai Jian (DJ) after dinner in my
room. We talked about emerging technologies and trends in
the computing world. This guy really has a zest for
learning. His scope of knowledge surprises me and i betta
learn more from him. Stanley appeared later. Both he and DJ
then went thru their highway code in prep for the
test..while i played a lazy game of mahjong on my laptop,
thanks to my sis who installed it : P

Apparantly, there is this manual of 200 questions of which
40 will be chosen as the highway code test here..so one juz
havta prepare for these questions and shud be able to pass
it. The test format is pretty simple. Bring a coin and
sratch your answer. You'll know if u got the right or wrong
answer instanly..it's like a lucky scratch and win coupon
: P. Otherwise it's the same as home, 3 wrongs you're out.. Stanley
oso bought a Nission Bluebird here for NZ$2000, way cheap.... but
petrol here is rather expensive..about NZ$1.50 per litre

Next morning, breakfast (b/f) was the usual toast with cereals. We
had our first packed lunch, personlised with our names on it, in a
doggy bag. In it were 4 sandwiches , 2 dessert biscuits and 2
oranges. The oranges here are pretty small but juicy juz the same.

Anyway we soon made our way to the Vic Campus by the children
playground. Betcha can't find em with a swing and see-saw plus a
giant slide back home animore. Morning is frosty and one can see
white frost all over the grass. Every breath we exhale is visible
vapour. Even your piss becomes vapour : P

After reaching MacClaurin Foyer, we were reunited with our friends
from Day 1, Frank from Holland and Sandy (Sydney). They were
accompanied by 2 more persons, Young from South Korea and Teck Hock
from Malaysia. Young is taking film studies here and to his credit,
he already produced and directed 2 short films: one about
reincarnation/gangsters and the other about 1 gay man and his
straight lover and how the gay one tried to change his gender for
someone whom dun even like him. He got a C for dat due to controversy
: P . Spoke to him about Korean films and drama and how popular they
are right now in Singapore

We also met 2 more Weir House personnel, Benjamin from Malaysia and
PeiLing (Paula) from Taipei. We soon proceeded to the Marae, the
traditional Maori gathering place. It is a temple-looking like
building and we were not allowed to take any photos there. We were
soon treated to some Maori singin and a speech from the Vice-
Chancellor of Vic. They then requested that we sing a some from our
country for them . Luckily, this China guy stood up and led the crowd
into the Chinese national anthem..heheh..most of us were
bewildered... Another highlight was the Hokey(or somthing like dat),
we got to rub noses with the Vic Staff. It was strange at 1st...but
pretty easy after a few rubs : P

We then proceeded to the LT for some intro talk. By now, Frank,
Sandy, Yoke Leng (YL) Young, Teck Hock, Peilin, Ben and me have
formed some sort of a clique. What follows was an hour of lecture :
P, but the interesting part was the intro by the professor of
linguistics, who is British but tried to explain the Kiwi "Kulcha"
(Culture) to us in a sardonic way : P. I finally know what Hugh
Anderson's Chocolate Fish is. It's a candy in the shaped of a fish
coated with chocolate and stufffed with marshmallow. Quite sweet in
taste. It's a traditional NZ treat to children who has done well. We
were also taught the NZ language in english. People here tend to
pronoune the "e" as "i" so "pen" sounds like "pin"..pretty
confusing...

Lunch came and it was a buffet of giantic burgers..sighz..we were
starting to get tired of these kindof food.... During lunch i managed
to talk to Frank and he revealed he was at the stadium in Holland
when Holland played the losing match to Italy in Euro2000 before
Dennis Bergkamp retired from international soccer..heheh... i tink
for an "ang moh" he's a pretty nice chap...he's onli 24 so it's easy
to communicate wit him.

Finally, it's time for the City Tour, nothing special except they
brought us to the top of Mount Victoria, Wellington's highest peak.
The road up was so windy that i actually felt quite nauseous. The
view up there was magnificient, breath-taking..whatever superlatives
you can think of... You get to see the entire Wellington in 360
degrees... It was photomania for YL whom i'll swipe a few photos from
to upload.. It's extremely windy up there...needless to say...cold
too...

In the city tour, we also got the chance to visit the Old St Paul's
parisan church, made entirely of wood..The interior was so beautiful
and gothic....

The funny part of the tour was that at the last part of it, the
driver dumped us right in the middle of the city..sheesh...they could
at least drop us at the cable car station where we can catch one up...

Anyway, Frank led us to this place which he knew of and we finally
bought our table lamps!!! By then, it was gettin dark and we
proceeded to Weir House. Dinner was usual fare, rice...with no gravy
again... but now it's betta cos Ben and Peilin are with us!!

After dinner, I went for a shower... pretty cold.... then proceeded
to play Dai Di with YL , Peilin and Ben... Finally some nite-time
entertainment... it's quite boring here at nite as we're up the
hill..so dun realli wanna go downtown....

That's about it.. will continue to update the missin days soon...

and check out my photo page...it has some new photos i took here..

cya soon,

Derek

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