New Zealand (D4)

Thursday… my last full day in New Zealand. Like all days before it, I’d woken from a great, deep sleep. This trip has been the first time in months that I’ve been able to have a proper deep sleep. I’m not sure why I don’t sleep this well back in Brissie – maybe it’s the bed, or the temperature or something?

Work was a fun and productive day. At around 10am, I wandered over to the local Westfield to get some money out of an ATM so I could buy something for breakfast. This began as a fairly simple task but soon turned into a bit of a mission after my EFTOS card was “declined” by the atm. The PIN and everything else worked, but choosing ‘Savings’ and then on a 2nd attempt ‘cheque’ both resulted in Transaction Declined messages.

Luckily it was only 7am back home in Queensland, so I called my bank and got through to an operator in under 30 seconds. She suggested I try another ATM because it *should* be working fine – but I was a bit reluctant to try a non-bank ATM, because the bank ones were openable by bank staff to retrieve captured EFTOS cards should the machine decide to ‘suck it in’ – whereas this wouldn’t have ben possible with a standalone mid-mall ATM, should my card be captured for trying to many times, or whatever.

In the end, we decided that I should give my debit card a try – thankfully I had the PIN on me (different to all my other ones, of course and it worked. The machine spat out a funny green looking thing with $20 written on it. For a moment I thought I was back in AU and that it’d given me a $100 Doh.

I walked back to work and stopped in at the cafe to buy a sandwich for breakfast and another wrapped one for lunch. Little did I know it’d go to waste, as we were going out to lunch that day. Doh (again ).

1pm rolled around quickly and we drove to a lovely local Indian place. The food was fantastic – but I was very full (actually, so was everyone else) after rice, pappadums and naan bread. The afternoon of work also went by quickly, dotted with a few meetings with the boss to work out how to reduce my work to-do list from 200+ to something more reasonable. At the end of the day, I went over to my boss’s place and had a glass of wine with his wife – I hadn’t seen her since I was last over in Auckland, so it was lovely to catch up. They took me out to dinner too – a lovely place called Apadana. We were soooo full after lunch, let alone more food with entree’s & mains for dinner (my boss and his wife had steak and I had an entree-sized ravioli dish for my mains – very delish!).

At around 9pm, I was dropped off at the hotel near the airport and set a wake-up call for a very early 4am (= 1am QLD time ) in the morning. I got to their airport nice & early, had some Maccas for breakfast and eventually boarded at around 8am before arriving in Brisbane almost on 9am (gotta love those timezones ). I took a walk through Duty Free before purchasing “the most alcoholic vodka I could find”, at my boy’s request I bought 2x 1L bottles (the limit is 2.25L per adult).

I got a cab home from the airport and am working from home today, since I’m quite tired & my legs really hurt for some reason . That’s all from my NZ trip – I had a lot of fun, enjoyed the weather and all-in-all if was a very productive trip. As much as I prefer working in the Aussie office (it just has a different vibe), I do enjoy a break from it every now and then. For some reason I tend to get more done when I’m in the NZ office – but that’d be because I have virtually no interruptions and all the development guys that I need to continually have access too are “right there” – no waiting for phone calls, IM’s or emails.

Hopefully I can return to NZ soon – whether for work or for a holiday with my BF. either way, I always enjoy my time there and look forward to visiting again soon! PS: I’ll post some photos (they’re all quite boring – trust me) either tonight or tomorrow… cya