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Pre-flight checks in progress.
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Taxi-ing out from the gates.
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Coming into Wellington.
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Coming into Auckland.
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It's nice to get out of the office once in a while.
I’ve been away for a couple of days for a work conference held at Te Papa. I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 3:45am last Monday to catch the first flight out. Meanwhile Jef has had to deal with his work stuff as well as all the parenting duties, including taking Kien to the dr with a sore eye on Monday afternoon. So that's twice in 2 weeks for 2 different reasons. Good thing I did duty of emergency pickup the week before. It's never easy when the school calls to say Kien is in the sickbay, and then Jef and I have to negotiate on who has got the least amount of commitments at work for the day. Last week I had only just arrived at work having driven to the airport through all the traffic (my current project is based out there), only to have the call up from the school office to say Kien is unwell. After I spoke with Jef I ran inside to let me colleagues know I was going home. Very thankful people understand these things - family first...always.
I’ve employed a tutor to help kien out with homework and music practice etc for a couple of afternoons. She came in handy these last couple of days when I haven't been around. That definitely took the pressure off Jef a bit with having to rush home to pick Kien up and then having to do all the schooling stuff, as well as the music practice stuff. Nah, lets just get someone in to help us do all that other stuff that is so tiring and naggy.
Anyway, just a few pics from Wellington. We were very lucky to have brilliant weather yesterday. My colleagues and I went out for dinner to the yacht club, and although cold outside, the views were fantastic. Good thing they supplied blankets for us. We drank our champagne and decided to move inside for the main course. Afterwards nobody wanted to walk the kilometre back to our hotel, so we lazily taxied there, much to my disgust in myself that I too wanted to catch a ride. The conference wore us all out. Thinking is such hard work.
Last month we went to Wellington for a quick weekend getaway. A colleague/friend was taking her kids there via train, and since Kien is good friends with those kids I thought it would be great to meet them there. I was not however going to spend an entire day on a train - been there, done that in Vietnam, got well and truly impatient, so no thanks, I'll fly! Plus, breakfast (and lunch combined) in the Koru lounge, yes please!
We stayed at the Copthorne on Oriental Bay. We've never stayed down this side before - we've always been more centrally located, so it made for a nice change.
We happened to have been there through a cold snap, and oh boy was it cold and windy. We did a fair bit of walking which kind of helped a bit.
Satnam and the kids finally arrived on Saturday evening, and we walked across town for some dinner at a little Vietnamese restaurant. There was a light festival happening that weekend (which we were not aware of) but it was good to be able to catch some of it on our walk home from dinner.
Sunday morning we visited Te Papa. Gallipoli: The scale of our war exhibition is still running. The last time we were here it was so crowded that we didn't want to queue for hours to see it, but this time, since we got there so early we were able to go through. If there is an exhibition that is worth coming to Wellington for then this one is it. It is truly spectacular with the giant models that look so realistic (and huge).
We all loved it.
We then took the cable car to the top of the hill - how novel.
A run around the playground for the kids to burn off some steam and then we took the cable car back to the bottom again (because we purchased return tickets).
Then a walk back around the waterfront for beers and ice-creams before heading back to the airport.
That's it. Another weekend over. They go so very fast, don't they?!?