When...

When you are awake most of the night and asleep through much of the day


When the highlight of your day is pick-up duty


When you've memorised the time slots of all your favourite programmes
and never miss them


When you watch repeats of Oprah


When your pigsty of a room is now neat as a pin


When you've baked 3 batches of cupcakes in 1 week
and find yourself flipping through cookbooks for more recipes


When you spend the afternoon lying flat on your back on the nice cool floor


When you fantasise about being in class
or hold 3-way conversations with yourself in your head


When you actually have the urge to blog but have nothing to say about your day






When reading can no longer hold your fancy for more than an hour

YOU ARE IN DIRE NEED OF A JOB

Kia Ora

(That's Maori for Welcome)

Here are the long overdue New Zealand pics. Or at least what few Blogger will let me upload. Enjoy!!

Sunset crossing from North to South Island. Breathtaking, no?

Meet Taki the Sperm whale.

Did you know sperm whale have like 10 tonnes of fat in their heads? It acts as a really cool mechanism that helps them dive underwater and stay afloat. And they're called sperm whales because the Japanese mistook the blubber for sperm. Now I could say a whole lot about their declining birth rate and their mistaking fat for sperm...but I'm not racist. So I'll just think it. And now so will you. =p


Dolphins!! Pretty pretty dolphins. After we saw the whales, we went to this little cove and there were hundreds of dolphins jumping, diving, swimming...Oh my God it was sooo amazing!!! And they came so close - i leaned over the side of the boat and I could see them swimming belly up just below the surface. That was one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen.


I think this was taken at sunrise, just before our whale watching trip in Kaikoura. Yes I said sunrise! But the sights more than made up for it. And the seasickness. Yup, I was horribly seasick about halfway through. Hated the stupid boat. I would so do it again though!

A rainbow over the Kaikoura whale-watch centre. Pretty pretty.

I forget what this river's called. I can't even remember where it is. See this is what comes of blogging about a trip after a month! But the raging water is amazing isn't it? And so BLUE!! GORGEOUS!!

Wine tasting! Can you make out my satisfied grin? (hmm, not so obvious here...) haha!! I had a blast sampling all the different types of white wine (Coz NZ is known for its white wine rather than red). You're actually supposed to spit out the wine after tasting it, but why waste good wine right? After visiting a few wineries I was pretty sure I could detect the subtle hint of honey or traces of apple or pear. But then again it might have been the fact that they had cards describing each wine. Lol!!

You can't go to New Zealand and not watch the Hakka. This was spellbinding- the woman's high-pitched singing interspersed with sudden shouts from the men had my heart pounding.

And I even got to join in and learn a traditional dance. You might not be able to see it but we're holding rubber balls attached to rope which is a traditional Maori weapon.

The guy on the left is actually quite cute, even when he's in fearsome warrior mode. (Notice I'm leaning ever so subtly towards him? Hehe!)

Two things i wanted to do but didn't get to was get a traditional Maori tattoo (yes, the one's done with bamboo) and learn Maori. Sigh. Guess I'll just have to go back there again. =)

See those people on the path? That's us. ('Us' meaning my mum, dad, bro, sis, tag-along cousin who lives in nz and yours truly, of course).

Mount Cook looms in the distance. Pity it was so cloudy but even then standing in the shadow of something so thretening and majestic all at once was ...incredible.

It was a 45-minute hike to get to this lookout point. That's my mum and sister by the way, tired from the walk. And as we were walking back, we saw this group of people hiking up a mountain that looked like it was nearly 90 degrees. *shudder*

That's me about to dive headlong 43 metres into the Kawarau Gorge. Woohoo!! That was the biggest adrenaline rush EVER!!

That's me, doing what I do best.

I love this shot. I think this was in a park in Wellington. My brother, sister, cousin and I were chilling under the tree on the other side. So incredibly peaceful.

My sister and I. That's Kawarau Gorge behind us.

The Auckland skyline by dusk.

The cousins turned alkees! Strawberry bellini is yummy! (My sister got upgraded to wine).

Clockwise from left: my sis, Din (my cousin), moi, Neshan (the one who came with us) and his Siamese twin-my brother.

And my fave pic of the lot - the whole family (mine and my cousins')

from left: Din, his mom (she was the cause of my bloating up like a balloon during our stay), my mom, dad, uncle, moi, sister and Neshan.