Around The World In 80 Waves

I stump up the cash for another ferry crossing back to North Island. Marlborough sound really is pretty but it isn’t anywhere close enough to justifying why it is $300 to take a campervan across.

My credit card takes the hit and I try to forget about it as soon as possible.

I arrive in Wellington and find a campervan park right on the waterfront where I stop for the night. I get settled in and then head straight out into the city to see on of the lions tour matches.

It is so long ago now that I can’t even remember who they were playing, but given I missed much of the game due to getting my time differences wrong that is not surprising. I caught the last five minutes of what was a rout and there is nothing much to report on the game itself.

I did however make some new friends in the bar which had plenty of ex-pats in it enjoying a night out. I got adopted by a table of computer animators who were all originally from the UK but now based here and working for Peter Jackson and the other movie companies based in the area on post production work.

It is more than a bit parky at the moment and we a freezing as we go on a bit of a pub crawl but it is a fun night for me despite missing most of the game.

Howdy Folks.

My apologies for the extended radio silence but I have been having countless technical issues, which I am going to try not to moan about too much even if I must gripe a little.

However as a consequence of all the problems I am now nearly a month behind on my activities, so you will have to forgive me if there are a whole heap of posts hitting your inboxes over the next week as I try to catch up.

I sincerely wish I could tell you that having splashed out on some shiny new toys here in Sydney that all my woes were over. Sadly that is not the case.

I bought a new Windows 8 laptop and mobile phone in the hope that this should minimise potential issues because they would speak to each other easily. How wrong I was!

I am a Microsoft certified technician and I couldn’t work the damn things out for ages, even having to search online to see how I go about turning the laptop off! (How ridiculous is that!) After a few days of pain I strongly suspected the laptop had a corrupt installation and upon returning it to the shop discovered that it was indeed broken. Getting it replaced for another piece of hardware was easy enough but that meant a whole week of installations, registrations, downloading updates, configuration, transferring data, etc. had been wasted. Grrrr!

Not impressed Microsoft and have to say that I am far from convinced by the merits of Windows 8 on both devices. I feel that I have just traded in my concerns with my old computer and phone only to have them replaced by newer shinier ones that I have no comprehension of at all. I was hoping for relief upon spending my cash but feel more stressed about technology now than I have at any point prior to this.

Moan over. Sorry I had to get it out of my system. Hope you enjoy the more entertaining posts and that the baffling operating system starts to make more sense to me the more I use it.

Congratulations to all those selected to be a part of this year’s tour of Australia, and especially so to Sam Warburton for being asked to captain the British and Irish Lions.

It makes him the first Welshman to be captain of the team since 1977. I can’t wait to get out to New Zealand and Australia where I can enjoy all of the tour later in my travels without having to get up early to do so. I will be seeing them play at least one game in the flesh too.

Being good enough to play for the team which only tours every four years and is made up of the best of the best of the home nations rugby sides, is the absolute pinancle of any player’s career if you are from the UK.

For that reason I think the press should be making more of the fact that anybody has made the team, rather than running the story with the headline that Jesus Wilkinson is not going because he didn’t feel up to it.

It is pretty insulting to everybody who does want to go down there and will be putting absolutely everything on the line for games which they may only get one opportunity to play in during their career. I can only offer my utmost support to anybody who has been selected.

The test match I saw with Genevieve and Clem in South Africa four years ago still remains the most brutal game of rugby I have ever seen. I’m looking forward to the same level of commitment this time around and no quarter being given by either side. However I can admit to wanting the Lions to win the series a tad more than I should, due to the two Aussies who abandoned me in the desert in Mexico.