1st Day Back

So much for having got the jet lag sorted....I was asleep before 9 last night and then woke at 04:31 and couldn't get back to sleep at all :( not ideal....although it was quite good in that I got up and made soup & salad for lunch and a fab smothie for breakfast, then went back upstairs and it was still before 7am! I took my time getting ready for work, and watched an episode of Waking The Dead whilst putting my face on!!!!

It's a bit tragic to blog such mundane things but I had occasion to buy a travel hairdrier while we were away, and I have to say it's the best hairdrier I've ever had, so after a 3 minute blow dry my hair is completely dry (this is something that only people with thick hair will appreciate!) it's amazing!

So anyway, the early start was good as I'm a morning person anyway, and we got to work before 9am - most unusual for me!!! 308 items of mail in my in-box were read & dealt with, and a good old chat was had with the guys who were in today. We had a deeply fascinating hour and three-quarter long meeting about receipts for refunds and exchanges - something I'd definitely been looking forward to all holiday - and then my "super tired" symptoms cut in...

1. numbness in right arm & hand alternating with
   
2. pins and needles in hands accompanied by
   
3. pins and needles in my NOSE!
4. nausea
5. faint feeling

this lasted all the way to Sainsbury's (on the way home) and I was getting more and more dizzy and faint feeling to the extent where I thought I was going to do my passing out trick in the car park, at which point I informed Dan I was either having a stroke or a DVT. The reaction wasn't quite as I had expected it to be....he was quite calm, looked me straight in the eye and told me that I shouldn't have had 4 cups of strong coffee today! Turns out he was probably right as I'm still alive & compos mentis at 10pm writing this blog!

Pictures for the Keanes

Thai Salad

Ingredients for the dressing:

• thai fish sauce
• lemon or lime juice
• pepper
• sesame oil
  

Ingredients for the salad:

• carrot
• cucumber
• watercress
• celery
• peppers
• any sprouts (bean, garlic, watercress etc..)
  

Chop all the ingredients finely & toss in a bowl, dress with a splash of fish sauce (instead of salt) and lemon or lime, a pinch of pepper and literally half a teaspoon of sesame oil (not too much because it's very overpowering).

To the above you can add strips of beef, raw fish, grilled chicken - in fact anything you can add to a salad!

Sunday Witterings

Well I think I've finally shaken off the jet lag. Last night I stayed up 'till 10:15 (wahoo!) and although I woke at 3:30 this morning, I managed to convince my brain it was night time and went back to sleep until 6:30. That's about normal for me so I reckon I've got it licked!

Yesterday we went to the Komfi shop in Birstall and finally bought our new bed! I'm very excited. It's quite hard for us to decide on anything at all so this is a major win! Not only have we gone for the mega storage bed, but also we've opted for a memory foam mattress which I'm hoping will relieve the 'Dan snoring' issue!!!! (Apparently you don't turn over as much on a memory foam bed and it's mostly when he's on his back that the ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ starts!!!!)

There is a 4 week delivery lead time, so I'm contemplating a bit of a bedroom makeover. The bed is in a sort of coffee-coloured material so I'm thinking about all shades of cream, beige and brown. I wonder if we can get new doors for our horrible built in wardrobes????

Today I made my 1st Thai influenced meal! It's a lovely salad that Rukmini showed me how to make. The only thing I didn't have was the dried shrimp (this will be procured from the Chinise supermarket in Leeds at some point in the future) but I managed to get the seasoning just about right with the fish sauce (yes, I did say fish sauce on a salad!!!) and the lemon juice. It was very good! I've also just found out that the Weight Watchers point value for fish sauce is 'zero'!!! No bad thing when I think babout the weight that I've put on whilst I've been away!!! I think I'm going to try a 'Tom Yam' next which is a hot and sweet soup.

On Jet Lag

Hmmmm! I'm not very good at this jet lag lark. Those of you who know me well will know that I'm a kind of 'early to bed, early to rise' kind of person. I sleep when I feel tired (any time after about 9pm) and wake up when I'm not tired (any time from about 6am) and I've never had to set an alarm for work my whole career.

This whole changing time zones thing has got my head all of a mess. It took about 3 days in Sydney to get into the zone, and then the night that Dan and I stayed up in Ian & Lloyd's house drinking until 5:30am set us back another week! I'm convinced that jet lag is as much to do with the fact that you spend X amount of your night time hours sitting on a plane not getting any sleep, as with the fact that your day becomes night and vice versa.

There are many pices of advice available on the subject, but the main one seems to be 'stay awake during daylight hours at your destination'. The problem is....I CAN'T! I got to 6pm Thursday (yesterday) evening and I had a splitting headache, was seeing double and felt like I was going to be sick. Yes, these are my 'over tiredness' symptoms which have caused me to pass out on more than one occasion when I've stayed up late a couple of nights in a row. I don't really understand why my reaction to lack of sleep is so severe. Dan seems to be able just to switch of the 'tiredness switch' in his head at will. I just collapse. God help me if I ever had kids!

So this post finds me at 04:32 on Thursday morning, having been awake since 1am (and asleep before that since 6pm!!!!) completely and utterly awake, surfing, working out things we need to do over the weekend, and genrally not even beginning to get over the jet lag/missing night's sleep which has occured. I hate to think what a state I'm going to be in by Monday! OH JOY!

L x

Travel Stats

Just as a matter of interest we set off from Leif & Rukmini's house on Weds 25th at 15:00 NZ time (4am UK time) and flew to Sydney at 18:00 (NZ) = 7am (UK) and we've arrived in Manchester at 12:30pm UK time today on the 26th, home at 14:30ish

Door to door then, we've been travelling 34.5 hours in total, which given that we've travelled more than half way round the world, doesn't seem to bad!

Of that time, the flights are 3+14.5+7.5 which add up to 25 hours!!!!!

We had 3 hours at the airport in Christchurch, 2 in Sydney, 2 in Dubai, and 1.5 in Manchester and an hour getting home from the airport.

Home Sweet Home

Well I'm writing this last bit from the lounge at no 17. What bliss to be back after that long journey. We didn't get a chance to log on in Dubai; the internet stations had permanent queues and we only had about 2 hours in total there. We used our time well though, getting a pint of Guinness and a plate of chips....good job the waiter was used to strange people doing strange things at strange times of the day and night - it was only 6:30 am!

I had been dreading the 14 hour leg to Dubai and to be honest it wasn't bad. I watched 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' all the way through, and also we both managed to get some sleep.

Somehow I was thinking that the last (7.5 hour) leg was going to be the easy one - setting myself up for a fall I reckon. It was 'orrible. I was sat in the middle this time - some geezer covered in tattoos on my left, and Dan on my right. I couldn't get comfortable and didn't get a wink of sleep. The last 2 hours went soooooooooo slowly even though I was watching the bit where Daniel Craig comes out of the sea in the Casino Royale homage to Ursula Andress, which is usually enough to distract me from ANYTHING, but even that couldn't take my mind of the fact that every time I looked at my watch, the time went backwards.

Anyway, the time eventually passed, and after the best part of an hour going through customs and getting our cases, Marina was there to pick us up and bring us home. Totally wonderful. Dan's in the kitchen putting the kettle on, and all is well with the world!

The Journey Begins

Well we're on our way home - 1st leg of 3 completed - we have spent a frantic last 24 hours in Christchurch - cooking, eating, drinking, seeing Leif at work, learning how to make sushi and many other things. Leif came to say goodbye to us at the airport - it was a sad moment for us all.

So now we're in Sydney - the flight was fine - at 3 hours, it's an easy one. This next one is the serious leg - 14 hours to Dubai. It's 20:15 Weds evening now in Sydney which means it's 11:15 on Weds morning in the UK. The flight leaves in an hour and takes 14 hours to get to Dubai; getting in something like 1am UK time on Thursday. Ughhhhhhhhh. Not looking forward to it too much, although there's a good selection of movies on the Emirates entertainment system! Hopefully I'll get onto a machine from there and y'all can check out our progress!!!!

Cheers me deers! L&D xxx

Last few days in Christchurch

Well it's Monday afternoon and we've been back in Christchurch since Saturday lunchtime. Our last blog was from Arthur's Pass - half way between Greymouth and Christchurch. We drove for another couple of hours over the pass - there were *some* hairy bits but nothing too scary - in fact the main thing that was notable from the journey was just how much the scenery changed with every twist and turn of the road. As we were traveling from the wetter West back to the East coast, it changed from lush tropical jungle, to drier scrubby land. We have some great pictures - alot of them a blur because I was trying to snap them every time we turned a bend in the road. So many of them will have windscreen wipers and a tax disc in them - reminds me vaguely of an old Victoria Wood sketch. (I'll look up a link to that next time!!!)

On arrival back here to no 21 we spent a bit of time explaining our route and the details of the trip to the clan, and we had some gorgeous dinner again. (Note: the fabulous Thai meals we have had here will be the subject of another blog entry) then we got ready to go out to the quiz in the local community centre; it was in aid of the family play centre which is like a pre-school nursery but it's run and managed by the parents. Me, dan Leif & Rukmini were joined by their friends Dave and Lynda to make our top team 'Simple Minds'. We did OK on round 1, and rubbish on round 2 but by round 3 the wine was flowing freely! Needless to say, by round 10 we were completely loud and lairy!!! We weren't really paying that much attention to the quiz activity but after the 1st prize was given out, we were surprised to be asked for a representative of our team to go up to the front - shockingly we had come in joint 2nd place and were up for the tie-breaker! Dave (our hero) went up and answered the question "Which is the largest land-locked country?" - we were all so relieved he went up to the front as none of us would have known the answer was Mongolia. He did though, so we won the 2nd prize which included tickets to various attractions in the local area - brilliant - and we divvied them up between us! Needless to say with my super raffle luck, we also won a prize of a basket of toiletries. Leif managed to swap a bottle of lavender water for some more wine (well done that man) and so the night ended with aplomb!

Sunday was a more subdued day for all of us - some hangover cures were needed and lots of water was drunk. There was even some mid afternoon sleeping! Tut tut!
That brings us to today, Monday, we've been out in Christchurch city centre for a great Korean meal at Mama24's with Leif, Rukmini & Orissa who is off school with a kidney infection poor thing. The had to leg it home to get Cyrus from school, but we hung out in the town for another couple of hours; visiting the aquarium where they have a couple of rare North Island Kiwis. Very cute and a bit difficult to see in the dark, but worth it! They're a bit wierd looking and as big as a cat! After that we went for a stroll along the river bank (I understand the Oxford/Cambridge references now I've seen the river!!!) and we had a lovely cup of coffee in one of the bars lining the river bank.

Now we're all back home and having a chilled afternoon/evening with the kids back from school and Cyrus wanting to show off all his new books and his star for reading!

I can't believe we've had all of this time away and now tomorrow is our last full day! It's seemed like we've been away a long time but all of a sudden the end is nigh! Tomorrow we're planning a better tour of the city centre, and then Wednesday we have to be at the airport for 3pm for our flight to Sydney...Dubai...and then Manchester! Hmmm looking forward to that!!!!

Goldmines and Glow-worms

Well we had a lovely day travelling around yesterday. After our last little stop, we were on the outskirts of Westport; we went in to the town but it was a bit like a 1940's holiday camp...a bit wierd!!! All we did was fill up with petrol and leave, heading down the coast to Greymouth, our ultimate destination for the day. On the way we saw signs for a seal colony at the delightfully named 'Cape Foulwind'...well we've never seen a seal not in a zoo, so off we went. Awwww, I'm so glad we did, there were HUNDREDS of little baby seals, flipping about in the water and on the rocks in a secluded cove that you got to by walking along a ledge high above the water. It was great as we were near enough to see them but far away enough that you didn't disturb them!

After the seals we were on a high, so we headed on down the coast and then stopped at the NEXT tourist attraction, Pancake Rocks and (apologies for the spelling again) Punakaki Blow Holes. This is a natural limestone formation which, at certain tides, causes water to blow up through the hols worn in the rocks. Again it was a spectatcular coastal walk, very well maintained path and viewing galleries. Unfortunately the holes weren't blowing!!! But we have some lovely picccies anyway!

Further down on the coast we hit Greymouth and armed with our MOTELs guide, we decided to try our luck at the Coleraine guesthouse. Unfortunately, every singel motel in Greymouth seemed to have no vacancies. As the next day we were planning to be driving over Arthur's Pass, a scary windy road thru the mountains back to Christchurch, we didn't really want to set off over the pass at a late stage in the day and risk losing the light, so we started up the pass road and then stopped at the 1st sign of civilisation we could find. This ended up being a small 'town' called KUMARA - population 450!

The Kumara Motel was run by Lionel, the man who also ran the post office, cafe, chippy and local store (actually all the one building!). We checked out the room and for $65 you couldn't really go wrong, so we took the room.
"Have you ever seen a glow worm?" Lionel said, apropos of nothing. "No" we replied. "Right then" he said "I'll pick you up when I've shut the shop, and we can go and look at them in the old gold mines"! Not an offer you get every day, we thought. So at 8pm, armed with my torch and a sharp knife in case he was going to rob and kill us, off we went to the gold mines.
We were concentrating on not slipping on the mossy track that he lead us down and so didn't really pay too much attention to the surroundings, until he switched off the torch.

WOW!

I wish we could have got a photograph. We were in a grotto, a bank of mossy ground under the roots of a huge tree, and all round us were little lights glinting brightly in the dark. Blue green twinkles like the milky way.
We then went into the gold mine (I gripped the knife tightly) but it was only to show us the 'cave wetter' spiders! In the cave Lionel said it was the glow-worms noses that glowed, but back in the pub afterwards the barmaid tols us it was their pooh! Good job I didn't find that out in the cave, as a couple landed in my hair, and then Lionel's torch gave out! Believe me I had my hand on the knife at that point!!!!

OK well we're in Arthur's Pass Village right now and it's Saturday 10am, half way home to Christchurch. Half an hour's internet access has bought a longer posting for today! More from back at Leif's when we get home!

L&D xxxxx