Not Quite Terminal

I did it!  Okay, so I didn't do it quite the way I had thought I would (i.e., head first or upside down) but I did it.  The Nevis Swing is the biggest swing in the world.  It's a 70 m vertical drop, with an arc of about 300 m.  People can reach a speed of 125 km/h.  So, you don't quite achieve terminal velocity, but it doesn't really matter.  It feels fast enough.  But tell me what you think.

"Hope when the moment comes you'll say, I, I did it all"

Too Much Awesome

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that Air New Zealand has quite frankly the best cabin safety video of all time.  In what they called "the most epic safety video", the entire thing has a Lord of the Rings theme.  There are a few cameos and they were able to use elements from the movies to explain how to buckle your seat belt and use the oxygen mask.  There were elves, dwarves, orcs, everything.  Seriously, very awesome.

Today's drive through Middle Earth was also awesome.  We left Christchurch and headed south to Aoraki/Mount Cook.  It was really overcast to start, but by the time we got to the mountains it was clear and sunny.  Then the awesome scenery started.  Honestly, sometimes there is just too much awesome to take in all at once.  I tried taking photos from the car (because we weren't stopping for anything), but I'm sure they're blurry and don't quite capture just how amazing it was to see it.  The snow capped mountains peaking above the clouds, the lakes that were so blue and smooth they didn't look real.  At the mountain, we hiked the trail that took us up close to one of the glaciers and had a better view of Mount Cook.  As we made our way from Mount Cook to Queenstown, we went through Lindis Pass which was basically driving between 2 mountain ranges.  The awesome kept going even as we were getting into Queenstown, which is situated within the mountains next to a lake with spectacular views all around.  I've already declared it my new favourite place.

It's late and the epic journey continues tomorrow as I dive off a platform using the world's tallest swing.  To be continued (hopefully)...

"Don't believe me, just watch"

Middle Earth is a Fortress

First off, greetings from the far future.  Eighteen hours ahead of home, it's safe to say that whenever you're reading this, I'm already in tomorrow.

If you ever decide to go to New Zealand, be ready.  It's like being in a really intense episode of "Border Security".  I have never been grilled at customs like we were upon entering Christchurch.  Then, after getting through the third degree and picking up our luggage, we were asked again if we had any food on us, then our bags were x-rayed, then the sniffer dog came to check them.  Like, wow.

It's been a bit of a blur since last night.  We got in really late, then had to wake up to fit in as much as we could since we only had one day in Christchurch.  I want to say it's a nice place, and I'm sure it is, but looking around at the empty lots, the crumbling buildings, the steel girders bracing walls, and the abundant amount of scaffolding, it makes me kind of sad, like we're looking at a war zone.  Of course, having to rebuild after a major earthquake is going to take time, just like any place that's recovering from a natural disaster (think Haiti).  And they've come up with some interesting ways of dealing with it for now.  The Re:START Mall is a shopping centre built out of shipping containers.

The main cathedral was seriously damaged.

So they build the Cardboard Cathedral.  Literally.

I'm still glad I made a stop here.  But no time to waste.  Next stops: Aoraki/Mount Cook and Queenstown.

"Pretty soon I'll be getting on my first plane, I'll see the veins of my city like they do in space"

The Things You Learn

They thought it would take them three years and $7 million to build the Sydney Opera House.  It took them sixteen years and $102 million.  But it's pretty much stayed the same since it opened around 40 years ago, so I guess they got their money's worth.

Manly was named after some good looking aboriginal guys.  No, I didn't see any.

Sydney's been interesting.  Not, as my mother claimed, like Canada from the 1970's.  I even understood what most people were saying.  I tried some Vegemite (as I suspected, it's not for me), I ate some kangaroo, I got to lie on one of the most famous beaches in the world, I rode ferries almost daily.

I would write more but I have to find a bank machine to reset my credit card pin, and then we have to head to the airport to start the next part of the adventure.  See you in Christchurch.

"Livin' easy, lovin' free, season ticket on a one way ride"

Woolloomooloo!

Woolloomooloo has become my new favourite place where I wished I lived ONLY so I could say the name on a regular basis. It has replaced the longtime former favourite, Rancho Cucamonga, which still runs a very close second because I once really had a legitimately possible chance to live there. Granted, Woolloomooloo's origins are a bit unsavoury, mostly due to the proximity to the naval base, but it's cleaned up in recent years.

After a couple of long plane rides, we've made it to Sydney. Within hours of arriving, I was able to witness my first funny thing: they take the whole “left-hand side” thing very seriously, and not just in driving. On the escalators at the train stations, you stand on the left hand side and walk on the right. Even on the Sydney Bridge, people were naturally walking/running on the left hand side of the path.  It's weird because everywhere else, even in Hong Kong, it's always been "stand left, walk right" on the escalators.  I guess everything is backwards here.  We have yet to see if the water swirls in the opposite direction, mostly because the toilets here are European designed, which essentially means that they dump water straight down at full force.  As much as that sounds effective, sometimes it's really not.

This is the furthest into the future that I've ever travelled (sixteen hours ahead).  It's also full blown summer temps so I've been a sweaty mess for most of the day, and my head is pretty mixed up right now.  Must sleep and reboot.

"Do you come from a land down under, where women glow and men plunder"

The Hong Kong Life

A long time ago, I went to visit my cousin when she was studying at McGill in Montreal. My cousin and I grew up together and we were pretty much like sisters. I stayed with her and her roommates for a couple of days, and in that time, I remember being very surprised about what my cousin was really like outside of our family environment. It was essentially an eye-opening experience.

At this stage in the game, I don't think there is anything that my brother could do that would surprise me. He's been playing in an Ultimate Frisbee league since he arrived in Hong Kong, and although I did visit him here a couple of years ago, I didn't meet any of his friends until now. I went out to meet a few of them and I'm glad that they are a diverse group of really nice people. Nice people who drink a lot. And I knew that my brother drinks a lot too, but it's been some time since I've gone drinking with him. I also have to admit, it's been a long time since I've been classified as completely drunk. Perhaps my body realized it too and did not appreciate it as much as it used to. I was in pretty poor shape the next day.

My brother's apartment is nice.  Recently renovated, clean, bright, sparsely furnished.  There are some things to get used to, like how you have to go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom, and how you have to turn on the water heater ten minutes before you take a shower. There is a washing machine but no dryer, and in this climate nothing ever really dries properly. All you can do is keep the air conditioner on and hope that it will remove most of the moisture from your clothes. The building itself is a little scary when you first look at it. The hallway is dark and dingy, there are tiles missing on the floor, and the elevator is claustrophobic (although that's not really uncommon here). I guess that's mostly how Hong Kong is – a bit worn out on the outside, shiny and new on the inside.

That's all from HK for now.  Happy New Year!

"Say, we can go where we want to, a place that they will never find, and we can act like we come from out of this world, leave the real one far behind"

Wan Chai

It's amazing how one can leave a place where the thermometer reads -26°C and just several hours later be in a place that's 22°C. But that's what I did, leaving frigid Canada behind and going to Hong Kong as part of this year's epic travel adventure. It was unusually hazy and muggy when I arrived. My brother showed me the alarming pollution index for the day. The humidity was already giving me uncomfortable flashbacks from my last visit, but since my poor dry, cracked hands almost immediately started healing upon arrival, I decided I'd stick it out.  I just wished my hair would stop expanding.  Thank goodness I brought my flat iron with me.

People who know me know that I love British period dramas. So, naturally, I'm a big fan of Downton Abbey. You can't imagine my giddy delight a few weeks ago when they were somehow able to work Wan Chai into one of the storylines. This just happens to be where my brother lives (but in modern times). It doesn't look very different from North Point, where he lived the last time I was here (to be honest, every street in Hong Kong looks the same the me).  Some parts of the area are known for being a district of the red light variety, but it's very close to the downtown shopping areas, so it works for me.

On the first night here, we went out for Korean fried chicken (a slightly different KFC experience) and tried to understand the various K-Pop music videos that were playing on the screens.  It made me realize how little sense most pop music videos make in general.  And yeah, every boy and girl group looked the same.  Seriously.

Back at my brother's apartment we sat around, drinking beer, catching up, and listening to his playlist of classic alternative featuring the likes of Radiohead, Foo Fighters and Smashing Pumpkins, and it completely felt like we were back home, and not on the other side of the world in a different country.  I guess it reinforces the idea that home is wherever you make it.

"And I wonder, when I sing along with you, if everything could ever feel this real forever"