Netherlands6178 Posts
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dravernor pachi H Plexa
Dave's trip to Auckland 2015
pachi During May-June 2015, dravernor went on a month long trip down under to Australia / New Zealand in order to visit her family. Unfortunately she wasn't going to visit me (in Melbourne, Australia), but she did let me tag along with her on her week in Auckland, New Zealand. We were in Auckland for a total of 8 days, arriving on Saturday and leaving the next Sunday, and we arranged to arrive and leave at similar times to keep things simple. Our goal for the trip wasn't for it to be some crazy adventure where we got to battle Orcs but instead just an extremely relaxed break where we would explore a little and meet up with lots of nice local people including some TLers.
Unfortunately for dravernor, rebounding from the trip and trying to get back into real life after being overseas for a month has made her extremely busy. As such, this isn't the masterpiece blog that you would expect from GrandMaster blog artist, dravernor. Instead, this blog is what we could piece together between the two of us in our limited free time. The wonderful drawings are all dravernor's though, so at least compliment her for those even if you hate my writing.
To start, here is my favourite dave quote about her trip:
dravernor It is weird having people drive normally, and lines marked clearly on the roads. And people park straight! Also there are like 30 brands of each item in a shop as opposed to one or two. I don't know how anyone ever chooses anything. Also law enforcement. Wtf, people actually listen. And public transport that runs according to schedule!
I've never even seen so many white people in my life.
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dravernor
The First Day - Arrivals
dravernor After waiting 4 months for my Australian visa, getting into New Zealand was a breeze. Arrived at the airport, filled in the departure card and hopped on the plane. The plane ride flew by (pun intended) compared to the Dubai/Brisbane flight - only 3 and a half hours. I watched a movie or two, so distracted that I forgot to feel nervous about meeting complete strangers.
Once landed, I walked through customs with a stamp in my passport and a cheerful 'welcome to New Zealand!' from the customs official. I stood near the carousel and wondered if I would catch a glimpse of pachi. His flight had been scheduled to land before mine, but it turned out his flight was delayed and he had only boarded at about the same time I had. And then I wondered if I would even recognise him if I saw him. I watched the luggage go around a few times before I realised that my nondescript black bag had been there the whole time. I pulled it off and walked through the 'nothing to declare' line into the arrivals room.
The room was crowded with smiling people waiting for their loved ones to walk through the doors. And that was when the panic suddenly hit me, that not only might I not find pachi, but I might not find Plexa either. I turned my head and recognised Plexa instantly, and he seemed to see me too because he raised his hand and waved. Relief flooded over me and skipped over towards him and his beautiful girlfriend, Neala. It turned out pachi hadn't landed yet, so we left him a few messages in our group chat and relaxed to exchange anecdotes about travelling and New Zealand compared to Australia. It almost surprised me how easy it was to get along with Plexa and Neala. These two people I hardly knew at all had me so relaxed and comfortable that I was instantly able to open up to them. All the while we chatted I had one eye on the arrivals door. There was a steady stream of people flowing through it, and none of them seemed to be pachi.
Eventually Neala asked if we were sure we hadn't missed him from lack of recognition. Plexa pulled out his phone and opened Facebook to pachi's profile. 'This is who we're looking for,' he said, showing us a photo dated 2007. Hmm. Moments later pachi walked through the doors and straight over to us, without the expression on his face changing even a little bit. There was a very brief greeting followed by us trailing out the door behind Plexa and loading our bags into Neala's car. It looked gloomy outdoors, the sky a thick cloudy grey and the wind a little brisk. We piled into the car and off we went, on a 40 minute car drive back into Auckland city. Plexa pointed out the road he lived on and I threatened to visit him for tea on one of the days during the week. Upon arriving at the hotel, pachi and I unloaded our bags and checked in.
It seemed like a good time for a nap.
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pachi
The First Day - Breaking the ice
pachi For this trip, aside from dravernor and Plexa/Neala, I had arranged to hang out with some friends I had met in a secret cult dedicated to worshipping Harem (｡◕‿◕｡). They were H_ (a former Team Liquid banling who lives in Auckland) and pem (a fellow Australian who was visiting for the long weekend). As a horrible person, I blindly introduced Dave to H_ and pem with minimal notice or preparation before on either side. My activity of choice to break the ice for our rag-tag internet group was a real-life Escape Room puzzle. Being trapped in a room together and forced into team work seemed like a easy introduction, while being watched on camera by a floor filled with amateur detectives seemed like a solid backup plan in case anyone turned out to be some kind of serial killer. My cheerleaders and I eventually managed to solve the puzzles and unlock the door of our cyber-crime based Escape Room within the time limit. Yay.
dravernor After being completely useless at the Room Escape, I spent some time bonding with Pem and H and was relieved to find I had much more in common with pachi's friends than I had dared to hope. Pem lives in Brisbane, which was where I had been visiting while I was in Australia, so I had hoped to meet up with him again before I left (which, sadly, I did not). One of the first stories that pachi forced a very embarassed Pem to tell us was the horrifying tale of how after first arriving at his hotel room after checking in, he discovered a pair of womens' panties inside one of the drawers that were soaked in blood.
pachi After some wandering around Auckland city for a few hours, we had run out of things within walking distance to do, and so we visited a craft beer store where we shared a salmon and capers pizza. After this, and still hungry, we decided to wander over to the restaurant where we were booked in for a later dinner. The restaurant was called Masu, a higher-end Japanese restaurant in Auckland with fancy trappings and highly rated service. Being a fancier place, we all felt quite a bit underdressed and a tad nervous. So much so that when our table was ready, we were all surprised by the nice couple who greeted us on our way to being seated (we realised a bit later that they were just well dressed servers). The meal consisted of small plates of sashimi, tempura, salmon, yakitori as well as some ribs. Overall the meal and the two bottles of shochu we had were absolutely delicious. Afterwards it was late so we split up and brought an end to our first night in Auckland.
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dravernor
New Experiences
pachi Travelling is about experiencing new things. Auckland, and New Zealand as a country, offers a surplus interesting and unique experiences from activities, culture and wonders of nature. We enjoyed visiting the hidden shops as we snaked our way through the shopping arcades and side streets of the city. I am still confused at every Auckland crossing when the green light for walking comes on and everyone walks through the middle of the intersection. I was also impressed and fascinated about how accepting they were about their indigenous culture through using Maori names for places and the usage of words being encouraged in regular speech and schooling.
dravernor On second day (Sunday), pachi made his own plans with his friends and I went to hang out with my cousins and meet my grandmother for the first time. I was completely nervous about this as I had heard she was a very intimidating woman, and had not spoken to my mother since she'd found out that I was secretly her grand-daughter.
But upon arrival at my cousin's house I was greeted with warm hugs and laughter all around. Everyone wanted to sit next to me and ask questions and it was really nice feeling so loved by people I hardly knew. My New Zealand cousins had been born in Botswana and raised in New Zealand, attending international schools, so they had the most exotic mix of accents. My eldest cousin, Christine, was only a few months older than me and I'd been shown photos of her and I playing together as children. She is one of the most beautiful girls I've ever had the pleasure of meeting, and her two sisters were equally as lovely. Pachi too was quite taken with them and kept referring to them as models.
After cooking on the braai (what we call barbecue in Southern Africa) and watching the weather change from bright sunlight to hazy mist with a fine drizzle, then back to dazzling sun again within the space of ten minutes, we sat down to a lovely late lunch and spent a lot of time bonding. My grandmother doted on me, said she wished she had known me earlier. It was nice to hear this fearsome Welsh woman whom I had heard so much about had such a soft side to her.
pachi dravernor was so easy to get along with that it was easy to forget that she didn't grow up next door. Instead, she is just visiting and actually lives in a significantly less developed country that is half way across the world. As a result, there were many unexpected situations where she was fascinated by things that I just took for granted.
Dave decided that since Jurassic World was opening that week, we had to go see it and it had to be in 3D. So on Friday night, H comes over after his exam and we decide on the 7:30 screening as it HAS to be in 3D. I use magic to secure us some of the last seats available and we head off into the city to see the big screen. We arrive at the cinema and we stop off at the candy bar to stock up on some popcorn (H's treat). As the attendant fills our large bucket of popcorn, Dave is eyeing something. She turns, looks at me like a puppy and points at the freezer and asks "What's that?" so we get her a choc top and she looks content that she has ice cream. The attendant moves onto filling our large-sized cup of Coke and Dave is eyeing something again before asking "What's frozen coke?" So we add a large frozen coke before heading inside to our theater to find our allocated neck breaking front-row seats. The movie itself was fine. I enjoyed myself on my movie date with H as we shared our large Coke where Dave was relegated to third wheel. But at some point, as life goes, I ran out of Coke and decided to move on with my life to bigger and better fish in the sea (I drank the rest of Dave's frozen coke).
An issue that has never been too much of a concern for me in Australia was stock levels at shops. When we went grocery shopping, Dave was surprised that items were not only in stock, there was multiple brands to pick from as she has mentioned on occasion, that if something you like was finally in stock you not only instantly grabbed it but also stockpiled it for winter. According to Neala, New Zealanders can relate on stock issues as the island is much more secluded than Australia. Neala and Dave's relatives told us about two memorable stock shortages that occurred in recent times, first Marmite then a popular brand of Chocolate Milk, that inspired Black Friday-esque antics such as trampling and driving out to remote locations across Auckland on a rumor that by chance some milk bar had a couple bottles in stock.
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H
Meeting H
pachi H / HCO / H_ is probably not a name that most would recognise on Team Liquid. Definitely not a Plexa or a dravernor. However, I have heard from some unconfirmed sources that he was once a banling on TL during the Brood War glory days, before he faded away and stopped visiting TL (except for the Nada's body thread). I do chat frequently with H outside of Team Liquid, usually about fighting games, Harem, or that time we raided together in WoW. Now that I had disposable income, it was a good opportunity to finally meet the shadowy figure behind this shady internet character. H is currently a university student, and we managed to plan our visit right during his first week of exams. Weirdly enough, this worked out for the better as he had just finished his assignment deadlines and had some free time before his first actual exam. H managed to be a cool guy and came out to hang out with us on five seperate days - the first Saturday, a house visit on Sunday, hanging with Plexa on Monday, a movie on Friday and the craft market on Sunday.
On the first Sunday of our trip, while Dave was occupied visiting some extended family, the boys made a trip to visit a less than famous landmark: H's home. The journey over there was fairly interesting as we traipsed up and down hills through the Auckland city area before walking down the infamous "K-Road" (fun fact: Every Aucklander that we met navigated K-Road by the various sex shops/adult entertainment establishments as signposts/landmarks for orientation). When we got to his house, we broke his computer. In order to mitigate further disaster, H and I sat in the corner playing some board games that I brought, while Pem performed emergency computer surgery. After some necromancy, we left the house and walked back into the city for some ramen. We finished the night, after meeting back up with Dave, by chilling in our hotel room and watching the National Geographic documentary on Professional Brood War and WCG 2005 (part of any true TL meetup).
dravernor As depicted in the illustration, one of my favourite moments of having H around was the one evening when we planned to meet up after his exam and go to the cinema to watch Jurassic World. H rocked up to the hotel with a giant bar of Cadbury chocolate wrapped somewhere in the deep recesses of his hoodie. He promptly sat down on the couch, produced this chocolate bar from said hoodie and devoured it as though it were a sandwich. This also happened to be the night of 'The Problematic Owl Scarf'.
One of the first days in Auckland, pachi and I went grocery shopping with the intent to cook a few meals in the hotel (as we had a kitchen built in). Pachi told me he had mastered a vegetarian mac cheese, which, being my favourite meal, I was keen to try out. We purchased some pasta, cheese, milk and several other groceries that I couldn't quite work out where they fitted into the recipe. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were too busy eating out on our trip to have time to cook, so on the Sunday before our trip abck to the airport we gave H our left over groceries - including our ununsed pasta. I can't remember whether it was H or pachi who joked about H not cooking them and instead eating them raw, but that tickled me pink (pachi note: Day 14X - Dear Diary, H still has not cooked pasta). Additionally, H has a great voice, it is so low and rumbly I could imagine him making children's audio books - 'H's Collection of Bedtime Stories!'.
pachi Although H didn't have a car to drive us around in, have any suggestions for places to visit and acted more like a third wheel than a tour guide, we greatly appreciated his company as he was fun to have around and gave loads of colorful local insight from his experiences growing up and living in Auckland. Meeting H after years of Team Liquid and IRC was definately a lot of fun and I'm glad that dravernor got along with him as well.
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dravernor pachi
Walking
pachi Early on in our planning, Dave and I decided not to rent a car for our trip. As Dave and I were both young and fit, we spent a lot of time walking. Dave was over the moon about walking since it let her smash all her Fitbit records and gloat over her relatives and their pitiful step counts.
We spent a lot of time walking around Auckland city shopping for souvenirs. Dave managed to get a couple small things for her family while I just got New Zealand Tim Tams for the novelty as Plexa had made the audacious claim that they were better than the original. During our shopping, Dave mentioned that she likes owls which turned shopping into a much more interesting treasure hunt for owl merchandise. We ended up purchasing owl bookmarks, owl notebooks, owl luggage tags and owl shaped lip gloss. Arriving back in Australia, Dave even managed to purchase some owl themed luggage.
dravernor One of the highlights of the whole trip was hiking up to the summit of Rangitoto, a volcanic island that sits in the Auckland bay. To get to the island we had to wake up early and catch the ferry before beginning our hour long hike. At the top, we had a nice picnic with crackers and cheese, did some bird watching (there was a particularly friendly little bird that was tame enough to take tiny pieces of cracker out of Dave's hand) and admired the beautiful 360 degree view of the bay. It was truly a lovely hike, scenic in the extreme.
At the bottom of the island we waited for the ferry to take us back to mainland, and whilst we waited we explored the little 'baches' (pronounced batches) - tiny houses built on the island that hadn't been lived in for many years. If I recall correctly, they are opened to the public once a year for viewing, but the rest of the year they remain perfectly preserved in a moment of history. If you look through the windows you can see all the beds made up and books on the bedside table with ancient gas lamps standing by. The carpets were moth eaten and worn, the curtains pegged open but faded by the sun and the kitchen filled with old pots and dented pans hanging from the wooden cupboards, unused in decades.
Another favourite was the visit to the Auckland Sky Tower, a tall cylindrical tower in the heart of Auckland city. Near the top of the sky tower was a viewing deck where you had a full view of the city for miles and miles around. Above this was another deck where you could pay to be strapped into a harness and thrown off the side of the building. Despite many threats to do this, not one of the group had enough courage to try, especially after reaching the viewing canopy and looking down at the teeny tiny ants for cars below.
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dravernor
The Owl Scarf
pachi During one our many shopping expeditions, one of the stores we visited had an owl scarf on sale for a cheap price of NZ$5. As there was a small line for the cashier, Dave made her purchase quick by paying with exact change, and declaring she didn't need the bag or a receipt and we quickly left the store to continue shopping.
Later that day as we were preparing to head out again, Dave decided she wanted to wear her new scarf. She then noticed that since she never handed over the scarf during her purchase, there was still a anti-theft device stuck to it. The brain trust of Dave and H had decided the best choice was to just break / rip the device off, but after several tools and google searches they eventually gave in to reason and Dave agreed to take it back to the store.
The next day, as we were on our way back to the original store to have the lock removed, we stopped by a souvenir store. To add insult to injury, the owl scarf triggered a security alarm and Dave had to explain her silly story to the souvenir store lady who had a laugh. When we reached the original store, we met a different cashier who was older and probably the owner of the franchise store. She looked unhappy but agreed to take off the device and liberate the scarf despite the lack of a receipt. After we retreated sheepishly out of the store, Dave swore that the cashier didn't really believe the story and had given her an accusing look.
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dravernor pachi
Eating!
pachi I had grand plans to cook at our hotel apartment in order to save on costs and avoid wasting time in restaurants or greasy unhealthy takeout. But between Plexa paying for almost every meal, Dave's relatives wonderful home cooked meals, and just the lovely Cafes we went o for breakfast, we couldn't stop ourselves from enjoying some of Auckland's food scene from Elliot Stables restaurant food court to the waffle truck. (Scandalous aside that we learnt in Auckland: Plexa doesn't actually like waffles that much)
Though we had stocked up on cereal (Dave loves cereal and not having to fight over milk with her family) and Neala had given us some tea, we still ended up at cafe after cafe for breakfast. Starting on our first morning was a neat cafe that doubled as a sort of tunnel walkway between main roads where Dave had a amazing bowl of oats. There was also a tiny book filled hole in the wall which we met pem at for coffee. On busy days, we stopped by Be coffee for a to-go cup of coffee. Waiting for our ferry, we had a milkshake at the Seattle international cafe where the owners greeted you in Japanese but spoke Korean out back. The other days we just settled for various Cafes with delicious honeycomb, thick cut slab of bacon, beautiful view along the harbor and always great coffee and service.
Planning for the holiday was tricky as I had nothing too specific to add for activities to fill the time. A game or mission I came up with was to find and eat lots of burgers. Burgers do usually come with a vegetarian option so I figured it would be fair to Dave but she ended up not coming most of the places for one reason or another. I managed to hit some franchises with H and pem such as "better burger" and "Wendy's" (missed burger fuel). On one night, while still hungry after first dinner, I went out on a quest and managed to track down The White Lady, a burger store that operated out of a very large trailer. Lastly I lucked out when Dave's cousins Christine took us out one night to the foodie strip in the Ponsonby neighbourhood where we went to a great place called Burger Burger where they even offer lettuce buns for your burger.
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dravernor
Meeting Plexa
pachi Anyone on Team Liquid should know of Plexa. A hard working elf who has always been there, slaving away with writing and administrative duties. Outside the computer he lives in Auckland happily swimming in the black hole of academia. Back when I used to contribute to team liquid, I used to interact a lot with Plexa. Nowadays not so much, even though we shared the common trait of being trapped on our own tiny oceanic island in our corner of the globe. As soon as Dave and I had decided to make the trip to Auckland, we knew we had to track down Plexa and meet him. Luckily this was very easy as Plexa was very accommodating, even demanding to the pleasure of driving us to and from the airport.
Although he had an extremely busy looking schedule, Plexa graciously made room to meet up on the Monday. Coming straight from giving a talk on things we didn't understand, Plexa rushed over and met us in the lobby of the sky tower before taking Dave, H and I to lunch at a nearby Korean restaurant, where we chatted about brood war and dirty teamliquid secrets. Dave, wholly uninterested in old men talking about dead games like brood war, sat quietly at the table as she happily fought her ordered mackerel with some chopsticks, nibbling at it slightly before declaring herself full. After lunch, we got to make a house visit to Plexa's apartment where we sat around chatting some more about New Zealand in general over some tea or in H's case Ribena. When his girlfriend Neala came home from work, we tried to get some dinner. Tried because we spent 10 minutes calling a pizza store that turned out to be closed. Dave saved the night though by suggesting that we get Thai food instead. At the end of the night as Dave and I were being dropped off, we discussed meeting up again before leaving. Learning that we hadn't planned anything for leaving on Sunday, Plexa/Neala quickly booked our sunday lunch and offered to drive us to the airport.
Over the course of the weekend, Dave and I got to say goodbye to a lot of the nice people in Auckland that had welcomed us and made our trip enjoyable (some people more than once as our plans on saturday were rather spontaneous). Our farewell to Plexa / Neala was a wonderful sunday roast for lunch at the restaurant Ostro (which had rave reviews from everyone we asked during the week). We met the Plexa couple at the Britomart Harbour around midday. Unfortunately, there was no room to fit H into our lunch reservation so we had to say good bye to him there. From the harbour, we went inside the building and headed up a couple floors to the restaurant riding in an overly spacious elevator (rumour has it that the building used to be some kind of morgue), and stumbled into our seats and took in the stunning view of the harbour on a warm day with clear skies. For some reason, Dave and I chose to sit on the side of the table that faced away from the view and in hindsight I'm not really sure why (I was probably more interested in looking at the restaurant interior). We started lunch by handing over some of the gifts we had picked up while shopping for Neala's early birthday presents (she commented that TL gives her more presents than Plexa).
After lunch (it was delicious), we went back to the car/our hotel in order to get our bags and begin the trip back to the airport. As we were walking however, Plexa, who was in a mix of shock and disappointment that we had not yet tried some iconic New Zealand snacks (Whittakers chocolate and some kind of pineapple candy), rushed into the closest convenience store before emerging with a couple bags of candy for us to taste. He then ran back inside once he learned that we had also not yet tried L&P (a New Zealand made lemon soft drink) and emerged with a couple bottles of the aforementioned soft drink. Thus, on our ride to the airport, Dave and I were gently pressured (slightly reluctant due to being full from the lunch) into sampling true New Zealand confectionery. I will report that L&P is very nice and it is commendable they managed to make L&P flavoured chocolate (side note: I forgot to try the pineapple candy, Dave said it was good though). We finally got dropped off at the airport and had our hugs and said goodbye. We forgot to take photos and selfies though, which we were very upset about. If you read this Neala, please take photos with us when we next visit/meet.
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dravernor pachi
Ice Skating
pachi Towards the end of the trip, on a nice weathered Auckland morning, we were wandered around the city as we did. We had a lot of free time, not enough free time to go on a day trip to one of the local attractions but plenty of time to walk between stores sipping on coffee and doing some shopping. During our walk we managed to stumble upon the event space near the cinema where they had set up a small ice skating rink. We were lucky to catch them on their first day of a month long stint.
Dave was overjoyed. If you have talked to Dave before, she has likely mentioned that she loves skating. Both of us come from cities where never snows or gets very cold, meaning that ice rinks are uncommon. Dave explained to me as she dragged me through the entrance that she had gone through a heavy rollerblading phase and had ice skated as a child in South Africa. I, myself, had never skated and had only seen snow long enough to learn how to put skis on and to turn them inwards to call on my face. Dave assured me it would be okay and used her puppy dog eyes to guilt me into acceptance as she signed us up for an hour of skating.
I tried very hard not to embarrass myself and made it very clear to Dave that I found giant blades on my feet to be a worrying hazard. Dave meanwhile rushed onto the ice and happily skated some laps before coming back to me in order to provide moral support and encouragement by skating circles around me. Dave looked like she had a ton of fun and I had a great time although I spent most of it split between being extremely nervous on the ice and hiding in a chair in the safety of dry land.
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dravernor
Owl'll be back
dravernorI've loved it there. I'll definitely be back soon.
pachi It was great to finally visit Auckland / New Zealand after living so close for so many years. While the timing we picked wasn't perfect as it was fairly chilly, we still managed to have more than enough fun. Everyone we met in Auckland was super nice and more than accommodating especially Plexa and H. Endless thanks to dravernor, who was the perfect travel buddy with maximum enthusiasm, minimal complaints and really pretty cousins. I would recommend visiting New Zealand as it does a very good job being a smaller and inferior version of Australia with less deadly animals.
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(that is all!)
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