To kick off with, here's a photo of Amanda and I getting married (as promised). There are of course tons more of these, but we have very few as digital images, and so this will have to 'do':


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It's been a decidedly odd week and a half. My promise to keep everyone up-to-date about the wedding was broken by dint of the fact that Internet Access on our resort in Fiji was dial-up only and $24 an hour. As much as I have a desire to stick my head over the cultural divide and announce "it's OK folks, we're married" the service was honestly a ( Read more... )

Amanda woke up this morning with tonsilitis and a fever. After doctor's fees of $100, she now has enough antibiotics to kill the bastard, but it's likely to linger a few days, possibly into the wedding ceremony ( Read more... )

If the idea comes into the brains of either of us to get a really cheap flight out of anywhere at 6:30am on New Years Day and stay up for the whole night before, please try to talk us out of it. Flying is disturbing enough and airports are confusing and stressful enough (to me at least, even after all this time) without throwing a complete absence ( Read more... )

The New Years Eve problems continue ( Read more... )

I spent a large chunk of yesterday desperately pacing the pavements of Christchurch and searching on the Internet to see if there was anything at all of remote interest happening on New Years Eve here. My first port of call was the local independent record store, where I was greeted by a slightly defensive bald man regarding me with a suspicious ( Read more... )

Just looked up some information about this Kiwi Hefner band - the band who have caused me so much confusion and disappointment surrounding New Year's Eve - and I've uncovered this. Please observe their playlist ( Read more... )

One of the first things we hear on the tannoy as we pull into Christchurch on our slightly battered train which whiffs strongly of burning rubber is the announcement: "Christchurch is considered the most English of all cities outside of England". This immediately causes bafflement. What English city are they talking about? London? Bradford? ( Read more... )

The remaining Festive readers may like to know that I'm presently staying briefly in Kaikoura, a town on the northern end of the South Island of New Zealand (do you follow me?). Kaikoura consists of a large, rich, bright blue bay surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It suffers from the same tourist trappings as Rotorua in that everything is bold ( Read more... )

This is probably a very stupid time of year to ask this question, but out of curiosity: Are there any people who aren't either friends or family or not on the livejournal friends list who are reading this? Are there any 'lurkers' out there ( Read more... )