Christmas in Singapore

He may be the only kitten who does not climb xmas trees 

Joel carried this noble pine home on his back from Far East Flora!

xmas morning by the "hearth"

Farewell New Zealand

Final night in New Zealand

It's been a great trip and despite the weekend of rest prescribed we made it a very memorable one. Joel traded in his riding for reading and cooking and we just cozied up listening to the crashing surf most of the time. On the way up here we bought a ton of fresh produce and meats for the BBQ and have just been in food heaven.

The weather warmed up to about 20 degrees with a brisk breeze. Yesterday we took a long drive to see the country side and today - after 4 days of bed rest - I went for a waddle with Joel down the beach at sunset. Feeling pretty good on my feet but not at all like leaving this beautiful place tomorrow.

Castle Rock day trip

An unplanned hospital tour

After the sleepy arrival from the Hobbit Festival last night we crawled into bed hoping to be asleep the moment our heads could hit the pillow. Unaware of the hidden peril of this I decided to change from lying on my right side to the left. Innocent enough no? Half way through this manoeuvre I was in blinding pain and couldn't move either direction. Joel rescued me and with my pillow fortress wedged around me I got to sleep. In the morning I was shocked to discover that the sudden pain attack had not been a random or fleeting thing at all. I couldn't completely stand up or walk or move my right leg much without assistance. Joel dressed me while I looked up our closest ER.

We slowly shuffled into the Wellington Hospital at 1pm and I spent a few hours in the ER with nurses and an ER Dr who were amazingly respectful and attentive. I was moved to the Women's acute care wing for the rest of the day where I was under the care of a very good midwife and eventually had two different opinions from their two female OBs on duty. Five hours later we'd ruled out anything scary, the baby was doing well and was more than happy to kick anyone who cared to poke around. The final consensus was that this was muscular skeletal and no one could really get an affirmative answer on just how badly the round ligament in question had been injured. I refused pain killers again and we went slowly back to our host's home. Marvelling at this clean, well run hospital and the amazing care we'd consistently had from each person we'd encountered.

I'm not terribly mobile and am on partial bed rest again so we are spending the next few days enjoying the experience of renting a Bach along the coast of the North Island. It's a nice cottage facing a small sand dune which breaks the frigid wind. The beach front is beautiful. We are now both in our winter parkas as "early summer" here is about the temperature of early early Winter in BC. Yesterday was 7 degrees!

The Hobbit Premiere pt 2

There's a very good reason for staking ones claim on a sacred bit of fence hours before the red carpet opens. We were aware that there would be little chance of a good view of the happenings by the time we headed back down there but we had no idea just how many would show up. Estimates said about 100,000 fans were glued to fence and pouring into side streets, spilling into the nearby Hobbit festival. We could hear the actors speaking to the press and see them on the big screens but that was about it.

I had little stamina for standing so we hailed a cab and went to check out the Hobbit Festival on its last night. Rather than a heavily Hobbit branded event it was a showcase of local artisans making anything from leather messenger bags to woven scarves. There were a few food stalls and then the huge field with a big screen where we caught the final stage of the red carpet hoopla as the PM and Peter Jackson as well as some of the actors took to the shire themed stage.

We continued our walk back through the city in search of a place for dinner. I was beyond exhausted so by 8:00pm we called it a night. Closed our tab at the pub we'd found and headed back to our friend's place to put our feet up.

The onlookers along the red carpet were at least 10 deep by this point all
 along the 500 metres

The Hobbit Premiere pt 1

The red carpet has been unfurled, the die-hard fans are dressed in their middle earth best and are lining the streets for places. Actors start their walk in about an hour and a half. These are the iPhone pics from just a little earlier today.

Motouka

Abel Tasman Park

Picton NZ

We just spent a very restful night at the Fernview B&B in Picton just a hop skip from where we got off the ferry last night. It's a small quaint town with a community of sport fishermen who keep their boats here.

Joel just did a ride along the Queen Charlotte track this morning. He had a great time.

The chorus of spring birds is quite amazing. We have been treated to yet another day of fantastic weather. Heading out toward Nelson now. We have Wifi in the rental car so we are easy to reach on email!

TGIF

Joel finished up his last day working for this trip and now our "vacation" begins. Headed to the South Island for the weekend. Back in time to document the Hobbit Festival and premiere festivities next week.

A beautiful day in the Shire

Just a gorgeous day here in Middle Earth. Wellington is transforming from city to Shire as the Hobbit Festival starts to get set up.

Traveling light

So Joel left for New Zealand the night we got back from Bintan. Two bike races, a ferry ride and then an hour to re-pack, switch bikes and go to the airport... Sounds like a Joel day to me! And people wonder why I have a hard time keeping up with this guy when we travel.

Anyway, I came home from an exhausting weekend and rather than taking it easy I made some lists. I tackled all of the Christmas shopping, to couple of design contracts and accepted nearly every invitation I had from friends to go out and eat. I shopped and buzzed around and for some reason wasn't really sleeping more than 6-7 hours at night. No big deal right? I got to Thursday and booked my usual Pilates session and went for a night time walk on my own because I just had so much energy...
Needless to say I was not doing a very good job of taking care of myself and it all hit the fan on Saturday when every annoying pain that could possibly be attributed to pregnancy hit me all at once. My midwife put me on bed rest and there I stayed for three days to fully comprehend my stupidity.

I checked in at the hospital on Monday to see my Dr and he just said "well you can travel but REALLY take it easy and don't lift ANYTHING."

I went home and lay back in bed and tried to imagine travel without lifting anything. It's a logistical puzzle. I decided to pack my clothes in two carry-on size rolly bags so in a worst case scenario I wasn't lifting much. Then I turfed my laptop and my EOS1 film camera from my purse. (Doesn't everyone carry those in their purse?) That left me with just a wallet, phone and a snack... Not so bad. I packed up Kopi-o's things which were less small and manageable but he was off to a friend's place and could he really go without his bouncy tunnel and his stuffed toys? In the end he had considerably more packed than I did.

My friend took a cab over and brought everything down to the car for me! After dropping off Kopi and her the driver took me to the airport and, on my friend's firm instructions, went and got a trolley on arrival and put everything on it for me and even offered to push it for me. So at check in I managed to get the airline staff to remove the bags and then I was free to not lift anything again to my next transfer at Christchurch.

The flight was uneventful. Singapore airlines staff were more than helpful at every moment of the trip. It helped that I was in the first seat at the front of business class and there were three attendants to look after about 6 people in that nearly empty section.

In Christchurch they arranged a Meet & Assist and I was treated to the kind help they give disabled and elderly getting off the plane. My attendant who meet me at the gate asked me what I needed help with and I said "I'm not allowed to carry anything" And she chuckled which is when I realized she was also pregnant. "We'll ask for more help at baggage." She suggested. It all worked out. The guys x-raying my bags were happy to just take my cart and unload and reload my stuff. The guy at the bag re-check was terse but agreed to let me just leave the cart with him to put the bags onto the belt.

My final two flights were on the smallest plane I've ever been on -- and that includes float planes. It was a wonderful scenic tour of the Marlborough wine region on the brightest sunny day I could have hoped for. Flying under the clouds I was treated to a birds eye view of Blenheim and then the Queen Charlotte Sound and then the scenic seaside landing in Wellington. Joel was waiting and ready to collect my bags so my journey was completed. No lifting. It wasn't easy. I had to ask for help far more than I ever want to again but it worked and I was again ready for bed.

Middle Earth Arrival

I arrived via a tiny little plane from Blenheim. It was a glorious afternoon and I had the most perfect view landing in Wellington. The first festive thing to catch my eye was the Middle of Middle Earth sign across the airport which I believe is covering the usual Wellington Airport sign. Upstairs was the giant Gollum that hangs from the ceiling you've probably seen on the news in the past few weeks. The baggage carousels were also dressed up in Hobbit style.

wellington_2012112100016, a photo by coach_stacey on Flickr.

This is the Embassy theatre all set for the big day. More pics to come over the next few days!

A November day in Wellington

wellington November 2012, a set on Flickr.

Joel is already in wellington getting some fresh air.

Tour de Bintan year two

Joel is just finishing up the final stage of the Tour de Bintan which has been running for the past two days. We have been staying at the host resort, Nirawana Gardens this year. Not as clean or as comfortable as the Bintan Lagoon Resort we stayed at last year but much easier to deal with all the race stuff staying right at the location of registration etc.

Joel has been riding with his team here and despite the incredible heat, everyone is holding up ok! He was ecstatic about nearly getting the KOM this morning... If only he hadn't dropped his chain at the last second. Ah the lament of cyclists. Anyway, final short race is starting around now. Then we are racing back to Singapore to see how Kopi-o is managing. He didn't spend the whole weekend alone, our helper went over yesterday to feed him but he's sure to put on a good show of displeasure when we get back.

Journey to the Middle of Middle Earth

Joel travels to Wellington quite frequently and our recent travels plans actually had nothing to do with The Hobbit premiere as Joel's already working on films much further away on the horizon. However, when we realized that our time there would coincide with the premiere of The Hobbit we began to look at the plans for what Wellington has in store for this monumental time.

This first article I read on Huffington Post states

"[Wellington] is preparing for the world premiere of the opening film in "The Hobbit" trilogy by showcasing an artisan festival selling all manner of small-folk paraphernalia, laying a red carpet that will extend 500 yards through central Wellington"

also...

"Wellington plans to unofficially rename itself "The Middle of Middle-earth" for three weeks before and after the premiere. It says the name will be widely recognized, reflected on things like the postmarks on letters and the masthead of the city's main newspaper."

And there's more! I've heard rumors that NZ customs is getting into the spirit with passport stamps along this theme. I'm hoping to collect one of those on landing. Also as we're coming in on Air New Zealand we might be lucky enough to get this safety video before take-off:

So what exactly can we hope to see at the Premiere? Information is not that easy to come by but this article says that they "will install big screens in Waitangi Park with a live feed from the red carpet."  I'm not sure where we'll station ourselves but you can be sure we'll be getting loads of pictures and taking part in every part of the fun that we can.

We are staying in one of the host hotels for most of the preparations and by happy coincidence our new  CANON 70-200/4 L IS lens is arriving just in time to accompany us on this trip. I will be blogging the crap out of this this so check back here in a few weeks time!

Two years in Singapore

Friday the 15th of October 2010, I wrote a blog post about our arrival in Singapore and posted a hazy picture from our window of the city. Today I'm looking back at the two years and reflecting on all the highlights and themes.

 

The First Year

2010 to 2011 was quite an adventure. While we'd left behind a marvelous life back in California we were not homesick at all and really didn't look back. This first year was all about discovery and adventure. We traveled, Joel especially traveled for his work (in fact was nearly not a resident due to the number of days he'd been away). Highlights were exploring the city, making new friends and taking side trips to Malaysia and Indonesia and hosting my family here in the Summer. At the end of that year we were into our second Monsoon and pretty settled in.

The Second Year

We have a mixed bag of feelings about our second year, 2011-2012. I think a lot of the things we compromised in our lives to be here started to wear thin. We were more annoyed with cultural idiosyncrasies as our adventure had morphed into having to just get on with life. We both started to feel restless with the constant noise of the city and we really yearned for clean air. Taking side trips became of paramount importance. The highlights from this year were our trip to Paris and London for Christmas, Bali again in January, my graduation and our trip to California, our trip to Thailand. For non-travel highlights, in March 2012 we adopted Kopi-o and then in June we found out we were expecting our first baby (due Feb 2013).

The Third Year

What's in store? Well we have more travel of course — at least until they start to kick me off planes. And then travel with our little family of three once he/she is equipped with a passport. There are so many places we still have not crossed off our bucket list. Will it be our final year in South East Asia? I'm not telling! You'll just have to stick around and see.