Travelling in New Zealand

I would love to show you lots of wonderful pictures from our boy's trip to New Zealand, but my computer is going through a difficult phase when it sometimes - not always, mind you - not often enough for me to remember to get a chap down to look at it, but sometimes - won't save things. So after much struggling, this is the only one of his emailed photos that I've persuaded the thing to save and therefore that I'm able to post.

So instead, here are some extracts from some of his emails. These are from when he and his beloved were travelling in South Island, though they did fit in work experience at the hospital at Nelson. In their final week they went to North Island.

They had a lovely time but I was so glad to see them back again.


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Just a quick email to let you know that I’m still ok.

We went in to hospital this morning (or yesterday evening to you, I suppose) and got told that they had an audit on, so could we go away and come back tomorrow? This is somewhat typical of being a medical student, but somehow, when it’s 25 degrees Celsius outside and you feel like you’re on holiday, you don’t mind so much.

We came back, got changed and went for a walk. This took in the town centre, a bit of beach, some Japanese gardens, a historic park and the “centre” of NZ. We were quite tired by the end. During the time we ought to have been watching Neighbours we went to a supermarket and bought quite a lot of food, then ate some for tea and sat around for a bit.

*****

Tomorrow, I suspect we may actually have to do some medical studenting, but I suppose that’s technically why we are here…

Someone said G’day to us today. It made me happy.

*****

(This accompanied some photos.)

1. A view over Nelson from "The Centre of New Zealand"
2. One of the many crossings of the Buller River in the Buller Gorge
3. The Pancake Rocks at Punakaike on the way down
4. Your favourite son/brother in front of the Franz Josef Glacier
5. A rather atmospheric shot on the glacier
6. Guess who at the foot of the Fox Glacier

*****

G'day,

Now in Queenstown. Arrived safely, although the landing seemed to come perilously close to mountains. We've seen several other planes take off/land and they all did that, not just us.

Our hostel has two cats, plus one who comes and begs for food from the kitchen - very nice, though obviously not quite as good as our cats.

*****

Somewhat time-limited right now (there's no such thing as free internet in NZ, apparently, and what we have in this campsite is rather slow). Today we went on a cruise on Milford Sound - very big, very pretty, very wet below, fairly wet from above. I also wrote you a postcard - are any of them getting through? This [picture above] is it - rather misty but very atmospheric. You probably can’t get how impressively big it was in a picture.

Tomorrow we're off to Stewart Island off the South coast, the best place in NZ to spot a kiwi, apparently.

*****

Hello there,

Just to let you know that we're still alive. We are. Yesterday we went to Stewart Island off the south coast. It was very nice, although the weather was somewhat changeable. Very choppy journey there too. We're now in Invercargill and about to drive to the Catlins National Park. The weather is currently sunny.

*****


Hope all are well back home. We are currently in a campsite in Timaru, which is sort of halfway between Dunedin and Christchurch. There's not a lot to Timaru, so we're really just stopping off in between the two cities (Christchurch is our target, where we will drop off our little Suzuki Swift tomorrow - sniff). For those who I haven't spoken to recently, since Saturday we have covered Queenstown, Milford Sound, Invercargill, Stewart Island, The Catlins, Otago Peninsula, Dunedin and Oamaru. It has been somewhat whistlestop. Over that time we have seen tui, fur seals, albatross, sea lions and penguins. No kiwi though.

*****

We're now back from Nelson Lakes, which were lovely, but VERY cold! It was beautiful weather, but if you weren't actually in the sun (ie when we were walking through the forest, which was much of the day) it was really fairly chilly. We walked up one side of a valley on Sat, and we could see our breath (and snow on the ground) towards the top. This morning the car (a Mitsubishi Colt this time) was completely frozen up. However, we barely saw a cloud.

*****

We made it back from Picton - which is where I last phoned from - driving the scenic coastal route. Those who get car sick would not have liked it much, but it was very pretty. Since Sunday the weather has been pretty cloudy and exceedingly humid, but still pretty warm, at least. Yesterday we went on an 8am ward round in the morning, wrote some discharge summaries and then both worked on our elective reports. Mine is currently about 3 pages long (maximum of 5) and very waffly.

In two weeks and two days I'll be heading back across the world - very odd. But nice. I'm looking forward to seeing you all and the cats. I'm intrigued by what you say about Sirius’s entirely logical fear of hot water bottles. Is it the mere presence of a hot water bottle, or does it need to be a particularly aggressive one?

This is not a cat

Various people have kindly enquired about our son's sojourn in New Zealand. He had a fine time and visited many places, the names of which have not lodged in my brain because they tend to begin with W, feature NG somewhere along the line and end in I. These are hard for a person used to places called Edinburgh and Fraserburgh and Peterburgh to remember.

He's not currently here to ask for the details, since he's at his young lady's house up north to celebrate her birthday. (He did manage four whole days without her between coming home and rushing to her side once more.) But meanwhile, here's the suggested guest post - or at least the caption he sent us with this picture.

"A fur seal on the beach at Porpoise Bay. It looks slightly like it’s been shot and is dramatically recoiling, but I thought this was better than the other photos of it, in which, frankly, it looks a bit dead. It wasn’t. It was just lying and rolling about a bit on the beach."

He also took lots of pictures of stunning scenery which I don't have access to just now.

(By the way, talking of photos - can you tell which one of the photos in the previous post was taken with Mr Life's very expensive new SLR digital camera and which with my little not-very-expensive non-SLR one? It was the first one. It does look quite atmospheric, I suppose. Not that I have any idea in what ways SLRs are better than anything else.)

Some pictures

Some commenters have kindly enquired how our boy is getting on in New Zealand. He’s having a fine time, thanks. He and his young lady arrived the weekend before Easter, so very soon got a long weekend (no one in New Zealand is ill from Good Friday till Easter Tuesday, evidently; or if they are, they don’t want to be treated by students). So the pair of them went off to see glaciers. Then they worked for two weeks and were told to take a week’s holiday. What a splendid country! So they went down to the south and saw lots more beautiful scenery, such as this: Queenstown Hill with Lake Wakatipu in the background. It looks a lot like the Scottish Highlands except that in Scotland the grass would be a lot greener (rain) and you probably wouldn’t be wearing shorts up a mountain because it would be too windy and cold.

Now they’re back in Nelson for a few more weeks before having a final week off, during which they’re going to North Island.


It came to me a few weeks ago that my second blogiversary had come and gone on March 3. This, combined with the slightly depressing fact that my stats have gone considerably down this week (I was clearly rather uninteresting last week) made me decide that when not many people were watching I would take up the self-portrait challenge that’s been going around. I didn’t actually take a new picture – this was done a few months ago for a blog friend who wanted to know what I looked like, but, you know, I don’t look all that different yet. It’s taken in the bathroom mirror, which has a kindly light from the side window. I actually look 140. I do like seeing bloggy people's faces so decided to step out from the shadows. My students aren’t reading this, I’m sure. And nor are all that many other people, judging by my latest stats. So here I am saying a quick hello to a select band of you.

If you’re reading this and haven’t done the self-portrait thing yet, I dare you.

The first one was me trying not to look boring, which I always think I do. Hence the dopey smile. The second time I decided to revert to type.

New Zealand

Our son is very excited because in March, he and his beloved are off to Nelson in New Zealand for their elective – two months which can be spent working in a hospital anywhere in the world. They were very keen to go to New Zealand and made the arrangements at the very first opportunity, which was more than a year ago. His bedroom walls are covered with maps of NZ, he has lots of books about the country and for some months now, he’s been bursting from time to time into what may possibly not be an authentic NZ accent. “Alright, mate?”, “Good as gold!” and “Sweet!” echo round the house as he goes about his business.

He’s been encouraged in this linguistic getting-into-the-mood by an information sheet sent by some wag at the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, which gives lots of helpful translations of descriptions that patients might give of their illnesses.

Here's an extract:

“The next group of adjectives imply that the patient is particularly tired or weak as the result of an illness, typically influenza, gastroenteritis, myocardial infarction:

stuffed

pickled

wrung out

knackered

not firing on all cylinders

buggered

If a New Zealander vomits, he may say that he is about to chunder, yak, spew, hurl or ralph.

When a New Zealand patient recovers from an illness they may say that they have perked up and are raring to go, hunky dory, beaut, a box of birds, good as gold or sweet as.

The ultimate New Zealand sign of gratitude is expressed when the patient says, “Good on ya mate!” When a strange man calls you “mate” it is either a sign that he is open to friendship or that he has forgotten your name. If someone yells, “Oh, maaaa…te!” in a crowd then it is likely that another man has broken wind. If someone says, “Maaaa…te” without the “Oh” in front, and they have a concerned look on their face, it is an expression of sympathy.”

The handout ends:

“Here is a little test to check how much of this dictionary you have taken in. Please read the following scene and answer the questions at the end:

Patient: Gidday doc.

Doctor: Derek, how are you, mate?

Patient: I think I’ve got a problem with the old plumbing. I’m up and down all night and bugger all comes out each time.

Doctor: Maaaa…te! Giving ya gip after each slash?

Patient: No, good as gold, mate, good as gold.

Doctor: You firing on all cylinders in other ways?

Patient: Well, me and the Mrs both had the dreaded lurgy last week but she’s now a box of birds and I’ve perked up. Do you think the old fella’s on the blink, Doc?

What condition does the patient have?

a) psitticosis

b) a blocked drain on his toilet

c) influenza

d) a paraphymosis

e) benign prostatic hypertrophy.”

Well, now my lad is all set to talk the language of this distant land. Possibly.

He says that the answer is e), by the way.