Auckland 2008

It's the first time I am in New Zealand so I was pretty excited about it. It's also a good time for me to visit my branch there since they are acquired by my company about a year back.

The Melbourne airport enforced a strict 20kg baggage rule on every passenger and I was really scared I would hit the limit as I had 2 bottles of wine, my laptop and my boots etc inside. The weight was 20.6kg....phew...the counter staff was pretty lenient. It took about 3.5 hours to fly from Melbourne to Auckland and the flight was pretty ok on Air New Zealand. The sandwich served was hot and comfortable for a cool day.

Taxi ride in NZ is very expensive...it costs me NZD72 to get to my hotel in the city (a 30 mins ride). There are many taxi operators in NZ because the market is open for anyone to come in.

The hotel which I stayed in is pretty good. Near to the SkyCity and behind my hotel is the shopping and food atrium. You can get all sorts of food at the foodcourt.The room is pretty big too . Above is a pic I took from the Sky Tower.

The following 2 days were spent at the Auckland office as well. It's a good visit as it's my first time meeting the people there and letting know more about how we function.

As I am leaving on a midnight flight, I spent the saturday morning visiting the Sky Tower...the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere. And in the afternoon, I signed up for a wine tour as well. Wine region in NZ is not as grand as Australia. I visited this gannet colony near the Tasman sea. Very big and beautiful sea birds.

I also find that Auckland is a melting pot of different culture and races. I can find a lot of Asians there. Every corner, you can hear people speaking in Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese and Hindi/Tamil.

After returning from the wine tour, I went back to the hotel for dinner and then asked to take a shower in the gym and stayed there till time to leave for the airport. Bought quite a lot of sourvenirs and food from the airport back home for family and co-workers.And guess what? My checked in luggage weigh 22kg and I have a hand luggage of 6kg but I didn't do any shopping in NZ. Can't explain the increase in my baggage.

Melbourne 2008

It's time again for my yearly trip to our Melbourne office. Arrived early on sunday morning in Melbourne and decided to go for a wine tour. The tour brought us to 4 different wineries and lunch is included. Vineyards have always been my favourite, guess its because we lived in a "concrete" city and vast land is simply impossible to find and even if you see one, its either state land or waiting for some developer to buy over and start to build more residences.

I am not much of a wine drinker and my preference is certainly sweet wine such as riesling and port. I had a great time at the vineyards and certainly enjoyed the cool temperature.

The next 2 days are spent at our Melbourne office discussing and resolving issues. It was a fruitful trip and things are certainly looking better than the previous year when I visited the office.

Had an early finish at the 2nd day and after depositing my stuff back at the hotel after lunch, I proceeded to the DFO near the hotel and walked around for a while. Bought a pair of boots (thank god i bought it as the pair back home was spoilt when I checked it the other day) and some clothes. The kids clothes are really cute but mostly are for the winter season.

I had apple strudel from one of the shop at crown entertainment centre after dinner one evening and it was really nice. Krispy Kreme doesn't really taste as nice as the ones I had from Jakarta.

And that concludes my Melbourne trip.