And so it was finally the day to fly to New Zealand! Well, actually, day 1 would be the day I landed in New Zealand, and I kept flying from the 12th to 13th November. There isn’t much to say about the whole flight journey other than the fact that that was officially the first time I’m flying to a brand new country I’ve never been before on my own so I’ll skip all that. Oh right, at least, I was lucky enough to have an empty seat beside me for both my flights from Singapore to Australia to New Zealand, so throughout the journey I had two seats! Lucky me! Also, while closing in on Australia, I could also see the horizon where the sun’s just coming up and it was beautiful as you can see in the photos below:

Anyway, long story short, I arrived in New Zealand around 3:45pm. I put on my kitty hat (so that Krizy can recognize me quickly) as I queued up to get through the immigration thingy and someone commented “Nice hat. It’s so bad it’s good.” =_=;; Seriously, what the hell’s that supposed to mean? Whatever, I decided to act ignorant and took it as a compliment. Then, after getting my baggage, I got out and Krizy found me! KYAAAA!!! Dun DUN DUUNNN!!! And so I saw her for the first time… in real life!!! O_O!! KYAAAAAA!!!! Unfortunately, I know Krizy won’t like it if I talk about her on my blog so I’ll just leave out all those details. Also, I will only post pictures without Krizy as she requested, so if you’re thinking I didn’t take enough pictures, you’ll know why.

So, we drove back to Krizy’s house on her brother’s car and along the way we stopped by the dairy to get some bread. Along the way, of course, I looked out of the car at the scenery and such to see what major differences there are between New Zealand and the countries I’ve been. I don’t know if this is just because it’s Auckland, or because we were far from downtown, but practically/majority all the houses and buildings are short. And by short I mean 1-2 floors. The only few exceptions I remember would be all in downtown but since we’re not at that part of the story/blog yet, let’s hop on to the next thing. Okay, there’re tons of green, which reminds me when I saw New Zealand up high from the airplane I thought the lands looked just like the Hobbits’ Shire. XD

Then, when we stopped by the dairy to buy some bread, to be honest, I was pretty surprised/shocked at how… how should I say this… ‘country’ it looks…? No offense whatsoever, really, it’s just, coming from Singapore and the US where most of the dairies are like air-conditioned 7-Elevens, it came as quite a shock. I’ve thought hard about it, and I think that the streets in New Zealand (that we usually drive by/through) along with the stores by it look more like those in Mauritius, or maybe Indonesia. Not that it’s a bad thing, but let’s just say I was expecting it to look more like, at least, Oregon.

Anyway, and so we reached home and there I met with Krizy’s mother and baby brother first. Her mom is really friendly and I had no problem getting used to being around her. Krizy’s younger brother and father came back home a little bit later, and I forgot exactly when I met with the uncle. >_>; Anyway, we spent the rest of the day in Krizy’s caravan, which is really her room (XD!!), talking and hanging out. And of course, we can’t miss out on the games, can we? =P I watched her play FF12 for that night, hoping that I could perhaps get to a part of the game where she could fangirl about Gabranth and Drace. LOL. Unfortunately, most part of the game that night were spent on gameplay rather than story and there was nothing on Gabranth and Drace, but hey… you may deny this all you want Krizy but I still remember how you went kyaaaa~ (in your own version) that night when you were using your computer before I went to sleep. =P MWAHAHAHAHAA!! Gotcha >=P

We woke up in the afternoon (yay to N.O.A! a.k.a. Night Owl Alliance a.k.a. the alliance for people who sleep and wake up uber late) and then we set off for town by bus. Yes… the bus… I must talk about the bus. In terms of interior look, it’s very close in design and practicality to the buses in Oregon. The difference is, it’s expensive. And by expensive I don’t mean a max of $2 like in Singapore; I mean $4.3 (NZD) for a single ride of about 20 minutes into town. You see, I’m not used to spending much on transportation since in Oregon buses are free (for University students) and in Singapore the rates are decent.  Mind you, I’m not complaining about how much money I have to spend on transportation in New Zealand. I’m just surprised at how much that will cost students to travel back and forth from home to school everyday 5 days a week. I don’t live in New Zealand so I won’t have to deal with that for like forever, but man, I sure am not eager to spend that much money just for transportation.

In town, we went to have lunch at Daikoku Ramen, obviously a Japanese restaurant. Krizy recommended the Tonkotsu Ramen and so I ordered it, along with some Combo A thingy to get additional gyoza with rice. The ramen was good, the gyoza was okay and the price is decent I guess, so it was all good. After that, we walked around town and ended up going to Hulu Cat, a bubble milk tea café. Krizy wanted to bring me to Japan Mart first, but it was already closed (by 5pm?! Marts!?) so we hopped on to Hulu Cat (what a name XD) to have some bubble milk tea (yeah, that’s what we call it in Singapore =P).

Hulu Cat was a pretty nice place with comfy chairs but man, it was $6 for an order of bubble milk tea. (Seriously, you should get used to me commenting about prices considering my stingy nature =P) Sure, they did give a lot cos’ it was a bigger glass than those you get in Singapore but I don’t drink that much and it only costs $3 at the max in Singapore. O_o; Krizy, you’d be so happy in terms of food and drinks here in Singapore. XD;;

After that, we went to the arcade, I think? XD Whee~~! The arcade… with Krizy!! The arcade was pretty big, and it’s got quite a number of games, including KOF! Mwahahaha! But I don’t think I played KOF that day. Krizy went and played her favorite Guitar Freaks game while I watched. She plays it well but gah! I can never play it. Something about it is just off and it pisses me off major, major-ly when I don’t get it right. Urgh. I’d rather play Drum Mania, which I did only like the 2nd last day of this trip, so I’ll talk more about it later. =P

I also found a Project Justice machine (Rival Schools 3) and I played it to show Krizy my next favorite fighting game. Most of you should have known that I’m really confident in this game (as mentioned before in the older blog entries) and there was just no way I’d lose to the CPU, but what the fuck? The buttons and joystick weren’t sensitive and I couldn’t do the usual stuff I do in the game and I died, twice. =_= That pissed me off, cos’ it made me look like an idiot but oh well, whatever.

Day 3 was the day we took the ferry to Devenport, which I think is an island a small distance away? ^^; (it didn’t look like an island to me cos’ I thought it seemed connected to the mainland by a bridge or something) The ride on the ferry was pretty fun, although it was short. It would have been more fun if it was really bumpy but it was only bumpy for a few seconds in the beginning. =(

After we got there, we got banana split at the ice cream store! Yum!! And then we went up the nearby Mount Victoria to the top so that we can look down on the city. It was a steep climb, but a short one, and we got to the top fairly quickly. It was windy up on the top but it felt nice. We took a couple of photos here and there, and I even left my ‘mark’ on the fake toadstool thingies there (as a number of people did)!! Mwahahahaha!! I hope that writing stays long enough. It’s unfortunate I didn’t have a permanent black marker with me. =(

Anyway, Mount Victoria used to be some sort of military base or something where soldiers would look out to the sea for enemy ships and stuff. And because of that, there was also this giant cannon thing at the top of the mountain, which of course isn’t working anymore. Other than that though, Mount Victoria seems to be a place for scenery viewing and perhaps exercise? XD The scenery was great though, not to mention the cool wind. You could see the Sky Tower (which is in downtown) stick out like a sore needle XD I also keep thinking that is where King Kong shall die of impalement. >_>;;

We returned back to town after that and had a plate of gyoza for snack. I forgot what else we did after that… >_<;; OOOOH… I saw this advertisement above by the bus stop (and many other places, really) and I just HAD to take a picture of it. It’s awesome and I love New Zealand for it, cos you can chop off your head and still never see anything like it in Singapore.

The one major thing we did on this day was going to the salon, and that took hours. We went to this Japanese salon called Lan, and Krizy got herself a haircut while I got a perm. At first I just wanted a normal perm since this is the first time I’d be perming my hair, ever, but the lady convinced me to get a digital perm so poof, there went my money. LOL. The whole process took like 2+ hours but now I really hope it had been longer, cos seriously, the curls disappeared in a matter of days. I still have a bit of curl right now but most of it is gone. So much for my 240 dollars.

The lady who did my hair was really nice though. She understood English enough but she couldn’t exactly reply in English so each time she needed to explain something to me she had to ask another hairdresser to translate. I could have spoken in Japanese to begin with I guess, but I didn’t until later, which she seemed very surprised about cos I just started speaking Japanese out of the blue. LOL. She seemed really happy that I understood Japanese though and that’s when she started to talk more.

Anyway, at the end of everything, my hair looked pretty good, since it was JUST done. The hairdresser, Chika, told me what I could do to keep the curls prominent and such but I’m so lazy I can’t really be arsed to do all that everyday, not to mention I always shower in the night and my hair has to be damp for me to put any sort of hair cream on. Sigh. I took a picture with her, anyway, and I asked her for her email address so that I can send the picture to her but oh my god, she said she wasn’t sure if the email she gave me was right. =_=; She must really be a non-computer person to not remember her own email address. I tried sending the picture to that email later on but just as I feared, the address was incorrect, and she still hasn’t emailed me. Oh well, so much for being friends, temporarily.

After the hair ordeal, we walked around Broadway street (is there a Broadway street in every country or something?) and the mall. We didn’t do much though and I didn’t get anything so we rode the bus back to downtown where we ended up visiting JB HiFi, an electronics and game store. Guitar Hero 3 was on display and someone was playing it, so Krizy and I went to take a look. Neither of us have GH3 and we were tempted to try, which we did. XD Man, it was fun! Not to mention free of charge! XD Mwahahaha! I even got to play Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce twice! Woot! ^__^! It was hard, but fun, especially when you can’t lose the song on multiplayer mode anyway =P

I forgot what songs Krizy played but I think we played the Dragonforce song together once. ^_^! And because of our visit that night, I think we were officially labeled as the crazy GH-gamer visitors or something by the workers there cos’ they totally recognized us the next time we went there again! LMAO! XD!!! But of course, Krizy’s the mad one between the two of us. XD I’m just a sidekick ^_-!

We went home after that and ate the trifle Krizy made!! It looked so good~ and it was yummy!! ^__^! Kyaaa~~! Thanks for making the trifle, Krizy~~!! Shiawase deshita~~!! Oh, this was also the night we watched Russell Peter’s “Outsourced” DVD and got totally Russell-ized. It was a funny comedy talk show, but alas it wasn’t better than his original first. Even then, it was because of watching his show that Krizy and I went on and on about the jokes he made, repeating his catchphrases and jokes over and over – they never get old. XD “Be a man! Do the right thing!” XD!!!! And the thing is, this is only the beginning of our addicted-to-comedy phase… O_O!

On this day, Krizy and I met with her friends to go for Yum Cha a.k.a. Dim Sum (what’s the difference between these 2 terms anyway?) The Yum Cha was great and it wasn’t too expensive either *GASP!* Oh, oh, it was also great to see Krizy and friends try out chicken feet for the first time! ^_^! Chicken’s feet’s AWESOME!!

Anyway, I think about 7 or so friends showed up, only one of them continued on for karaoke later on. Karaoke… man… that was the first time I’ve went for karaoke since I was like what… 15? Back then I didn’t go because I wanted to anyway. ^^; So, there were only 3 of us so we take turns singing. I could only sing the Japanese songs and for some reason most of the songs I found that I could sing were all Crystal Kay songs. I must have some sort of fate with her? (Cos’ I often sing and record her songs XD) It’s too bad I didn’t record a video of Krizy singing… Damn. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?! >_<!

After that, Krizy’s friend left and we continued on to the arcade to take some purikura a.k.a. neoprints! We messed up our first purikura (gah!) so we took another one with the right machine. This one turned out well but alas I can’t post them here cos it’s got Krizy in it. =_= Sigh…Or maybe I can… if I just post my side of the purikura? O_o;;

Anyway, I played some KOF after that, and Krizy played Guitar Freaks. And after we went home, we re-watched Russell Peter’s first show (the one with the Pacific Mall joke =P), along with a few clips of Whose Line Is It Anyway on youtube. XD!! Two of those clips which totally threw us off were – Leg Warmers and Cops and Ducks. Since then, the Leg Warmers song has been stuck in my head… along with a couple other parodies and stuff, especially THIS. >_<!! This has turned us both into ‘retards’… for a number of days now. @_@

We woke up somewhat late this day but this day’s the day we’re going to the Japan Day celebration thingy. It was quite a long ride on the bus to get there and by the time we got there it was like 5pm... >_>; but luckily the celebration hadn’t ended. We looked around the food stalls and found takoyaki and stuff and so we got ourselves some food.

Then, we looked around the food stalls again to find more food, and we bought more food anyway cos they were on sale cos the celebration was ending and they had to get rid of their food. LOL. So yeah, most of the time we ate. XD The takoyaki and okonomiyaki was good so yeah, it was worth it, somewhat. XD!!

After that, I think we just went straight home or something. >_>;; And at home we continued watching more Whose Line Is It Anyway… is all I remember… >_<!! Wow, now this’s a ‘short’ day.

We woke up a little late this day and we actually didn’t have any plans for the day at first. Luckily, Krizy’s granddad came by her house for a visit and said that he could take us to the beach. The beach!! Whee~~!! Yaay~! Me love beaches! ^_^! And so we finally left the house at around 3pm and granddad drove us to many of the beaches in the south (I think?) just to look at them first before we finally stopped at the beach he intended to bring us to.

We were worried about the weather though, since the clouds were pretty grey and the sun was hidden. A grey and cold day at the beach would have sucked. At first we wondered if we really wanted to stop at the beach for a picnic (Krizy’s mom made us some food) but I decided that we should do it anyway by the weird tree we passed by cos that tree is probably worth the stop-by…? LOL.

And so we stopped there to picnic by the beach, and almost immediately after we settled down by the table there, the (sea) gulls came and stood by staring at us. At first I didn’t notice, but after a while and they didn’t fly away, it finally clicked to me what they wanted. =_=;; So I started throwing bits of meat from my noodles at them and man are they hungry. You should totally see them fight for the food; the angry ones that didn’t get it would start gawking at the others like it’s the boss. LOL.

After feeding the gulls for a while, we noticed that there were other smaller birds who were also hoping to get some of the food. I don’t know what kind of birds they are but they kinda look like sparrows, I think? To feed them we actually need a sort of strategy O_o; cos otherwise the gulls would just grab all the food, leaving nothing for the small birds. They would even attack them to steal the food if they don't fly away in time! Bastards...! With so much feeding, I ended up like giving them a third of my food, including the tomato cucumber sandwiches that both Krizy and I didn’t like. Hahahaha!!

Anyway, the sun did come up after a while for a bit and that’s when I took the photos with the odd looking tree. Hehehe. We left after finishing our food, and we drove to yet another beach. This one looked pretty nice to have a walk on and so Krizy and I went for a walk. However, it would have really been an awesome beach… if the whole beach wasn’t covered with broken sea shells. >_O!! Man, that was totally not the right foot therapy for anyone! And speaking of the broken sea shells, it wasn’t just this beach, but it was on like every beach I’ve seen in New Zealand! (If my eyes didn’t see them wrong, that is) But anyway, we finished the walk in about 10-15 minutes and we left for granddad’s home to rest for a bit. After that, we stopped by Krizy’s cousins’ place which was near her granddad’s place to say hi, and then we went home.

At home that night, we hung out in Krizy’s caravan and played DMC3 together for the first time ever @_@!! Kyaaa~~!! It was awesome!! ^__^! After all, it was the game that brought us together O_O!! For that night, we finished missions 1 to 9, all of it using doppelganger of course, so that we can play it together. =)

Today’s ZOO day! Yesh! We’re going to the zoo! That’s just so me, isn’t it? =P Well, since I’m in New Zealand I thought that I must at least see the kiwi birds and the only place you can find them is the zoo… so yes, the zoo it is. =P

Along our way to the zoo as we’re walking to Britomart (their bus station name?), we walked past this er… little car park area behind a bus stop where the walls are fully filled with graffiti. And you know the thing with graffiti and how their style goes about? They’re usually really fancy and flashy, most of it text in fancy ‘fonts’ and colors. But this one’s not just that; this one’s like it’s done by graffiti pros who have too much time and spray paint that they decided to do free freelance work for the public. I dunno what you guys think, cos maybe this is standard level for graffiti art, but damn, I was definitely impressed, especially at the horse one.

Now, let’s fast forward to the zoo and bam, we arrived… =P at 2pm. *Falls over* I thought we might not have enough time to see all of the zoo but it turned out that it was exactly enough time, so woot, lucky~

So okay, first thing we went to see is, of course, the kiwi birds. =D They were in a dark room… like… really dark. It was like the dark room in the photography labs, only, the red light’s over and behind the glass walls. For a moment I thought I’d never find the birds considering how much they’d blend in there, but woot! We saw one (and another one later) digging for food right about the center and I managed to take a picture (without flash of course) although it’s still hard to tell where the hell it is in it. I actually had to convince myself that’s the bird before I circled it for you readers. XD

So yeah, mission to the zoo accomplished in like what… 5 minutes? LOL. But of course, we continued on to the rest of the zoo, starting with Pride Lands where the African animals are kept, like the giraffe, ostrich, zebra, lion (they were sooo lazy) and rhinoceros (all listed in order too =P).

After that there were the hippo and this rabbit-like thing… and many more of course. I just didn’t take a photo of every single animal there was. O_o; And then we got to the birds… and that’s where we met with (self-named by us) Chap, Sum and Bong. =P (I hope most of you know and remember Russell Peter’s jokes =P)

Well actually, the first of these birds we met that interacted with us was Bong (the name of Bong has to go to the one with the best impression!). He was this red and purple er… pardon my ignorance but I shall just call them parrots. (And I’ll be referring to them all as ‘he’ just for narration sake) I didn’t actually notice it until Krizy called me over when apparently he said hello. Auuww! Bong was a really friend one, he’d even let us pet his beak, although he never said hello a second time. We stayed there ‘talking’ to it for a while until Chup came along for his part of the attention (I randomly decided that he’s Chup). He was a green one and I don’t think he talked (?) but he was also very friendly and let us pet him. And finally, Sum was the other red and purple parrot in the same cage but since he didn’t exactly come over to us to interact, I didn’t get to take a picture of him, sadly. In any case, he looked just like Bong anyway. =P

Next, there was the cockatoo in a small cage. Poor bird. There was also a sign next to the cage that said “This bird may bite” or something like that. Well… putting up a sign like that calls for a challenge. =P And so we went up to the bird to test and see if it was really an unfriendly one and look, it let us pet him! XD!! Mwahahaha!! And not his beak as well but his neck! ^__^! He’s such a sweetie. He also said hello about 3 times. And then there’s also this other er… parrot. >_>; A grey one with a red tail that was friendly but I don’t remember if he said anything. In any case, they were all sweet. ^_^

And then we went on to see the tortoise, spiders (they’ve like what, 3 of them? =_=;) and monkeys. Oh yeah, we totally skipped the reptiles. >_>; Then, we went to the walkabout thingy where the animals were kept right out in the open and we could just walk in so long we stay behind the er… ‘fence’. There weren’t very many different animals in there but there was the peacock (with his butt feathers opened =P), emus (which I got to touch~) and er… kangaroos… or wallabies. And then there were more birds or something in the second part of the walkabout.

After that we went on to the farm animals which was quite disappointing really. They don’t even have llamas, camels, cows, horses or donkeys. =( All they had was a goat, and three sheep of different kinds, but well, it’s better than nothing. Now, these ones we could pet! ^__^! Although it’s only if they come up to you by the fence, which two of them did – the goat and the super hairy sheep (the worker there said his name was Patrick). There was also this what I thought was a chicken which apparently was a pheasant… or something. >_<; And the rabbits and bunnies and guinea pigs…

Then, we went and saw the meerkats, which were really cute actually. And you could actually go under their ‘cage’ and climb through some tunnels beneath it so that you can pop your head out from a glass dome to look at them from inside their ‘cage’ at their level. I know that was a bad description so just look at the pics >_>; There was a meerkat that came up to the dome to dig the sand on the side for like 3 seconds before it left too. Cute. Too bad I didn’t have my camera on. =(

And then there was the red panda! @_@ So cuuuute!! So fluffy and cuddly!! Those who know how much I love raccoons should know why I love the red panda so much as well =P Maybe it was 5pm and the zoo was closing or something but the red pandas at that time were being really lazy. It took us a lot of waiting to finally catch one walk out from hiding for us to see its face. So cuuuute!!!

And then there was the tiger, which we couldn’t even find until some kids went “Look, look! A tiger!! OMG!” LOL. It was hiding really well and behind the thick glass wall, it was really hard to take a clear photo of it so pardon the photoshopping. It was so pretty and majestic… though all tigers are anyway. XD And then there was the seal. The end. LMAO. (Okay, there were many more animals but you surely didn’t expect me to name them all, did you? O_o;)

After the zoo, we returned to town and had dinner at Daikoku Ramen again where I had Seafood Ramen this time. Unfortunately it wasn’t all that great; I should have stuck to the Tonkotsu Ramen. Then at home, we finished the rest of our DMC3 game and I watched the new episode of Heroes Season 2 on her computer. XD It was also then when I kinda spoiled Krizy on a lot of the Heroes story just so she could understand what went on with that episode I was watching. However, the good thing is, it seemed that that made her addicted to Heroes again!! MWAHAHAHA!! The story’s getting really good again so all you guys out there better not miss out on this great series!!

We woke up at like 3pm or so this day… prolly because we were up till about 6+am the previous er… ‘night’. ^_^; But that’s okay, cos the only plan today was to go for Krizy’s great grand aunty’s 80th birthday party in the evening. And boy, that was one huge and long Samoan party that consisted of people over 5 generations and stretching up to 5 hours. @_@ Well, I know that can’t be helped, considering how big a party it is. I’m sure there were no less than a hundred people at the least. Although, the funny thing is, I dunno how many people in the party actually knew most of the other people there, since there were people from extended families and you know how extended families are like. I could seriously walk in and just pretend to be one of them and they wouldn’t even know. LOL. In fact! One of them thought I was Krizy’s sister! LMAO!!!!11 I guess I look half Samoan or something? XD!

The food was good and I tried some things I’ve never eaten before like this… er… purplish root thing. Then again, maybe I have eaten it before in Chinese cuisine and never knew what it was cos I know that happens a lot ^_^; And that purplish root thing kinda looked like yam to me so maybe it was yam… or tapioca…? >_o;; Anyway, there was also roasted pig, like, the whole thing, only without the head. That one was good. =P

And then there were the performances, done by some of the family members and friends I guess. They lasted quite a while and I wondered if they weren’t tired yet cos I got tired even just by watching. >_<; One of the people who sang was Krizy’s cousin whom she said got into the top 10 (or 5?) for New Zealand Idol and sure enough, he had a great voice. I’m envious. >_<!

We woke up a little late, again, and today we went to town with Krizy’s younger sister Zara who was looking to buy some clothes. Since we were in Newmarket and that’s where the salon I went to was, I went back there to find Chika again to tell her about her invalid email address, only to find that she took the day off. =_= And so I left a message for her through one of the other hairdressers and asked if she could email me but sigh, she still hasn’t emailed me to this day.

Anyway, we walked back to the mall after that and I had laksa for lunch there. Yeah. Laksa. @_@ They sell laksa in New Zealand!?! I swear I didn’t see that on the laksa article on wikipedia! LOL! So yeah, I had laksa and guess how much it cost? $10.90. Dude, I could get 3 bowls of laksa here in Singapore for that price. Siiigggghhh…. And just for this blog, I even went and wrote down some other prices for the other popular ‘Singaporean’ dishes they had there: Nasi goreng - $11.90, Hokkien noodles - $11.90, Nasi lemak - $9.90……….. WAT DA *BEEP*!?!?!

Next, I went and bought this hair cream thing for my perm/curls which I still haven’t used anyway cos I’m still using the sample one I got (LMAO). What a waste, since my curls are already disappearing and I prolly won’t have use for that hair cream thing I bought. Then, we went back to Zara’s car and Krizy asked if she could take us to this other mini Japanese mart thing where we bought some food. However, it was in that time when Zara got moody and cranky (?) and some conflict came about between her and Krizy because Zara thought we took too bloody long… >_o;; So er… yeah, that was the end of shopping and we went home.

At night, I rushed through Krizy’s Resident Evil 4 Mercenaries to help her 5-star everyone and unlock the handcannon. It took quite a while since for some reason I kept dying at stages I shouldn’t be dying at considering the characters I was using but I still managed to did it all except for one – Leon in Waterworld, which I wanted to wait till later to do cos I know it’ll piss me off so bad. Then again, I was already pissed that night cos I kept dying again and again for some of the stages when I know I was good at it. GAAH! Poor Krizy had to deal with my gamer-anger. ^_^;;

This day, we went to town to just walk and look around, really. First, we went to this manga café cos I wanted to get a something (dunno what it’s called) for a friend, and outside the store was a poster of Gundam Wing that totally caught my attention not because it’s Gundam Wing but because something was so totally OFF about it. I mean… just look below and think what looks awkwardly creepy? >_<!! LOL. I know it’s lame but I still had to take a picture of it. XD

And then there was this weird building in town we’ve walked past like a dozen times every time we went there. I couldn’t even tell if it was a building that was construction-in-progress or if it was a building that’s supposed to be demolished. I mean dude, it had 2 sides of the building and nothing else in and out of it! What the hell?!? O_o;;

Anyway, it was when I wanted to take a picture of that building when I realized that all my batteries were dead and I had to get new ones. So I got this pack of 4 batteries from a convenience store and it was (yes… back to prices!) freaking $7.5. Well okay, battery prices have always been a problem, even in Singapore. I know that. The only place it’s actually cheap is in the US where I could get a whole row of 24 batteries for like $9, though that’s from Costco. But guess what? Those batteries didn’t work!! I put them into my digicam and it died after taking ONE picture. RIP OFF!!! And guess what again? I happened to buy another pack of 4 batteries from another store (before I found out those batteries were faulty) and those 4 didn’t work either!! WTFFFF!?!? So now I officially blacklist New Zealand as one of the countries you should never buy batteries from. =_=#

After the batteries, I went to this Istanbul and something pastry place to buy this er… pizza, I guess, for the second time. It kinda tasted just like pizza but it’s shaped different that’s all, and this one’s spinach and cheese. =D I also actually gave that pizza a name (in Jamaican to be exact =P) cos of it’s ‘interesting’ shape but er… it’d be gross for those who know what it means so I think I’m gonna skip out on that here. XD But hey Krizy! You’ll know what it is =P Mwahahaha!! HAHAHA!!

And now! What happened after buying the pizza was that we entered this other mall thing and we walked past this shop we’ve walked past once before and that’s how it caught my attention. It’s a clothing store that happens to sell some gothic dresses as well, and I’ve always thought those kind of dresses look cute, only, expensive. So there was this really cute gothic Lolita dress on display right, and I thought hey, maybe I could just try it for fun. And so I did and the woman there even allowed me to take a picture of me in it, but the more at it the more tempting it looked, especially when Krizy was convincing me to buy it. >_<!!

Long story short, I ended up buying it. O_O!!!11 And so there it is, my very first Lolita dress, at a royal price of $150 (SGD168). I know I won’t be wearing it much at all and that I prolly will regret it the second after I paid but er… I couldn’t be arsed to think too much. I know I always wanted one for the hell of it, but I was eyeing this one that they were selling in Singapore and so I didn’t know if I wanted this one since the design is different. But gah! Whatever man! I’ll just buy them both! >_<!!

After buying the dress, we walked around a little more and ended up in the arcade where we took more purikura since I immediately wore that Lolita dress out. XD. We also played a few arcade games before we left to visit that JB HiFi place again where we played our free Guitar Hero 3 (Actually, we also played GH3 at another store at another mall earlier in the day =P)... and that’s when the same worker there saw us and said “You guys again! Back to play some more?” or something like that. XD!! And so of course we played some more, and it was fun, although there were a number of people who kept watching us play from the back, giving me some pressure cos Krizy’s like always kicking my butt!! >_O!!

We played until the store closed (LOL) which was like 30 minutes or so from when we entered, and then we went home. I asked the worker there to help us take a ROCK OUT picture with the guitars and it turned out well, but alas, I can’t post the full picture here cos Krizy’s in it. SIIIGGGGHHH.

We were actually planning to go horseback riding today but alas the weather wasn’t our side. It was cold in the afternoon and the weather forecast predicted rain, and the cold got Krizy’s granddad sick and so he couldn’t take us to the country where the horseback riding location was. So kaput! Plan gone.

So we ended up just staying home for the day, a good full day of rest from all the going out we’ve had since the first day I arrived. O_o We actually woke up early today, though, cos we were supposed to prepare for setoff to the country but since it didn’t work out, we just er… had lunch and then went back to the caravan and started playing games. LOL. I also took that time to take some photos with the family’s pet stray cat (LOL) which they unofficially named Puss Puss. XD! He’s such a cutie, and he looks hilarious in that photo where I picked him up! LOL!

Later, Krizy went and played DMC3 on her own fighting DMD Vergil battle 3 over and over (I think I did too for a bit?) while I watched and used her computer at the same time. And later, we played Guitar Heroes: Encore together for hours, and she managed to beat the last song Play With Me on expert with 4 stars!! @_@ I don’t have 4 stars on my record… T__T

After that, we re-watched all those parodies and stuff that have been stuck in our heads for the past few days, and even ended up re-watching the last quarter of Total Recall and most of Transformers. XD. So random.

This was the last full day that I had left in New Zealand and Krizy asked if I wanted to go to that Underwater World place and of course I said yes. =P And so we got on the bus and yadayadayada. When we got to our destination, Krizy told me to quickly get off the bus cos that was our bus stop and so I hurriedly got off. The moment I got off, I quickly checked my bag (cos I’m paranoid) for my wallet, only to find it missing. =____=. That. THAT. Ruined the day.

I started to panic, wondering if it fell off on the bus but well, the bus had gone off. So automatically, the first thing I thought was to call the bus station people to see if they could maybe help us but Krizy said it’s unlikely, especially since I had cash in my wallet and someone was likely to have just taken it and left. And… that didn’t help.

So I was still panicking, and Krizy suggested that we wait at the opposite bus stop until the same bus comes back cos there was only one route for the bus to turn around and eventually go back to town. And so we waited for a bit until the next bus came. Of course this couldn’t be that very bus we were on cos it had only been like 10 minutes, but we decided to stop it anyway to ask the driver what else we could do to find my wallet.

The driver then told us that the bus we were on was unlikely to come back down this route since blablablabla which I didn’t understand but bottom line, he said it wouldn’t help to just stand and wait by the bus stop and he advised that we call the bus depot. And so we got the number from him and now all we need is a phone, cos Krizy’s phone’s got no credit. O_o

And since there’s no pay phone around, we decided to just stop by the Underwater World place to ask if we could borrow their phone. The guy was nice enough to say yes and so we tried to call the bus depot, only to no avail/help since the Lost and Found department wouldn’t pick up the phone. Seriously, by then I was already freaking out like mad, cos although there weren’t any LOSE IT AND U SHALL DIE items in my wallet, there were my credit cards and shit that would have been a whole lot of HASSLE to replace, not to mention the amount of cash in it (about a hundred NZD). (And remember this wallet incident, cos it’s critical to what happens the next day in the Australian airport…)

Anyway, since we couldn’t get the bus depot to answer their phone, Krizy suggested that we go home for the day and call them again from home. There’s nothing else we could do anyway so I agreed. It was then when the guy at the counter said “If it makes you feel any better, you can go in for free.” O_o;; That… was very nice of him. It did make me feel better just to hear him say that but I was entirely in no mood to have fun when my wallet’s still missing, so we turned down the offer and left.

So we went back to the bus stop and waited for the next bus to come… but it was delayed. So we waited a while longer and when the bus finally came… I was god bless surprised to see that it was that driver from the bus I lost my wallet in, which means jackpot. O_O!! And the next unbelievably lucky thing is, someone actually found the wallet and was honest and nice enough to turn it in to the bus driver, who then returned it to me after confirming that it belonged to me. @_@!!! *DIES IN HAPPINESS*  WHAT LUCK AND BLESSING!!

SO!! I got my mood back and we hopped back to the Underwater World to resume with our plan for the day. We told the guy at the counter that we’ve found our wallet and that we’ve come to visit the underwater world and was going to take out our monies when he said “It’s okay, you can go in for free.” O_O!!!! I felt super lucky and blessed but at the same time I felt a little bad if we could get in for free just like that. Also, I wasn’t sure if he thought we came back because he said before we could go in for free, because I think he totally didn’t know that it was originally our plan to come here anyway. >_<! And SO!! That’s how we got in for free!! Wahahahaha!! What an ordeal!!

And so we went to the underwater world, which was actually pretty small. Okay, we saw penguins, quite a lot of them, and I took some pictures of them from the er… ‘automated-car’ thingies that you can ride on. What do you call those things anyway?? >_>; Some of the penguins had babies and they were cute, although it was only later when I noticed so the photos I took didn’t really have the babies in them.

Then there was the actual underwater world place where you stand on conveyor belts (and become sushi? =P) so you can look at the fish around you as you pass through the er… tunnel thing. I didn’t take any pictures there so er… too bad. >_>;

Anyway, to cut things short, there were a number of different marine species including the lionfish, eel, holy giant crayfish, seahorse, octopus, piranha, stonefish, stingray etc. We didn’t look around for too long before we leave. >_>; And for that I’m actually glad we got in for free cos that really didn’t last long at all. ^_^;;

And so we were going to catch the bus to go back to town but annoying just just had to happen. The bus was late, for FIFTY MINUTES. I was getting SOOOO pissed off having to wait for a bus for THAT LONG. UURRGH!@#$%^&* But anyway, it did come at the very end =_=### and we rode it back to town for dinner and the arcade, again. =P

This time in the arcade, we actually tried out Drum Mania for the first time. It was actually really fun, although it gets annoying when someone else plays the other Drum Mania machine next to you and now you can’t hear your own song and so you fail. I’ll be sure to try that out again in the arcade here in Singapore sometime.

This time, instead of going home by bus, Krizy had her father come pick us up instead. And before we went home, her father took us for a drive around the place and across Harbour Bridge, and then we ended up back around the Underwater World area, only further, to see the city lights from there. The moon was really bright and big that night too. Then, we stopped by a car park, got some ice cream and ate in the car before we drove home. I guess that concludes the whole of my actual trip to New Zealand since Day 14’s blog entry wouldn’t be about the trip anymore but rather something else.

In any case, it had been tons of fun, although none of the places I went to in New Zealand beat the fun from just hanging out and playing with Krizy. ^_^ After all, you’re the reason I went there! ^__^!! *HUGS* Thank you so much for having me there and having to take care of me for 2 full weeks! >_<!! It was lotsa lotsa fun!! EHARGH!! XD!!! Now, it’ll be YOUR turn to come to Singapore! MWAHAHAHAHHAAA!!

Coming soon...