Recharging the Batteries

Holidays and travelling can be many things. One can go somewhere for relaxation, or for adventure, to party or pamper, to discover new experiences or revisit favourite places. There seems to be no end of reasons for going somewhere. However, on coming back home, we are all hoping to be invigorated from our holiday experience and ready to jump back into normal life with a refreshed outlook.

This last week I've spent time in the southern island of New Zealand. I've been there before, and visited places both new to me and where I'd travelled before. I went with my lovely wife Caroline, and our friends Nick and Zoe, spending a week in Queenstown, with an overnight excursion to Milford Sound. The point of the holiday for me was to relax, walk a bit, see some of the most beautiful landscape in the world (and cleanest air and water), and spend quality time with those people I most value.

It's less than 4 hours flight to New Zealand, and we stayed in a lakeside apartment. The view from our apartment was already refreshing.

The view from our apartment

 We arrived on Nick and Zoe's anniversary which was a nice touch. It meant heading to town and a meal on Saturday night. The biggest noticeable difference between Melbourne and Queenstown is the amount of people and traffic. Even Saturday night in Queenstown was a gentle experience with no trouble finding parking or a place to eat. A week without queues or traffic jams was indeed a refreshing experience.

Anniversary couple, Nick and Zoe at Milford Sound

Queenstown is an adventure playground for those who are that way inclined. You can ski, bungy, canyon jump, white water raft, climb, mountain bike, jet boat etc. I must admit that I'm not into that sort of thing, but it doesn't stop me taking in the views of those who do.

AJ Hackett Bungy platform

Shotover Jet Boat

Queenstown was only a base for us, albeit a beautiful base. We hired a small car for the week which took us to some historic and scenic places. The area became populated in the mid to late 1800's due to the discovery of gold in the Otago region. Arrowtown is a living monument to this, with a Chinese Settlement area which preserves the buildings of the early Chinese miners.

Caroline giving scale to a hut from the early Chinese settlers to Arrowtown

Arrowtown was more than just history, nestled in magnificent scenery

There is no doubt that the area is amazingly beautiful. I'd be hard pushed to decide whether Queenstown or Wanaka were more stunning, not to mention Te Anau, or the areas between these places. The mountains, lakes, rivers and forests are beautiful. However, these are eclipsed by Fjordland, the scale of the beauty I'm unable to capture in pictures. You really do have to go there to experience just how amazingly beautiful this area is. I took my second trip to Milford Sound and was just as stunned as the first, perhaps even more so as the weather was completely different making the Fjord look totally different.

It was worth getting up at 5.45 am to get this view of Mitre Peak, Milford Sound

Mitre Peak, Milford Sound. Picture postcard beauty

So am I recharged? Absolutely! It was just the break that I needed. A week of losing oneself in a pristine environment to come out the other end ready to take on the world. Highly recommended!

Connected ramblings

Are you one of those people who are trying to find connections between things that happen, meanings or rationale? I guess I am. It is bizarre really, taking into account that I am vehemently against ideas of predetermination which mean that I don't believe in luck, fate or doom. In fact, it really annoys Caroline, my long suffering wife, when things just seem to fall into place. As an example, last year during our driving holiday around the USA, we had a day in Yellowstone. The drive and walks were wonderful, and we came close to amazing wildlife such as buffalo and pronghorn deer. On our way out of Yellowstone, we saw a car stopped on the side of the road, and so we thought we'd slow to see if the passengers had found something interesting to look at. Near to the road was a beautiful stag elk, grazing. We were just about getting ready to pull off when his head shot up, and we sprang off. And the next thing we heard was the unmistakeable howling of a nearby pack of wolves. The sound charged the air, and the wonder of hearing the wolves was exacerbated by the elemental fear that the howling puts through you. Caroline thanks her lucky start for that moment, while I was glad to be in the right place at the right time.

I was so happy to hear from one of my very best friends from England a few days ago. When one emigrates, it is so easy to get on with the new life and leave the old one behind. I guess that I have been guilty of that throughout my life. I left school, and moved from home to university, keeping in touch with virtually no one from that time (now there is only one left, and I only talk to John infrequently). After leaving university I travelled (bummed about) a bit before finally settling in Coventry. I lost contact with my university friends, only to start regaining contact recently through social media. Now that I've moved on again, I seem to have left many of the friends behind who I spent time with in Coventry. It's not that I don't think about these people, and often my mind will draw back to a moment in the past when something happened and someone who I haven't seen for ages comes to mind. When my great friend Mick contacted me through Facebook, it was really good, and I was able to catch up with him about times we spent together, and the laughs we had. I'm sure there will be more laughs and reminiscences to come. In fact I've just remembered a weekend we spent away in the somewhat less than salubrious setting of Hartlepool. OMG, there are some memories that could be better left locked away :D

I learned today that Robin Williams has died at the sadly young age of 63. While I was never a huge fan of Robin Williams, there is one movie that will stay with me for a long time, and that was partly due to the movie, and partly because I love the novel. The World According to Garp is a moving film from an equally moving book. It is a story that deals with deep themes such as sexuality and the inevitability of death. I must make the effort to see the film and read the book again. In that case Robin William's death will have influenced me, as I'm sure it has affected millions of other people.

I currently have a mass of books sitting on the shelf waiting to be read. There's a combination of genre and a mix of authors who I've read before, and who are new to me. There are even some books waiting to be read again. I lent out a copy of Joanne Harris's "Blackberry Wine" to our best friends in Australia, Nick and Zoe, and when I got home, I felt like reading it again. Bizarre! But then again, I remember reading it and thinking, 'this is like nothing I've ever read before'! I mean, how many novels are narrated by a bottle of wine? I mean, using death to narrate "The Book Thief" was great, but no greater than Harris's vintage. I guess it was books such as Blackberry Wine and The World According to Garp that took me away from reading mystery, or fantasy fiction, not that I've stopped reading those genre. I now read anything and everything....except horror, I guess.

It's been cold recently in Melbourne, and this always makes me think about trips away on holiday for some reason. Of course, we're always content when the weather is good outside. But the weird thing is that I'm heading to the south island of new Zealand where it's likely to be colder than it is here. Never mind, there will be plenty to see and the breathtaking beauty of New Zealand should be enough to recharge the batteries. The plan is to see this winter through, experience New Zealand, and then start a mad fitness drive through the spring and into the summer. So it should be back to writing occasionally about running. It's important that I start a fitness regime, as diabetes runs through both sides of my family. Funnily enough, the first time I really took tor running was in my mid 30's, which coincided with about the time that I was first reading novels such as the World According to Garp, and Blackberry Wine.

See, it's all connected, or I think too much...

Autumn Update

Inspirational words on the pavement in Port Melbourne

It's been over a month since I posted last, and an explanation is, I think, required. Simply put, I've been working like a dog and have been too tired to write this blog. My 9-5 job (more like 8-8 at the moment) as a chess coach has been extended to some managerial duties and has seen me putting in long hours. As well as that I've started playing chess again, and have tried to put some work into that. All told, these factors have pushed this blog to the side for the past month. Well, I see some light at the end of the tunnel, so I'm hoping to be able to update this blog a bit more regularly (though I've said this before).

Firstly, I will explain to the chess playing readers that this post will have nothing to do with chess. I am planning to blog about my feelings and experiences of coming back to chess after a year off, but this probably won't be until Tuesday. No, this is a post about things non-chess that interest me. It won't be in any order. Rather, I'll just allow my murky mind to wander over things which have come up in the last month. A couple of weeks ago, after the excessive heat of late January and early February, Caroline and I headed down to Port Melbourne to see the Queen Mary 2. It really is a magnificent sight, even from the outside. Compared to other ships that dock in Melbourne, it is absolutely huge. I've never been on the ship, but I saw a great blog post which shows the interior pretty well.

Queen Mary 2 dwarfing Port Melbourne

Queen Mary 2

The QM2, originally from Southampton changed its registry to Hamilton, Bermuda to allow on-board weddings.

I must admit that my work involves perspiration rather than inspiration. For inspiration I look at life around me. My life in Melbourne is great, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to travel to new places. Next week, for example, I'll be off to Hong Kong for a week (more about that soon), and Caroline and I are already planning trips in the future. Meanwhile, I start work at 8 am Tuesday to Friday, and a bonus is travelling to work and seeing the sunrise balloon trips over the city.

Low flying balloon dominating the Kew skyline

I saw this one landing, probably in the grounds of Xavier College in Hawthorn

To be honest, it doesn't take much to brighten my day. I love reading, though I was saying only earlier today that I find it hard to read non fictional subjects, probably because I read so much technical, historical and biographical works on chess. But I am an avid fiction reader, and always have a novel with me. There are times during the week that I just have to drop into a cafe and spend half an hour getting lost in a novel while drinking a long black coffee.

It is easy to take for granted just how good life is for us in Melbourne. I arrived here 9 years and 1 day ago, and to some extent it still feels like a holiday. That doesn't mean I'm not settled, or that I want to return to the UK. No, this is my home, but the move, the emigration, was an amazing, inspirational boost to my life. Today Caroline and I spent the early part of the day with our great friends Nick and Zoe. Nick had recently been back to England sadly because of the death of his father. The huge distance from here to our relatives is the only down side of living in Melbourne and the advent of the internet social networks and communications has been a godsend to many expats far from their place of birth. Both Caroline and I, and Nick and Zoe have plans to visit the UK next year. Nick's recent trip was a necessary one that most expats dread, and I was happy to see him in good spirits today. In fact, he brought back some interesting mementos from his father, including an original membership book of the "Ancient Order of Froth Blowers". The AOFB was a charitable organsation from the 1920's and 1930's which I'd never heard of before. After reading about the AOFB, it seems that it was a decent sized thing in the late 1920's, and it even made it into a poem by John Betjeman:

I started a rag in Putney at our Frothblower's Branch down there;
We got in a damn'd old lorry and drove to Trafalgar Square;
And we each had a couple of toy balloons and made the hell of a din,
And I saw a bobby at Parson's Green who looked like running us in.

Somehow it seems fitting that something which displays such British qualities as charity, humour and drinking should appeal to the popular Poet Laureate. Anyway, thanks to Nick, here's the opening page of the booklet that members of the AOFB received.