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I’m a girl with a Latitude.

June 9, 2009 By View Comments

While I was making my way through New Zealand I  have to say Google Map rocks, mostly. The map failed in areas outside the cities due to a lack of 3G coverage especially in isolated areas or where there were mountains cutting off 3G signals. Good thing I wasn’t driving and needed to depend on a GPS device.

In areas where there were  3G signals, I’ve been having fun updating my location on Google Latitude so friends back home could see which city I was heading into so they could tell me not to miss the oysters in Invercargill or the sights and sounds of Queenstown. It was delayed crowdsourcing with the help of Google Latitude. And since I was traveling alone, it was good to keep friends and family informed in case I don’t reach a destination by the time I said I would. Haven’t you heard of undead rabid sheeps in the deep south of New Zealand? lol. I was more worried the bus I was in might skid off the road coming down a mountain and should that happen, may 3G help us all.

If you have a phone with GPS and a data plan, download Google Maps for mobile from your phone at http://m.google.com/maps or http://maps.google.com.

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Invercargill

June 9, 2009 By View Comments

I can see why this city isn’t on the tourist map. There’s nothing here, really nothing. My 2 hour bus ride from Queenstown was fun though. Shared the bus with only one other passenger who was an old lady called Mrs. Forbes. Max, the bus driver told me when he picked me up in Queenstown that Mrs. Forbes has Alzheimers and she has been taking the bus to Invercargill everyday and it’s always a new trip for her. She’s the bus company’s best customer though and the bus picks her up at her home. If she’s not going to Invercargill she’ll be going to Wanaka. Seems she has been a fixture on this route that anyone who has taken the Wanaka Connexion from Queenstown to Invercargill or Wanaka or from those towns to Queenstown would no doubt have met her on the bus. Max was great, other than meeting new people and driving them from city to city, he is also an accomplished musician with a record to his name. We had a great time chatting so the trip felt really short.

I stayed at the Living Space and rented a car in Invercargill. Called Pegasus first which was recommended by the hotel and got a guy on the line who said “I’m really busy right now, can’t help you, good bye.” I was like, WTF kind of service was that? Shocked I turned to the net and found Rent-A-Dent. Lady there was great, she was so friendly. She picked me up from the hotel and brought me to their office at the airport. The paperwork was fast and I was out of there in less than 5 minutes. She knew I wanted to catch a sunset and it was getting late. When I saw the car, it really had a lot of dents, lol. Who cares, I like the price which was half of what the international rental car companies were charging. I quickly drove south to Bluff and caught a beautiful sunset there. Bluff was another one-street (of stores) town famous for its oysters.  The lady at the hotel earlier recommended I try the Anchorage Restaurant in Bluff for the oysters. Another disappointment – no more oysters even though it was oyster season. I headed back to Invercargill.

bluff sunset

Sunset in Bluff

This time, the lady at the hotel recommended a restaurant in the city where I might find Bluff Oysters. A bit north of where we were was a nice little restaurant called Flanagan’s and they serve oysters in 4 different ways. This time, the lady called ahead for me to make sure they have oysters. So I went and had their natural and Kilpatrick oysters (grilled in Worcester sauce and topped with little strips of bacon). They were yummy. Very fresh too. The restaurant felt a bit eerie to me though, some might enjoy the lighting and the romantic mood it’s supposed to give but I had goose bumps when I walked into the place. I was also the only patron and a few times I felt like there were invisible diners around me. I left as soon as I was done.

My timing to Invercargill couldn’t be worse. I checked on the net and found that there will be little to no sunspot activity and thus no Aurora Australis for the duration of my stay. I wasn’t totally disappointed although my main purpose for coming this far was for the Aurora. New Zealand had been great to me so far – perfect weather and all. I guess she knew I wouldn’t be able to see the Aurora so she made everything else better.

The next day

Seashells on the Invercargill Seashore

Seashells on the Invercargill Seashore

I had a whole day to burn so I gave myself a project like an Amazing Race activity. The beach was only 15 mins away so I went and picked up some shells. Then I took the shells to a hardware store called E. Hayes & Sons Limited and told the guys there I needed to turn the shells into powder or a form close to it. They were not very creative when it comes to a challenge like this but boy were they helpful. After shaking my head at the hammers, a guy recommended I try farm supplies stores like CRT and RD1 and he pointed them out on a map for me. They don’t do it there unfortunately but the guy at RD1 suggested a stone grinder (Allied Materials) and an oyster wholesaler (Barnes – super cheap oysters too). I went to all of them and spoke to everyone. LOL. None had answers and all were curious to know why which I said was for an art project. I do know how to turn shells into dust but I was bored and wanted someone to talk to and the driving around helped me discover Invercargill and its people a little better. In between all this, I took a break for lunch at the museum and saw that 100 year old Tuatara Lizard Max was telling me about.

By the way, E. Hayes and Sons hardware store is also an old motorbike museum and proudly displays Burt Munro‘s two modified motorbikes, a Velocette and an Indian Scout which was driven by him to claim the world speed record in 1967. That record has not been broken till this day.  In 2005, the life of Burt Munro was made into a movie starring Sir Anthony Hopkins called The World’s Fastest Indian.

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Hotel SO. Coolest hotel in the Southern Hemisphere.

June 5, 2009 By View Comments

On my recent trip to New Zealand, one hotel left me awed. It was Hotel SO in Christchurch. It was not high class but it was high tech + high touch. I think whoever designed it is brilliant. The rooms may be small but with well-placed mirrors and space saving features like a fridge doubling as a nightstand, it felt more cozy than cramped.

LobbyLobbyThe Mac LoungeMac lounge

The bed is slightly higher than average so luggage could be stashed underneath. There are no windows in most of the rooms. One out of the three nights I spent there however, I got a room with a window but it was facing a wall so there was zero view and zero sunlight. Funny I didn’t miss it at all. The lighting system in the room was great. The hotel took the science of sleeping into the lighting design for every room. This impressed me the most.

blue room

The first thing I noticed was a blue neon glow under the bed. Blue light is supposed to help you sleep. Then there are brighter colored lights located in the shower. With the bathroom’s opaque walls, it becomes one giant mood lamp when turned on. Couples may want to try red for a romantic mood, says the manual. There’s also the option of blue, violet and green.

The lights also act as an alarm clock. I set the alarm clock to wake me up at 4am and with less than 4 hours sleep, I thought I’d surely oversleep but I managed to get up 5 minutes before 4am – amazingly without a single alarm going off. The lights woke me up! It also had that magical ability of putting me to sleep once I set up sleep mode. I swear I didn’t know about these lights and what they could do until the last day. command console

I’m not one who falls asleep easily in unfamiliar places but I slept like a log at Hotel So. I wished they were in every city in New Zealand but no, only in Christchurch for now.

And here’s a video:

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Flight Attendant 2.0 1.0

April 13, 2009 By View Comments

I like to travel light, thanks to the heavy-as-a-sack-of-bricks camera. So I have my phone, MP3 player, portable game device, GPS, pseudo blackberry (I now get push mail through emoze), organizer, casual camera and video recorder all pack neatly into a Nokia N96.

Contrefaçon d'un Nokia N96
Creative Commons License photo credit: priceminister

It’s great until I get on a plane. My gizmo can’t help but look like a phone. Even though I set it to “flight mode” flight attendants would get into a frenzy at the sight of it and yells at me to switch it off. If you have an Apple iTouch, forget it also, flight attendants can’t tell the diff between that and an Apple iPhone. You’ll be inviting a lot of grief too.

Too many toys
Creative Commons License photo credit: The Ninja Monkey

Now I’m not talking about the plane taking off or landing which is an important time for everyone to pay attention. Data has shown that these times are when shit (like a bird) is most likely to hit the fan. Signals from your electrical devices might also interfere with the plane’s navigational systems. Please follow all in-flight instructions on take off and landing.

So I’ve had a few nasty experiences with flight attendants when I was plugged in to my mini jukebox. I tried to explain that it’s in flight mode only to hear them raise their voices as though I didn’t hear them the first time. I could raise my voice too but now there are laws that can get me restrained and arrested as a terrorist for screaming on a plane. Flight attendants can scream but not passengers.

A friend who’s an ex-flight attendant with the same airline I flew on told me that mobile phones in “flight mode” are allowed to operate in flights, it’s in the manual all attendants are given at flight attendant school. So why are they being such a pain to passengers like me?

Come my friends, let’s test out these airlines the next time we fly. But first, put your mobile phones in flight mode please then leave it out in the open with headphones plugged in. Share the reaction you get from your flight attendants. Please do not try this if your phone does not have flight mode.

Flight attendants these days should get with the program and understand that people are going to be reliant on little gadgets like a mobile phone that does more than make phone calls. They should familiarize themselves with mobile phones with flight mode. And if a passenger doesn’t know what’s flight mode, the flight attendant can offer to show him how to set it to flight mode. Unless the airline is a super low budget airline that charges for everything and you can’t bring on board your own entertainment like you can’t bring on board your own food and drinks.

Happy flying.

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