Visual indulgence

Kiwi Holiday

Finally found time to edit and caption the photos so here they are. Whether or not this is necessary, I'd like to request that you excuse the lack of interesting photos. There was so much to see and shoot, but being a first-timer to NZ, I had to take the chance to gawk around first. (I still haven't gotten round to Part II of Cultural Immersion yet; that'll come...eventually.)

Cultural immersion, part 1

Kia ora. Currently in NZ now. The weather's being too wintery for a summer (50ish currently). I hope it picks up soon for swimming; I want to break in my new boardies. Praying that this sun at the moment will last us until Marlborough Sounds.

This is a part 1 because 1, I need to leave soon for grocery shopping and 2, I don't want to sit here blogging in a small hostel office with Blogger's unrestrained glory displayed on a 19" monitor. Yes, I'm conscious like that. Did write a few entries in my paper journal, so I'll probably digitise it in the coming weeks.

All in all, I am well. I've survived Britishy food (quite missing my Japanese gourmet, oy) and I'm honestly missing people back home. It's probably homesickness; it is. But I should appreciate both (or all) worlds. At least there isn't a language barrier...um, sort of. :P Will explain that later.

Part 2 to come. Pictures later as well.

Shameless vanity

To further spruce this already visually appealing blog, I've added a travel map to the bottom of this blog. You can see where I've already been and have lived. I've managed to mark all the places I've touched ground on, save for a few preliminary markers (the "places I want to visit" ones) whose status will change to "have visited" after actually visiting them. A dotted trail leading to the South Pacific will be added very soon. Much happiness, thank God.

This is the first time I've used this online map so I'm giving it a chance. It may look cool now but time will test its usefulness. I wish it'd show alt text on mouse-overs. ('Course, with Internet Explorer being a pain in the confounded posterior, the map causes my layout to go screwy for IE users. That means the map is probably at the bottom of this page instead of at the right where it's supposed to be. That is why you use Firefox, people. /shakes a stern finger.) Although IE 7.0 came out, and improved enough to display my page properly, I still favour FireFox. Cue sagely nod.