Entries from February 2005 ↓

Umm. Yes.

That homemade soap shop ‘Lush’ in the Old BNZ has such a strong smell – it’s pretty overpowering when you’re at Smith’s having a coffee. Today I visited offices on the third floor of the building and you could smell it quite strongly all the way up there.

I’ve booked and bought a few things on the Internet in my time but never have I had the fright I had today when cruising the Air New Zealand website. I went to the Air Dollars screen to just have a look around and see how readily available upgrade tickets on Air Dollars are. I plugged in a random date and clicked ‘Continue’ and got “Thank you for your request. The Air New Zealand Air Points centre will contact you within 24 hours to confirm your request.” YIKES!!! Nothing like loosing 900 Air Dollars on a tour! I’m sure all other times ‘Continue’ means ‘go to the next screen’ or ‘are you really really sure you want to proceed and make this purchase’ upon which you are presented with a ‘confirm’ button.

I then spent 18.25 minutes on hold with the Air Points centre (who quite rightly advised me that due to exceptionally heavy caller demand my call wouldn’t be answered for at least 5 minutes) to check that I was not going to be docked Air Dollars for a non-existent flight. The woman assured me that no Air Dollars had been redeemed. I still feel nervous though. I believe you can’t get an Air Dollar upgrade unless you have a ticketed economy ticket which I definitely don’t have so even if the Air Points Centre does contact me within 24 hours it’ll be to tell me that my request has been declined.

… strum strum … 21 hours to go …

I’m a bit frustrated with Outlook. Yesterday I had to organise 2 meetings between other people. Yes Outlook labels me as the ‘Organizer’ if you dig around and look in the schedule of invitees. My main gripes/requests for greater functionality are:

1. Without being proxy and organising the meeting on behalf of someone else (which would require normal proxy access to their calendar) I would like to be able to indicate more obviously that I am a non-attending organiser, rather than it looking like I organised the meeting. This overcomes the problem of people seeing that I organised the meeting and choosing to not accept or turn up based on who I am … in both cases I was organising on behalf of the CE but he just looks like an attendee.
   
   
   
2. I need to manually go into the appointment in my calendar and mark it as ‘free’ otherwise others looking for a slot in my diary will presume I am busy. I supposed I do need some indicator or record that I have organised a meeting but how do PA’s get on when they organise several meetings but don’t attend any of them? Their calendars must get overloaded and hard to look at with meetings all overlapping each other.

I’m one of those people that wonders how a little digger or bobcat gets onto the roof of a building for construction work, or down into a hole. In the last 6 months I’ve seen the cutest thing twice – a big digger with a little digger tied onto it’s dump bucket – lifting it to where it needs to go. I’m also one of those people that finds this cute (what kind of people are ‘those’ anyway?) But I do. In the case of the little digger getting onto the top of a building – it was a crane that lifted it.

A year ago yesterday we buried my best friend. Where has the time gone? Why her?

Random question: why don’t United Video give a receipt or similar when you hire DVDs stating the date they’re due back? Would be extremely helpful for the thousands of multi-day hires they’ve got, especially 8 days. By the time a few days have passed, the date we hired the DVDs is blurred, making the date they’re due back impossible to work out.

Probable answer: they don’t want to be helpful and remind you of the due date because they want the DVDs to be returned late, so you can be fined.

I hate fines. I never get fined.

Yep, only an anal control freak who wears full briefs would fly via helicopter out to the very exclusive Wharekauhau Lodge for lunch and manage to have a sandwich rustled up! My god it was delicious – chargrilled capsicum, tomato, basil and haloumi (cheese).

The helicopter ride was a bit nerve wracking but only 15 minutes each way so easy enough to endure – absolutely stunning views of Wellington Harbour and the south coast once I opened my eyes after going through the bumpy thermals above the Orongorongos. Must say I did feel *rather* posh and glam having the helicopter land on the lawn of the Lodge with other guests looking on and the same when landing in Wellington. Very peaceful and isolated out at the Lodge – just a handful of tourists on a bike tour but they were away on a farm visit while we had our lunch.

The whole trip took 4 hours – mind you with 1450 bottles of wine to choose from I’m not surprised!

Breath-taking view of Palliser Bay coast line:

Our private outdoor table in the courtyard:

Perhaps not so glam:

I’m going out to lunch in a helicopter! Thank goodness it’s a gorgeous day without wind. Family birthday lunch at Wharekauhau on the Wairarapa Coast.

Have found a couple more neat photos of the orange gates in Central Park – a cool aerial shot of the whole park:

and even a satellite image!