Wednesday

Wednesday was that very rare day – a day off and in Auckland. I had meetings Tuesday and Thursday in Auckland, so the cheaper and more logicial option was to stay up. It was great to, for once, not be rushing from meeting to meeting and then to a plane.

Managed to catch up with an impressive number of people that day. Started with a random encounter with Craig Ranapia at Borders at 1 pm. Then had a coffee with an insolent chap a couple of hours later at 3 pm and then headed up to Sky City to meet the infamous Chuck Bird at 4.

An hour later at 5 off to a K Road pub for what I though was a small group – meeting Darren G plus two of the Sir H’s crowd – Adolf and Gooner. But also got joined by David W and a Rob and Michael from NZBC who were in the neighbourhood. Finally Phil U from Whoar also joined us so we had a very balanced group. Was good to put faces to names.

After a couple of hours at the pub then headed to Kingsland for dinner with Claire, Lin, Simon and a few others. Can highly recommend Canton for a good feed. We then headed next door for dessert and drinks. The only downside was getting there as my taxi driver (Singh3) not only did not know where Canton Restaurant was, he did not know where New North Road was and eventually admitted he did not know where Kinglsand even was. I will fire a letter off to LTSA iof I have the time. I mean not knowing a street is one thing, but not knowing an entire suburb!!

Then headed into town and ended up drinking with a couple of very sociable students in their apartment for many an hour, finally making it back to the Hyatt at 4 am.

A long, but very enjoyable day.