I like dodgy Chinese delivery men

I really should re-phrase that title, but it's basically true. This time yesterday I was sitting in the front of a large truck trying to speak in Chinlish with a delivery man who had wanted to hide Sha under a tarpaulin in the back of the truck. Sha and I had gone to IKEA - The World's Most Unromantic Store - to buy a bed. What a surprise, the bed that we had chosen was not in stock. So we went and watched Harry Potter instead. After the film, Sha with her rather impressive sixth sense (or with some magic that she'd picked up from the film) decided that the bed did exist and went storming back into IKEA. It then turned out that they had plenty in stock!

So we bought the bed. When I returned from checking that we had all the bits, I discovered that Sha had found the dodgy Chinese delivery guy and they had struck a deal. He'd drive me home and carry all the bits into the house. Very efficient!

Today, my sixth sense didn't work so well. We had taken the train to a station close to the Olympic Park and I confidently convinced Sha that I knew the direction. I didn't. Amazingly we ended up at IKEA again (after about a 30 minute walk in the heat). We finally found the park and rented a tandem. That was fun!! We went hurtling around the mangroves, dodged the pelicans and got very hot.

I'm now cooking Sha her first Yorkshire Puddings.

Oh, we've signed up to get married in Sydney. 23 days to go! The ceremony will be next year in China. I hope that everyone is coming!

Apparently I have to add that we cut Tuan Tuan and Baozi's nails this morning. I have a huge guinea-pig induced scar on my arm.

Day 4: in Wellington and back to Sydney

I've just bought a book "Make the most of your time on Earth". It is full of exciting and adventurous things to do around the World. It dedicates an entire page to Wellington's Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand. Luckily Sha and I visited Te Papa on our final day and we're so glad that we did. It's an amazing museum. It even has a sheep simulator where you get to be a sheep for as long as you like. I ate some grass. The museum is wonderfully set out. You don't know what you'll find around the next corner. Maybe a life-size whale heart, maybe the only giant squid on display anywhere in the World, a huge canoe or maybe a building that shakes as if you're experiencing an Earthquake ... In fact they had a huge earthquake exhibition on and were handing out bags and checklists so that you'd know what to do in an Earthquake. Unfortunately a lot of the visitors seemed to be from Christchurch. I heard one complaining that he'd come all the way to Wellington to get away from Earthquakes and they put a "damn exhibition on".

After a Malaysian lunch we took a taxi back to the airport (which apart from the ridiculous $25 departure charge per person) was fine. Then we flew back to Sydney on Air New Zealand. What an airline!! Phenomenal food and service and the funniest safety video that I've ever seen. We didn't get the nude air hostess safety video, but instead got the All Blacks version (do watch this link)!

Finally we got home and recovered the guinea pigs. Sarah had given them a hair cut. We also discovered the huge mangoes that are now everywhere in Sydney!