Anniversary, voting, Chinese medicine and dumplings

I've just been to see a Chinese doctor. He was about 200 years old and checked my pulse and my tongue. Apparently I'm okay. However, he is an expert on excema and so took a good look at my hands and prescribed a remedy. Walking around the dispensary afterward and noting the "deer penis" and the "Tibetan Rhubarb Tea for Hemmorrhoids", I was a tad nervous about what was in the prescription, but Sha has just translated the ingredients as: nosed pit viper grass, cyathula, plantain, manyflower glorybower, salvia, escallonia 'red dream', virgin: radix rehmanniae, phellodendron amurense, Kam tree, Health Gardenia, Dictamni and Rhizoma Imeratae. So that's all right then!

I've just discovered from a 17th Century astrologer a whole heap of interesting facts about plantain: ""The clarified juice drank for a few days helps excoriations or pains in the bowels, and distillations, of rheum from the head. It stays all manner of fluxes, even women's courses, when too abundant, and staunches the too free bleeding of wounds.
The seed is profitable against dropsey, falling-sickness, yellow jaundice and stoppings of the liver and reins."

Unfortunately searching for "nosed pit viper grass" just gives me photos of snakes.

Anyway, I haven't drunk this stuff yet. We had to walk around the City for a few hours while they prepared it. Apparently I have a weeks worth of medicine and have to drink it twice a day starting after dinner tonight.

I also voted today. Very exciting. Australian voting is, unlike places like Britain and Canada, actually fair. First, voting is compulsory so I had to wait in a long queue before I could cast my vote and second, it is based on a preferential system where you rank all the candidates. I discovered that ranking the Australian Sex Party, Communist Alliance, The Climate Sceptics and the Christian democratic party was actually really hard. Worryingly, the Australian Sex Party ended up reasonably high up on the list. A magnificent summary of the election from the Taiwanese News Service is on youtube here!!

Sha and I had an anniversary last weekend!! We've been together for one year. It seems as if a lot has happened since I met Sha in Beijing!! :) Sha was incredibly generous and bought me a posh pulsar watch. Apparently it is traditional to "give the time" to someone on their anniversary. We then went and had dinner in the revolving restaurant at the top of the huge Sydney tower. The views were spectacular. After dinner we "accidentally" got lost and found ourselves in the movie theatre where we had an immersive experience in which our chairs bounced around as we virtually flew across the Australian landscapes. Very impressive, but probably would have been better before all the food!

I also went to Perth for a few days. PULSE@Parkes went really well and Rob and I managed to get some work done between discovering the various pubs and restaurants.

Time to eat some dumplings!

Day 4 in New Zealand

我有一个未婚妻!! 很好! 我的未婚妻叫莎莎

On the fourth day of our holiday we drove out to find the Christchurch gondola. After stopping in a small French cafe for breakfast and after getting a little lost we managed to find the gondola. I promised not to make it swing from side to side and up we went! The gondola rises 500m above sea level and provides spectacular views of the ocean, Christchurch and the Southern Alps. It took us to a ridge of a crater produced by a huge volcanic eruption. The volcano is now extinct.

We then went for a short walk in the ice around the rim of the crater.

After a "time travel experience" and a coffee we headed back down and then unfortunately had to drive back to the airport. We got lost.

The flight back was as spectacular as ever. We had a perfectly clear view as we flew over the mountains and then it got extremely bumpy. I'm glad to report that Sha wasn't sick, but it was very close!

What a holiday!! :)

Day 3 in New Zealand: Sha's birthday

Hey ... I'm engaged. I've now been with Sha for exactly 1 year!! We celebrated today by having a house inspection for termites and then having dinner in the revolving restaurant on the top of the Sydney tower.

Day 3 in New Zealand was Sha's birthday! She's now approximately 22 years old (as she has been for a few birthdays now). We set out early in the morning to try and find some breakfast in Westport. We did. The bacon was about the size of a gammon steak. Feeling rather full we headed off to try and find the ocean. This shouldn't have been too hard as Westport is a port on the sea, but Sha was navigating and so we got lost. We ended up on a quiet dirt road which allowed Sha to have a go driving until we stopped next to a field to have a photograph with a large dog called Yeti ("because he has 7 toes").

Finally we found the ocean and drove down to the end of the pier. After a rather nerve wracking 100-point turn to face the other direction we headed back toward the mountains. We hoped that the Lewis Pass through the mountains would be open!

The drive started through the Buller Gorge: "Scene of earthquakes, floods and home to hundreds of transient workers during goldmining times, the gorge has been a challenge to horsemen, coach drivers, roadmakers and bridge builders". It's certainly fun to drive along!

Then we started getting back into the high snow-capped mountains. But the road was clear! Although it did start snowing for a little while.

After a very long drive through the mountains and with the weather starting to look rather dramatic we pulled up in Hamner Springs for lunch. Another hour or so of driving got us to the other side of the country and we ran onto a beach on the Pacific coast!! Then we got completely lost in the one-way streets in Christchurch. We ended up by accident at a hotel and found that we couldn't do a U-turn and so simply stayed there for the night. It was a great hotel!! We were on the 23rd floor and had a huge window sill which we sat on eating Sha's birthday cake and watching the great views!

Day 2 in New Zealand: up the coast

Did I mention that I was engaged? Engaged to 莎莎. I got very upset last night. I was trying to say the word "coin" in Chinese. Apparently it is yingbi which seems to be completely impossible to say.

After getting off the train in Greymouth, eating our huge lunch and discovering that the road back to Christchurch was blocked with snow we started driving north. Wow, that was a spectacular coast line! I had just asked Sha to find me a seal when she spotted a baby one bounding across the sand into the sea. We didn't travel very fast as we seemed to stop after each corner to jump out of the car to get a better view of the scenery. It wasn't possible to get a good view whilst driving as I was concentrating on the rather windy road (which happens to be the only road on the West Coast of the South Island).

We stopped at Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks! According to wikipedia the "Pancake Rocks are a heavily eroded limestone area where the sea bursts though a number of vertical blowholes during high tides. Together with the 'pancake'-layering of the limestone (created by immense pressure on alternating hard and soft layers of marine creatures and plant sediments)". We also saw lots of Nikau Palms which are "the most southern naturally growing palm in the world".

We continued North, past signs warning us of penguins, wekas and deer. We saw lots of deers, a few wekas and no penguins. However, we did come across a huge seal colony. It smelt of fish. There were young seals frolicking in a small rock pool and the adult seals sitting around looking very relaxed.

In the evening we arrived in Westport. There's not much in Westport. We found a great motel (the Spa Motel) which provided a huge spa in the room and then went out to explore the town. We found some strange fruit in the supermarket and bought Sha a candle for her birthday. Finally we ended up in the Denniston Dog which was obviously proud of the local mining community. All the photos on the wall were of huge diggers (Alexander would have loved it).

Day 2 in New Zealand: The Train to Greymouth

Did I mention that I'm engaged? Engaged to Sha Sha!! :) We woke very early on the second day of our holiday (ridiculously early given the time difference between Sydney and Christchurch). It was raining hard. We checked out of the hotel, gave Gary a final stroke and jumped into a taxi to the train station. We got on the TranzAlpine which goes from Christchurch on the Pacific ocean to Greymouth on the Tasman. Between the two towns the train crosses the spectacular Southern Alps and then through the rain forest. It's wonderful. The rain stopped somewhere high in the mountains and we went through some patches of snow. However, the sky suddenly cleared and we had incredible views of the snow covered mountains. (We discovered later that a huge snow storm was following us which completely blocked the roads.)

The guard on the train provided a running commentary. He had been working on the New Zealand trains for the last 40 years or so and was sad to see the end of the steam locomotives. Apparently they had a job getting up the mountains, but the diesel trains are even worse because they overheat in the tunnels.

On arrival in Greymouth we picked up the keys for our hire car, discovered that all the roads were under thick snow and so went to have a huge lunch in the local pub. In the afternoon we drove North along the coast trying to find a way back through the mountains!