Another long day

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  Auckland, North Island, New Zealand
Friday, February 5, 2010

Despite my alarm not going off - these hotel clocks seemingly have a mind of their own - I managed to wake up just in time to grab my breakfast before heading over to Takapuna again.  It's a really pleasant drive and I get to go over the harbour bridge, affording me nice views of the city.   I was presenting at the 9am session, so was at least alert when I got there.  The session went really well, even better than in Australia, and  by the time we broke for lunch I was really confident of the work being done in NZ.

Lunch was a nice fruit salad for me, before saying my goodbyes to the conference delegates and my colleagues.  I was not required at the afternoon sessions so I headed back to the city.  I dropped off my car and went down to the harbour to see if I could get my boat trip.  Unfortunately for some reason the harbour cruise was not running - they weren't allowed near the bridge or something, but the rather cute young guy said if I wanted to I could get on the ferry boat to Stanley Island and go there and back for free.  This sounded a good idea to me, so I got myself a nice seat on the top deck and sat in the sun.  It was a 45 minute round trip, and was very relaxing.  The sun was shining and the water was calm and a lovely turquoise colour.  I was glad I had been given the option to take this ride. 

Whilst I was out one of the conference guys emailed to say he was arranging a dinner for those of us remaining in Auckland, so said to be over in Takapuna for 7pm.  This was nice, as it meant another evening of company.  I spent some more time walking around the city, before heading back up to my room to change.  I headed out at 6:30pm and only just made it as there was a lot of traffic crossing the bridge.  This time I said I was taking my car to the restaurant so Andrew came with me and the rest of them walked.  We parked the car and after spending a good 5 minutes working out how to use the stupid meter, we paid and walked over to Aubergine, the restaurant we were eating at.  The food here was really nice and there were 8 of us, so we were able to chat easily.  It was a nice evening.

By 11pm it was absolutely chucking it down with rain, so I kindly taxied half the group back to the hotel, and then came back for the rest.  I avoided the rain by using Andrew's super expensive suit jacket, which makes up for him throwing his drink over my handbag in Australia (see, what goes around comes around!).

I got back to my apartment at 1am again, so was glad I had packed my stuff up earlier.  I headed off to bed ready to be out by 10am tomorrow.

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