mount wellington and other stories

wow...so much has been happening. but every time i get home i feel extremely lazy to blog. that coupled with the fact that internet here is quite unpredictable, as unpredictable as the weather here in Auckland...:)

Click on photos for larger size.
anyway, first things first. I went on my little own adventure up Mt Wellington, this mountain near my place which is actually a dead volcanic crater. I located it on Google Earth and made my way there on Friday morning. it's about 3-4 km away and it took me about 35 minutes on foot, that including all the photo opportunity stops i took. The mountain was really beautiful..
The view of Auckland city was quite magnificent, and i won't be surprised if i find myself lugging all my books and hitting the summit during my study break. I can't believe i live so near a mountain! It was the sort of place that would tempt you to break into song at the very top of the world going "The hills are aliveeeeeeeee!" =)
The cows in this pic were HUGE and black and i could've sworn one of them wasn't too pleased with me. It was lying down by the path and as i wanted to cross it, the cow got up and stared at me. I got a bit cautious, so i texted Ben and here's how the text conversation went:

Me: Hey Ben, do cows bite?
Ben: No, but it depends. I supposed they don't bite like horses do, but i'm sure they can bite if they want to.
Me: oh, coz i'm atop Mt Wellington and this cow's staring at me. i'm scared. haha...
Ben: haha cool. well, have a staring competition!

i did. the cow stared square into my eyes, and mooooooed at me. i did a 180 degree turn on my heels and scampered off the other way. hey, when ure all alone on a mountain you find that your courage is halved. at least mine did.

anyway, along the way i saw many shops and supermarkets. Rebel sport is a HUGE outdoor sports gear place and it's got the coolest sports gear on discount! ah, to be rich and have spending power!

At night i met Irvin and Abigail for dinner! and they both brought along their other halves. so I brought Shermayne! =) it was a great dinner, best i've had so far because of the chatter and subang jaya talk. Irvin's girl, Steph, is from DJ school and she knows Yuh Huey! and Abigail's man, Alex, is from Seafield and he knows Khai Ron and Charles and co! haha, what a wonderful dinner it turned out to be. :)I followed Shermayne and her friends to some of the night spots in the city after dinner, which really isn't much. We hopped around, and finally settled on a nice Mexican pub where people smoked outdoors and danced salsa indoors. I kinda like that place, except this old man kept asking us to go dance. I was in no mood to salsa..haha...

Saturday (yesterday), i spent half the day moping around the house coz Shermayne was out and the internet was down. Thank God she came home a little after lunch and we started making stuff! I learned how to make ondeh-ondeh and kiuh bingkar. It's really easy!
At night we went to this pot luck party that her friend hosted because they just ended their Malaysian uni games called Bersatu and they came out first. :) there was a LOT of food. we even got to bring home a whole chicken for our dinner! whoopee! :)

yup, that sums up my first week here in Auckland. Class starts tomorrow, which in the beginning i couldn't wait for it to start. But now i'm kinda hoping i can laze around a bit more. :) hehe...

yup, Auckland's turning out pretty great. :)

Click here for more photos of Mt Wellington.