Saturday 20th December - A bit of planning

A nice morning and had little planned for the day except for our normal walk.

Over the past week we have been reviewing our travel plans and particularly our view that perhaps we should break our journey in Hong Kong on the way back to London. Earlier in the week we had spoken to Air New Zealand and the lady kindly informed us that a change of flight would only be an administration fee of NZ 50.00 (around £15.00 per ticket) and so we contacted a friend in Hong Kong to see if they could put us up for a couple of nights to which they agreed immediately. We had requested Air NZ to look at changing our tickets but when we spoke to them to finally confirm the change of flights etc it all went very wrong.

It wasn’t only the NZ 50.00 per ticket we would have to pay but also another £ 150.00 per ticket plus Hong Kong Airport taxes and because we would end up travelling on a different day of the week than we originally planned then a new fare structure would apply and that was likely to be several thousands per person. So we have given up the idea to change our flights and will travel back as planned on the through flight and land at Heathrow at 1400 hrs on 10 March. The same evening Jennifer is going to ballet providing she can still stand.

In the meantime we have booked our flights back from Kaitaia to Auckland on a twin propeller aircraft; it takes 45 minutes as against five hours to drive and will give us time to count our fingers before the London flight departs on its way via Hong Kong. It’s a bit strange on this ticket thing, we actually go to Hong Kong and we have to get off the aircraft by law, but if we want to get off and stay a bit longer we get screwed for extra money.

We are also planning our trip to the South island and will have about five weeks from leaving here and returning to see Brian and Sheila before we depart to UK.

Out of nowhere, late this afternoon, the sky went dark and we had some heavy rain where did that come from.

We have noticed from the News headlines this morning that the Chairman of the Allied Irish Bank and some of his colleagues were using the bank for their own purposes over the past seven years as a piggybank to the tune of 150 million Euros. It makes you wonder about the quality of government control, the Bank Auditors and bank staff in general; surely someone knew this was going on and this is on top of the Bernie (Madoff with the money affair) hedge fund guy in USA.

I find this very irritating as the people who have to cover these losses are the general public through taxation. I strongly recommend the return of the death penalty for this type of event as it ruins so many peoples lives. And why are people and Banks so stupid enough to put money in a hedge fund which was showing massive profits of 125 % you know Christmas does not come every day. One wise investment banker said, we looked at investing in it, but it seemed too good to be true.

In view of the above it makes you wonder what is going on. Tonight I tried to transfer £1500.00 from my Lloyds Internet account to my current account and it was blocked because their system recognised that the pc I.P address was not UK. This is not the first time this has happened. They waste millions and then stop me transferring a pittance within accounts- idiots.

Down here in NZ, somebody ripped off a local council for NZ$ 16 million for computer services. They were charging for a program that really did not exist and kept on putting in invoices which the council paid. Needless to say the invoices were approved by the Council chief who just so happened to be co director of the computer company providing the services.

Get of your hobby horse Noel.

Anyway back to reality. This evening Jennifer cooked snapper fried in olive oil and drizzled with Soya sauce. Together with a light salad

it was a lovely meal. Last night Noel cooked the T-Bone steaks on the griddle with a pan full off onions, mushrooms and tomatoes and together with some lettuce also made for a good meal.

The local paper arrived today and the adverts are unlike the local paper in Weybridge which has bicycles, cars, old furniture and personal services by a nice lady who comes to your house.

Here, we have fishing equipment, boats, car repairs and livestock. Animals can be cheap and one advert was selling piglets at NZ50.00 per animal (around fourteen pounds in real money). So, we have purchased 50 of these darling little piglets as Christmas gift for our friends. They should arrive by boat just in time for New Years Eve.

See you tomorrow