Saturday 31st January- My god what is that!

My god what is that with lights on it. No, it can’t be, but it is, it’s a set of Traffic Lights.

This is the first time we have seen Traffic Lights for almost three months as up in Northland there are none. It was a lovely morning as we headed away from Taipa down State Highway 1 all the way to Auckland. There is a new bit of toll road which we had purchased our tickets on the internet and we are glad that we did as there was a huge queue waiting to use the machines. We stopped for an early lunch at about 1145 at a little café that we have been to before with Brian and Sheila on the way up to Taipa. The quiche with salad was excellent.

Using the motorway over Auckland it took about 35 minutes from one side of the city to the other as there was little traffic, that is to us.

We arrived in Hamilton for our first night stop and stayed at the Park View Motel which was fine as we could go for a cold swim in the pool before going in to town. We wanted to go to the movies and so using the Internet we checked and booked for a new film called ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ but more of that later.

We wandered around town for a while and found a nice restaurant called ‘Tables by the River’ and the food was very nice but a little on the expensive side but we had decided to treat ourselves.

The film was excellent and a true representation of life in the slums in Bombay (new Mumbai) as Noel has been to India several times. The slums are appalling and also the way children are treated.

It’s the story of a teenager who somehow gets to appear on a TV show called ‘I want to be a Millionaire’. It follows his life in the slums from when he is about six years old and how he endures the degradation but at the same time learns a lot from it as a result of a series of incidents which finally provide the answers to the questions in the TV show. It also tracks his meeting a young girl whom as he gets older, he has to find again and eventually they meet up and no doubt get married.

It’s a riveting film and highly recommended but it is hard to watch at times. I think we may see it again sometime.

We got back to the Motel and slept pretty well apart from the odd interruption caused by drunken teenagers walking down the street and young car drivers practising their Formula One starts.