Jet Hag

The friendly Kiwi night guy at the little motel in Manukau (the Quality Inn) was waiting to give us the keys to our tiny but adequate one-bedroomed apartment and rental car, and help carry the luggage to our first-floor room. We finally got to bed at around 3am local time, after which Maya woke us up several times complaining that she wasn’t sleepy. After I banished her with dire threats, which I will not repeat here for fear of the fearsome Kiwi social services, we fell into a blissful sleep – only to be woken up two hours (two hours!!!) later by my bouncing children, who had decided that their afternoon nap was now over and that they were HUNGRY. After all, as Maya reminded me, the change in time zones meant that we had gone straight from breakfast on one plane to supper on the next a mere five hours later, so – horrors – we had missed lunch! I tried hard to ignore them, but Willem finally forced me to get out of bed by bringing me horrible instant coffee. Muttering darkly, I descended with as much dignity as is possible under the circumstances to the breakfast room. (Q: What do you call a woman with jet lag? A: A jet hag.) Luckily the Kiwis seem rather serious about their coffee, and I revived myself sufficiently with a nice and hot ‘flat white’ (Kiwi-speak for coffee with milk) to plan our first day with Willem.

And all in all, it was a good day. We discovered the most beautiful park right next to the motel, where I took Max running after breakfast. In addition to a vast expanse of Ireland-green lawn fringed by quaint houses with sidewalks, the park has a wide range of ubercool convoluted jungle gyms, slides and swings, and even a scooped-out skateboard ring (Max didn’t need a skateboard to ride it). And get this: it all works! Nothing is broken! And the jungle gyms are bedded in soft bark chips. It created a very good first impression of the city. Later, we went shopping. We had inadvertently sent our Auckland street map with the shipping container, but have spent so much time poring over it that we could navigate our way around very nicely. The children – evil spawn – fell asleep in the car as soon as we drove off, but that didn’t stop us stocking up on groceries (the most essential of which were the rooibos tea and a coffee plunger), getting SIM cards for our phones, meeting Lize for coffee, cruising Howick, and applying for broadband wireless Internet.

Based on my initial recon, New Zealanders do indeed love their coffee. (Another reason to stay here, yay!) Everywhere there are cute or trendy or just fast coffee shops claiming that theirs is the best in town, and, for the more plebian connoisseurs (ahem), Starbucks and Wild Bean Cafes litter the joint. (One coffee place is called ‘QuickFix’, mwahahaha). Then it was back to the park for the children (who are reacting to the change and the jet lag with slightly hysterical hyperactivity alternating with periods of dead sleep), while I turned our flat into a place we can live in for the next few weeks and concocted a rather good supper in its tiny, underequipped kitchen. Max passed out at the dinner table at 6pm, with his spaghetti fork poised halfway to his mouth, while Maya (who refused to wake up from her morning sleep and was in a foul mood when she did) is still going strong and shows no signs of adapting her circadian rhythm to anything but SA time.

Our contact numbers are: Penny +64 211 419 276 and Willem +64 211 387 602. We’re still waiting for the broadband, and when it comes I’ll download some pics. Till then, I’m gonna try get some shut-eye before I’m summoned to prepare lunch at 2am or something equally appalling. Good mor- Good night!