Maori Bling

TheJester here.
We may have accidentally OverDosed on Maori culture within the last 24 hours. We went to a hangi ( a traditional Maori dinner feast) and a hacka (warrior challenge dance with much bugged eyes and sticking-out tongues) in Rotorua yesterday.
Then today, we went to the Te Papua Museum( http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/Tepapa/), which is a bit like the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, but with a much more NZ feel. Most of the captions are dual-labelled in English and Maori. About half of the museum is dedicated to Maori cultural artifacts, which are actually pretty interesting.
The museum also had a bunch of other interesting stuff. Appearantly, NZ bugs are BIG. Like BIG BIG. There was a scale in one display, and the mouse on one end was 20grams, and the bug on the other end was 70grams. Big. Bugs. Bunsteroonie would have found this hilarious. :)
They also have some really interesting parrots that live at altitude in the mountains, and can appearantly handle snow. There was an amusing diorama with a bunch of those parrots taking apart an alpine hiker's backpack and making off with his stuff.
Interesting exhibits on plate tectonics, volcanism, and forest ecosystems as well.

Things that are different in NZ

Jester here.
They say that travel is broadening, and the point of travelling is to KNOW that you're somewhere different. In the spirit of adventure, I though I'd comment on some things that we've found that we've noticed are different than they are in the states.

Good stuff:
-food has a British twist on it, but not in the "boil it until it's grey or dead" sense of the word. Eggs and food here are generally VERY fresh, so food is quite flavorful. Also, service is quite cheerful, and it's generally NOT a tipping society, so they're this cheerful genunely by default. This is TheCleric's breakfast from this morning in Wellington. Even the EGGS are cheerful. :)
-coffee is milder and less acidic, but more muddy "brown tasting". Generally quite good. Not sure about the caffeine content. Ask us again in a few hours to see if we're still on a good caf buzz.
-Coin change is the same as in Britain: satisfyingly meaty change. Big, thick coins with crinkled edges and interesting motifs are the norm. Change that, with a slingshot, you could hunt birds with.
-New Zealanders (we were warned by one of the guidebooks) are much less stuffy and uptight than most other world cultures. The book says something like "they'll greet eveyone like old friends". What I didn't realize this extends to is that they'll also RAZZ you like old friends. We were at the Vodaphone counter, they've known us for like 30 seconds, and they were giving us heck about USA policies on Nuclear Arms, and were telling us about many Americans pretending to be Canadians. That is, they said "until you open your mouth".
-We're still getting used to the idea that we're now "the folks with the funny accents". Not only do they have an interesting accent, but they speak FAST here. And of course, they're using idioms that we're not familiar with ("Oh, you've got me on the hop there. I should know that..."). It's a lot of fun, but it means that cell phone conversations are interesting.

Not so good differences:
-Wrong-side-of-the-road driving. We've found it easier to adapt than we'd thought. Little bit of brown pants motoring early on, but otherwise do-able.
-However, there isn't more than 0.1km of straight road ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY. The drive down from Rotorua to Wellington had some switchbacks that we didn't belive were correct on the GPS maps until we drove them. Like 190 degree switchbacks with a bit of Armaco to protect you from careening off the cliff to your doom. wow. We'll have to upload the GPS tracks for our motorcycling friends.
-telecoms are insanely expensive here. They're like the US cellphone and Internet market in 1998. From TheCleric's Vodaphone pay-as-you-go plan, Cell phone rates are the same inside of NZ as they are to something like 13 other countries, including the US. Which means that the marketing people are trying to convince us that the "same low rate" of $1.30 a minute during daylight hours to call inside of NZ is a *good* thing. We've carefully NOT told them that we're used to $0.10/min cellular and $0.12 International Calling.
-this "paying by the hour for internet access" thing is a bit like metering the air. Painful, and it means that you're actually not able to SURF, so much as you have to attack the Net with a mission. $2-$10 NZD an hour seems to be the going rate. We're counting ourselves lucky that our hotel today seems to be hip enough to offer 24 hours of Net access for $15NZD, which is totally awesome.
-The real kicker is that they have the British/European cellular model of "caller pays", which is good because when someone calls us, it doesn't cost anything. The consequence, however, is that it seems all the calling card plans we can find BLOCK access from NZ cellphones, because the insane charge is reversed to them, and they won't accept the call. Which means that TheJester's calling card is totally rubbish from within NZ. Bah.

Rant on telecoms aside, we're having a great time, and really enjoying it here. We've had several moments of "Dude! We're road tripping in NEW ZEALAND" 

Mount Doom

We believe that is Mount Doom behind us. Shortly after this picgture was taken I attempted to forge a ring of power. I need to work on it however, as my ring only granted me dominion of amoebas, lichens, and one species of daffodil. 

Wellington

We've made it to Wellington, and all I have to say is "THANK YOU GPS!". Some people may knock the technological saturation that modern society has, but I'm all for it. It doesn't hurt that I generally rule over it instead of the other way around, but I'm still all for it. The trip here would have been nigh impossible in my opinion, without it. Or at least we would have been VERY lost in Wellington looking for our lodging.

Speaking of the lodging...NICE! I was talking to the Jester about this, and we both agree on it. Either NZ really knows how to do it's tourism right, we've got a really good travel agent, or a little of both. Our lodings here are excellent, I mean really nice! There's 2 bedrooms, beds to sleep at least 3-4, a full kitchenette, and a bathroom with a jacuzzi tub. I feel a bit ashamed to admit that the bathroom here is both nicer laid out, nicer, and more spacious then the bathroom in my own home. And had I mentioned the toilets here in NZ? That's one of the little difference things, but it's a nicer setup here. They are, at least publically, very vocal and supportive of conservative movements. The effect on the toilets appears to have been that there are 2 buttons on each one, a half flush and full flush. This sounds trivally small, but it is actually highly useful. Strangely, for a place so big on conservation, their water pressure is INSANE. No wussy-fied showers here. You can sandblast your skin off with the sinks. I categorize this as awesome, although you have to watch your electronics near the sink, the first time you do that American flip-to-full-blast to fill your glass, as the water goes everywhere.

We're going to hit the Te Paupa(That's almost cetainly spelled wrong) museum today, and also take a tram ride up to the highest point in Wellington, should be really nice if the weather holds. It's gotten sunny out, very nice, but still cool. It's definately early spring here.

Live from New Zealand, it's Halloween

Well we've are finally in NZ and on our way! Here means a place called Rotorua(which I think is Maori for second lake, or something like that). Actually we've been here for a day now, but we've been too tired/unable to get internet access to be able to post. I've been trying to get my cell phone to be able to post to the blog again, but the cell and phone network in general here is odd. It reminds me of where we were in the US about 5 years ago. Rates are pretty high, the prevelance of cheap and abundent any time minutes isn't here, and the land line and cell phone networks don't play nice all the time. That translates into 39 cents(NZ) a minute, off peak, although that includes calls to the US. Of course the on peak when we'd want to use it most, is 1.39$ a minute. And we can't call calling cards easily to reduce the cost because the calling cards don't appear to be reachable from cell phones because of the way the land and cell providers interact(or don't interact as it were). So we're sorta in the dark ages of cell service still, which sucks. On the good side I can receive phone calls on my phone quite well and inexpensively...if any one can successfully navigate placing an international call here.

I'm trying to post an image if a Haku warrior that I took while we attended a traditional Maori welcoming and dinner last night. Hopefully it'll come through, internet activity also seems a bit spotty. Which also doesn't bode well for me posting pictures to the picasa album.

so other stuff! Driving on the wrong side of the road: Crazy! Freaky! Awesome! Roads are twisty everywhere, it's a motorcyclist's dream, assuming they have a bike here. The Jester has been doing all the driving so far(which means the day before yesterday). Today is my turn. It should be interesting to say the least. But a big plus, we finally managed to get the routable GPS maps of new Zealand yesterday, which means we now have electronics that know the way FAR better then us.

We were going to a "famous" spa thing here(this region is the most geothermally active in NZ), but we both feel less enthused about that one right now, so we think we are going to skip it. This area is nick named "sulpher city", and it's quite obvious why when the wind goes the right way. It smells like the bad parts of New York when you catch it wrong.

The day before yesterday we went to the glow worm caves in Waitomo. There won't be pictures there as they don't allow photography, the worms are senstive to light or somthing. It was pretty cool, despite raining the whole day. The worms look like these cool blue LED lights attached to the ceiling, with creepy strings they hang down to catch prey. The strings look like loogies to me. We then hiked to this really high point near by. The views were incredible, spectacular, (insert whatever description with lots of exclamation points you want). And I don't even think they are close to the best we'll probably encounter. We did get some good pictures of that, and we got to baa at the sheep that were roaming around the field. Pics will get posted if we can ever get reliable enough internet access.

Last before I go...it's windy and rainy, or has been. The rain has finally let up and is supposed to be clear the rest of our trip. I don't exepct the wind to calm down though. Maybe I can get my cell working today, in which case there will be more frequent updates with some poor pictures.
-The Cleric

We are on the plane to nz!

I left my luggage, in San Francisco...

TeamGeek
So United was kind enough to put us up in the Embassy Suites hotel. No, wait, let me rephrase that. United put us up in this nice hotel because we completely missed our flight to NZ, thus a full day we were supposed to have in Auckland is gone. So I think it's the least they could do. Missing the connecting flight has had 2 effects:
1) We won't get to see much of Auckland.
2) We won't get to meet some nice people from the Ars Technica message boards who were helping us out.

The upshot to all this is that our room was right on the bay, so we have some nice pictures. Interestingly, the approach for the San Fran airport is over the harbor, so we also go to see some planes coming in for landings, which was pretty cool.

We're off to the airport next to make sure our ticket situation for tonight is squared away, then we'll probably tool around SanFran a bit. Jester is somewhat familiar with the area since he comes out here for work reasons pretty often.

I guess I'd be more excited to check out San Francisco if I wasn't actually supposed to be in New Zealand.

As a side note, I'm glad I purchased some travel insurance. At only 30$, I think it's going to pay for itself. I'm also very concerned our luggage is now having a better vacation then us. It's negative thinking I know, but I have a dreadful feeling that we'll finally get to NZ sans luggage.

Well that can't be good. The computers have 22 people listed but they count 24.

Edit: I posted that from the airplane to SF, before we took off. The cabin crew started asking everyone for their names. I assume they resolved it since we did leave shortly after that. I had volunteered it might be me since I had shifted on to that flight in Lansing, but it wasn't.

My seat to san fran is in 1st class! I hope i get there in time. Had lots of delays so far.

Green goo

My delayed flight.

Starting the Time Adjustment Early

TheJester here.
So, in addition to being too excited to concentrate all day, I'm also too excited to sleep.
...which isn't a bad thing, since NZ is on the other side of the international dateline, and flipped +18 hours from Chicago time.
Lessee, GMT-5 to GMT +13=....confusion.
But no longer.
I've finally figured out how to convert from Chicago (Central Standard) to New Zealand Time (GMT +13 or so).
Ready?
1. subtract 6 hours from what time it is now in Chicago. (so it's 3pm in Chicago? that means it's 9am in NZ).
2. Make it be TOMORROW. Then you've got it. (25th today in Chicago? It's the 26th in NZ).
Strangely enough, this may mean that it's actually going to be easier to adjust to than going to Europe. We'll see, I guess, when we get there.
-TheJester

Twas the night before leaving

So it's the night before the trip to New Zealand! I am pretty tired because I've been up late the last few nights, but I still suspect that I won't get tons of sleep. I've got a lot to do yet for the trip, unfortunately it's all stuff that has to wait as long as possible. So....

Also, it's looking like we're having what I hope is our only mishap for the trip. The maps for our GPS units of NZ are MIA. It's getting close, if they don't arrive where we shipped them soon, we're probably going to have to do without. Actually, we have a few contingency plans that we can try putting into motion if it comes to that, but I'd rather not if i can avoid it!

I think I'll start getting to the last packing that needs to happen, at least until I realize I'm forgetting something in the morning.

Photos galore

I took what I consider to be my first official picture of the trip yesterday. Here it is:
While not quite as awesome as I expect other pictures along the way to be, it was the first one I took in relation to the vacation. The fuzzy thing on top of my suitcase is Shadow.

My luggage is composed of a fabric which coincidentally is the most idea sleeping material for cats. Without fail, within 10 seconds of laying my suitcase down, a cat appears on it, no matter where I am. It's frightening sometimes.

Oh, in addition to the fabulous blog you see before you, we'll be trying to upload more pictures, and higher res ones to the Picasa photo album I created for the trip. You can see the album here.

There's nothing there now, but there will be. There will be....

The other member of TeamGeek - TheJester!

So, this is me, too excited to work on the preso I have to give in 2 hours, instead fooling around with auto-posting an MMS message to the blog.
I'm going to have to do finger puppets in this meeting.... doh!
Too. Excited. To. Concentrate.!
-TheJester

Phone blog on!

In the beginning...

In the beginning, there was The Trip. And thusly did Team Geek say, "The Trip" is good. But Team Geek saw that "The Trip" was lacking, and so, did Team Geek say, "Let there be Blog". There was also some Big Bang, stars being born, and dinosaurs in there too, but that those are just details.

Welcome to the Team Geek blog . Teem Geek is comprised of myself(Jason) and not-myself(Dave). I started this blog so I'd have a place to put down all the inane thoughts, brilliant insights, and witty remarks that we came up with as we travelled to New Zealand for no particular reason other then seeing it. I think this is the best reason to go places.

Actually, that is something of a small white lie. Being as we are Team Geek, there's a small amount of "Lord of the Rings" movie-was-filmed-there as the reason for choosing the locale. But it's also true I haven't been there.

As a bonus, I'm going to commit some continental rounding, and add this to the list of continents I have been to, which means I now only have to visit South America, Africa, and Antarctica before I die. I'm looking forward to two of the three remaining.

This trip, my first real overseas travel as an adult without my family(that is, my parents), has really gotten me much more excited about travel. Which is funny since I've lately become a bit of a home body. I hope this is just the beginning of a lot of travelling that I will do in my lifetime. Again, for truth in advertising reasons, I have to thank digital photography as a motivating factor in this. I'm not patient enough for film photography, but the rise of digital photography has lead to all sorts of new, secondary interests, feeder hobbies I guess I'd call them.

Anyway, back to the main goal. Team Geek is travelling to New Zealand in *3* days! I will be meeting the other half of Team Geek in Chicago's beautiful O'Hare International Airport, where we will fly to San Francisco, and then on to New Zealand! BTW, did you know ORD, O'Hare's airport code is derived from "orchard"?

It will be something of a low low grade miracle if the travel works out as planned. We plotted our flight plans in unison, but through different sources(Dave, directly through United Airlines where he is a frequent flyer, and I through Orbitz.com). At more then one place in the flight plan we are "reasonably certain" that we are on the same plane. If not, I hope the Nintendo DS has a really good range for wireless, but I suspect disappointment will ensue.

Speaking of the flights, the other part...seating. In my normal somewhat fatalistic view, something must go wrong. I'm guessing if the flights all work out, it'll be seating. It will be somewhat annoying if we are seating quite a ways apart. With any luck someone will trade seats with us if that happens. I hope the airlines don't frown down on that kind of thing. I haven't air travelled a lot since 9/11, but my view(gathered from reading the news on TSA) is that it's a major pain in the ass for not a lot of return benefit.

Anyway, we should be arriving(2 calendar days later) on Saturday in Auckland, New Zealand! I'm getting excited at this point! Last night I took the first pictures I consider part of the trip, one of my cats sleeping on my mostly-packed suitcase. I have suitcases which are apparently comprised of a material that cats find more appealing then any other in the universe to sleep on. I would put the picture here, but my camera is at home. I'll try to remember to put it up tonight.

Our first day in NZ should be pretty low key relatively, which is good, we'll get that time to acclimate to the time change. As an added bonus, I'm meeting up with some people from the message forums of ArsTechnica.com where I have been a member for 5 or 6 years now(which is a very scary thought, but is a subject for a different posting and blog even). One of them has even been kind enough to allow us to ship some GPS maps of NZ to his place because we didn't think we'd be able to get them sent to us in the US in time.

Packing must continue tonight, but I think we're in good shape mainly.
-The Cleric