super generic girl

the awesomely average life of a girl like all others


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Throwing coconuts into blowholes

 

The Alofa’aga Blowholes in Savai’i are one of the coolest things to see in Samoa. The whole visit takes only a few minutes but the blowholes are pretty impressive, even on a calm day like the one when we visited, last Saturday.

I’m no expert on these things but the internet says these blowholes are among the most impressive in the world and who am I to doubt the internet, right? We didn’t have much time and had to make a short list of the shortlisted things to see in Samoa but I’m glad we included a visit to this place.

We visited the blowholes during my Saturday of doom – I was sick the entire day (and by sick I mean I felt like I had gone to Savai’i to spend my final day). It’s surprising I even remember seeing these, since I don’t actually remember everything from that day.

Still, I marveled at how high the water goes when it roars through the lava tubes and, most of all, I marveled at John’s braveness as the old Samoan villager threw coconuts into the blowhole, only to have them spat out in his direction just a second or two later. His timing was impeccable and he always moved to the right place, which makes me think he’s quite experienced at it.

The blowholes can be accessed through the village of Taga, in South Savai’i. You will pay a small access fee to one of the villagers and can then park very close to the blowholes.

We had the company of some village kids who no doubt see this phenomenon all the time but still stood near us while we watched it.


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a tropical island getaway got in the middle of everything else…

…and it was equal parts terrifying and divine. But mostly divine.

In any case, normal blogging should resume now. I’ve got a handful of posts I want to write about the three and a half days I spent exploring Samoa but, for now, I’ve got to save my words for NaNoWriMo, which I desperately need to catch up on. I haven’t written a single word for it in over a week (which, yes, is making me rethink the whole thing). I logged onto the website for the first time in days today and the little dashboard thing told me that, at this rate, I’ll be finishing my novel on January 13, 2012. Boy, do I have a crap load of writing to get done in the next few days!

I also didn’t run at all while I was in Samoa and had a pretty pathetic excuse for a run today – the final run before the half-marathon this saturday. I had the best intentions and took all my running gear with me to Samoa but sunday was the only day when I actually had free time to go for a run (after feeling sick as a dog on friday and saturday) and I was told jogging/running was not recommended on sundays as it is a rest day in Samoa. I’m not one to offend anyone’s costumes and beliefs (at least not intentionally) so the running clothes came back to Auckland untouched.

Stress levels? Pretty much back to really freaking high. I’m a lot less fit and a lot more unprepared for this half-marathon compared to the last one (and this is a very objective statement) so I can only count on the track and the weather and the running gods to help me out on the day.

And to think that it was just yesterday that I was taking the photo above…


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I went whale watching and all I got was a full sick bag

a little bit of a whale, a cloudy day and a boat that rocked a lot


I’ve met so many people who have whale-watching as an item on their bucket list so I feel like I’m doing a bit of public service here by announcing that it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be. This, I believe, is my first travel-related post where I write about an experience I wouldn’t repeat.

But maybe you’ll do it/ you’ve done it and you’ll love it/ you’ve loved it. If you have a strong stomach, which I don’t. And if you enjoy being out at sea, which I don’t. Come to think of it, why did I go whale-watching anyway? Why was it something I wanted to do? I’m not sure. A whole afternoon I will never get back.

My memories of that afternoon are now a bit blurry (thankfully!) but then so was my vision on the day. Seasickness is a real bitch and one that accompanies me every time I step onto a boat. That afternoon was no exception. And the longer we stayed afloat, with the boat rocking like crazy, the more I thought that I was not going to make it back to dry land.

All that could even have been worth it if I’d seen some whales but, in those four or five or 345 hours I spent on that godforsaken boat (it’s hard to judge time when you’re having the worst time of your life, really), all I could do was keep my head between my knees or inside the barf bag, taking the occasional quick peek every time someone on the boat went ‘oooooh’ or ‘aaaaah’ or ‘look!!!’ – and still, the best I saw was what you see in the photo above.

Am I the only one who hated a bucket list experience? Have you ever done something you were really looking forward to do only to be massively disappointed by it?


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Inspired!

After my mini-meltdown about the half-marathon last week, I’m feeling a lot more positive about things this time. It may have something to do with all the marathon excitement that populated the internet in the past few hours (with a friend finishing the marathon in Porto – his first marathon!), people I have met finishing the NYC marathon and other cool stuff like finding out that the fourth place belonged to a Portuguese lady (is she fast or what?). I mean, between the article about the couple who got married *while* running a marathon and this great read about the un-sporty turned runner, there’s a lot of running goodness out there on the interwebs right now.

I am sure it this positive vibe I’m getting is also somewhat related to the fact that, after running 6km on Saturday and feeling like crap, I ran 16km on Sunday and felt amazing. Not sure what happened there but boy was that a good run! I think that’s exactly what I needed: a good long run to put my mind at ease and remind me that, yeah, I’ve done it before so I know it’s not impossible.

On sunday morning, in spite of the cloudy (sometimes rainy) weather, S. and I headed over to St Heliers for what we thought would be a 12km (maybe 14km) run. Our goal, when we started, was to run non-stop for 45 minutes, then stretch, turn around and run another 45 minutes to where we’d started.

The temperature was just ideal and all the other runners around really added to our motivation. Once our 45 minutes were up, we decided we could keep going a bit longer and ran another 5 minutes to the port, where we sat on the grass overlooking the shipping containers and had a good stretch. Then we turned around and ran another 50 minutes back, with a total of 16km (according to her app) or 16.25km (according to mine) done. The best part? We felt great afterwards! And may I add this was a mere 30 something hours after my epic running fail when I met up with her, ran 1km (yes, one!) and had to walk home with some sort of weird stomach pain? I was glad to see that hadn’t stuck around.

The half-marathon is now less than two weeks away and I’m feeling a LOT better about it. We’re making a girls’ weekend out of it, staying at a cool hotel and heading to the street party that the town is putting on after the half-marathon too. I don’t know what I’m more excited about but the important thing is that I no longer feel like Kerikeri is the place where I am going to die. Win!

On a less positive note, I’m so far behind on NaNoWriMo it’s not even funny! I wrote about 300 words last night and felt myself hitting a bit of a dead-end in the story so decided to sit there and let it simmer for a while. Time to stop over-thinking it and get that word count up, seeing as that’s what this challenge is all about anyway.


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Emergency two-week half-marathon training plan

Oh heck, I should just accept that this is becoming a running blog, shouldn’t I? Don’t worry, regular broadcast (if there ever was one) will resume soon but, these days, running is pretty much the most important thing in my mind.

You wouldn’t think so, though, if you looked back on my running calendar and saw how little training I’ve been doing. Yes, I’ve gone for lots and lots of runs but they’ve mostly been short ones and the truth is that I haven’t really been putting much thought into the fact that OMG I’m running another half-marathon in exactly two weeks!

To be honest, at this stage, I’m not sure how (if?) I’m going to pull it off.

I was looking at my workout calendar for the past couple of months and the longest runs I could find there were a couple of 10km ones.  I think I got stuck in a “It’s only in November” state of mind and didn’t really get out of it. A couple of days ago, someone asked me when my next half-marathon was and I said “it’s only in November”. Two seconds later, the little “oh shit!” speech bubble was hovering over my head.

I now have basically one week to get ready for those 21km in Kerikeri. I also have an average of 1,666 words to write for NaNoWriMo between now and half-marathon day, as well as a four-day trip to Samoa, a concert and a couple of dinners with friends. Oh yes, and the whole full-time job thing, which means training/NaNoWriMo/social life are a no-go on weekdays until at least 5pm.

This morning, after a 6km run, I came home and drew up this emergency plan. It’s not something I’ll be able to follow 100%, I’m sure. Some days I’ll try to run more than that, others I’ll have to run less but writing this up helped me feel a little more organised.

My only hope is that the flat course and the weather will help will help (they don’t call it the Winterless North for nothing, right?). Also that adrenaline will kick in when I’m at the start line with all the other runners. But I’m not expecting to get a PR on this one.


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happy birthday, zara!

I’ve been excited about it being Zara’s birthday all week long and I don’t even care how sad that makes me. Today, I celebrate 1 year of kitty awesomeness.  Happy birthday, Zara Maria, Zara Puddington, Poopinator (yeah, she’s got a few names and at least one of them is related to poop)! In true Zara fashion, she made it pretty much impossible to get a decent shot of her facing the camera so this was the best I could get.


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early morning runs rock

Today, I went for my first run since the Auckland Quarter Marathon last Sunday. The weird thing about it? I ran in the morning, before work. And no, I wasn’t on a late shift.

I jumped out of bed (and by “jumped” I mean slowly rolled out while cursing my life), got into my running gear and headed out of the house. It had to be a very quick process because I knew I was racing against my lack of willpower and laziness. It was 6:45am.

To be fair, it was only a short 5km run so it’s not like I ran a marathon, saved some children from drowning and then baked a pie before doing a full day’s work but, you know, it’s better than hitting the snooze button for half an hour while lying down regretting not having gone to bed earlier the night before.

I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever make a habit of it but it definitely proved to me that, rather than make you tired, exercising in the morning is the productivity boost you need to then be able to go to work and kick the crap out of your to do lists. It also felt pretty awesome to be running while it was getting sunnier rather than running as it starts to get dark (on weekdays, those are my only two options).

It was a good thing I unintentionally went for this morning run on the deadline day for one of the publications I write for. I had what seemed like 4 million words to write before the end of the day and they were all written.

*pause for patting self on the back*

Now I’ve got a free evening to do whatever I want without feeling guilty about not being out running! Yay! Maybe I’ll go running to celebrate. I do need another energy boost if I’m going to tackle today’s NaNoWriMo wordcount…


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Kiwi letterboxes

You’ve probably heard all about New Zealand’s many fences (the jandal fence, the bra fence, the toothbrush fence, even the bicycle fence), but there are plenty of other excuses for “emergency” stops on the side of the roads around here. These are some of the examples of the quirky letterboxes I’ve came across during roadtrips around New Zealand. Using microwaves as letterboxes, for example, seems to be pretty common, as soon as you leave a big city,  but I can’t help smiling every time we drive past one.


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Summing up the October blogging challenge

October has come and gone and so has the blogging challenge I set for myself.

I had initially decided to try to blog once a day every day during October which would mean I would get to the end of the 31st with at least 31 blog posts written. I knew it would be a busy month so thought that, if necessary, I would just post some YouTube video or whatever interesting Ted talk I had watched on a day when I didn’t have time to write anything else.

Then I decided that there was really no point in posting stuff like that just to fill up the blank space – the old “if you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all” adage came to mind. After all, this was a challenge for myself, to try and get me into the habit of blogging (and writing) as often as possible. A YouTube video to replace a blog post wasn’t going to help that, really.

I started off well. In fact, I managed to publish on blog post every day until the 14th, when I didn’t publish anything. It was okay because I had published two blog posts the day before and then published another two the day after.

From the 15th onwards, things got slightly harder. I travelled through different timezones to Singapore and worked my butt off so couldn’t keep up with blogging and everything else. Nothing was published between the 15th and the 19th, when I sat on the hotel lobby and posted a quick recap of my Singapore trip. And then another break… travelling back to New Zealand (stopping over in Australia) took a total of 15 hours and I came back to the office with about 3.5 tonnes of work to do before setting out on an overnight hike, which I blogged about four days after the Singapore blog post. The next day, to try and catch up, I published another two blog posts. For some reason, I skipped the 25th and didn’t blog on that day, but got back into it the day after with another two blog posts (one of them fairly long). From then on, I’ve blogged every day until today, the 31st, including two blog posts on the 29th and three today (!).

In total, I posted 30 blog posts in October. I know I’m one short and I could quickly pick a funny cat photo or something else to put up here and get a better result on this challenge. But what would be the point? I don’t think that would make this self-imposed blogging challenge any more successful. I really feel like blogging as become a habit again and, regardless of whether some blog posts are more interesting than others, I’ve enjoyed documenting everything I’ve documented here this month.

Here’s a roundup of the most read posts from October, in case you feel like a trip down short-term memory lane:

  1. Leitch’s Track, Whareorino Forest, New Zealand
  2. lomo love
  3. distance means nothing
  4. crouch, touch, pause, engage!
  5. a photo tour of new plymouth, new zealand
  6. running randoms
  7. a small photo tour of Sintra’s many Sintras
  8. vanilla cupcakes with passionfruit icing
  9. Fado (and other weird expat behaviour)
  10. How much did this run suck? Let me count the ways. 
November will be a very different story. I’ll be focusing on my off-work writing efforts on NaNoWriMo and a lot of the rest of my free time will be taken up with half-marathon training. But I’m sure I’ll squeeze in the time to stop by as often as possible to document all of those things too.