judyonthenet

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

We had to wake up early today to catch our ride back to the mainland and make our 10AM flight. The earliest daily seaplane flight is at 8:30AM, and given the time it takes to the airport, that would be much too close to comfort. I had originally booked our last night in Fiji on the mainland, assuming we’d take the boat back the day before our flight. A month before our trip, the resort that runs the seaplane service got a booking with an early morning seaplane arrival, which means we could get an earlier flight back to the mainland. We really lucked out; it was relaxed and convenient to spend all our time in Fiji at the same place.

Unfortunately for me, the sickness I thought I had paradise-d away never left. Either that or I got something new. When I woke up this morning, I had that feeling in my throat: the one where you know you’re going to be miserably sick later in the day. I was already feeling a little worn. At breakfast, I stuck with fruits and muffins and drinking as much orange juice as possible. Kelvin helped himself to cereal with milk. Because we had to leave early, the dining area was open earlier than usual. My appetite was sucking cuz I was feeling ill, so a staff lady wrapped my muffins to-go. I miss their muffins.

After breakfast, we looked over our tab for our trip. Everything looked to be in order. The total cost for all the food, services, and activities not included with the cost of the room after Fiji’s ridiculous 17.5% government tax: 1331FJD. At the time of our honeymoon, it was about .55USD to FJD, so about $732. Overall, I was very satisfied with our stay at Navutu Stars. The food was good, and the people (and dogs) were very friendly. Everything was excellent, especially considering how inexpensive they are (relatively speaking, anyways). I thought staying at the same place for 5 days, I’d run out of things to do and get bored. Seeing how much stuff I tried to cram in on the last day, that obviously wasn’t the case. We even missed out activities I had planned on doing. For example, we never had a private picnic on a private beach, and we never explored the island the resort was on or snorkel the resort’s beaches. Maybe next time. *sigh*

With the bill settled, we waited in the dining area until our departure. I can’t remember when we were supposed to leave, but they were running late. I remember getting anxious, but all the staff people were very chill and relaxed about it. It was very Fijian of them, I guess. When they got word the seaplane was almost arriving, the staff gathered together, gave us leis, and sang their send-off song. We got on the resort boat with Seruvi, and we headed to the dock of Turtle Island Resort, the resort that runs the seaplane service.

We watched the seaplane land and the staff of Turtle Island Resort carry away (literally, at least for the woman passenger) the vacationing couple that deboarded the plane from the beach. Seruvi dropped us off at the dock, where we waited with several native Fijians and various food supplies.

Our ride

It turns out all the people waiting were hoping to get rides back to the mainland. The pilot (who I’m guessing was Canadian, based on his Canadian-flagged hat) was yelling at them for not telling him, as he would have brought something bigger than a 4-person plane. As is, he could only take one other person, aside from us, of course. They dumped all the food supplies and luggage into the back, and I sat in the back seat with some random Fijian who had really terrible body odor. (I tried to breathe through my mouth for the trip.) Kelvin sat shotgun to pilot in the front. The seaplane coasted to a location where it could take off properly, which seemed to take FOREVER as the seaplane moves fairly slowly on the water surface.

I’m somewhat afraid of flying. I don’t like turbulence, but the scariest thing for me is, by far, takeoff. And at this time, I was in a tiny, old seaplane crammed in the back with some smelly Fijian guy. Despite this, it was surprisingly not scary. The takeoff and landings were completely smooth. It was a beautiful day, and apparently the air was as calm as the waters, as there was zero turbulence for the entire 45 minute flight. The views were so gorgeous; Fiji looks great from the air. It costs a lot more to take a seaplane than to take a boat, but it was worth the money to make our trip easier and to experience the flight at least once.

We arrived at the mainland around 8:50 AM to this dinky dock in the middle of nowhere. There was an old Fijian guy waiting to help us deboard (where he came from, I don’t know), and the cab Navutu Stars had arranged for us was already there.

We had a little over an hour to make our flight, so we were rush-rush. The taxi driver was super-duper nice. As he drove, he made to point out things we were passing by, including interesting landmarks. He also got us to the airport in 20 minutes. I read you’re not supposed to tip in Fiji, so I didn’t tip him. In hindsight, I wish I had. I never converted any of the coin Fijian dollars I had (which was probably a good $10 of coins), and I don’t know if I converted all my Fijian bills. The guy was friendly, fast, and probably would have had better use for my coins than them just sitting my change jar at work right now.

When we got to the airport, we rushed through check-in and security. We arrived to the boarding gate as passengers were getting on the plane, so we really cut it close. But we made it, and it was on to our next destination: Auckland, New Zealand!

The flight was only three hours, so it wasn’t long until we got there. We were seated near a couple stewardesses who told us the plane and crew were from Los Angeles. They guessed correctly that we were honeymooners, saying we “looked like honeymooners”.

Our first look at New Zealand

When we got off the plane, the air felt SO nice. After being in Fiji’s sticky air for 5 days, it was nice to be back in a place with a similar climate to the Bay Area (basically, perfect). We exchanged our Fijian bills at an exchange before customs, but it turns out there’s banks and exchange places outside the secured areas as well. We found the WestPac ATM. WestPac is the largest bank in Australia and has ATMs everywhere in New Zealand. They’re also in cahoots with Bank of America, which means you can withdraw money from your BofA account at WestPac ATMs without ATM surcharges or conversion fees. We were also using a Capital One credit card (which has no international conversion fees AND covers the $1 fee Visa/Mastercard charges) for all our honeymoon expenses, so we were doing direct conversions for our entire trip. The only exception was doing currency exchanges at the airport, where they overcharge you big time for the convenience.

Buy our smokes, btw SMOKING KILLS.

We took a cab from the airport to downtown Auckland, where our hotel, SkyCity Grand Hotel, is located. The ride was long and seemed inefficient. I thought the cab driver might have been ripping us off, but more probably is that there isn’t a good direct route into downtown. We were dropped off in front of our hotel, where the doorguy helped us take our luggage into the lobby. (Kelvin’s bag makes this awful noise when rolled, and the doorguy carried the bag instead of rolling it after like 2 seconds of rolling, lol. Kelvin’s father didn’t lend us the greatest bags; my bag was hard to roll cuz the wheels were too close together and would constantly fall over to its side. I kinda chuckle thinking back on me and Kelvin’s constant bitching about them. I probably should have registered for some luggage.) Our check-in went very smoothly, and we went directly to our room after check-in. The hotel has some awesomely smooth and quiet elevators, and the elevators doors make a soft hiss that makes me feel like I’m on a sci-fi show.

I had asked for a room with a view in my online reservation, but I know that’s always hit or miss. This time, however, was definitely a hit. I can’t remember the exact floor number, but we were in the teens. Plus, our room faced the harbor and the SkyTower, so the view was amazing. (I know you can watch people do the thrill-ride jump thing off SkyTower, but I never got see anyone do it while I was there.) The room wasn’t the largest, but it was comfortable and very chic. I don’t usually stay in nice hotels, so this was pretty awesome to me. This was probably Kelvin’s favorite accommodation for the trip.

The view

Kelvin made these cool panorama images with his digital camera. I forgot to post the one from Fiji, but here’s the one for our SkyCity Grand hotel room.

After settling in, we ventured out to the city to get some food and explore. This section of downtown has several hotels within the same area, and the first place we went was to the food court in the mall (call the Atrium) below the Crowne Plaza Hotel, across Albert St. from SkyCity Grand. We were looking for some real food aside from the airplane food we had earlier. The food court was an international food court, so no burgers or hot dog on a stick. Instead, there were stalls for every kind of Asian food you could think of, plus Mexican and Italian food. One stall, Uncle Jack’s, caught my eye because of the pictures of beef noodles on their menu. On the other side of the stall was a Quickly Fresh, a pearl milk tea place. From this and listening to the Mandarin spoken by the FOB-y looking folks behind the counter, I deduced it was Taiwanese stall. I dunno why I was so excited about a Taiwanese food court stand in New Zealand, but I really wanted to eat here. Also, I was definitely sick at this point, so I was happy to have noodle soup. The pearl milk tea was decent like any other pearl milk tea I’ve ever had; the beef noodles were only okay.

After our snack, we proceeded towards Queen St., walking through some shopping stuff on the first of the next building. It was very reminiscent of Taiwan, as all the shops looked like they sold cheap made-in-random-Asian-country cheap clothing and accessories. On Queen St., our store called JayJays caught our eye. I love this store. Everything was SO cheap, even more so with the favorable exchange rate for us. They basically sell snarky clothing for poor-ass teenagers. While Kelvin and I are old people, we’re immature and cheap, so the store really appealed to us. I bought a couple clearance shirts, as did Kelvin. And there were SO many cute summer outfits. Tip: If you’re going to New Zealand and Fiji in November, go to New Zealand first so you can buy all your cute resort clothes before heading to Fiji. I found NOTHING at home before leaving for my trip, and seeing all this cute (and CHEAP) summer wear after leaving Fiji frustrated me.

After shopping, we walked around some more. We dropped by an arcade where Kelvin found out he’s nowhere near as good at Beatmania as he used to be.

Queen Street

We eventually made it to some movie theater. Since we had a lot of time to kill, we watched Burn After Reading (decent, but very strange and dark).

This movie is Four Christmases in the US.

After the movie we wandered a little more, passing by City Hall before heading back to the hotel.

We dropped by SkyCity (not to be mistaken with SkyCity Grand across the street), which is where the SkyTower and casino are located. I can’t remember, but I don’t think we did much at the casino on this night. We were looking for dinner, and we found a lot of places were closed already or too fancy for what I felt like having. (I wasn’t feeling optimal at this point.) Back at the Crowne Plaza, there was a ramen place called Genzui still open on the main floor, so we had dinner there to satiate my noodle soup needs.

After dinner, we called it a night. I wanted to get as much rest as possible so I could be well for the rest of my honeymoon. (It didn’t work.) We watched more Lord of the Rings, and I familiarized myself with New Zealand television. I wish I had written stuff down while I was traveling, because I remember very little of it. For TV, I remember there was a SkyTV and TV3 (and I guess 1 and 2), and that there were movies on all the time during primetime. And all the commercials had people saying things funny. For example, the shampoo Fructis: in commercials in the US, we hear them call it Frook-tees, while in New Zealand, they made it sound a lot less exotic by calling it Fruck-tis.

The view of SkyTower from our room at night

Previously, Honeymoon Day 4 – Spear-fishing, cave-snorkeling, and kava-drinking
Next, Honeymoon Day 6 – Taking a sick day in Auckland

New thing I learned today: You have to be 18 years old to purchase alcohol and 20 years old to enter a casino in New Zealand.

For those of you that don’t know, Etsy is like the eBay of handmade crafts. People all over the country sell their crafty wares on there. I never bought anything on Etsy before I started planning for my wedding. During the stressful period of planning the event, I found myself gazing at beautiful items on the site (and elsewhere) that were too expensive for my budget. Like beautifully designed invitations or amazingly constructed cake toppers. Eventually, I broke down and splurged on a couple custom items for my wedding. Both Kelvin and Anna assured me it was alright to treat myself, so I shall blame them both for pushing me over the edge!

The first thing I ordered was my hair accessory. I don’t remember how I discovered the blog, but I had subscribed to The Flirty Guide, which is a pretty decent blog of a Bay Area wedding accessory maker, Stacie Tamaki. Her website has a bunch of “flirty ideas”, many of which came from her own wedding. One of those ideas was decorating her dress with kanzashi flowers. Kanzashi are hairpieces traditionally worn by geishas, and they’re decorated with flowers made of folded silk, kinda like cloth origami. I figured a kanzashi hair accessory would be a cute way to add color to my outfit and further incorporate my “Asian autumn” theme.

There’s some amazing kanzashi artists out there, including one officially trained in the art on Etsy. In the end, I went with a different Etsy seller, Regina AKA littlecookie, because I loved her dye work. The gradients on her pieces were beautiful, and she had previously made an autumn piece similar to what I’d be looking for.

Almost the final product (Pic: Regina’s flickr). I made her change the stems of
the second piece to greenand added leaves to better match my qipao.

Regina was super nice and easy to work with. So nice and easy in fact, I ended up ordering a second piece to wear with my qipao… and then I ordered four more pieces for bridesmaid gifts. (Yeah, I was hooked.) Regina was excellent in doing all my little requests; I was very specific with color, positioning, etc. Even after she finished, I asked her to make a couple changes, and she did them with no complaints. I don’t really understand how she tolerated my Bridezilla self, but I’m so glad she did! They came out great, gorgeous and cute at the same time. Some pictures of the pieces in action:

Getting ready before tea ceremony (pic: Anna)

Putting on the veil (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

Cheers at Monkey Island (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

Putting on the blindfold for games (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

Wearing my kanzashi to brunch the next morning (pic: Kelvin)

What’s funny is that Regina puts a little paper with all her pieces, warning the wearer that pieces don’t do well in rain and high humidity. Well, Mother Nature was tired of the dry spell we had for months and made sure to bring it on on our wedding. I wore them anyway, and they never lost their rigidity or shape.

Goofing around for bridal party pics in the rain (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

The pieces were pretty much perfect. I think the only thing I would change would be the backing used to hold the petals. It would have been better if they were a similar color to the piece instead of white, as the backing would be visible in certain angles. I (very nervously) trimmed some of the backing off so they’d be less visible from the front.

Showing aunties the kanzashi (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

The other thing I’d change would be making the second piece for the right side of my head. I never thought about what my “good side” is, so I just stuck the pieces on the left side of my head. But we decided during pictures that my good side was my right side, and there’s so many pictures of the right, accessory-less side of my head! Even for non-posed pics, everything I did, my right side would be the one facing people i.e. the ceremony. It bugged me how few pictures I ended up getting of my hair pieces. (Is that weird? To be disappointed I didn’t get enough pictures of my hair accessories?!) I wish I had thought that through a little better.

The other Etsy item I ended up splurging on was the cake topper. Going along with the Asian theme, I wanted to get kokeshi dolls as cake toppers. It was hard to find authentic kokeshi dolls for this task, but there was a great substitute on Etsy. Teresa, AKA Mikazuki81, specifically makes kokeshi… for cake toppers! Her figures are cuter than regular kokeshi, IMO.

Teresa, like Regina, was super awesome to work with. She was also incredibly patient with me with the timeline. I contacted her 6 weeks before the wedding, which is within her request of 4 weeks. However, I didn’t give her all the details she needed until less than 2 weeks before the wedding because I was still so indecisive about so many things. Without complaint, she took all my details (even the late ones) and got them on the figures. She sent the cake topper as soon as she finished, and I got them a couple days before the wedding (phew!). And they were so cute in person!

The final product (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

What I thought was weird and initially a bad thing was that the figures are not attached to the base. I worried about stability, as did the person who put the cake topper on the cake (probably my day-of coordinator) apparently. When I arrived to the reception, the figures had tape sticking them to the base. However, this is actually an excellent feature. You can position your figures anyway you want, and people can play with them like toys when they’re off the cake. Basically, I was left with cute little action figures of Kelvin and me once the wedding was over.

The cake! (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

Kelvin likes the cake. If he looks weird, it’s cuz it’s a reflection. (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

Unfortunately, because of the humidity of the day, the cakes were extra soft. The cake topper ended up toppling over, and the bride and groom fell down three stories of cake. Groom was okay… bride not so much. She lost her head!

Oh noes!

You can see the trajectory of the fall kinda in this pic. My mother stuck the
people back on without the base. I saw her do this without knowing about
the fall and had a minor freakout about her messing with my cake
before she explained the situation to me. (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

I contacted Teresa after the wedding for advice on fixing it, and she was super nice with adhesive suggestions. I still haven’t fixed it. I don’t mind my bride’s gained head mobility, so I’ll leave it as is until it bugs me again. These cake toppers are so cute and not-corny, there’s no problem displaying them after the wedding. Right now, they’re chilling underneath our TV!

Handing over the topper to Patty (DOC) for safekeeping (pic: FC Wong Weddings)

While I was initially hesitant with both of these Etsy purchases, I’m so happy I ended up getting them, as they make unique momentos because they’re all custom. If you’re tempted to get something a little selfish for yourself on your wedding, I would say based on my own experience you should definitely go for it! Even after time has passed after my wedding, I have zero regrets about getting them… and there’s SO many things I still regret about the wedding to this day!

New thing I learned today: Miis (avatars on the Wii) were based conceptually off kokeshi dolls.

The site’s been going down daily since sometime last week. It was particularly bad this weekend; we couldn’t even reboot the server. Kelvin’s bugged tech support about it, and I haven’t noticed it going down since he bugged them. I don’t know what the issue was, but I’m hoping it’s okay now.

Kelvin, Kimi, and I went to House of Genji with our mommies for Mother’s Day. Due to some miscommunication, none of us made reservations, and we didn’t realize it until day of. Luckily, they were taking walk-ins, but the wait was over an hour. Kimi endured most of the wait, which was kind of her, as Kelvin and I picked up the moms and took them to the restaurant.

The mommies!

Kelvin, Lyn, and Kimi at the table

FIRE! The table next to us had a newb chef that wouldn’t
do the flame show. They missed out!

House of Genji had a special Mother’s Day menu, and both our moms ordered the “mama-san” special (New York steak, chicken, and scallops). They also took pictures of all the moms, like they would usually do for birthdays. So each of our moms got a picture, stuck to a copy of the special Mother’s Day menu. Because Polaroids are pretty much dead, the restaurant now uses a much more modern digital camera/photo printer combo instead. (I’ll try to get a pic of the freebie in this post eventually. It turned out really cute!)

After dinner, Kelvin’s mom passed on her old wedding dress to Kimi. She’s not getting married in the immediate future (I think), so I dunno if her mom is trying to drop some hints or something. The dress is a pretty trippy flashback to the past tho, 1976 to be specific. The veil was attached to some crazy small hat thing. While I’m sure Kelvin’s mom was thinner when she was young, I doubt her skull was smaller. I’m still trying to understand how that thing works…

Kimi tries on the veil from 1976

New thing I learned today: The woman who created Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, in 1914 campaigned against the holiday by the 1920s after seeing it become so commercialized.

I’ve made several changes to the Prosumer theme, including yanking all the calendar style options from the Atahualpa theme and sticking it here. The theme is mostly to my liking now, simply making some simple modifications. I’m still missing a few things though, the main omission being the search box. People don’t really use it, but I do use it when I look for past posts to reference. I could just use the search in the admin page, but the actual webpage is much more interesting to look at.

I changed the header image, too. Used to be some generic anime looking thing, a little reminiscent of Naruto. I figured I’d bust out my MGS Kubricks to play with again. Since I got the 20th anniversary ones, I also acquired on eBay the MGS2 Kubricks (minus the rare ones… I want Raiden :( ) that were released a few years back. So I’ve got some version of Snake from each game in there. They’re all standing up on their own in the picture. Do you have any idea what a bitch it was to get all 4 of them to stand like that? And if you don’t get the reference, well, you must be from another planet.

I tried the “unfried” chicken today from KFC using the free 2-piece meal coupon. You know, the one that everyone and their housewife knows about. The local KFC is worked by the most cheerful of fast food workers; today, some of them looked like they had lost their soul. I’m sure the insane crowd of the last couple days have worn them down a bit… I hope they make it through the next couple weeks okay. Anyway, I managed to get my share of free chicken.

It tasted… bland. I sorta expected more, considering how Boston Market’s non-fried chicken is pretty okay. If they’re gonna compete, they better add like 300% more herbs or something. Sure, the sodium levels will probably return to original KFC levels, but at least I’ll actually want to pay money for it. So is this new chicken option actually healthier? Here’s the nutritional information of what I usually get (2-piece original leg thigh, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet corn, and biscuit):

	Calories	Fat (g)	Saturated fat (g)	Trans fat (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Sodium(mg)	Carbs (g)	Dietary Fiber (g)	Protein (g)
KFC Lunch	790	53 (81%)	13 (67%)	0	140 (47%)	2040 (85%)	74 (25%)	4	36

Actually, this seems a lot better than when I last checked the nutritional information a couple years ago. I don’t know if they improved their formula, portions got smaller, or maybe I added the margarine (which I don’t use anymore) into the calculations. And now for the new grilled chicken in the same configuration:

	Calories	Fat (g)	Saturated fat (g)	Trans fat (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Sodium(mg)	Carbs (g)	Dietary Fiber (g)	Protein (g)
KFC Grilled Lunch	630	26 (40%)	10 (52%)	0	130 (44%)	1600 (67%)	66 (22%)	4	35

I guess it is better. However, I don’t think added health value is worth the untasty factor. It’s still not very good for you, so if you’re going to eat garbage, might as well eat the yummier garbage.

New thing I learned today: The studio where the Beatles recorded most of their albums and singles is located on Abbey Road.

I’m town between two themes: Atahualpa and Prosumer. Prosumer is closer to the style I’m wanting, but Atahualpa is very customizable, with changes easily made without manually editing the code. Well, you do edit the code, but it’s through the theme options and is very thoroughly explained. I can’t decide if I should make changes to Atahualpa to get closer to what I want, or edit Prosumer, which still needs little things like calendar formatting. Anyway, my blog might be going back and forth between the two themes for now, so pardon the mess.

New thing I learned today: Atahualpa was the last emperor of the Inca Empire.

Prosumer is a combination of two words: producer or professional, plus consumer. The former describes the increasing ability for people to customize their own things: the consumer becoming the producer. The latter describes a hobbyist who is more than a casual dabbler in something, but isn’t quite at the level (or doesn’t want to spend to the level) of someone who does it for a living: the inbetween of professional and consumer.