My Life @ Blenheim

When we finally received the call we were waiting for, we made our way to Blenheim (pronouns as Ble-num).

Blenheim will be our home for 3 months.

Blenheim will be where we work for 3 months.

Blenheim....oh Blenheim....

We found a place to stay and coincidentally our landlord is a Malaysian! Chinese too! Talk about a small place ay? It's a nice place to stay with internet for $90 a week. Not a bad deal really. Me and Twister shares a room and the couple took the other room. The bathroom was huge!!!! So is the backyard!!!!

FYI: we even have our own lemon tree growing right out of our room window! Not to mentioned, there's grapevine, apple tree, plum tree, nectarine tree, peach tree growing in the backyard! Yum yum!!!! Too bad it's not in season yet so we don't get to sample any :-(

The factory we work at is a mussel factory. Our job is to open mussels. Yeap, doesn't sounds too hard? Try open 13k mussels a day and tell me if it's hard or not. Trust me, it's so damn hard to get that figure! I have no idea how those ppl did it. What are they? like, robot or something???

Our work shift is pretty shitty too. Working hour is 6am - 3pm....6AM ok??? I need to get up at 4AM lor since there's only one toilet!!!!! After breakfast and stuff, we drove about 15 minutes to the factory as it's 13km away....I pretty much think we are the only one stays so far away from the workplace.

First day in the mussel opening table and I hated it. I hated the company, I hated the system, I hated the management and I don't even fancy the people there. You have no idea how lousy it was! Allow me to describe to you in gore details.

When we first arrive, we follows the crowd into the workplace. Before we enter, we need to wear uniform and gumboots first. Then we need to step into a water bath to clean the sole of the gumboots. Upon entering the "washing area" we need to scrub our gumboots thoroughly to remove any dirt, then wash our hand with soap and sanitize it before wearing gloves and sleeve covers.

Even the gloves separated into 3 type: linen, latex and rubber gloves. First you need to wear the linen, follow by latex and rubber gloves in separate hand. Things like this weren't taught to us. We just follow blindly and study what the local people do and we imitate as best as we could.

At this phase, I was already not happy with the management. How could they not teach us newbies? Do they expect us to know all these like we have done it all our lives? Goodness me, of course not! WE have NO idea whatsoever, IDIOT!!!!

After wearing gloves and a plastic that covers our arm, we exit the washing area into the mussel opening table. As we enter, we need to dip our gumboots into a water bath again to remove dirt from the sole. All these are done in the name of hygiene. After all, we are handling food therefore hygiene is really important here.

Once in, we need to wear apron to protect ourselves from the "mussel juice" as we called it. Then we pick a knife, sanitize our gloved hands and head to our table. The tables are numbered from 1 - 40 so we need to stand in one and alternate it the next day in a zigzag manner.

Which number will we be standing? NO IDEA.

No one direct us to our position. Not even the supervisor. We have no idea and we just stand there like some idiots whereas the locals (has been working there for some time) just march into the stand. Apparently, we can pick where we want to stand.

Like we know huh? Turn out, we just went to stand at places that no one claimed yet.

Then the mussels drop into the conveyor belt. Then we have no idea what to do next or how to do.

Then we see people opposite us opening mussels at lightning speed. Means we can't see anything at all. I just saw their hand move very fast in grabbing mussels and opening them.

We just stand there staring. We seriously have no f*king idea what are we to do. We naively assumed that we will be taught. After all, it's our first day at work. Not like we ever opened a mussel before in our entire life!!!!

I don't even know which is head which is tail of the mussel nor which side to open. We practically looked at each other bewildered and stared at others "pro openers". Like, 5 minutes later, an Asian colleague took notice of us newbies, stopped what's she been doing and came over to teach us.

Finally, we kinda get the idea of how to do it, which shoot is for rubbish and which shoot is for mussels. In fact, for the first week or so, I don't even realized that I've occasionally hold the knife blade wrongly. Until the supervisor come and correct me. Finally my dense brain realized that the knife has only one side sharp enough to cut, just like our regular knives at home lol...I know I know I'm darn stupid...laugh all you want...I think it was hilarious too LOL ;p

At the end of the day, we all can check how much mussels we have open and guess what? I manged to open 14xx mussels!!!! Bravo!!! Kudos to me^^ Of course, until I see what other's scores were like 6 - 7 k average.

I felt like dying then. It wasn't easy to open 1k mussels ok? Godzilla asked the supervisor what's the average target to achieve and she mentioned 6-7k....

I died a second time then.

Lake Tekapo

I believe Lake Tekapo is one of the most beautiful place in New Zealand. If you were here in south island especially, you should not give this a miss. Definitely most come.

Lake Tekapo is famous for its powdery blue water lake. It's in that colour due to the minerals in the water and rocks and stuff. To know more about the geology, you may google it;p The Good Sheperd Church and the Coolie Dog statue were probably the most photographed too.

For a simple minded girl like me, Lake Tekapo is fascinating due to its unusual colour and also the scenic background of southern Alps. Snow capped southern Alps in the winter is really a view to behold.

Of course, nearby, there's also quite a few beautiful lakes such as Lake Pukaki, Lake Alexandrina and Lake McGregor.

One of the biggest attraction in Lake Tekapo is the Earth & Sky Observatory in Mt John. This is the best place to view stars and moon and galaxies and also the aurora. If you are lucky, you may get to see Aurora Australis!

Well, I wasn't that lucky. I only managed to see the moon surface, and some zodiacs stars, some unique constellations...and also the milky way! Not too bad ay? Their powerful telescope is really amazing as it allows us to see stars that are a few million light years away.

Apart from that, if you have some cool DSLR cameras, they will also help you to take beautiful pictures of the milky way and moon. Truly amazing when your own camera can capture such beautiful view. Too bad mine is just a normal digital camera. Can't do that lol ;p

Besides the observatory, I have had the most sashimi in my life here in Mt Cook, slightly further from Lake Tekapo. The Alpine Salmon farm sells the freshest salmon sashimi, smoked salmon and fresh salmon fillets to all. Previously, I hardly take raw fish but this sashimi was different. It was so fresh so tender that it practically melt in your mouth! It was absolutely delicious!

If it come out from someone who don't eat sashimi, I bet you can take my word on it ^^v

After filling our tummy, we went to Mt Cook to take a look at the famous Tasman Glacier. A short walk of Tasman Walk will lead to the river with glaciers floating around in the powdery blue water. Not a bad sight! Not like we get to see glaciers everyday lol.

We just snap snap snap away to our heart content ^^v

Reasons to go to Kaikoura

As usual, lazy bug got the better of me. Sorry for neglecting this site guys^^

our gardening job in Nelson eventually comes to an end as our boss is heading back to Japan. We HAD applied for another job position in Blenheim but then it will not start work until further notice. We did however went and signed a contract with them already so basically our job is secured. Just that we have no idea when it will start work.

They said they'll call us you see...

Since we have got about 2 weeks of free time before work is expected to commence, we decided to travel to as much places as possible so as not to waste any time. From Blenheim we travel down to Kaikoura for their ever famous crayfish a.k.a lobster!

Damn is the crayfish expensive! Cheapest and smallest crayfish itself would have cost NZD65 alone! Still, although it is expensive, but we still need to give it a try^^v It tasted really fresh and delicious! Although the price is a little steep, but i reckon it's worth a try! My first time ever - eating crayfish;p Me like!

You'll also get to see many many seals here in Kaikoura. i was told those big lumpy fat thing can chase human and attack human faster than they seemed. Personally, I have been frightened by them! You see, we were at the seal colonies area and busy snapping photos...Little did I know there's one giant seal lying nearby.

That thing must've sense human=danger hence it shouted at me and give me possibly my biggest fright! Imagined how I jumped when I suddenly heard noises when I couldn't see anyone. My goodness it was really terrifying experience for sure! It kinda went like this, that seal shout, me too shout (due to fright).

It was really kinda embarrassing as there were people nearby. They probably think what an idiot I was to go agitate the seals. Not that I wanted to! I just didn't realized they were so near to me. I swear!

To think about it, my best memories of Kaikoura has got to be the Mt Fyffe. Last year, Cunning and Small Gas climbed it and for some reason, I wanted to do the same too. Mind you, I am not much of a climber myself. In fact, I tire out too easily. Not only that, it was the worst time of the month for me.

But SOMEHOW, I have this strong desire to conquer Mt Fyffe. I know I'll porbably have a helluva time climbing up but I still wanna give it a try. Slow as I might be, I wanna do it! I believe Dinosaur and Godzilla were probably surprised at my determination. It was after all, 4hrs up and 4 hrs down.

I think, the biggest reason has got to be Mt fyffe is a snow capped mountain. I think I just want to feel and touch snow one more time since it's already the end of winter already. Other than the skiing trip in Mt Ruapehu, we haven't had any close encounter with snow anymore.

As predicted, the climb up was really torturous. It was really tiring for me as I hated the part climbing up. I have no problem with coming down though;p We slowly made our way up and stop at some points to snap snap snap more photos. Finally, we reached the hut.

The Hut is like the main stopping point for all before you continue to climb to the peak. This is the place where there's bed for you if you wanna stay overnight and toilet too. We had our lunch picnic there surrounded by snow. Really cold but really sweet experience.

I even made some miniature snowmen to represent my family members^^v It was so cute! Not to be beaten, Twister and Dinosaur made a bigger one as they claimed mine's too small to be counted as snowman-.-"

They finally modified the snowman into "Ultraman Snowman" which actually looked like Teletubbies more;p It was really an amazing experience. Definitely not something we get to do everyday.

Oooohhhhhh the snow fight! How could I forgot about it? All four of us were playing snow fights like children. I am not surprised if the mountain is ringing from our peels of laughter. It was truly a wonderful memories for me. Our trip to Mt Fyffe were really spectacular in every way.

I'll cherished the memories we have created in Mt Fyffe for a long long time.