Holiday

Flight into Christchurch (CHC), I met 2 familiar faces. The Chief Steward and Inflight Supervisor, we chatted a little. As for junior crews, considering the fact that I have left 6 years ago, even the Leading crew can be someone new to me. The children managed to sleep, it's a night flight - thank God. I managed to sleep too, CS helped me by letting us know where the empty seats are, so mom had 3-seater to herself; Athena had 3-seater to herself and we didn't have the bassinet fixed for Aricia. When Athena decided to go over to sleep with mom, we simply let Aricia sleep in the 3 seater behind us. It was an easy flight apart from the food which my children don't really eat (what to do. fussy kids!) And we bump into the CS at Lake Tekapo the next day.

The holiday is fun, it was fun until the older girl had to make everyone angry with her stupid nonsense. I'm not going to spell out every detail whatever nonsense she had to come up with, but it really made us fuming mad at her for scolding her at almost every half hour. If you think it's because of my raging hormones that is causing it, nope! even my meanopausal mom can feel the frustrations and kept asking "why is she so stubborn?"

Apart from that, I tried not to let that girl spoil my holiday. We travelled alot, I mean alot. In total more than 3500km, goash! we don't even ill-treat our Nissan this way.
Our car ahem 7-seater comes with a personalised "car alarm". Everytime my husband turns off the engine or if he opens the door, the personalised car alarm comes on - the little girl from behind will cry "mummy..........ma...mie......." Really it's no joke, obviously during this trip she leached on me so she thought I was going to dump her (in reality, I'm more keen in dumping the older girl). All I wanted was some extra time for mum and the older girl to come out before I can go in to carry her from the car seat, but she starts crying the moment the engine's turned off. What I'm worried about is the cold air getting into her lungs (when older girl was 3 and started crying out in public while we tried to put on clothes for her... in bitterly cold winter.. she came back with pneumonia when we were back in Singapore. So you can understand why my kan-cheong-ness when it comes to the little one crying out alot this trip)
I saw rainbows!! I don't mean to be some suaku person, but how often do we see rainbows in our highly clustered country and......how free can I be to be looking out the window? The last time I saw a rainbow, I remembered mom said "it means good news" and it was good news coz' I didn't know I was preggie then. But nope, this time I saw 3 rainbows and no good news. Phew!
I saw the beautiful sky with twinkling stars and I was trying to see if I can make out anything. And then I told Athena about constellations. And that girl, went on with "mummy, you see I join this star to this star I saw a rocket, a bird in the sky." Hmm......frankly speaking I have no idea where she's pointing.
Athena learn alot this trip, I told her so many things on geography. On plates, and what happens when I rub them together. She can tell me "earthquake", if I crush them "volcano". I think I must have taught her before then. Okay, why the heck I was telling her all these cause we were first in Rotorua, and then back in Wellington we were in Te Papa Tongarewa and there was an exhibit.
As for Aricia, she sure sees alot of sheeps. If she's not laughing to the music, she is looking out of the window and "baah-ing" at every mass of sheeps she sees. Ahem, the population of sheeps is even more than the human population, so you can imagine how many times she "baahs". Too much that hubby said that she even "baah" when she was sleeping. Haha!( I didn't hear it coz' I was fast asleep)
A few interesting places we went but I'm not going to say anymore.

A picture says a thousands words : how true can this statement be? The camera's overworked with a total of 1200++ digital pictures + 200 over in the video camera. I think I video-taped around 7 or more hours of video? Speaking of which, I think there's a problem with the video, twice I had to re-save the videos when I was prompted with a "Video Management File broken" and just as I was returning back, I couldn't zoom the camera. The moment I turn it on, it's already zoomed and whichever way I adjusts, it blurs. Darn! Okay, I don't think this has gotta do with being over-worked. I think there's a problem with the camera. So now, I have to quickly record in our DVD player and then I'll send it for repairs.

Flight back, the Leading Crew did look familiar she found me familiar too. I was able to chat with her and another guy for a short while, didn't want to interrupt their work. A newer crew, a Taiwanese girl, talked to me kept saying that Athena looks like a Japanese. (So many times she's been mistaken for a Japanese liao!) I found out that the Leading's cousin is actually my LSS batchgirl. Small world huh? Got both numbers and will keep in contact with them. She's also a flying mother, son same age as Athena.

Okay..... and here's the story which I LIVE to tell my friends and the whole world who's reading this.

On one leg, we were departing from Queenstown to Punakaiki (that's a long journey) so we set off much earlier as the day starts. On our way, we were to stop by in Wanaka for Puzzling World coz hubby didn't want to do it the day before, saying it's going to duplicate the drive route. Queenstown to Wanaka is less than an hour drive away and it takes us through Cardrona. Well logically that's the shorter route but we ended up...
Skiiers will know Cardrona is a ski area, okay so perhaps I forgot all about that, and having travelled in those curves and up/down slopes etc... days before I thought this is going to be the same.
At some point, we saw ice on the ground and was showing Athena. As we drove further, we were admiring the whites, and even told her we were driving through a mist. It was damn cold! Okay, the girl got excited we were happy going on with the journey. We went up and up and ..oh oh..we saw snow on the ground but we didn't stop. Then it was snowing and freak! The car skidded a little. Thank goodness the wheels were more sturdy so it wasn't that bad. And we stopped. Nobody seemed to be driving through, I thought OMG we must be a bunch of stupid idiots going up the slopes today and everyone else knows the snow is heading this way so decided to sit infront of their fireplace with a cuppa hot piping coffee.
Soon, more than 2 cars pass but nobody seems to stop for us. Logical - coz in that situation you can't brake. Then, one vehicle was coming up and it skidded too - worst than our situation. The driver stopped, another car behind stopped too. Now, there are 3 vehicles stuck. Okay, so we weren't idiots afterall. At that time, we took out our snow chains figuring out how to fix it and we needed help with fixing the snow chains more than anything. It was snowing!! And at that time I wasn't even in the mood to ask Athena to see the snow flakes or whip out my cameras - hubby will take the snow chains and chain me up instead.
Then we were also worried about the condition further up the remaining journey. One guy said he didn't have snow chain and he's going to be up there awhile (I think he's a photographer) and will go down later. The driver of the last car said he called his friend from Wanaka who's coming to rescue him.
Throughout our conversations outside, I dunno what was going on in the car, I asked mom to help take care of the 2 girls. But mum said that at one point when we had the car door open, Athena was complaining "the snow touch my leg, the snow touch my leg."
I sounded more kan-cheong than anybody else. Of course lah! I was the only woman there and honestly I dunno if hubby was as worried as I am or he was just trying to act cool. I asked them to help with snow chains (they have no idea themselves too) and then in my more kan-cheong than anything asked them " we don't have snow where we come from, so in this situation what are we suppose to do. We can't brake, or ... what?" Until one guy told hubby to go on Low Gear (huh? whatever that means. He better understand-that's his job. My job is to act the damsel-in-distress.) Hmm......okay that's just some advice we needed from them who experiences this kind of situation more than we do.

We managed to fix the snow chain on one tyre (which apparently turned out we were wrong in fixing it. Gotta take out the whole tyre from the car to fix it), we couldn't even open up the other snow chain. And so our decision is to go down and go by the long way to Wanaka since we have no idea how the situation is further up and when the snow scrapper vehicle is coming.
3 vehicles drove a few metres further up, there's a look-out stop ahead and we'll make a U-turn from there. Hubby made a comment, yah.. feels so much grip on the wheels. As we did the U-turn the guy from the 3rd car came down and told us "your snow chain dropped off." huh?? Imagine if we had continued driving on thinking we still had that snow chain on and worst still - returning it to the car rental company with one snow chain short. Haha!
The guys were really helpful and we didn't even get their names.
One last advice from the guy from the 3rd car, he told us to drive on the wrong side of the road. Ahem.... the more he said that, it makes me think if he thought or knew we were going to flip down the cliff. Choy!

And so our journey down the slope began. Hubby's hands were tight on the wheels, I was the turtle trying to keep a lookout since my view is not blocked to see on-coming cars. Just then, the scrapper vehicle came up. ??? How to make another U-turn? Okay, we're not to risk it all.
Hubby honked the car, like all the Indian drivers in India do, to warn oncoming car our presence. Aricia laughed at every honk. Athena kept asking "why are we not going up? Papa papa, why we not going up?". Mom was chanting, I couldn't make out what were the words but coz' she was whispering it did sound "pssf ashhis...". I was looking out, eyes popping out more than the Maoris can do (okay, just exaggerating) and wondering if I'll live to continue my baking (many more recipes to try) and bento and ....
Okay, it was a tense; silent (not exactly silent since we had noise behind hubby and myself) journey down. Once we passed the snow, we heaved a sigh of relief. I only managed to laugh about the scenerio in our car after that. The children - one laughing at every honk, one yakking while we're worried she's more concern in seeing the whites. The mother - the chanter. Me - the worrier.

And so, I live to tell my story. I guess next time we're more prepared. Huh? I don't think hubby wants to drive in that situation where all lives are in his hands.

**Photos will be up when ready ** keep your eyes open and don't worry, you don't have to honk