vasco_pyjama: (Default)
Someone - and by 'someone', I mean ME - is going to New Zealand to have adventures!

Courtesy of Accessible NZ, I have scored myself 22 days of glorious rambling fun, with the added bonus of a) one altogether shiny New Years Eve party in Matakana, and b) the certain, happy knowledge that I can get absolutely everywhere I need to go - all the accomodation, all the activities, any and all travelling between Point A and Point B, any help I might need, about half my meals...all the niggly little factors that usually get in the way of the Gimp Brigade's attempts to go off and have Internationally Awesome Backpacking Adventures like all my able-bodied mates have been able to do.

Seriously, check this out.

29 December - Auckland
Fly into Auckland airport. Nice, easy, relaxed day to catch up on some sleep, get over the dreaded jet lag fail, do a spot of sightseeing...maybe (not likely, but maybe) a bungee jump off the Sky Tower.

30 December - Auckland
Harbour cruise. Prep for New Years Eve - maybe a beach somewhere, or a few quiet bevvies at the pub. Maybe head out and check out some night life.

31 December - Matakana
New Years Eve, complete with a ticket to get me into the Highlife NYE Experience. By the looks of it, this is going to be so cool.

1 January - Tauranga/Mt Manganui
Amble up the Coromandel coast. From here until January 3, it's all just nice relaxed beach time. Could go on a fishing charter, have a swim with some dolphins, fit in a spot of kayaking, go out to a gig...

4 January - Rotorua
This'd be the town with all the crazy geysers exploding up every-bloody-where. Nice bit of sightseeing and a meal with the locals. I have no idea what 'hangi' is, but I think I'm going to find out!

5 January - Taupo
Hang out at Te Puia, have a look at Huka Falls...all that good stuff.

6 January - Wellington
Sightseeing and some night life until the 8th.

8 January - Blenheim
Catch the Picton Ferry from North Island to South Island, sit back and relax in what my good mate Sven (AKA Tintin's Kiwi Cousin) assures me is some bloody good surfing territory. He of all people should know - he grew up in Blenheim and his family still lives there.

9 January - Kaikoura/Marlborough
Into Central Otago, which - being serious wine country - would be a really good spot to slot in a wine tour at some place called the Montana vineyard.

10 January - Kaikora Coast
OMG OMG OMG WE'RE GONNA GO WHALE WATCHING.

11 January - Christchurch
Shopping, sightseeing, people watching, a round of Giant Chess. Too bad I can't actually play chess...

12 January - Hokitika
Nice easy day in a quiet little town. Hokitika is apparently where all that beautiful greenstone comes from, so I might end up leaving with a few more shiny trinkets than I had when I arrived!

13 January - Haast
Who's up for a look at Franz Josef Glacier?

14 January - Hawea/Wanaka
Two days of soaking up sun and getting back some energy. I'm probably going to need it, because the next stop is...

16 January - Queenstown
I have no idea what I'm going to do here. Bungee jumping? White water rafting? A whirl on a jetboat? Nice quiet cruise on the original TSS Earnslaw?

18 January - Christchurch
Winding down and a last ditch bit of adventuring before we fly out again on the 19th.

This is going to ROCK LIKE NOTHING HAS EVER ROCKED BEFORE.
vasco_pyjama: (Default)
Guess who has the dreaded lurgy?

Urgh...
vasco_pyjama: (Default)
Just for future reference, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the TRIPPIEST MOVIE EVER if you walk in on it and start watching halfway through.
vasco_pyjama: (pic#163446)
I didn't fall off the edge of the internet.

No, really. I just...went quiet for a bit. It was one of those big long stretches where you - or at least I - keep having things happen, think I should probably write that down and then other things happen that get in the way.

Of course, now I'm back here I can't actually remember any of the things I've spent most of the last month reminding myself to write down.
vasco_pyjama: (Default)
Because he will crash land on his head, assuming it to be
The strongest part of his body.

Because someone will put up a sign that reads:
Do Not Step on the Cirrus Clouds.

Because it does not even take a man hundreds of feet above
Sea-level to learn contempt.

Because there will be new categories of handicaps: bow-wings,
Ostrich disease, scaly feathers, carousel flight syndrome,
Or at a freak show: The Amazing Wingless Wonder.

Because he will have a new weapon, gravity,
And everything he releases becomes a missile,
Even glass marbles, books, the fatal music box.

Because he is lonely enough without being able to
Frame the house he lives in between his forefinger and thumb.

Because then the sky will shed its metaphors of freedom
And become another path for him to carry his burdens.

Because there will be a popular form of suicide:
Flying into foreign airspace and being gunned down;
All it takes is a nose-tip to press an invisible blue button.

Because each death in mid-air, each comic comet plunge,
Will be another enactment of the fall of Man.

Because in concentration camps people will break wings
And use the feathers for quills to write sonnets
And pillow stuffing for innocent dreams.

Because he will have less to fantasize about, less of miracles
And the word 'levitation' will not exist.

Because there will be children who will empty their bladders
Under cloud cover in an attempt to make yellow snow.

And because he might get the wrong notion that he is closer
To heaven, when he has not even come to a mile
Within the presence of angels, despite the resemblance


-Alfian bin Sa'at
vasco_pyjama: (Default)
I spent the day wandering up and down the length of a room in my underwear, being manhandled into all sorts of intriguing positions by an absurdly hot young bloke named Joel, getting impressively rumpled and bench-pressing quite a lot more than I thought I could.

H - who will know who they are when they see this, though it's not my place to drop names - would be impressed, and might possibly try to pounce on me (lovingly) through the internet!

Okay, so it's not quite what it sounds like.

I was back at the Gait Lab, being tested. I've been a medical guinea pig all my life - first kid to have Botox injections in my hamstrings and calves, first kid to have some of my surgeries and very early on the list to have most of the rest, they used me and my wonky walking to calibrate all the machines in this particular Gait Lab when it was built - so honestly, if I'm going to be paid and get some decent strength training out of it, one more round of guinea-piggery won't do me any harm.

The thing is, though...I really don't like going to the Gait Lab. I know it's necessary. I know why it's necessary. It doesn't hurt until I have to rip the tape off, nothing bad happens to me while I'm there, the people are nice to me 95% of the time. I've done it heaps of times.

I just don't like it all that much. There's something about all those numbers that strips me down. Reduced to a string of stats about degrees of flexion, surrounded by a whole pile of medical mumbo-jumbo I don't have a hope of being able to understand...I stop being me and start being that.

I'm suddenly very aware of the hundred and one little things I've always known don't work for me the way they do for everyone else, and I hate that. I can't really explain why.

I console myself with thoughts of my new Robot Leg. There's a little machine taped to the top of my thigh, and it goes VRRT VRRT VRRT as I walk.
vasco_pyjama: (Default)
Nothing to see here. Just pimping a movie.

If you haven't already seen it, go forth and watch.
vasco_pyjama: (pic#163446)
Just got back from having a good long chat with Dane. He taught me back when I was in first year, indulged all my fangirling about poets and authors - did a bit of his own, too! - encouraged my writing (especially the poetry) and showed me cool new things to try.

Man, I missed him when he was gone.

Dreamwidth

May. 4th, 2009 03:28 pm
vasco_pyjama: (Default)
So yeah.

I can has Dreamwidth account.

I'm [livejournal.com profile] fizzylizard at LJ still, but I've decided to be a bit daring and call myself [personal profile] vasco_pyjama for Dreamwidth purposes.

Anyone who wants to, start inspecting.

Profile

vasco_pyjama: (Default)
Vasco Pyjama, Explorer At Large

August 2009

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 31     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Feb. 27th, 2026 03:26 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios