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Wellington
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I got up early today - mainly because I had ordered room service to bring breakfast up at some ungodly hour. Note to self, make that a bit later tomorrow! Anyway, breakfast came and it was good. In fact, it was the best breakfast I had ever had in a hotel - truly massive with a huge variety of foods. Certainly didn't need to eat for the rest of the day.<
As it had been fairly windy and cold yesterday I put on a jumper and coat. I made it as far as the harbour (all of 3 minutes away) before turning round and going back to take it all off. It was so warm!!! Beautiful clear skies, sunshine and about 18 degrees. Couldn't have asked for better weather. I wandered around the harbour until about midday, when I had to go to the Michael Fowler Convention Centre to register for my conference. I went there via the Civic Square, which is a nice meeting area with benches and a suspended ball of leaves in the middle! Quite amazing.
I registered and set up the stall with my colleague. We left at 1:15pm to head over to the National Library of New Zealand, where we were meeting with other conference delegates to head to a Powhiri at Pipitea Marae. The powhiri was just amazing. We lined up, women first to walk to the building, built in traditional Maori style. As one of the Elders called us in, the men overtook us to go in first. We all greeted the Maori with hand-shaking and nose-kissing and then seated. The whole ceremony was in Maori, and we had to sing various Maori songs at parts of the ceremony - despite having the words it was almost impossible to get them sounding right!! At the end we all had fruit and sweet breads before heading our separate ways.
We were given a leaflet on a small walking tour of Wellington Buildings that we could follow from the site back to the conference centre. My colleague and I thought this was a good idea, so we set off. Funnily enough, no one else did. Perhaps this was because despite saying it was only going to take 40 minutes it actually took us nearly 2 hours and we didn't even get to stop in the pub (which was number 1 on the list and also closed!).
After getting back to the conference we finished setting up and then went to the Welcome Drinks reception in the Town Hall. This was a nice opportunity to meet some of the other delegates and stall holders. And also collect those all important promotional gimmicks!! Cuddly fish, stress cars and a really funky blue light are all mine!!
My colleague headed over to my hotel for dinner a couple of hours later. The hotel had an a la carte menu so we thought we might as well sample something nice. I had the strangest looking concoction, some shredded Herefordshire beef on a mascarpone mash topped with a field mushroom. All shaped in a perfect cylinder. I had a side of fries, which to be fair looked just like they had come from McDonald's (which was just over the road). Ged had the Special, which was a fish and pancake dish with a side of artichokes (and various other things). In all it was very nice and reasonably priced for top notch food! Sadly, there was not a single pavlova on the dessert menu so we skipped that.
My colleague headed off home and I headed off to bed, knowing that a long day was ahead tomorrow
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