Day 5 - 11/12/08

What the hell!!! It was freaking cold this morning... Even under the thick blanket I had, I still felt freezing...


By the way, a strange thing happened this morning... Rex and I got out of our rooms at THE EXACT SAME TIME and we were BOTH wearing long sleeved shirts.... Weird, huh?


Oh yea, I did the laundry by myself. *Claps hands* Awww, come on, people!!! It's a really rare occasion!!! I was so proud of myself that i took a picture of the hanging clothes, which, might I add, I hung all by myself too. :D


Here it is...


Anyways, enough of my laundry ordeal... Today was freaking windy, like 40 km/h type winds or something like that. Tom went out to get his daughter's 7 seater - a Mazda MPV so we could go out with two girl exchangees from Australia (Elly and Dannielle) to Te Papa and a wool mill. (I hope they're hot :D)


Ah, damn... They weren't free... Oh well, Rex, Tom and I went to a place called STANSBOROUGH, where they specialized in harvesting wool, spinning wool and producing stuff made out of wool. It seems that they were the ones who made the cloaks for the Lord of the Rings and Narnia films. Those cloaks that Frodo and King Caspian wore came from the company we were at.



STANSBOROUGH...


The moment we were in the front door, we were bombarded by barks which cam from a cute little dog.

Here it is.. AWWWW!! IT'S SO CUTE!!!


But it was cool, as he (or she, I don't know as I couldn't see under it) was only doing his (or her) job - protecting the shop with his/her cute barks. Not a bad strategy, "cute" the bad guy to death.


Anyways, we went on our way with a tour of the place. We got to see how wool was made and spun. We got to watch a short film about the sheep they rear and the machines they used. (The sheep were so cute!!!) The machines included the loom and several others. (Can't remember the names of the machines, though...)


The loom... Dum, dum, dum...


We were at the gift shop before we knew it. They sold many different items made from wool...


Well, duh. Imagine if we went through the whole WOOL factory and at the end the gift shop was filled with stuff made out of... Say... PLASTIC or artificial FIBER... That would be just plane weird. The tour guide would be like: " And here we are at our gift shop. Feel free to try on our clothing made from cotton, because we ran out of wool... At this wool factory..."


Anyway, they sold a lot of stuff, ranging from teddy bears... Awww!!


To neckties... Oh my god! What the hell is that!! The neckties they were selling were damn ugly! It was bright red and furry... Like a red, furry monster... Argh... I was too afraid to take a picture of it, in case my camera lens cracked at the sight of that monstrosity...


To wallets, which were quite good. The problem was that everything in there was really, really EXPENSIVE. Yea well, they ARE made from real, pure NZ wool. The teddy bear cost $90 and the ugly tie was at $75. The cheapest item there was a wallet at $70. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a cheapskate person... As a rule of thumb, when I travel, I see prices as dollar for dollar... But even then, they are really expensive...


After that, we headed down to Te Papa, again. But this time, we were going to see something really spectacular - THE COLOSSAL SQUID!!! When they said colossal, they (the Te Papa people) really meant humongous-ly gigantic! It was about 4.3 meters in length. Imagine this, if we were to cook this monster, the octopus rings that would be made out of it would be as big as car tires...



The colossal squid... From the bottom up...

The colossal squid... From the top down...

The special thing about this colossal squid is that it had tons of ROTATING teeth at the end of it's arms. As shown below... (actual life-size)


We took a couple of pictures outside Te Papa...



Then, on our way home, Tom surprised us with accelerating downhill again... THIS time, in a Mazda MPV. If that's not enough for you action-enthusiasts out there, he also did a miniature burnout at one of the traffic lights. When I looked back, I could actually see a black strip of tire marks on the spot we just left.


I swear by the time I get back home to Malaysia, I would be saying :" MOM!!! Why are you driving so slow?!" Even though she's doing 110 km/h...


Upon reaching home, I did the ironing all by myself. Again, because I was feeling so proud and light headed that I've done another completely normal thing all by myself, I took another picture of the ironing board... I don't really know why I did that... I think it was somewhere along the lines of - can't find anyone to take my picture while I pressed the clothes... So I'll settle for the next best thing - a picture of the pressing board.


Argh... Still bright at 8 p.m. Don't know when I'll get used to this...