New Zealand Trip (Part 1) : Christchurch | Lake Tekapo | Lake Pukaki | Twizel

Note: All pictures are not filtered unless stated otherwise. So what you will be seeing will be New Zealand in its purest amateur digital form. Dig in!

I had no plans to write about my family trip to New Zealand in my old blog because I figured it would take a lot of time and I was lazy. And now that 10 months have passed since that trip, it would be kind of weird. But a friend texted me recently asking about the trip as his parents were planning to go to New Zealand for their honeymoon (He told me later that they ended up changing their destination to Turkey though). And I remember how I had browsed over 10 blogs while planning the itinerary for the holiday, and how that had helped me immensely during the planning process. So as I have ample time on my hands now and I have a new sparse blog, I thought what the heck I’ll write a post – or two -  about the trip. Who knows, somewhere in the world someone is planning a trip to the picturesque islands and like I did a year ago, turns to Goggle for help.

My family and I were in New Zealand for 11 days and 10 nights. At first we planned just to visit the South Island, but my mom all of the sudden wanted to add Wellington (the southern part of North Island) to our trip. If you ask me, when you only have less than two weeks to explore New Zealand, it’s better to stick to one island. There’s so much to do in the South Island, that I wish we had spent more time there. Praying hard that I can set foot on this beautiful country again in the near future.

We booked our tickets in June 2014 but only booked for our rental car in July and accommodations in late August. It was a bit late but my parents entrusted me to plan and decide on the route and I had to do it alone without the help of my sisters so I gave it my best. Oh yeah, by route I mean driving route, because my dad would be driving in the South Island. We used Booking.com and Agoda to find places to stay but I can’t recall the website we used to book the 8 seater van, sorry. Tip #1, you should choose a place that has rave reviews. Out of the 6 places that we stayed in (and booked online for), only one was a disappoinment. I think prebooking is crucial if you're travelling in wolfpacks, but if you're travelling alone or in twos, it would not be a problem to just swing by the many motels and check yourself in. You can try Airbnb.com to find a place to stay too.

We departed from Kuala Lumpur with MAS on the 20^th October 2014 in the morning and arrived in Melbourne that night. If you’re from Malaysia, there is no direct flight to the South Island of New Zealand. So you either have to fly to Australia (like we did) and then take another flight to Christchurch (South Island) from there or you can fly directly to Auckland (North Island) and make your way to Christchurch from there. We had a two and a half hour transit, if I remember correctly before we hopped onto our next flight. I think not staying in Melbourne for the night was the first mistake we had made. The airline we took to Christchurch after that was JetStar and I understand that it was a budget airline but the seats were kind of harder than what I expected. So it wasn’t really a pleasant experience as we had little sleep during that journey. Add in the fact that we spent 8 hours in the air earlier so we were really knocked out. It took another 4 hours to Christchurch and we arrived at about a little bit after 5 in the morning.

DAY 1

Yay! Arrived in Chricthurch, NZ. A tip for Muslim travellers, the prayer times on the internet are not 100% reliable so you’d better cross check with the local muslim association or mosque. After we went through the customs and had no trouble unlike when went to Australia because this time we didn’t bring any food except for canned sardines, 3in1 drinks and instant noodles. Oh and the Christchurch Airport isn’t a 24 hour airport so you have to go and get your passports checked quickly at the customs.  Only after we got our luggage did we find a secluded area to pray. Unlike the airports in Auckland and Melbourne there is no Surau or prayer room available so you just have to make do with a clean spot.

And then we took some pictures inside and outside the airport – like typical tourists- as we waited for the people from the car rental to pick us up at 7.30 am. Only when we went outside did we realize how cold it was, at least for us Malaysians. It was late October and it was supposed to be in the middle of spring in New Zealand but the temperature then was only 4 degree celcius. Good thing I read a blog earlier about how the weather there is bipolar, so you should always have a coat ready.

After picking up the car from the car rental place and realizing that we had brought too many bags, we made our way to the city center to find our motel. But first, breakfast. We stopped at a café to have breakfast. I can’t remember the name but it was attached to an organic grocery store which was colder than the air outside. The food was alright but was a bit pricy. After we were happy and full, we used the free map to go to our first motel. Yeah, a map, guys, I did not made a typo. We wanted to rent a portable gps but the rental company said they were out of stock. Thankfully, we managed to find our motel which was Courtesy Court Motel in Edgeware , situated in a row of motels. It was owned by a Korean family. We booked two units, each has a living room with a tv, a kitchenette, a bedroom and attached bathroom. Since we are a family of 6 we had to pay for an extra bed. My sisters and I share one unit while my parents and younger brother share the other one. I really recommend this motel because it is clean, including the bathroom, the furnitures are not outdated, has ample parking space and the owner are nice enough to hold to some of our luggage when we flew to Wellington on the 7th day. Of course, it had free wifi. 

That first day we only drove around the city (where we found lots of amazing street art and went to the mall to get food (there is a halal indian food place but it was kind of a fast food place so the dishes were just so-so) as were tired. We only stayed for the night because the next day is when the real adventure begins. After checking out early in the morning, we headed straight to the highway ( just for a little while, soon after it was only a one lane road) towards Tekapo. It took about 3 hours and a half to get to the lake but it was worth it. The scenery was great, We got to see a lot of cows and sheep as expected. 

My dad was the one who drove and would be the only driver for the whole trip, poor him, because my sister (who was the only competent driver aside from him in our family) said she didn't dare to, at the last minute after seeing the steep road towards Queenstown but  we'll get to that later. If you're Malaysian and you're wondering what is the procedure to driving a car in NZ, fret not. You don't need an international driving license like you would if you plan on going to the UK or the US. I made a mistake in telling my sister to do her international license and we wasted quite some money. Oops. After finding out about that, my dad didn't go and made his. Thank God. Okay so first you need to book your car or caravan online prior to your trip. When booking, you will need to type in the name of the driver and the license number in the online form. Then, you have to photocopy your license and bring that with the original along to New Zealand. You will need to submit that to the car rental company and you're done. You also drive on the left side of the road just like we do back home so there's nothing to worry about except for some scary winding road but like I said, let's save that for later.

When we made it to Lake Tekapo, I was lost for words. Here are a few pictures to tempt you. We actually took a lot more pictures with us in them but you wouldn't want to see shots of people or selfies when you could focus on and admire these beauties. 

We spent some time in Lake Tekapo basking in the sun. I later learnt that that was the one and only time I can walk around without a coat for the duration of our trip. At Tekapo, there is the Church of The Good Shepherd, which I didn't have a good photo of in my camera. There is also accommodation available there but we decided to choose to spend the night in Twizel, a nearby town which was cheaper.  Twizel was also further down the road than Mount Cook, which we had planned to see that day. But unfortunately, we didn't because it was late already and we were so hungry for lunch. So we went to Twizel which was a nice quaint town and one of the places in NZ that they shot LOTR.  But I think If I were to go to Tekapo again, I'd spend the night there.

The sky was so clear that night and we got to see stars. Like a lot of them. Unfortunately the camera was in my mom's room and even my sister's iphone could not get a good snap. But you can see a picture of that from google. And the clouds in Twizel were just beautiful. I didn't get to take any pictures with the camera but here's a few with my phone and filtered using Vsco.

Okay that's all guys for today. I will update more on our trip soon. Especially the hotel we stayed in Twizel which wasn't up to par even though it was supposed to be a good hotel. The motel in Christchurch  was heaps better.

Let's Talk About Kevin

Let me get this straight, I love reading. I love to read any kinds of books but until recently, the genres of books that I liked to buy were usually chick lit, romantic drama, legal thriller, crime fiction, science fiction (dystopian), medical fiction, melodrama, fantasy and the list goes on. I've also read a lot of books from my uncle's old collection ( the ones he left in my grandma's home from his school days and never brought to his house after he moved out) that somehow are usually made up of the same subgenre: legal thriller, crime fiction and christian science fiction. Honestly speaking, I've never even known the last subgenre before I started raiding his book collection. 

But lately, I started to read more and more psychological thrillers. I think I have had more than the healthy dose for now. Don't get me wrong, you can't NEVER read too many books. But psychological thrillers - the really good ones at least - would always leave me feeling a little sick to the stomach. The book that got me hooked in the first place was actually Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. .You might know the author from the box office movie, Gone Girl. But I'm not gonna write about that ( really disturbing but amazing) book today. I'm going to talk about the latest book I've read and finished last night called We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

This book is written in letter form with Eva, the mother of Kevin as the narrator and it was addressed to her estranged husband, Franklin. The scenes in the book are switched between the past and present and back and forth continuously for us to be able to get to, well, obviously, know Kevin. And the rest of the dysfunctional family members. In the official book synopsis, it says that Eva did not want to be a mother. As a result, she had a lot of thinking done in the aftermath of the *spoiler alert* school killing about how her coldness to her son from day one had affected him. However in the book, it says that Eva was feeling bored and wanted something more in her life (she already had a successful career) and discussed with her husband about having their first baby. It was only after she conceived that she first had feel regret and recalled her non existent maternal instincts.

(SPOILER ALERT)

I find that the book could have been named Let's talk about Kevin and Eva, instead. Trust me, you'll think about Eva more than Kevin for the first one third of the book or so. At least I did. I immediately harbored a dislike to Eva when she narrated that her son was evil from birth. I mean I could understand if he was not a good person or mentally disturbed ever since he was a young kid when he could think properly. This is as at the age of 7 or so, a child's faculty of thinking is already developed enough that he could make choices or form opinions of his own (but the level of cognitive skills and judgement are of course, still a far cry form an adult's). But I can't fathom what kind of mother would describe  her child as an evil being when he was barely a day old and refused to drink her milk. (An update: I just read it again and realized Eva's reactions towards her baby could actually be a manifested symptoms of post-partum depression, but it was not explicitly stated in the book).

But my ill feeling of Eva wavered as Kevin grew older and did more bad things. Kevin, was probably every mother's nightmare. Worse still, Franklin, Eva's husband and Kevin's father would never believe her whenever she brought up the subject that the boy was in the wrong. This is why I believe that Franklin - oblivious to his son's misdemeanor when he was a young child and his wicked ways when he was much older- was the worst culprit of all. Eva suffered emotionally throughout the years until she had grown indifference and stopped being surprised whenever Kevin misbehaved or hurt other people. So yes, I understand her pain. But the way she responded to Kevin's classmate's mother who came to their house complaining about how Kevin had taunted the girl until she returned to her bulimic ways, held her somehow accountable. She told the woman to tell her daughter to "suck it up". Because apparently she said that telling Kevin off, would make things worse. As I read on, I got more exasperated at Kevin's parents. If only they had talked more about Kevin, instead of now when one of them isnt there, they could send Kevin to therapy from an early age or something. Eva did suggest reform school,but that was after an argument with her husband who like I said believed sweet Kevin could do no wrong, thus the discussion did not go anywhere.

Unlike most books that I have read, I couldn't finish this book in one sitting or two. It actually took me about 4 sittings in the course of 6 days to finish it. No, it's not because this book is unusually long. Or it's really bad that I only had to finish it because it's my personal rule. It's just that the first I don't know half of the book just really drags along. And I find that Eva's writing was a bit monotonous. But most of all, I really despised all the main characters in the book at some point, although that wasn't at all abnormal when you read a psychological thriller. That is, except for Celia. (shes's not really a main character though) Well, she's a poor thing that deserved to be born to a better family. But I was still disappointed with her for not being braver and for not even trying to go against her brother.

And the twist in the ending was something I did not foresee at all. I did smile and think, of course, Franklin was spared from living the humiliation and disappointment of finding out that his precious son Kevin was nothing short of a psychopath and murderer ( i don't even care that he is a minor). Kevin killed his schoolmates, a teacher who liked and understood him and a cafeteria worker in cold blood with a bow and arrow. Most of them bled to death. He also killed two other people.

Readers will be arguing (healthily of course) whether Kevin was evil from birth or it was being unloved by Eva that made him that way. I, for one,believe it is a combination of both nature and nurture. I believe that Kevin was the only one to blame for the murder of innocent lives. But his psychopathic tendencies could have been controlled.  Eva could have loved him a bit more when he was a young boy and Franklin could have been smarter and should've seen through his son's pretense. And let me reiterate that they are both to blame for not sending Kevin to a psychiatrist earlier so that we could know what is actually in his head.

You see, I read an article prior to reading this book about a neuroscientist who did a research on psychopathic traits in the brain of serial killers only to be surprised when he found out that his own brain displayed these traits. BUT he had never killed anyone or hurt someone like Kevin did. The only things the scientist was guilty of were lack of empathy towards his family members, being aggressive and him always wanting to win in everything. He later on went on TEDtalk to talk about this and wrote a book about his discovery. He said what made him turn out a stark contrast from serial killers or rapists is because he had a loving and stable childhood. He also tried to change for the better after learning about his brain, by being nicer to people ( Joseph Stromberg, 2013). 

With that, I rest my case.

 Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/)