Flaming computers!!!

Monday 11th October 2010

MP3 track of the day: Red red wine - UB40

Weather: mixed but mostly hot with a cool strong breeze

Today I started as I meant to go on; I didn't get up until 9:30am (well that's not completely true, I was awoken at 7:00am by a noisy Frenchman who took forever to pack his bag and leave the dorm but fell back to sleep) and I then went for a long shower.

Leaving the hostel around 10:30am I went for a wonder around the town practicing my 'urban photography' which, after a while, I realised needed a lot more practice. The town of Nelson is lovely, however the retail area seems way to big for such a small place and I did wonder why it was so. Eventually I made it to a lovely church perched upon a hill. It was very photogenic but the skies were not so. Finally on my tour of the city I went past the jewelers who created the 'One Ring' for the Lord of the Rings films to find that, if you wanted a replica, it would set you back anything between $200 and $1700 depending on what you wanted ... no thank you.

After lunch I headed to the local supermarket to purchase food for tomorrow. It was now 2pm and I decided to head back to my hostel to have a quite afternoon of surfing the web, looking at other photographers urban photos (to get some ideas) and then possibly watch a film or two ... however my computer had other ideas.

Four hours it took me to upload my photos for the day, book my hostel and bus ride (which is nearly ten hours) To Franz Joseph, my next port of call on the west side of the south island, and check my emails ... four hours to do a usual 45 minute stint. The amount of updates, crashes and blue screens of death were starting to make me feel like throwing my PC out of the window above me. This doesn't happen to often, it's usually when Bill Gates and Norton feel like updating my system at the same time but it isn't half annoying. Luckily it happened to me on an 'empty day' but still, four hours of when I could be watching a film wasted.

So it's 6:40pm now. The plan soon is to go out and find that Chinese takeaway I found yesterday, come back and watch a film whilst having tea before an early night (As I have to be up by 6am tomorrow). So today hadn't been quite as relaxed as I had planned, my computer caused a few hair pulling moments plus a few naughty words but it's all okay. What I had set out to do today was completed and I'm a lot more energised than yesterday. Abel Tasman National Park, here I come!

Toodle Pip!