The completely predictable migraine

30 Sep, Kathmandu

After a late night and an ok sleep, I was up early for Bharat's 6am Durbar Square expedition. 

But alas, by 6:30am I had the familiar flashes of a migraine aura. Back to bed I went. No Kathmandu Durbar Square for me, no Monkey Temple for me either.

I felt okay enough by lunchtime, though, to emerge and face the day.

Yummy Hotel Jampa Chili Chicken

Hmm, what's on my to-do list?

✅️change money
✅️notebook and pen
✅local sim card
❌️didn't get pants
✅scammed (nicely) out of rs1000*

*rs1000 is somewhere between NZD 10 and USD 10. Think, "100 rupees is about 1 dollar" and don't worry too much about which dollar you mean. Thanks to that mean Mr Putin the exchange rates were jumping all over the place anyway.

OK that last one wasn't really on my list (initially).

Kathmandu in a jetlagged, post-migraine fog is hard to deal with. I was clearly easy pickings because I made lots of friends along the way who had painting shops and rugs to show me, with special prices just for me as their new friend. Eventually I met a man who said, don't give me money because I'll just spend it on booze but can you buy some milk powder for my baby? How could I say no to that.

I scurried back to the safety of my hotel.

The others were meeting at a momo (dumplings) shop after monkey temple so I headed out there armed with Google Maps and a vague sense of direction from three years ago. 

Chenda happy to jump on the back of Expansion's scooter after momos!

Then back to the hotel, Expansion took us shopping for hiking gear, and then it was dinner time.

First group dinner, meeting everyone together for the first time

Packed for Pokhara.
Suitcase stays behind, grey porters bag goes on the roof, black daypack comes with

We're on the bus to Pokhara tomorrow already. Not a lot of time in Kathmandu! 

Hello Singapore Airlines. It's been a while.

29 Sep, Wellington - Christchurch - Singapore - Kathmandu

[my journey, as told to Angela via text message]

I miss you. It would be a lot more fun with you here.

I'm in a small "sub cabin", only six rows. 3x3x3.

I had fish curry. Yum. Properly spicy. Such a novelty getting food with stainless steel cutlery, with a plastic cup of wine

I watched the "Elvis" movie. It was great. And it must have been long!

Australia is big. We're halfway between Sydney and Coober Pedy. Hours and hours to go before we hit the coast again.

I went for a wander. Not a lot of wandering to be done. They've chopped the plane up into little cabins. I think that a lot of this plane is behind the curtain at the front

Only one little emergency exit window - and it faces the wrong way for me to catch a glimpse of Uluru. I think Uluru is actually like 300km away so probably can't see it.

There's a father and son beside me. Son is watching Pokémon. I keep watching over his shoulder. 

A little kid, 3 or 4, happily wanders down the aisle from the front from time to time. I wave as they go past and try to show them pictures in my book. Unfortunately my lonely planet 'Trekking In Nepal' guide has few pictures so it's quite boring. Mum has figured out a perimeter where she has to go chasing them when they get beyond it.

It's now 17:33 nz time. We have clocked over halfway there at last. 

Still over Australia. Still. Looks like we leave Australia over NT. Somewhere to the left of Darwin. Time for another walk,  a stretch, a bit more reading

19:08.  The world is going on around our little plastic flying cylinder. It's so metaphysical. 2700km to go. We're over Timor. East or west? There aren't any lines to show

20:01. Just finished the movie "Wild". It was great too!

I went to the only tiny window and saw a small tropical reef island. And a larger coastline through the haze. I have almost visited Indonesia now.

20:34. I've started that Stephen King book on my kindle. 11/22/63. It's good. Lots of foreboding so far

I like this. It's like I can just chat to you. So what if it will all just firehose down at once in ... 1 hour and 54 minutes when I hit the wifi in Singapore. Oh, and that the conversation is very one way.

21:30: dinner! They tell me it's chicken.

Choice of chicken curry, vege rice or no beef (they ran out)

And a slice by Pandoro, 8096km away

I'm crossing the equator!! What's that feeling your mother gets crossing boundaries and borders?

And I need to tell you about, "c'est si bon". What your mother says when she is "speaking French". I thought it was gibberish. But a man on this plane had that phrase on his t shirt 🤯 [and now I discover it's a famous song sung by Eartha Kitt, amongst others]

Look! It's Singapore. Very brief transit here.

23:48: Next leg. I couldn't get onto the Singapore Airport wifi in my 1 hour transit. Singapore-Kathmandu plane has wifi - but for streaming movies only apparently.

Oh well. You're asleep by now anyway. My plan is to sleep all the way to Kathmandu. The flaw in my plan is that my bag is at my feet so I have no legroom.

I am officially changing my personal timezone now. It's 00:45 in NZ and 17:30 nepal time.

Nice view taking off of the lights of hundreds of freighters queued up in the Harbour and the bright lights of Singapore stretching off in all directions. But now it's just darkness and what looks like the lights of villages. No seat-back map so I don't know where I am. Malaysia? Vietnam? No, just a floating metal cylinder suspended above reality.

OK. It's Malaysia. A floating metal cylinder suspended above ... Malaysia.

4°01'20.4" North, 103°05'05.7" East

Looks like I'll go over Malaysia, then ocean, then Bangladesh or India.

18:45: meal service is taking forever and the lights are blazing. Not conducive to sleeping :-(

We have gone over southern Thailand and now we're over Myanmar. Basically going due north from Singapore. Nothing to see outside. Especially with the cabin lights blazing.

19:09: well that was bad. Choice of fish, and "we ran out". Tough white meat in watery pea soup. My mum would have loved it. The people in front of me chose their dinners well, what ever it was they ate til it ran out. 

Yeah, nah

I don't think I'm going to sleep on this flight. Oh well. Book is good!

The seats are very familiar. Identical those on my Air NZ Wellington to Christchurch leg. But built for a 737 not an a320 so a bit narrower. (I have had two hours of not sleeping with the blazing cabin lights to think about this). They are perfectly fine for city hopping in New Zealand but hard and uncomfortable for a five hour flight where you just want to try to sleep.

20:03 I've been wrapped up in my jacket but not sleeping. Nothing to see out the window but the crescent moon, getting lower and yellower. The lights are out now at least.

21:00 the lights are up again and the hostie woke me up to put up my seat back.

21:40 We're here! I must have fallen asleep again because I got woken up by the ground hitting the wheels.

Kathmandu hotel room, nice

I look a bit tired

The Thursday back at work

 Hi,

After Vivienne's beautiful funeral yesterday, I am back at work and slightly stunned by it all. Mike and Toby are almost on board their flight to Chc - 8.35am. Toby is going back to his flat and uni - and Mike and Bharat start their international leg to Singapore from Chc this morning.

It's just me and the cats now for the next 3 weeks.

Vivienne is buried at Mākara natural cemetery.  She will have a kōwhai planted on top of her which will be awesome in that spot, overlooking a valley with wind turbines on the top of nearby hills.

I do not know what I have done to the fonts on this post.  Seems like a paste of the word above has carried that font over into the rest of it.

Hopefully I will hear from Mike early tomorrow morning when he lands in Kathmandu. Safe travels to him. He is going to enjoy it so much.

And wee Toby was such a big support since he arrived in Wellington. Thank you, Toby.  xxx

Have a good day.

Love,

Angela

Vivienne Lewis

This is my little speech at Vivienne's funeral; celebrating a life cut too short but a life well lived.

My earliest memories of Vivienne centre around her care and creativity and detail. Her meticulousness.

They are little boy memories. As much impressions and fragments as anything else.

I remember the beautifully embroidered hankies - christmas presents for my dad every year.  Every year it would be a delight to see what she'd embroidered. Dad motorcycling. Dad skiing. Dad digging the garden.

I remember Vivienne's wonderful writing.  The envelopes that she sealed with wax and the signet ring my dad made her with her own seal that she designed. 

I remember Vivienne's succession of mice that as a very young preschooler I’d somewhat awkwardly dig up again after they were buried. They ended up with unmarked graves fairly quickly. 

I remember visiting her at her job at Mater Hospital, with all the smells of bulk cooking in the kitchen.

I remember the sounds of the flute being practised, and I remember marvelling over the actual pressed vinyl of the Kaikorai Valley High School production of Titivulus that she worked on.

****

Vivienne left home when I was six, so I was less connected with her varsity days, then as a child vaguely aware that she’d taken an overseas holiday - and was now engaged! 

My very first aeroplane trip was to go to her and John’s wedding which was incomprehensibly far away in Auckland.  

I think the next time I remember seeing Vivienne and John was their motorbike trip over the length of New Zealand, before they left for Canada. They met us in Dunback for a christmas in caravans and tents. Although it was hot and sunny in Dunback, they had to pass over a freezing cold pass riding through snow. I remember how cold and near hypothermic they were when they arrived. 

****

As I grew up, I’d get regular updates of Vivienne and John living in far off places and doing amazing things. I would treasure the letters and postcards I’d get from far off lands, in her neat unique handwriting.

I was able to spend more time with Vivienne and John, and now their very small boy Benjamin I moved to London and they lived in Edinburgh. We overlapped by a year or two in the UK.

I got to know the M1 and the A1 pretty well, as well as the east coast train timetable and the easyjet booking system. 

It was fun spending time with them in their little house in Durham Road South, getting to know my new nephew Benjamin. Spending weekends and christmases and then being able to squeeze them all into our little flat when they were on their way back to new Zealand.

****

And then, we were living in different countries again, emailing and phoning and swapping presents, until I made it back to Wellington in 2007. We can almost see their Ngaio house from ours!

Andrew and Sally told me about mouse-sitting the Lewis family mice one time. There was an unfortunate accident with the cage and both mice escaped. One was retrieved but the other could not be found. The next day Andrew rang Sally and told her, "It's okay! I went to the pet shop and found a brown mouse with just the right patterns. They'll never know!" "But their mouse has no whiskers," replied Sally. "It's fine, I chopped them off!" Andrew replied earnestly. (No, he had actually found the escapee and restored them to the cage.)

Toby remembers being babysat when he was quite young. Of Vivienne bringing around books about pirates and cavemen that she used to read to Benjamin. And then getting the whole Captain Underpants series from Benjamin!

Now we had a supply again of Vivienne’s shortbread - aunty Claire's recipe - and Christmas fruitcake - Great Grandma Warrington’s recipe. 

Our presents were always something creative and wonderful. We have quilts and flannels and scarves and clothes and all sorts of other things that are so special to us, even more so now.

****

I reckon it’s what you fit into your life that counts. Vivienne was taken from us far too early. But she crammed so much into the years she had.

We need to honour that, to celebrate it, and live like her. 

The Wednesday with more family time

 Hi,

I had a half day at work then caught up for lunch with Sally, John and Benjamin. I had made some biscuits - my first attempt at these. They seemed to come out okay. Will try again.

I made Afghans. Or I think they are called chocolate walnut cookies now.

Andrew got back from his tramping trip and Sally brought him back to see John and Benjamin. We stayed for tea - Sally got burgers delivered.

Then home for me - fed the cats.  So late they are probably happy to see Mike this morning in the hope of a more normal routine. And maybe Smudge will want her spoon back. Yeah - don't ask! Okay - I hear you asking. Mike always leaves the spoon in Smudge's bowl. I have no clue why. She cannot use it! Mike mutters something about how they can lick it clean. I just bang it on the side to dislodge anything still on there - and take it back upstairs!

I had a better sleep last night than in recent days. Up to head to the airport to collect Mike and Polly. They were up at 3.50am to get the early flight out of Dunedin. Mike was down for just 24 hours but it was well worth doing he said.

Waiting for Mike at the airport

That is exactly my teddy

While I was waiting in the arrivals area, I saw an ad for the Wellington Museum. With a pic of the exact teddy bear I got when I was 1 years old. I have never seen a teddy like mine. Well, my teddy's right ear is half chewed from Jupiter. But - apart from that - they are exactly the same. Even down to the eyes that go in different directions.

Mike and his Mum arrived safe and sound and we're back at our house now. I am WFH today. Long weekend here due to the memorial day for the Queen. And funeral prep. Toby arrives Sunday.

Mike has been searching out photos of Vivienne while he was down in Dunedin and also found some of us. Here is me and my mother and Shona and Sharon with big hair! My mother is so young.

Mike has found old photos as he searches for memories

Anyway - it's a huge day for Mike's mother to be back up here so soon for such a terribly sad reason. Sending her lots of strength today. And to all the family.

Love,

Angela

The Tuesday with terribly sad news

 Hi,

Yesterday afternoon we got the news of Vivienne's passing early Tuesday morning. John and Benjamin are okay and processing through the sudden shock of it all. Mike is flying as I type to Dunedin to help his mother come back here.

Funeral next Wednesday.

Thank you to whānau that always help us through these terrible times. My mother and sister were a huge support when I told them yesterday. Mike's family is as strong as they always are. Toby was amazing support for Mike - especially thinking of his Nana and her grief.

Kia kaha. 

Lots of love,

Angela

The Monday back at work

 Hi,

I planted out the spinach and red cabbage Little Gardens from New World.  Sweet!  Looking forward to seeing them sprout so I can plant them out.

Little gardens

Mine

Moxley was funny - end of our day she was all over Mike trying to convince him it was her tea time.  Too funny.

Time for my tea, Mike

Tues morning iced latte

Spin after work on Monday

We jumped out to Spin at 5.30pm and Mike ran on the treadmill.  Good session. My knee did not even twinge at all!  :-o

Back home and delicious burgers.  Bath, then bed.

Up for PT session with Quentin.  Lucky I drove home as the showers were cold at work. Wow.

Spin after work again today. And Mike's mother is heading back down south today at some stage. Fast visit. Saw her once or twice. But we really need to try and get back down to Dunedin more regularly through the year.

Have a good day. 

Love,

Angela

The weekend in Wellington

 Hi,

On Thursday I WFH - and got away for lunch to visit Iona and Helen at Otari Wilton bush.  Yummy cheese sandwiches and the first time I have seen Helen in ages and ages. She was up for a wee walk and we poked around admiring some of the trees and shrubs. 

Hello Helen

Hokey pokey biscuits

Smudge!

Okay - you want some food then, Moxley?

Friday saw Mike in town for work and me at home. Mike dropped the Subaru off for a WoF - without the trailer as we have not finished the tail lights yet.  And I promptly forgot to collect it from the garage at the other end of the day.

Oops.

Saturday saw Mike up for Park Run in Lower Hutt and me on the treadmill at the City Fitness over the road. 

Then a quick brekkie with coffee with Sally before off to Epuni to get the first top coat onto the outside of the windows and the back door. 

Back to WLW for lunch. Yummy food from Sally. I was so full.  Zucchini and tomatoes and risotto.  Mmmm.

Mike headed off to Brewers Fest with Janine and I headed home to feed the cats. Mike got home later and we slept well.  

Run, Mike!

Striding to the finish

First top coat

Lovely colours for lunch

Reading spot

Up early Sunday morning to meet Maureen at the car park at the end of Woodmancote Rd in Khandallah for a walk up Mt Kau kau.  Great idea, courtesy of Maureen.

Sunday walk up Mt Kau kau

I see the harbour

Almost there

Views!

Then back down to Dunshea's deli at the bottom of the hill (next to Automat - which was not yet open). I had a delicious tofu scramble with bombay potatoes. Very nice - would recommend.

Dunshea's deli had great coffee and brekkie options

Back home to start more trailer work. But got distracted by a hunt for the hot glue gun. Then I headed to Bluebridge to meet Iona for a quick catch up as she waited in her ferry queue.

10 mins with Iona in her ferry queue

From there, I grabbed some groceries on my way home. And then chilled with Mike for a lot of the day. And the cats.

So close!

Monday morning is a little cold and wet. My hands are a bit frozen as I type here at my desk at home. Want to get to Spin after work today.

Mike collected the Subaru from the garage. All good. Need to re-fit the trim - especially on the seat belt post. Also - cam belt needs doing. Ouch. 

Have a wonderful week.

Love,

Angela

The Wednesday with more trailer work

 Hi,

Busy day at work. Headed home after work while Mike met Bharat for Nepal ops. We had tea when Mike got home and then headed up to the garage to work on the tail lights for the trailer.

After we hit a snag (need a tool so off to the hardware store next) we retired for the evening. Had a good sleep. The cat does come and wake me up so she can crawl under the duvet with us. After we got up and saw the cold temps today, we know why she did that last night.

Sunrise

Nailed the coffee for Mike

Frost scraping

Scraping and scraping

Cold morning!

Off to the gym - and 1C.  The windscreen was frosty. The car is out on the street because... trailer!

Anyway. Going to see Iona and Helen for lunch in the Otari Wilton bush today. Yay!  So WFH to facilitate that.

And a weekend at home. First one for a while.

Novelty.

Have a good one,

Love,

Angela

The Tuesday with trailer fixing after work

 Hi,

Mike and I headed home after work on the #13 and were surprised to see a lot of masked people still. Yay.

Cooked tea - Mike had bought fresh new season asparagus. Made me so happy. Yum.  Added them to a Buddha bowl for our dinner.

Bus to town

Bus home

New season asparagus

Then into the garage to sort out the trailer tail lights.  It needs a WoF on Friday so we need to get this working before then.

Fun working with Mike on it.

Having fun

Attached the new tail lights

Off to bed.  Good sleep. Up for brekkie with Zaheer. It has been ages since I saw him. Good to hear his news. He's off to visit family this Christmas after a long time here in NZ.

Me saying I have left the flash on

Hi Zaheer

Now at work. More trailer fixing after work, I hope. Don't want to leave it too late. I am enjoying it.

I did want to mention when we went to bed one night last week, Mike had his bed light on but I thought it was the main bedroom light. I rolled over after reading to go to sleep and mumbled to Alexa to turn off the light.  Alexa, turn off the bedroom light.  Mike reached out and clicked off his light at the same time Alexa said:  okay

I was so confused for a few seconds.  And then I dissolved into giggles. Mike had just turned off his light and I really thought it was Alexa. 

Hope your day is a good one.

Love,

Angela