CHRISTCHURCH

Greetings from even further down under. It's 9:00pm here in Christchurch, and we've just finished having dinner in the oldest residence (the first, actually) in Christchurch -- the Deans' home. First started in 1850 or so. But I'm getting ahead of myself, perhaps the result of again some fine NZ viniculture with dinner. Last night was in Sydney at the Opera House. I steeled myself by visiting a fine English pub at 3:00 in the afternoon and joined the rest of the punters sipping ale and watching the still incomprehensible cricket on the big screen tellies. You'll want to know, I'm sure, that Enland was 36 to 3 over South Africa, and the last bole was at a speed of 89.9 mph, and England has 15.4 overs, and that 242 is the average 1st innings total at Centurion. Got that? About all I understand is that Abba is on the jukebox. Oops, here's an update. Andrew Hall has 4 overs, 1 ball, 1 maiden (you think I'm making this up?) and 2 runs. Time for more beer. Black Ale. Yum. Some dwarf on the tool opposite me is rolling his own ugly ciggie. Is this atmosphere or what? Back to the hotel to pick up Mom and Loni, and off with the Squeaker to the Opera House. Today's lesson: designed in the 1950's by a Danish architect who entered only a "concept design." He was very surprised when he won, but not as much as the local engineers who had to figure out how to build the thing. The first company quit. Engineering didn't catch up to the design until the 60's. What was budgeted as a 4 year build at $7 million ended up 14 years later at $102 million. No problem. The ever resourceful Aussies simply funded the whole thing through their lottery. It was paid off in 2 years! Took a tour with Wayne, who started on a six-week gig and has been there for 15 years. The original architect -- the Dane -- got in a squabble with the local politicos over redesigns for the interior, and left in a huff. He has never been back to see his finished creation, and is now 86 years old in Denmark. Talk about a grudge. The building is as pretty close up as it is in the panoramic photos, but surprisingly smaller than it appears. It's almost intimate inside. The actual halls-- there are two main ones, one for symphony and one for opera-ballet -- are separate wooden buildings within the concrete shells. After the tour, we had dinner on the back veranda with a view of the Sydney bridge and the harbor. Not too shabby, especially with --- yup -- more wine. It was cool to the max to be sitting there in that setting with a nice glow on. Sydney at night is quite beautiful. All good things must end, and we trudged upstairs to the opera. Carmen as a story is no more comprehensible than any other opera, and it was made more difficult by the fact that our seats, although on the main flloor, were back under the overhang of the balcony, thus we couldn't see the translation screen above the stage. This made for major ZZZZZZZZ, at least after they did the Toreador song. I'm afraid my plebian tastes just zone out after the first few arias (if that's what they're called). The cognoscenti around me assured me that it was a fine performance. What do I know? I can say that the accooustics were terrific. Even I could make out some phrases with my 1966 French. Outside afterwards, the night was fairly magical. A soft summer night with Sydney glowing in the background and the Southern Cross beaming overhead. Back to the hotel afterwards to pack for the 6:00 suitcase call. My packing definitely is leaning more to the throw-it-in-and-sit-on-it style. I think I'm going to sleep in for two days when we finally get back. I think I forgot to tell you about our hotel room. Our view was of the office building across the 12 foot alley. Our bathroom also had a picture window facing the same way, with the glass being that pebbled sort that they make shower doors out of. Unfortunately, we could see through it fairly clearly to the windows directly opposite, and I'm sure it was a two-way street. I'm sure we disappointed the voyeurs by not turning on the bathroom lights. Got enough light through the window from the alleyway to get through most functions.

Off to the airport on a glorious morning, unlike the doom and gloom of the previous three days. Figures. We got seats even further back in the plane, but at least the heat was working and the flight was fine. No breakfast this time, because as soon as we got on board they told us to turn our watches ahead two hours to Christchurch time. All of a sudden it's lunchtime. Watched Sky Pilot And The World of Tomorrow, which I had seen in the theatre, just to use the Sennheiser's. Gotta amortize that cost, right? The approach to Christchurch was spectacular as we came over the mountains, which had snow on the peaks even at the height of summer. Mount Cook loomed big to the south. We're off for there tomorrow morning and will spend the night at Franz Joseph village. After landing and clearing customs (which we're now more savvy about --- declare everything, down to the smallest item, and they don't bother you), we took a brief bus tour of Christchurch. I have to say my mental image was MUCH different than the reality. They have great parks and gardens here, with some old English stone buildings scattered about, but the rest of the architecture is early (or late) Oakland. Frankly, the one afternoon spent here is about all you need. We did have a great meal tonight, as I mentioned at the beginning. The residence is on the river Avon that winds through Christchurch. They even had some punts tied up on the shore! Was built in stages from 1850 to 1900 by the Deans family, a star-crossed lot if ever there was one. I say that with all admiration as they were truly pioneers who accomplished a lot in relatively short lifetimes (tuberculosis being the villain). We had the place to ourselves and had a lively meal in the great room. We shared our table with an ex-Navy, ex-LAPD, Model-A Ford afficianado and his wife who were a lot of fun to talk with.

By the way, no pictures again. This setup in Christchurch doesn't even have individual computers at each station, just a screen, keyboard, and cables disappearing into the table. It does a floppy disc drive glued to the underside of the table, but no USB port. The camera has been crapping out anyway, eating batteries at a prodigious rate far in excess of what we have experienced before. Time to get out the manual and figure out what's going on. That's it for today's excursion. Off tomorrow to the mountains. We're boarding a train for a 2 1/2 hour trip through passes and over gorges on the way to Mount Cook. Sayonara.