A STICKLER FOR ONE-LINERS AND SOME INTERESTING QUIRKS


Walking around Auckland, I saw a lot of these witty, and sometimes funny, one-liners on walls, on billboards, and on shirts. I already mentioned the one on Papa's shirt that goes: 'Bar Bar Bar. Baa Baa Baa. And that about sums it up. New Zealand.'

Another goes: 'New Zealand. Somewhere in the Pacific.'

Too bad I didn't have the camera with me when I saw these...

'Life is too short to drink bad wine.'

'Behind every successful man is an astonished woman.'

'If somebody mistakes you for someone rich and famous, it's probably the beer talking.'

And then, there's the Tui adverts. Tui is one of the beers concocted in the brewery we visited.

'We are not a cult, we're a church. Yeah, right.'

'American intelligence. Yeah, right.'

There were so much more. I guess if I wasn't able to take pictures, the least I could have done was to take down notes. Sorry about that. Anyway...

It was on a Friday afternoon, lunching at the Victoria Park Market, when I saw my first barefooted local... a woman, obviously on a lunchbreak from work, carrying her shoes, and walking on her bare feet. And this woman wasn't even an islander, she was caucasian. Well, stereotypes would have us thinking the other way around, right? In fact, in the succeeding occasions that I saw people walking barefoot, it was never an islander I saw. They'd be walking like this anywhere that's concrete, dry and warm.

I've seen people walking in this manner a couple of times here in Singapore. Now I know where they are from.

If you were anywhere else, you could easily mistake a Maori for a Filipino, or of any Malay race. Yes, except for the fact that the Maoris are almost all heavy-set. And unlike most Filipino guys, the Maoris would prefer their women on the heavy side too. I guess this is one place where Marie-France will not be doing business, huh.

Now get a load of this...

We shot that picture on the way to Wellington, at a countryside shop next to a diner where we made a pit stop.





Notice the boot on the foodtray? Well, we were at a place called the 'Gumboot Manor' so I guess that made sense.






Yes, another of the New Zealand skies.

And my favorite curiousity...





Those are birds called gannets. We shot that picture at a beachside park called the Takapu Refuge. You'd think these birds knew well enough to arrange themselves just so, for people to take delightful pictures of them.