Random Stuff

This blog will be all over the map. Here are a few random stories from the past few days, pictures to come.

Small World

It’s funny how small the hockey world is. I’m sure that I could walk into a dressing room anywhere in the world and share a mutual friend or past teammate with at least one person in the room. This holds true even on the other side of the world in New Zealand.

In Dunedin I met two hockey players who I had friends in common with. Meeting a friend of a friend is always awesome and to make a long story short we ended up joining the hockey team for a night out bowling and found ourselves staying in a pretty awesome house over looking the beach!

Cadbury

We toured the Cadbury Factory and got a ton of chocolate. Simple as that!

University

The University of Otago is New Zealand’s oldest university and ranks one of it’s finest. The campus is a mixture of new and classic stone and ivy buildings that house faculties ranging from music to business. In many ways it felt like Queen’s University in Kingston, even the schools colours were the same.

With strong on shore winds and no surf to be had we found ourselves wandering the Otago campus, which eventually lead to us stumbling into the school’s MBA office. Mike recently graduated from Dalhousie’s MBA program and if all goes as planned I will follow suit in a year from now. With these backgrounds we were very keen to check out how a Masters of Business operates in this part of the world and to compare the differences and similarities between our school and Otago.

We ended up meeting the MBA Director who gave us a fantastic tour of the facilities and who explained a lot about how the program works at Otago. We were also given a chance to sit in on a finance class, which we eagerly accepted – I know it’s weird to want to go to a finance class on vacation. By the end of our tour we had made some really valuable connections for both for our school and our personal use and were thoroughly impressed with what we saw. Otago is definably a place I would love to go on exchange to.

B & B           

After leaving Dunedin we drove five hours north to Christchurch to catch our flight to Australia. After dropping off our camper van we booked into a bed and breakfast for the night and packed for our flight (which we didn’t catch) the next day.

This was my first time staying at a B&B but I have to admit I’m a big fan. The people we stayed with were really nice and we woke up to an awesome spread of food in the morning. If you are ever in Christchurch I strongly recommend staying at the Belmont on Harewood. It’s very clean, convenient and they will even drive you to the airport!

Rugby

In Christchurch we attended a professional rugby game. Although I have to admit that I enjoy watching hockey more, rugby is a pretty sweet sport. It’s the perfect blend of athleticism, passion and aggression that make a sport fun to watch. I think if I had of been born a Kiwi I would have taken up this game.

Pissing money into the wind

Yep, that pretty much sums up our trip to Christchurch. After missing our flight because we were to lazy to double check our flight schedule online, paying for another night’s stay and getting dinged $20 per kilo for excess baggage, I feel pretty ripped off right now. The last two days have cost over $300 not to mention the day we lost in Australia. My Visa says ouch!

Australia

OZ by sun down. It looks like its going to happen as I sit waiting for the plane to board. What a disaster that would be if we missed our flight again!