Sunday, December 26, 2010

I didn’t want to post this before Christmas in case any of my family happened to read it and figure out what they were getting but...Christmas huh?...it’s always a bit of a strain on the pockets and considering I’ve found most NZ-made stuff to be rather expensive I knew I wouldn’t be able to buy much this year...so I made most of my presents. It was mostly jewellery which used up a lot of old beads I had lying around (plus a few i got from Trademe...not NZ-made but second hand).  The guys of the family were a bit harder though. My brother is into brewing these days so I popped down to Aqua Vitae to see if they had any NZ-made stuff. Turns out a lot of it is made here...well...the dude behind the counter assured me it was made here, even if the label on the packets said made in Australia, he got a bit fired up when I kept questioning him about it so I said I believed him and bought it anyway. As for Dad, well he’s always been hard to buy for so I decided to make some DVDs (I managed to “borrow” some blank ones from mum!) but that didn’t really work, turns out it takes a very long time to burn DVDs and as I am a do-everything-at-the-last-minute kind of person I kinda ran out of time...so I went down to Dusk, the local NZ-made store. There was some very cool stuff but unfortunately nothing that he would like, same for the market in Cathedral Square. I had almost given up when I found myself amongst the hustle and bustle of the mall, kinda bored I wandered into acquisitions to play with the random wee toys but instead found a small NZ-made section! It was mostly sauces and seasonings which everyone likes right?

And now that Christmas is over I have my summer holiday to look forward to...Australian road trip for two weeks! I booked the tickets at the start of the year, not really thinking how much harder it would be to live NZ-made over there (and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t even think I would last this long, I don’t have the best will power and thought i would have caved by now and gone back to my old spending habits)so I decided why not try buying only NZ and Australian made stuff. Is that a cop out?...maybe but I think it will be an interesting comparison and I am going to be on a super strict budget (being a student doesn’t give much opportunity to save!) in fact, I am going to be cutting it very fine...that’s part of the fun of travelling though right?