Back2School@45

Am on my fourth season now in New Zealand and it still amazes me when I witness weather change. Coming from Mumbai, we are used to hot, humid or wet weather and there you have a cherry blossom at the neighbhour's house. Our garden is no less.   A plum tree that had been shaved a few months ago as it had gathered fungus on its bark has a few young leaves. There is a lime tree with exactly one lime on it. This was a revelation for us as none of us seemed to have noticed it until recently. And as winter recedes, I am noticing wild flowers in our unkempt garden. On one sunny day, I take a walk around and click pictures of them. And as I count, we have eight unique varieties of wild flowers in a rather small garden. I go about looking for them on the web and sure enough I am able to tag seven of the eight varieties. This unknown one must be the undiscovered! The undiscovered... Bird's Foot Bermuda Buttercup Common Daisy Hawksbeard. New Zealand Gentian Valerian Neighbhour's cherr...

Technically speaking, winters ended last month. We have spring now and rightly so as you can see wild flowers sprouting on road sides. Soon the barren trees will have leaves and it will mean that I would have witnessed all the four seasons of this beautiful country. So when we were at the peak of winters last month, the boys and I planned a trip to Mt. Ruapehu to witness snow! A five-hour drive , Mario and I took more than seven hours as we kept taking detours, passing through quaint villages and stopping over for coffee and muffins. I got to know more about Mario, a charming and happy young fellow, loves and plays soccer for a local club here. But one second, Mario is not from Brazil but from Borivali. Anyway, we took a shared bus from the foothills as it started to rain and only 4WD or cars with snow chains were allowed on top. Our bus driver was a funny talkative guy named Jongo to told us not to expect too much on the top as most activities were closed owing to the weather. He ...

There are these days when you are under a lot of pressure. It’s a weekend and the weather is awesome and you want to make the most of it. But you don’t have plans. Grant, the kiwi housemate, is around so I ask his advice as usual. Of the many options he suggests, I decide for a place close by called Chelsea Sugar Café which is good for a stroll and of course coffee.  Of the many things Gagan, the Indian housemate, so used to sharing his wisdom, once said, “Bhaiya (brother) whatever you do, don’t ever fall in love with coffee. It will ruin you here in New Zealand.” And I kind of agree. Coffees in NZ are good. And expensive. And I am increasingly getting fond of them. Am on course to get ruined!   Anyway, I head out. And on the way stop for coffee and meet some happy souls, dressed in beach, summer wear. On an easy banter I find that they are heading for Wainamu Lake, which is far and quite in the opposite direction of where I am headed, dressed in jeans and pull-over. But ...

Wwoofing was on my mind for sometime but had not got around to explore it in NZ. Some of you may know that I had wwoofed at an organic vineyard in southern France in 2017. For the uninitiated, the volunteers (aka wwoofers) do roughly four to six hours of work in exchange for room and board at an organic farm.  There are thousands of farms to choose from across the world with an array of offerings, anything from working on a vineyard to weaving. Majority of options tend to involve manual labour, so don’t expect wwoofing to be a relaxing time on a bucolic pasture. If you want to be a wwoofer you have to commit to working hard and might have to live in potentially basic conditions that you're not accustomed to. If you do follow through with this educational, character-building experience, you’ll likely leave with a new perspective on a culture and lifestyle that might otherwise feel totally foreign. As the desire to get close to nature picked up, I quickly wrote to Tom whose plac...