What a good son, brother and grandson I thought I was being. My first Christmas living overseas and I had bought, wrapped up and packaged a parcel full of gifts for my family at Christmas. I had even gotten myself down the Post Shop to post it in time for it to arrive in the UK for Christmas!

Never mind that it was a blazing hot day and I could feel the chocolate bar in the package had gone soft. It would soon be sat in the freezing hold of an Airmail plane and would be restored to its former glory. I was definitely doing the right thing by sending these presents – wasn’t I?

Well, 25th December passed and my family still had not received their pressies! In fact, most of January passed. Sorry, all of January. And February. Their parcel was lost. Or stolen, more like. Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty, but it seems that the temptation of three NZ calendars, a DVD and a bar of New Zealand’s finest choc is a wee bit too much of a temptation for some postal workers. “How did they know what was in the package?” you ask. Because it was written on the side of the flipping envelope! On the customs slip. Next time I reckon I’ll just write ’1/4 litre of urine, some fingernail clippings and last week’s TV guide’ on that thing.

Of course, there is the possibility that the parcel was genuinely lost by some honest accidental method. Such as ‘it fell out the back of the plane’. Or maybe a sniffer dog raided it at the airport, just before the poor creature found out what chocolate does to dogs? Or, at a push, the melted chocolate looked too much like a stool on the x-ray scanner to allow it entry into the UK?

None of it matters, really. The main point is that my family are still awaiting their Christmas bundle of joy and it’s 13th March. And that makes me quite sad, really.

And here ends another week, our fifth week, as honorary ‘Westies’. The weather has been a bit up and down this week. One evening we managed a trip to Bethells Beach for a take away dinner, the rest of the week’s evenings have been spent at home, watching loads and loads of Outrageous Fortune Episodes.

Being relatively new to NZ and Jen having been in the UK for 6 years, neither of us had had the pleasure of Outrageous Fortune, until recently we were in The Warehouse and couldn’t resist handing over the $19 they were asking for Season 1. The gamble was what you might call: “WELL WORTH IT!” as, despite receiving mixed reviews amongst colleagues, we both love it.

Watching the continuous stream of troubles arriving at the door of the Wests has highlighted to me a unique way of living, which I am a strong follower of. There is no name for such ways, so I’ll simply call it ‘Watching Old TV Shows Way After They Were On The TV The First Time’. Without meaning to, I’ve always done it.

Back in the UK, I used to enjoy re-running Dragon’s Den episodes, a few years after they were first run. About 99% of South Park episodes are brand new to me; I own two whole Simpsons DVDs, of which I have seen two episodes; I love Black Books, have three seasons of it, but have only seen one; And Spaced, one of my favourite all time TV comedies, was only first watched by me in 2003 (it came out in 1999).

I have given some thought as to why I am so far behind the times and I have put it down to a couple of factors: the first was that I packed of to Uni in September 1999 and the TV reception was never close to great, so I never saw a lot of these shows first time round. The second reason is a kind of subconscious future-proofing: I am obviously scared that TV is going to suffer some massive ‘creative downturn’ (hell, some would argue it already has – eh Simon?) so am saving up as many episodes of quality programming as possible. Just in case.

I still have about four seasons worth of Outrageous Fortune episodes to work my way through, then I may just begin on Lost. Actually, I may go back and fill in my X-Files gaps first… We’ll see.

So it’s been over five months since we flew in to Auckland from Shanghai and have survived on little more than a pathetic dial up connection to remain connected with our family and friends in the UK, keep my websites up to date and do all the simple things we NEED the internet for these days.

The move out to West Aucks has prompted us to go grab a bite of the giant broadband sandwich for ourselves. Telecom were initially a bit unsure as to whether or not our house could sustain the pressure of such an influx of data into the building, but I persuaded them it was just because our phone number was a new one to them. Also, next door has Telecom Wireless Broadband (I know so, cos our computer detected it – aren’t I smart?), so surely we could have it, right?? And so here it is, one seemingly fast connection! So I can work online AND use the phone at the same time again. Sweet.

One thing I do have to remember about New Zealand is the limited data usage on broadband. Ah, to hell with it! Let’s get the rest of my photos uploading…