The new discovery- Alpaca

Working Holiday is never free. Life is busy with working, cooking and travelling. The only thing free is the mind. Everyday, I keep on repeating the same gesture, same movement. Turning the kiwifruits, checking them and putting them back to the boxes. I guess I repeated these movement more than thousand times. After work, it is probably dinner time and it is time to cook. Other than cooking, I need to work again. Yes, I work at home for my house owner as part time. The good part is I can work anytime as I like. That's how I passed my time while earning money for the trip. You might be wondering, What's the point that I mentioned all these? Yeah, These are all the exuses for the late update of the blog. Haha~:P

OK, back to the working holiday life. Last weekend, we visited the alpaca farm. Alpaca, this sounds alien to me when I first heard about it. My house owner's friends own an alpaca farm and we were given the chance to see this special creature. Dita told us it is similiar with llama but the size is smaller. 

Before that, let me introduce the owner of the farm, Dita and William, the lovely couple from Holland. They are really very nice and friendly.

Their house is located beside the farm and I like their house so much. You can see a big piece of green land when you look out from the house. This is just like those house for vacation. Relaxing and comfortable. When I can own such a dream house?

Let me show you the main character of this blog- The Alpaca~

Very cute and adorable right?? It is just like a big soft toy.

They are so shy and coward as we walked near them, they will move away. Ah! Cute little shy animal. Nevermind, there is always a trick to attract them.

See? They love me so much. Haha~ all animal (even the human) can't resist to food!

William told us that we can't touch their head and neck because they just don't like. Hmm, so bad, I can't pet them.

Every alpaca has their own name. The amazing part is Dita and William can recognised each of them and they can say out their name easily. Wao, you know how many alpacas they owned? 150. They can recognised each of the 150 alpacas without fail! Awesome!!

So, what is the function of the alpaca? Their fur can made into clothes/ scarf for us to keep warm. It is just like the wool but it is much softer and comfortable than wool. The wool product sometimes tend to make us feel icthy due to the rough surface but this does not happened on alpaca product. Want to know more about alpaca? click here.

Wao, love it. Dita told us she can teach us to make the alpaca scarfby ourselves! Yes, handmade alpaca scarf~ Yeah. Wondering how to make it? Stay tune.

The little alpaca soft toy made from the real alpaca fur.

cute~~~~

The Maori Food

I just noticed, half of my working holiday blog talked about food. Chinese always craving for good food. A famous quote, 民以食为天, which simply means food ranks first. This shows how importance the great food for us. And, I am the typical chinese too. :P We work very hard to look for special food which we never tried before here. Today was another lucky day for us to try the local maori food. Yes, local and real.

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The maori family is my house owner's friend. Due to that reason, we were able to grab the chance and taste  the genuine maori food.

The boil up. This food was really surprise us because it simply tastes similiar with the chinese watercress soup 西洋菜汤. The only different is ours is soup and theirs was served as main course.

Fried bread. Simple and nice food. But not advisable to take too much. Fat....

The best partner for fried bread- the red plum jam with butter. Yummy~ I love this jam. The sweetness is just nice and it contains slight sour taste. Works well with fried bread.

Dessert~ they called it as trifle~ cake topped with cream and fruits.

Of course we must take a group photo~ A big family. Thanks to the dinner served~ OMG, I'll putting lots of weight if I continue my eating habit like this.. help....

Rotorua: The Luge

When we asked our house owner 'Any interesting place nearby to recommend?' The first place came across his mind was 'The luge in Rotorua'. The luge? What was that? Then, he showed us the photos in the website, my respond was 'Huh? This thing just similiar with the Go Cart in Malaysia. We can play it in Genting as well. What's so special about this?' So, we didn't show much interest in this Luge at that moment.

After couple of days, he asked us whether we want to go or not. This round we said yes because we did not have any plan for the weekend. During that Sunday,we drove to Rotorua and stopped by i site to purchase the tickets. Yes, we purposely bought ticket from i site as the tickets selling was cheaper than those selling at the counter!! My house owner don't even know about this and he kept on asking 'why, why, why' to the staff in i site. Haha~ You see, sometimes tourist know more than local. :P

Here we came, the luge. We took a cable car up to the station!

When we reached there, it was raining, so we took our lunch at the skyline cafe in The Luge theme park (I think it doesn't called as theme park but it is a theme park for me).

Fish and chip. Argh, the worst fish and chip that I ever had in NZ. Disappointing.

Swiss roll. Dessert in NZ is always too sweet for me.

Steak cruiser. Yeah, this was the best food among the three that we ordered. It was something similiar like steak pie. Not bad.

We took this up the hill and started our luge journey!

Yes, the luge. This is totally different with the F1 in Genting. Genting one is quite slow even u press for full speed. But, the luge is much faster and it runs due to the slope of the hill. Brakes are available so you can control your speed by using it. There are three different categories for us to choose, scenic, intermediate and fast. We were quite greedy and we want to choose intermediate during our first ride because we just purchased for 2 rides.

However, we were stopped by our house owner as he commented that we had to go for scenic first because we didnt' know how to control it. OK, fine, scenic first.

Wao, I felt good for the first ride! Since second ride was the last ride, we chose the fast one. Fast one was really different with scenic. But something stupid happened. My luge stopped at one of the turning!! Yes, stop! Then, I was forced to move my luge MANUALLY. I use my leg to move the luge!!! So embarrasing and I guess those who saw me must be laughing non stop. Sob sob... Now I know even there was slope but technique was still needed to let the luge keep moving.. sweat...

We had our 2 rides and we just loitering around. There was an cherry blossom way but we only saw stick at that garden due to the winter.

Fees: $33 (2 rides + gondola)

Try it if you have extra budget.

My First Ever Butter Cookies

When we were in Malaysia, we always need to think, when we work, we think, when we were doing something, we think, when we have to solve a problem, we think again. Over here, we don't actually need to think much. The hottest topic to think is 'what should we cook tonight.' That's all. A very simple life. Sometimes I do worry that my brain might become rusty after half year of working holiday.

Basically, we are very free after work. So, I start doing something that I don't do in Malaysia. I learnt to bake butter cookies!! Yes, first time in my life.

Yeah


cookies dough were ready!

Let's see the complete version~

Wah~my cookies


Let me share the recipe

1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and white sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour and salt; stir into the sugar mixture. Cover dough, and chill for at least one hour. Chill cookie sheets.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Press dough out onto ungreased, chilled cookie sheets.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until lightly golden at the edges. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Very easy right? :P

Yummy Kiwi Breakfast

A non working day is definitely a very relaxing day. Now I worked as repacker in a kiwi packhouse again. Yesterday was a working day as there was order needed to be rushed.

This morning, my house owner cooked us a kiwi breakfast!~~!~ Wao, we were really lucky. I never think that being a backpacker actually can sleep well stay well and being so xin fu 幸福.

Let's kiwi!!


parsley + white sauce + egg + ham + muffin split with cheese flavour

Wao~ smoke salmon~~~ yummy yummy

The breakfast is easy to prepared and it's tasty~! So happy. Next time I can cook in Malaysia and tell others this is kiwi breakfast. Wahaha~~

I love it~