Boulcot Suite II

I forgot to say the place has two bathrooms which is nice.  However, one of them smelt like someone had recently taken a dump in it.   Not so nice.

Food, Warmth and Shelter

These three things are basic to mans' survival.  If any one is missing for any extended period of time, then that's it.  You're dead.  Pretty serious stuff really - and now I'm going to completely trivialise it.  Last night Camille and I were reduced to turning all the lights on in the place we are staying in order to bring it up to a reasonable temperature as the 9 bar oil heater in the downstairs area is too inadequate to do the job.

We are staying in what is supposed to be 5 star accommodation.  It is a nice example of the "tick box" rating system. 

• Large LCD / Plasma screen?    tick
• Heated towel rails?  tick
• Controlled lighting?  tick
• etc.

Get enough of the right ticks and you earn the 5 stars.   Unfortunately I don't believe they rate some of the things that are fairly important to Camille and I

• Adequate soundproofing so we can't hear people traipsing up and down outside
• Good climate control
• Beds that don't 'dip' in the middle so I'm not lying downhill when ever I lie on my left hand side.
• and so on.

We are in the Boulcott Suites, an apartment hotel which is apparently great for corporate travellers looking for quality and space.  We are in a two bedroom "Townhouse" and yes, there is plenty of space.  It's clean and reasonably comfortable except for that heating thing.  It's not a particularly cold day and yet the heater can't really cope.  Most of the overhead lights are halogens and as they produce a fair amount of heat Camille had the bright idea of turning them all on to warm the place up.  This was very effective and possibly a better option than turning all the elements on the hob and oven on as we could feel the warmth radiating down on us.

We are in Wellington on a flying trip.  Camille has a meeting here this morning and then I'm dropping her at the airport so she can fly to Christchurch where she has another in the afternoon.  I get to drive home.  Joy!

In Auckland Again

Camille and I are in Auckland again to meet with a few potential clients.  We are staying in a hotel in Mt Wellington.  It's a bit strange.   When we arrived nobody greeted us.  No staff offered to help with our bags and so I was left to load them onto a trolley myself while Camille registered.  Then she shot off to park the car while I waited in the lobby for her along with the fully laden trolley.  When she arrived back I ended up pushing the trolley to the lift and so up to our room (after having the lift door close suddenly while the trolley was half in it).


The room was... not up to scratch.  It reeked of fresh paint, not because it had been painted but because all along the corridor were rooms in the middle of refurbishment.  The corridor had been carpeted with plastic to protect the actual carpet.  The noise of saws etc. was quite audible as were the voices of the staff working on the rooms.

Not good  - so a phone call was made and a complaint laid.  We have now been moved to a much better room with its own wee balcony and a lovely view of one of Auckland's lagoon which you can see below with my not quite matched up stitch job.

Now we wait for our first meeting which is shortly after 5:00pm today. Ho hum.

Conference stuff

Yesterday was a very full on day for Camille and somewhat less so for me. Camille started at 5:30am which is incredibly early for her. However, being the conference organiser she was required to be on hand for pretty much the whole day - so it was up and breakfasting, checking e-mails and ensuring certain things were in order prior to heading to the conference facilities at 6:30am. I headed down to be there by 8:00am when the attendees were supposed to be arriving.

It was a long day and I thought it went very well. The Sky City staff were excellent. Nothing but praise for the woman who was our main liaison for the day.

My role was pretty much limited to helping people who had experienced problems with the membership database. For the most part this was in the shape of "I can't recall my login details" and the answer was a quick demonstration on how to retrieve their login details. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me though as I had considered the way I had written the database login retrieval and its display to be fairly straight foward - and it is for people who are used to computers and the internet. However, many of our client's members are older and are not very computer/internet savvy and need more of a guide. I'll have to think about this and see if I can produce a more obvious method.

The day went on. There were presentations on all sorts of subjects that I know almost nothing about though I do know more now. Meetings were held, breaks were taken, lunch was eaten, displays were perused and vendors spoken to. The end part of the conference day at Sky was the organisation's AGM which was, I gather, very successful with a number of important points being resolved.

Then it was off to the Muddy Farmer where a large bar tab and been plunked down for a cocktail/drinks evening. We had organised a small map to show the attendees where to go as the bar was a few minutes walk from Sky. And here Google Maps let us down again! We had printed a map off from Google and given it to all attendees so out of towners could find their way to the bar. The map was WRONG!

I ended up standing on a street corner in the middle of Auckland holding up my Executive conference card in an effort to flush out conference attendees from the milling crowds. It was at this point I discovered that I have an almost complete lack of authority. I ended up with about 30 attendees gathered on the corner who all ignored my instructions on which way to go though they did listen to me when I said "The map is wrong!". They insisted on asking a passing policeman who had no idea where the bar was. However, he was a Figure of Authority and he eventually directed them to head down the street where I had been trying to get them to go.

The Muddy Farmer was a good bar. We believe all those who made it there enjoyed themselves. Camille and I eventually made it back to our hotel room by 9:00pm or so.

It was a long day.

The photo above is of the main conference room set up for the 240+ attendees.

Hotel Hotel

In Auckland again and in the Sky City Hotel, not the Sky Grand Hotel. Back in June we stayed in the Sky Grand and I wondered at the difference between the two hotels, the SG being a 5 star and the SC a 4 star. We are staying in an executive suite in Hotel 5 which puts us on the top floor. We have a large living area and large separate bedroom, both larger than most people's living rooms/bedrooms. The bathroom is separate from the toilet and shower and there is a dressing room. Not too bad.

However the 4 star rating kicks in with

1. No bathrobes!
   
2. No bottle opener
3. No utensils of any type at all except for 3 teaspoons
4. Lots of other small bits

The one that really gets me is the lack of bathrobes. You get used to things like this in hotels. Even the Jimmy Cook provides them in their standard rooms. Yes; one gets used to them and so fails to pack them. This can cause embarrasment in the morning when breakfast arrives - so I made Camille get up and answer the door.

I'm pretty suprised by the lack of various items in this suite. Have they forgotten to stock it or did they deliberately remove everything just in case we decided to pack our bags with extras? Either way, it's been noted down along with a fairly long list of other things about Sky City Hotel which I won't go into here - suffice to say we won't be organising any more conferences here unless they buck their ideas up.

The Bolton Hotel

A good hotel which we have stayed in before. The woman at reception was pleasant enough but needs to think about the way she approaches things. I enquired about the food style in the hotel restaurant and was startled to be told that it was 5 star dining and that I may find it a bit expensive and that there were good but cheaper restaurants elsewhere. Ok, I'm not one of the best dressed members of society; in fact I can look very rough. However, I would have thought hotel staff would know not to make assumptions about their guests.

We were given the key cards to our room and headed on up to the 3rd floor which is the same level as the Gymnasium but we were told that we were far enough away from it so we wouldn't be disturbed by the noise. We got to our room and it wasn't quite what we expected. Instead of the suite with kitchenette we had booked, we were in a tiny room with barely enough space to get around the outside of the bed. A quick "There must be some mistake" phone call was made and we were transferred to the 14th floor into something more like what we were expecting.

The staff in the hotel are very pleasant people and quite chatty. I like this and have had several conversations with them in the lifts and corridors.

Hotels

Everytime Camille and I stay in a hotel, something happens. This time we are having problems with our key cards.

In this hotel you have to flash your key card over a reader in the lift before the lift will work. Yesterday I did this and the lift worked. However, when I tried the key card on the door of our room it didn't work. So in the space of about 30 seconds it had expired. Down to the reception I went to get it reprogrammed.

Later that day Camille got in the lift and flashed her card and nothing happened. It was then that she discovered that you can't even open the lift door without an operational key card. Yes, she was stuck in the lift. Appallingly, when she used the emergency talk button NOBODY ANSWERED! She rang me on her mobile and I raced out to the lift to try and call it up to free her. Fortunately someone else had done pretty much the same thing and had released her but she had been in there for at least five minutes by that time. She made a trip to reception to get the card reprogrammed.

We went out today. On coming back to the hotel we got in the lift and I tried my card - not working AGAIN! Fortunately Camille's was working but back to reception I went.

Be warned - if you are staying at the James Cook Grand Chancellor in Wellington, New Zealand you need to be prepared to be stuck in the lift as their key cards seem to be bloody unreliable and they don't seem to like answering the emergency service.

I'll just repeat that hotel name to ensure it gets found by google - James Cook Grand Chancellor, Wellington, New Zealand

Gang City

Camille and I are staying in Gang City, the place where a couple of dozen men with tattooed faces and filthy clothes stalk the streets day and night, paralyzing an entire city, terrorizing 45,000 people, and causing Mayor Michael Lies to froth at the mouth. Interesting place. The buildings in the centre of town remind me of a low storey Wellington from sometime in the 70s combined with a population with all the grace and slack jawed intelligence of modern day Upper Hutt.

Our trip here was fairly uneventful. We stopped at a Palmerston North restaurant for dinner. Camille had eaten at the place before for lunch and thought it well worth it but we were travelling and didn't know where it was apart from it being in Palmerston North. However, modern technology came to the rescue and we used my phone to do a quick google search and then a look at dineout.co.nz which gave us the address. I have to say that the "Aberdeen Steakhouse and Bar' is pretty damn good, particularly if you enjoy a good steak because that's what the menu mainly consists of though they do serve a few other things including vegetarian food for those who, as the menu said, "would really rather be somewhere else". It's a good restaurant. Pleasant layout and decor, excellent atmosphere, good service, uncrowded seating etc. We started off with a beer each and a couple of tapas - sundried tomato & feta infused with olive oil and rosemary tarts, chicken balls rolled in sesame seeds with a soy based sauce. There were more on the menu but we were there to do some serious meat eating so we held back. However, if I were in PN for lunch or if I had more time I would happily do their tapas. The mains menu consists of about a dozen different cuts of steak all attractively described. It even includes Wagyu beef at $45.00 for a 100 grams. I was tempted but I'll wait for another time to binge on Wagyu. We both went for a 180gm eye fillet cooked medium rare. There are a number of accompaniments and sides you can order from. Camille and I were fairly traditional and ordered a baked potato with sour cream (Camille) and the "house fries" which are basically oversized chips. A salad arrived with our mains which was, I think, a cut above the average restaurant salad. The steaks were excellent. Both cooked medium rare. Quite refreshing to find a restaurant that doesn't cook a medium rare closer to medium. Mind you, when a place specialises in steaks one would expect them to be able to do them well. Camille went with a green peppercorn sauce with hers and I selected a horseradish cream. I was a bit disappointed with this as it was more cream than horseradish and lacked bite. We had a Trinity Hill Syrah with our steaks and this was good. I don't know the year as there were no dates on the wine menu. I recommend this place.

We are staying in the Kingsgate Hotel in the city centre. We investigated the Gang City accommodation online and this seemed to be about the best place available. We are booked into one of their "Superior rooms". Is it? Well, this morning I went to the reception and asked them to check our booking as I thought we had been placed in the wrong room. The reply was basically, "No. You are in one of our superior rooms". Obviously this is a redefinition of the word superior because I place this room on a par with second rate and very small motel room. I would hate to stay in one of the Kingsgate Hotel standard rooms.

Now follows a long whinge about the Kingsgate Superior room we are in.

The room itself is a bit larger than, and this is no exaggeration, one of the bathrooms in my house. The bathroom here is about the size of my fridge. Ok - that is an exaggeration but not by much. There is chipped paintwork and peeling wallpaper. The shower is arranged in such a way that when you are in it water flows all over the floor of the bathroom soaking anything that is on it. It's a small miracle that it didn't flow out of the bathroom and into the main room. I suspect that if we chose to have long showers that this would happen. However, it's impossible to have long showers because the ventilation in the bathroom isn't working. The vent grill is filthy and clogged. When the shower is running the bathroom very quickly turns into a sauna and is quite unpleasant to be in. The airconditioning is completely useless. They have a selection of teas but only one type of INSTANT coffee.

No! I can't stand it and neither can Camille. She has left for work and I am leaving this fucking awful hotel. I'm cutting short the whinge and I'm looking for somewhere else.

Later: I am now ensconsed in the hotel-that-begins-with-the-letter-C Hotel. You may have guessed that I can't recall the name even though I checked in five minutes ago. The name is unimportant. What is important is that I am in a far more pleasant place. It's light, airy (perhaps because I have opened all the windows), on the 2nd floor, quiet, no peeling paint or wallpaper. There is real coffee and a plunger to make it in.

I am far happier, as will Camille be when she arrives back, and more relaxed. It may be time to wander the streets of Gang City looking for trouble.