(written… today!!!)
I’ve been stuck in Christchurch all day today waiting for my phone to be re-repaired. 😅
Oh how I wanted to be gone from this place! 🙃
It’s funny, after days of a sore throat hitting me every night pretty hard, the day after I down candy like a 10 year old on Halloween, my sore throat is gone. 😆
Aaaaaand… my guts are rotten. 🙃 Necessitating the finding of a toilet quite quickly, as micro john is full from yesterday.
So I set off heading the direction that I figured the toilet was going to be (the reviews of the freedom camping spot mentioned toilets), and gratefully, I found them just a couple hundred meters away, or so.
Unfortunately, I came on the heels of another man who beat me there. 😅 Needing to go to the bathroom as badly as I did, I went right over to the ladies side, gratefully found it empty, and just about lifted off the seat.
😅
Quite relieved, and also relieved no ladies needed to use the bathroom while I was in there (outdoor facility with two stalls and an open-air sink), I walked back to my van and hung out there until a security guy came over checking everyone’s tags.
Gratefully, I’m all current, but it still is a little nerve wracking.
From there, I headed to the city to get my phone cleaned and the front-facing camera properly adjusted, but I didn’t realize there were two locations with the same name, and I had accidentally chosen the wrong location.
So I plugged the correct location in and headed over to the Northland mall location.
As I got there, I was about to go in when I remembered that I hadn’t yet done the photo transfer from my phone to my computer, so I spent maybe an hour transferring all the photos to my computer since the last time I had done it.
Nice to have that done, just in case something bad happens with the re-fix. 🤞
Once done, I went inside and dropped my phone off. The phone tech who was there yesterday wasn’t there when I arrived, but I was told that he would get there at 2:00 and that the phone would be done no later than 6:00.
I had it back to my van only to remember something that I hadn’t told the person behind the counter, so I went back and mentioned the thing that I forgot, then went back to my van, then back to the counter, then back to my van, then back to the counter a third time, each time remembering something that I had forgotten to mention the previous time. 😆
From the mall, I headed over to a nearby park where I spent a good little while working on journal catch up.
After getting a little cold in the breeze, I went back to the van to warm up a little, and I noticed the skink from the other day was still in the van. I watched it on the dashboard go into my AC vents, and then a little bit later, it came out and went briefly went into my sun hat…
…before finally venturing into one of the outside pouches on my little black backpack. 🙃
I was concerned that it was a skink from Fiji that had followed me home in my luggage. There were a bunch of little lizard things all over the place in the Maravu Taveuni Lodge, and I wondered if one of those little guys had made it into my pack while I was packing and had managed to hitch a ride all the way to New Zealand.
Not a good thing given how important it is to the Fijian government that non-native plants and animals be kept away.
But the glances that I got of the little creature made it look quite like the Fijian copper-headed skink.
So I zipped it up inside my pack, so it couldn’t get away, not wanting it to get outside the van and mingle with the local skinks and potentially cause an issue.
Then I started doing a little bit of research to verify that it was indeed a Fijian skink and not just one from New Zealand.
Texted back and forth with Richard as I was dealing with the situation, and then put an empty soda bottle, lid removed, as the only exit out of that pouch in my backpack. I put a ladybug inside the bottle hoping to lure it inside.
Eventually, I gave up, and I wanted to take more pictures of the skink to make a positive identification, as if it was a New Zealand skink, then I wouldn’t have to worry about just letting it go.
When I opened up the pouch, I noticed that the skink had gone inside the folds of my rolled up waterproof cell phone case, so I very carefully got my hands on both ends of the rolled up case, so the skink had no way out, got my hands out of the pouch, and then put the only exit to the cell phone case via the empty bottle and finally managed to coax it into the bottle.
I don’t know if the little guy ate the ladybug on its way in with such speed that I didn’t even notice, or if somehow the ladybug got out while I was in the process of getting the little skink in, but there was no more ladybug inside the bottle when I looked for it immediately after getting the skink inside.
After some more photos and some Googling, I was able to determine that the skink was indeed from New Zealand (looks like either a Northern or a southern grass skink) and not the copperheaded skink from Fiji.
More relief. 😊
Unfortunately, in the midst of doing all that research and effort, I hadn’t noticed that when I turned my key on, I actually turned it past the accessory mode and into the on mode, which drained the battery, so when I tried to start the van, it was dead as dead could be.
Ooos. 🙃
The fact that I was parallel parked on a busy road with no suicide Lane made it even more challenging to figure out how to get myself jumped off and moving again.
Gratefully, pretty much just as I got my jumper cables out and had disconnected my battery from the van with plans to try and find somebody who could just charge it for 5 minutes, the young man who was parked in front of me was walking back to his car, and he popped his hood, and I brought my battery and jumper cables over, and we chatted well the battery got charged up a bit.
Super nice kid (Noah), second year of uni, studying software engineering, hoping one day to program the algorithms used for stock trading.
From there, I headed back to the mall, worked on journal catch up efforts, texted a bit with my sister Tish who just bought a used truck after their other one got totaled–again, veged out in my van a little bit, checked up on my phone progress, the timing of completion changing 😒, and worked even more on journal catchup efforts.
I’m almost a month and a half behind. 😆
😅
I do at least have notes for every day. 🙏
I went get again to check up on my phone to then be told the phone was now off site at a different store because they didn’t have the parts they needed.
😶
Parts?!?!
There are no parts needed. It just needs to have the screen removed, the back interior camera glass cleaned because he got it dirty during the repair, and the front-facing camera adjusted because it got misadjusted when he was putting the phone back together.
No parts. Just I’m work careful reassembly process.
I chatted with the lady confirming that it was indeed going to be free, and she assured me that it would be.
I don’t trust that for a minute, but at least she said it to me.
And that’s where I am now. 8:09 p.m. she assured me that the phone would be back and ready to go by 9:00, which I think is when the mall closes.
I was originally assured that it would be done by 6:00, and now with the phone not even being on site… and with them having access to my unlock screen code… ugh.
At least I uninstalled all my financial apps, I think. Though if they wanted, they could look through my email and probably see my financial institutions, and then just go to the website and get into my financial accounts. 😅
Lots of trust is given to people who get access to our digital devices for repair. 😬
Really hoping this ends well. 🤞
I’m ready for a new phone. 🙃
…
Well… It certainly didn’t end well today. I was promised that my phone would be ready to go at 9 o’clock tonight.
When I went to go pick it up, however, not only were none of the things fixed that I had brought it in to be fixed, but now the brand new screen had probably an inch and a half of broken pixels.
😶
All day. I’ve waited all day. I’ve had the promises change multiple times, and here we are at the end of the day, and nothing is fixed that was supposed to be fixed, and now the brand new screen is already broken.
😶
The reassured me they would get it all fixed tomorrow, but after today, what trust can I have? What faith is reasonable?
They are going to need to get another screen, and they still have to clean the inside and properly adjust the selfie camera.
[sigh]
Now I’m frustrated.
It’s 10:20, and after spending probably an hour trying to find an available freedom camping place, here I am.
Erg. I got back to New Zealand on Monday, and tomorrow is gonna be Friday, and I’m still not away from the Christchurch region.
Oh, how I’m crossing my fingers for success tomorrow.
🤞
~ stephen
Lift the World 