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River Of Data.com |
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Friday, 21 November, Auckland, NZ As part of my packing things up for the move from the hotel to the ship, facilitated by them giving us a late check out at 1300, I backed up my iPhone. Then I headed across the street to get some more “kiwi dollars” at an ATM. As I turned to leave the hotel, I slipped and fell face first into one of the reflecting pools. I was completely soaked. Hotel staff came running, but I wasn’t hurt except for a minor elbow scrape, and I assured them I’d just go up to our room to change. The pool was about a foot deep and had decorative stones at the bottom. The hotel staff apologized profusely, as if it were their fault, and said we could delay checkout another hour, until 1400, which was nice. In the room I realized I didn’t have my iPhone and that it must have fallen from my shirt pocket. I called to the desk and they fished it out of the pool. I went to get it, and as expected it was dead. Disaster, as that is our only phone, and also had lots of other data on it. I made a number of calls to Vodafone stores in the harbor area and didn’t have much success with getting assistance, nor did I from Vodafone telephone support. I finally decided that we needed to go get on the ship, so we got a cab to the dock. It took about 90 minutes to get through all of the procedures to get on board, but considering the number of people to go through all the customs, health forms, getting ship key/ID cards, and so forth, it wasn’t too bad. Our veranda suite is delightful, amidships on the port side. The veranda has room for chairs and a little table. Since I’d not had luck with resolving my iPhone problem, I left the ship and looked for a store that had them. I finally found one quite near to the ship, that had the identical phone for $NZ1268. Even at .52 cents US for each NZ dollar, it is still more than they are at home. Fortunately the NZ iPhones, by law, aren’t locked in NZ, it would be possible to switch the SIM card from my dead phone to a new one. That couldn’t be done anywhere else except Hong Kong. Anywhere else I would have had to sign up with a provider. I came back to the ship to discuss the issue with Gail, and we finally decided it was pretty important, and we’d resolve the problem with the dead one when we get home next year. So I ran back to the store, getting there just as they were about to close, and got the new phone. It worked immediately, and I restored it from my laptop so that it is just like the old one. I won’t carry it in a shirt pocket any more, that’s for sure, even though don’t plan to fall into any more pools, either. We went to dinner at 800 and were blessed with charming and intelligent dinner companions from Vancouver, BC. After dinner we watched TV for a while and then stayed up to watch the ship sail out of Auckland at 2359 (midnight). Finally to sleep another hour or so later. Back to itinerary (trip home page)
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