Last Friday afternoon, a package arrived to my home. In this, contained Peppery’s old iPhone. I wasn’t that eager to open it and start playing with it, so I eventually got round to having a look, and taking pictures of the re-unboxing. The first thing you notice about the iPhone, is that the box is gorgeous! Then when you get inside, you have in front of you, a shiny device. You wouldn’t know the device is a phone, if it wasn’t called the iPhone.

Now that I have had a play with it for a week, you would think I’d have something to say about it. Yes, I do, but the thing is, everything has already been said, over the past year of its release. The iPhone is an amazing device. It does everything well. I could go into detail about what I love about this phone, but go Google “iPhone Reviews” and pretty much everything is covered in there.

I could go on and get into specifics, but I don’t want to, I don’t need to. If you haven’t already experienced an iPhone, you are really missing out on something. This device offers so much, and every iPhone owner wouldn’t be disappointed by their investment. I got this for a more than reasonable price and I absolutely love this phone. I’m sorry if you expected a review or something, but you really have to use this product, instead of reading about all of it’s features. Now I’m going off to play with it, my precious!

…for now.

There have been many updates to my blog and tumblelog over the past few days. All the blog changes are hidden away. Peppery has been doing some stuff with servers and what have you, as well as updating the blog to Wordpress 2.6. On the tumblelog, the changes are more apparent, with a completely new look. The reason for the refresh was not because I felt like it, but because my old theme had disappeared from the internet. The full story, as what was posted on my tumblr, is as follows.

Yesterday at 10am, Vodafone New Zealand announce their plans for the new Apple iPhone they are releasing on the 11th of July. We had been waiting for weeks to get this information and a couple of days before launch, they finally gave it to us. I can see why they waited till the last minute (look at what happened in Canada.) The prices are really expensive for the average mobile user and New Zealanders were not pleased at all with what Vodafone had to offer.

At 10am, on the dot, the Vodafone New Zealand site was hit by many users that wanted to see the plan. But to everyones surprise, the site went down immediately due to the huge amount of traffic. You would think Vodafone would have foreseen this happening and done something to prevent it, but no, they were pretty useless so we had to get the information from other sources until the Vodafone site was back up, which was over an hour later.

Anyway, the price of the iPhone plans start at $80 and go right up to $250 with 1GB of data. This is insane. From the tables below, you can see the full details of the plans as well as the total cost of ownership over the 2 year contract period. The most expensive plan costs $6000 over 2 years. You also have to option to get the phone by itself for $1100 to use on a YouChoose plan.

The plans are pathetic and the prices of them are outrageous, especially when compared to the rest of the world. Vodafone New Zealand is doing the exact same thing Rogers in Canada are doing, taking advantage of the monopoly. In saying that, New Zealands mobile costs are expensive, even before the iPhone, so when you look at it like that and compare the iPhone plans to the current plans, you get a reasonable deal, in New Zealand.

I hope something happens soon to lower mobile prices in New Zealand, not just for the iPhone, but in general. This will probably never happen, especially since there is only one GSM carrier and two in total. With little competition, there is no reason, or incentive to lower prices. I wanted to get an iPhone from Vodafone, but it doesn’t look like I will be able to. I will still get an iPhone somehow, sometime soon, you mark my words!

Today is the start of the mid year holidays. I won’t be doing anything these holidays. I won’t be travelling or doing anything special. I wouldn’t mind going to Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch to wait in line for the iPhone but I can barely afford the iPhone, let alone a trip there to get it at 12:01am on July 11th. So I will probably be on my computer for the next 2 weeks and surfing the net and watching some TV shows.

Being the middle of the year, I got my mid-year school report on Friday and it was pretty good. There were a few errors in it though, such as an incorrect grade and 2 of the same report, both with a slight error in the comment. You would think that someone would check through and make sure they are alright before giving them out. Oh well.

While still on the subject of school, just as I was about to relax on Saturday afternoon, a red letter from school arrived. A red letter is a naughty note, in simple terms. The reason the note was sent was for not submitting my Geography Report (and don’t say anything Stephanie!) I’m surprised I got one without knowing. I’m not too worried about it because I don’t really need the credits for UE. Also it’s my first red letter in 6 and a half years I’ve been there, so I like to think I’ve done well.

So basically I am going to waste away my holidays again. When I return next term, I’m going to have a fair bit to do, including submitting a Reading Log, doing difficult Electronic component physics assessments, as well as many other things. Not long to go before I’m done for good. It’s going to be 2009 before I know it.

As you know, I went off to Queenstown for 2 nights. It’s not a very long time to go away, but the time we were there was pretty action packed with a full schedule of things to look at, and do. We didn’t just go to Queenstown, we also travelled to the surrounding towns and attractions nearby. The journey starts off on Sunday late afternoon, when I went up to school with all my gear and got on the bus with about 30 other students to go off to Queenstown on a geography field trip.

The bus left school at 5pm, on the dot. Everyone managed to get there before five so no one was left behind. Then it was off to Queenstown. It was a long ride, and it started getting darker, and in about an hour of travelling, it was pitch black. We did however stop in Alexandra for dinner, which was after 7pm. I had KFC, which didn’t taste that nice. It was greasy and the chicken was tasteless. The chips were too salty for my liking. The potato and gravy was edible and so was the bread. Then we went back on the road and off to our destination.

At 9:30, we were at our destination. We were staying at Lakeland Park Camp in Kelvin Heights, which is about 30 minutes out of Queenstown. There we settled in an were in bed and lights out at 11pm. I found it difficult to get to sleep, and ended up having a horrible night. I was really tired in the morning, but a nice hot shower sorted me out. We had to get ready to leave to go into town and needed to be on the bus at quarter past nine.

From there, our first stop was Frankton, which is 6km out of Queenstown. There we first went and had a look at the Queenstown Airport, and took a lot of pictures of various things there. Next we went to the Remarkables Park shopping center. Here we had the opportunity to have a look around the shops and buy food and other things if we wanted. After that, we got back on the bus and made our way to Queenstown.

Here we just drove around the town looking at places in the town, and then we made our way to the gondola. Everyone went up the hill in the gondola and at the top there, drew a sketch of the Queenstown area as well as taking pictures of the area from the top of the hill. After that, we got to go on the Luge. It was awesome! Then we made our way down the hill and back onto the bus at quarter past twelve.

Then we went and drove up to Arrowtown. We had a look around the town, and had food there. There is not much in the town, not many shops and stuff. I had lunch there and got a Mince Pie and a Pepsi, which was damn expensive, and cost me $5.90. Rip off! It was a good pie though and it didn’t come out of my pocket so I was alright with it. Then we went back on the road.

We went to the Bungy jumping bridge and there was watched a quick video while the people going for a jump got set up. Out of all of us, only 3 of our group jumped, one was my geography teacher, and the other two did a double tandem jump. It was really cold out there but it was interesting to see people jump. It looked scary. It’s something I can never see myself doing, ever! Then we went back towards Queenstown and to the wharf so people that wanted to go on the jetboat could. I decided not to go on it.

Then it was back to camp to do whatever until it was dinner time. At 7pm, everyone got onto the bus and we went into Queenstown to have our dinner. Me and my mates walked around Queenstown for 15 minutes looking for a pizza place, but we had no luck so weended up going back and going into the mall and having McDonalds. I had a $10 voucher so I ended up getting more that I would want. I got a Large Quarter Pounder combo, a hamburger, and a chocolate ice cream sundae. After eating all of that, I was pretty full. I do however regret eating the sundae, because it was damn cold and I was frozen for ages.

Then we made it back to the camp where we watch 2 movies that we hired. The first one was Jumper, which I happened to have seen in the weekend on DVD at home. It was interesting watching it a second time, but that’s a story for another post. I decided not to watch the second movie, Chuck and Larry, because I had seen it before and it wasn’t that interesting. I went into my cabin and the group of use talked for a while and eventually went to sleep.

In the morning, it was time to pack. I stuffed all my gear in my bag, which didn’t fit as perfectly as it did when I packed to come on the trip, but I managed to get it all in anyway. Then it was time to clean. I ended up vacuuming 3 of the boys cabins which wasn’t that bad because it warmed me up. Then were were on the bus and started travelling.

We did make a stop at the Millbrook Resort, where one of the guys there gave us a quick tour of the place. We had a look at some of the buildings, the eating facilities, and one of the rooms. It was really fancy, and expensive to own. The guy also told us a little about when Bill Gates was staying there. No one ever saw him, but they had stories about his body guards and what room he stayed and what he did.

Then it was time to head back home to Dunedin. The trip back was longer and more boring than the trip there. We stopped again in Alexandra, this time for Lunch at 1pm. This time I had Subway. The nice old lady behind the register talked me into getting more than I intended. I had a meatball sub with a drink and 2 cookies. It was quite nice, much better than KFC by a long shot. Then it was a 3 hour journey back to Dunedin.

We got back home at 4pm and Dad was waiting to pick me up there. It was a really good trip and I enjoyed it lots. I wish it was a little longer so we could look at more things and do more things as well. This is the last trip for the year, and for my high school life. I’m happy my last school trip was a great one. Oh, and not once did I think about the internet, or miss it. Although I was Plurking some of the time I was there. I took heaps of pictures, 200 (500MB) to be exact which I will slowly upload to Flickr over the next few days. Queenstown is AWESOME!