We have booked and paid for the family's holiday. It is a bit scary to pay such an amount via online payment over the airline's website and this is the first time we did it. Usually we are used to visit our travel agent and let them handle the booking and make payemnt at their office.
The airline sent an email to confirm the booking, travel details, passenger info within hours after payment being made online. All we have to do is print out that email, bring it to the Auckland Airport before checking in to get the boarding pass. We will be away for about five weeks from New Zealand for the vacation.
I have stumble upon this cool site, which is very easy to use to submit your site to the search engines. You just need to enter your email address and homepage URL or your blog's link. This site offer free service to submit your link to over two dozens of powerful search engines!This link is located at http://list-your-site.com/As of the writing of this post, my blog has 16,925 visitors.Now it is winter in Auckland, New Zealand. The weather is not as cold as last week (it was freezing below zero and heavy fog).
These are the first few pictures I took of Skippy, our darling little pet at home with digital SLR camera. It was a cold winter morning and the temperature was hovering around four degree celcious I am not quite use to handle digital SLR camera now and hope my skills will improve with time. Please click on the picture for larger view.
China's health authorities are reported to be putting a stop to restaurants serving chickens which have been bitten to death by poisonous snakes.The dish, which is served by a small number of restaurants in Guangdong and Chongqing, is billed as detoxing.But it has generated a storm of controversy in the media and among bloggers after a video of its preparation was circulated online.The video shows a cook holding a snake and forcing it to bite a live chicken.A week of intense internet discussion has reached the near-unanimous decision that it is cruel to kill live chickens by forcing deadly snakes to bite them repeatedly.Some voices noted, however, that they found the cooked dish delicious."It's disgusting and really cruel," read one post on the popular portal sina.com.cn."Not only is it cruel and blood-thirsty, but totally amoral," the Chongqing Business Daily cited a neighbour to one of the restaurants as saying."Although nobody has been poisoned, this at the very least is an irregular way of slaughtering poultry," the business newspaper quoted a local health official as saying.According to Reuters news agency, health authorities in Guangdong have already told restaurants to stop serving "poisonous snake-bitten chicken". It said officials in Chongqing had joined the ban.Restaurants in China have long specialised in exotic dishes which have provoked condemnation from animal rights activists and health watchdogs - such as monkey brains scooped from a live animal, civet cat and deer foetus soup.
A bumblebee which is extinct in the UK is to be reintroduced from New Zealand under plans being announced.The short-haired bumblebee was exported from the UK to New Zealand on the first refrigerated lamb boats in the late 19th Century to pollinate clover crops.It was last seen in the UK in 1988, but populations on the other side of the world have survived.Now Natural England and several other conservation groups have launched a scheme to bring the species home.International rescuePoul Christensen, Natural England's acting chairman, said; "Bumblebees are suffering unprecedented international declines and drastic action is required to aid their recovery."Bumblebees play a key role in maintaining food supplies - we rely on their ability to pollinate crops and we have to do all we can to provide suitable habitat and to sustain the diversity of bee species."This international rescue mission has two aims - to restore habitat in England, thereby giving existing bees a boost; and to bring the short-haired bumblebee home where it can be protected."As many as 100 of the bees will initially be collected in New Zealand and a captive breeding plan established, with the aim of eventually releasing them at Dungeness, Kent, where they were last seen.They will be flown back on planes in cool boxes, and will not be disturbed, according to Natural England, as they will be in hibernation during transit.The scheme's project officer Nikki Gammans, of the Stirling-based Bumblebee Conservation Trust, said the bee was a "keystone species" which was key to pollinating around 80% of important crops."By creating the right habitat for these bumblebees, we are recreating wildflower habitat that has been lost, which will be good for butterflies, water voles and nesting birds."The partnership project is being run by Natural England, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust the RSPB and Hymettus. 
We have booked and paid for the family's holiday. It is a bit scary to pay such an amount via online payment over the airline's website and this is the first time we did it. Usually we are used to visit our travel agent and let them handle the booking and make payemnt at their office. 
