Celebration

When we went on the Parnell Art Walk just over a week ago we met a very nice Chinese couple from Hong Kong and discovered that they had just been approved for New Zealand citizenship and their Certificates were being printed on the same day as hubby’s. This seemed such a happy coincidence that we exchanged contact details and agreed that we would have our own ceremony after their Certificates and hubby’s Certificate arrived.

The Certificates arrived on Monday, so we agreed to get together for a meal tonight. It needed to be somewhere in the city, as they live over on the North Shore.  I put the thinking cap on and decided we’d go to a restaurant that none of us had been to before and chose Ima Restaurant, having read about it recently, and it was close to where our buses arrived and departed. We arrived at 6pm, enjoyed a mezze-type meal and a couple of glasses of wine, talked and laughed and enjoyed the lively atmosphere and walked out at 9pm. It was a lovely celebration.

On our way to the restaurant hubby and I went for a little walk around the Britomart area and I took some photos of the lights on trees and on the side of a hotel building. The blip includes those photos as well as a photo of the starter mezze and our dessert - plum and almond crumble and a hot cross bun bread pudding. The restaurant is known for its hot cross buns, so they’re obviously extending the “season”.

There are 6,635 new community cases today, and the seven-day rolling average is 7,972 compared to 7,595 last Saturday. The number of people in hospital is 400, including 12 in ICU. Another 6 deaths have been reported, bringing the total number of deaths to 1,045 and the seven-day rolling average to 13.