Fishing Day

Assalaamu’alaikum wr. wb.

They say, Wellington is the coolest little capital city in the world. I second that! Some of them say it’s because Wellington has everything from hills to beaches, variety of food and city life. Some also says what makes it cool is the people. All of them are true, imho. But for me, there are two main things that make Wellington really cool. I’ll write the second reason on another post. But my first reason is, because here in Wellington there are lots of cool free children/family event to attend, almost every week.

For me especially, having little children means having lots of outdoor activities. The thing is, I am a stay at home mom. I don’t really go out much, except on my special me time, which mostly ended up on me having a nap. And as much as I’d love to give my kids screen time (about 2hr a day), I can’t do it all the time. So going outside is actually a win win solution for us. Parks, playground, beaches, pool can be easily found here so it’s not hard to find outdoor activities. Naisha and I are both happy everytime we do outside activities. Luckily for Wellingtonian families, if you search carefully, you’ll see that there are lots of free/almost free children/family event to attend, (almost) every week.

For example, today we went to Kids Gone Fishing Day. Naisha has been asking to go fishing a lot for the past few months. But we don’t have fishing gear. We don’t know how to do fishing either. But then one day I saw the ad about this event when we were passing through a street, but I only remember it said kid, fishing, and 18th March. I actually searched it on google but funny I didn’t find the event I was looking for. But then 2 days ago, Facebook suggested this event on my newsfeed! HA! How did you know Facebook? How??? Sometimes I wonder what Facebook doesn’t know about me. Maybe facebook knew I was pregnant before I realized it. #kidding

So I checked on their facebook page, found out that this event is totally free. We don’t have to bring any fishing gear. And there will be lots of free stuff too such as face painting, sausage sizzle and prizes. So I asked Mr. Ghifary if we could come to this event since I don’t think there will be any more chance to take Naisha fishing with our never-gone-fishing condition in the future. So we went there today. And we had a great time! ^_^

The event took place at Queens Wharf. We started the event by registering Naisha, in the under5 group, she got number A44. The lady at the register table said, to tell the number to the committee whenever we caught a fish. The lady also gave us two handlines for us to use since we didn’t bring any fishing rod, and said we could get the bait at the other table. So we went to get our bait, which was chopped dead squid. Then  we’re ready to fish!

We arrived about an hour from the start of the event, and there were already hundreds(?) of families. So it took us a few minutes to find a spot since the harbour was already packed. After we found our spot, I asked Mr. Ghifary to help Naisha do the fishing. Truth to be told, I found putting chopped dead squid is a bit disgusting so I just let Mr. Ghifary took care of it, lol. But at that time Rumi was crying for feed too, so I walked away from our spot to sit in the chair provided. The other things that made me happy at this event was that I met our friend from Playcentre. She came with her husband and two kids, Naisha’s friends, and they ended up took a spot beside Naisha’s. We had a nice chat. I also had a lovely chat with a Malaysian lady who’s been living in Wellington for 36 years. She was one of the committee who helped this event run. She said this is actually an annual event. Last year they had 600-700 families. She also said that earlier today they pour some special mixture down the ocean in the event area. I couldn’t really listened to what she said about the mixture composition but it was something that would attract a lot of fishes to come. That’s why lots of kids caught fishes, she said. She also introduced me to the MC event, a guy who apparently just visit Indonesia recently and he said he loves Indonesia. 🙂 Oh the other thing I remembered about the MC was when he said through the microphone that, this event is proudly brought for the kids, so kids can experience and try something new (which we did, thank you very much!). And then the MC said, “Thank you for all the parent who bring their kids to the event today”. 🙂

After finish feeding and chatting, I checked out on Naisha and Mr. Ghifary. Still no luck from the fishing thing. Then I offered him myself to look after Naisha and tried fishing. Mr. Ghifary and Rumi then went to the waiting queue for couple of hot chocolates. Yes, they also provided free hot&cold drink (coffe, hot choc, juices)! It was a long queue for Mr. Ghifary. Which left us fishing for some period of time. Naisha was curious why we still couldn’t get fish after a while. Well, that how fishing goes, right? But then something amazing happened. I saw something big and orange on the surface of the sea, few feet right to us. It was definitley not a fish. Then I looked at an old gentleman sat beside us. He checked on one of the fishing rod he was looking after (there were three). And I finally realized that fishing rod caught a starfish! A huge one! But apparently it wasn’t the gentleman’s fishing rod. So he called for a kid, the real fishing rod owner to come and so the kid himslef pulled out the starfish. It was a really nice experience, not only for Naisha but for me too. 🙂

After a while, I get a bit boring waiting for us to catch the fish so I offered Naisha if we could go home. She refused at first. She said she wanted to catch a fish. She wanted to get a prize, since I told her they measured all the caught fish and there’ll be prizes for those who caught big fish. I was kind of afraid that we sill still be there for long since surely we had no beginner’s luck on this fishing thiing, but then Naisha’s friends came back to their spot with their painted face. So I asked Naisha if she wanted to have face painting too and we could go home after that, which she agreed. Yayy!

All in all, it really was a nice family event. Besides all the fishing and free things already mentioned, they also brought a firetruck, and police cars with lots of policemen and police women. We ended our activities with having lunch near the event area, where there were some picnic chairs and tables.

Tomorrow, there will be another free (for children) event for us to attend. It’s called the Life Fllight Open Day. There will be more than a dozen EMERGENCY SERVICES will be on display, demonstrating the important work they do. Other free event already happened the past few months was Island Bay festival, Karori Carnival, Newtown Festival, Children’s Day celebration, Meridian Kids Magic Botanic Garden, and many else. Not to mention there will always be free event at Te Papa Museum, for example we could  have attended the Whale Rider stage act show at Te Papa this evening but we didn’t, 2 weeks ago there were also children strings concert which unfortunately we didn’t attend too, and lots of other show to come. See? We can never be bored in this coolest little capital city in the world. Oh Wellington, you’re too cool to be true! :*

Wassalaamu’alaikum wr. wb.