Keeping up with Jake in April

We’d been planning a retreat with our 2023 Next Gen and Indian Ink peeps for a while. The day finally arrived. Next Gen Programme Leader, Manuka had scouted and booked a community hall, corralled the Next Genners and composed a bespoke Indian Ink waiata for them.

General Manager, Jude had made a pot of soup for lunch, baked biscuits and cakes for afternoon tea, sourced all the ingredients as well as utensils, pots, pans, cutlery and crockery for a 15 person dinner – chickpea curry, rice and chapatis, to be made by us all as an activity to end the day.

My only job was to fly up from Wellington with a spice mix for the curry and lead the workshop. I flew up from Wellington. I forgot the spice mix.

Luckily our Producer, Pene, managed to scour five spice shops before finally locating the desired brand of spice mix in a Sandringham dairy. In my defence, I had actually packed the spice mix but then changed bags at the last minute because I decided to take my favourite big red rubber rolling pin (for rolling chapatis) which didn’t fit in my original bag.

This was a decision that came back to bite me – twice.

Once when I left the spice packet in the other bag, and then again on my journey home when Auckland Airport Security confiscated my red rubber rolling pin, citing the potential threat to passenger safety. Bear in mind you can take a full metal drink bottle or a glass bottle of wine on a plane, but they draw the line at a rubber rolling pin.

You’d think I’d be annoyed. You’d be right.

But then I thought back to the day I’d just had, sitting in a room with a group of whip-smart, funny, passionate 20-somethings as we shared what we loved doing and then dug deeper to discover the common themes that revealed what we truly valued.

I can always buy another rolling pin.

This was priceless.

 

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