Hello Tatupies, and a happy New Year to you all! We are back with a brief end of the year sum up, an article in the French newspaper "Dauphiné", a new project, AND a new challenge!
Shortly after our arrival in New Zealand, we bought our amazing Tatup mobile, a cute second hand van. It was the rare find: raised, lengthened with an automatic transmission.
We were quite happy to finally get out van after a few minor drawbacks with the technical control and ownership paperwork.
That being said, 86 kilometres (53,4379 miles precisely) were apparently the point where our radiator thought it was a good idea to come say hi. By exploding, because well, he’s a radiator, and apparently that’s what they do. I’m not judging here!
"Ha! A+ for effort!" said our radiator, when our cylinder head went on a sudden vacation to the head gasket’s heaven. RIP. Yes, despite our best efforts, the van still overheated.
Narayan was an invaluable help by handling all the reparations himself, leaving us with a reduced bill for our rogue radiator.
Falling 3 weeks behind our schedule was the biggest issue though. 3 weeks spent in uncertainty, not knowing when our van (and Narayan) would whip the radiator into submission. Today? Tomorrow? It’s a mystery!
Once repaired, we were all set to leave for new adventures.
We kept working on the amenities in our van while travelling, tinkering it into a literal tiny mobile home.
Emirates Airline’s VIP class :
Our Tatupmobile was the rising star of the camping sites, with its 5 stars bedroom, according to Jennifer Aniston’s standards!
The TATUP-mobile
Gallery
Alright. First, radiator, second, cylinder head, what’s next? Oh right, Delphine’s graphic tablet got an emotional burnout from all the tickling and left us to become a Taoist monk. We wish her the best for her new chosen path.
And by that I mean that her «Wacom Cintiq» died on us. It’s a high end technical tool, enabling Delphine to draw with smoothness and precision, close to that of paper. It had allowed her to keep her work up to date for her current clients so far, and was a precious tool for her.
I thankfully use a Surface 2 pro for my pictures and the blog.
Delphine was able to use it as a band-aid, but it’s clearly not optimal.
Delphine’s work being still the top priority, our blog updates suffered a major setback these past few weeks.
Well for starters, it HAD to happen just 2 months after the warranty expired of course. I’m looking at you, planned obsolescence. Right in the middle of (a very beautiful nonetheless) nowhere, at the end of the world where people walk upside down, and where an official retailer is harder to find than Gollum.
"Fret not!" we told ourselves, "we will now happily ride the globalization train, and order a new tablet in France, and have it travel here as 8th passenger in our friends’ b...ackpack. I know exactly what you expected here, but that’s gross.
Aaaand then Wacom crushed our (sci-fi) dreams when they informed us our order wouldn’t be ready on time. Missing the deadline by 24 hours...After 3 weeks wasted on a painful email ping pong match with their customer service only able to answer ONE question at a time (no matter how you ask your questions), this one stung.
Delphine sees it as a sign to rekindle her fading relationship with paper drawing and even challenged herself to produce 1 illustration/drawing per day, for a year.
Joke’s on her, there are 366 days in 2016, HA!...
You can of course treat your eyes to her artwork on her official blog pro.
This tablet issue was the main culprit in our blog desertion. But we’ll be back on track very soon, to regal our readers (and make our translator suffer for his forced holidays) with new amazing stories.
In the meantime, we live the good life in out Tatupmobile, cruising across New Zeland. Gandalf and Frodo say hi by the way.
We truly hope this year will be filled with beauty and wonders, and who knows, even trips and journeys for some of you!
Next time, but as English readers, you might won’t regret it because this French newspaper will hardly publish in English!
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