Happy Holidays from Janis and Larry, Auckland, New Zealand.

We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a happy holiday, we wish you a cheery Christmas, and a super-duper New Year! (Bollicks on the millennium!)

We're spending the Christmas holiday in the South Island: Dunedin, Milford Sound, Queenstown, and a very special treat — a night at a farm in Otago, courtesy of Helen Tunnah (a Kiwi journo covering the Cup) and her parents.

We'll be back in Auckland for the New Year's Eve fireworks and all-night partying. The irony is that most people in New Zealand, which prides itself on being the first country in the world to welcome each new day, are unlikely to see the first sunrise of the so-called new millennium. The Maori didn't name this place Aotearoa — "land of the long white cloud" — for nothing. It's more likely to be a grey day than not.

           Cheers,
      Janis and Larry

PS: That Christmas tree is in the Louis Vuitton Media Centre, where Larry spends most of his waking hours — if he's not out on the Hauraki Gulf watching paint dry . . . er . . . yacht racing. Fellow journo and "Quokker" Rich Roberts was kind enough to snap the pix for us.