Live blogging from a chocolate box

Today I mediated in Queenstown, NZ - our ski resort town - and notwithstanding the truly stunning chocolate box scenery and party atmosphere, the locals still manage to have particularly fractious disputes in their corner of paradise.

But it's cold. Very cold.

I went to leave and the plane had iced up.

I went to 'offload' and the overhead lockers had iced up - they wouldn't open because the hydraulic hinges were frozen. FROZEN!

I didn't even want to know what that meant for the wings.

The normally stunning view from my seat, carefully chosen on the right hand side of the plane, was not encouraging either - and I'd seen off 2 Chinese tourists to get it - it seems the concept of allocated seating is a Western one.

[That's ice inside the window by the way]

So here I sit, at the airport - 8.31pm and my only source of heat is the laptop on my knee - for as long as the battery holds.

Tammy, if your Woodbury College grad students are reading this at the start of class on a summer's day, tell them please that this is the reality of the coalface for just one of an increasing number of mediation road warriors - but that none of us would change it for all the tea those aggressive tourists have back there in far away China.