2023: A very good year with new friends, new travels and new life

Are you looking back on the year with gratitude or regret? Five New Zealanders share why 2023 has been a very good year for them thanks to a range of very different reasons.

Praj Narkhede

A coffee group in Timaru was a life-changer for Praj Narkhede; she no longer feels alone in the crowd.

It has been a hard few years. I got married in India in October 2019 and my husband, who was working in Timaru, went back to New Zealand after our wedding. I was supposed to follow in March and then the Covid-19 pandemic began and New Zealand went into lockdown. I was stuck in India and we spent three years apart.

I finally came to New Zealand in January (2023). I hadn't been here before, it was a very different experience. I didn't know anyone in Timaru except my husband. I was so scared and lonely, and I went into a shell. It is really hard to feel alone in a crowd, it pierces your heart.

I was sitting on a park bench one day, crying, and a lovely couple talked to me. They told me about a place - Multicultural Aoraki - where people from the community all come together and people aren't alone. Everyone is there for each other, they said.

They told me the street that it was on (Latter St). I wrote it down and I walked to it. I was made to feel very welcome, and I was asked to have coffee. I kept thinking, 'How can people be so kind?'

I was a bit scared and I went to leave but they called me back and they were so lovely to me. The message was that we were there for each other, just like the couple had said. They were really generous people; they made me feel part of their society. This is what humans should be like.

Multicultural Aoraki told me: 'Go to the places you cried before. It will always remind you how strong you are when you're giving up, and never lose faith. There are kind, loving people out there who will never let you be alone.'

I have been going to the coffee group every single Wednesday. It makes me feel connected, it has given me hope, and it helped me come out of my depression. They can advise on so many things. They helped me with a work reference and I now have a job as a receptionist. I have friends now, too.

My parents in India are very thankful to Multicultural Aoraki, it is like their prayers for me have been answered. I feel much more settled, safe and happy. My husband is happy for me too.

I'm still looking for the couple who told me about it, and I'm passing the message on to others.

Cliff Lochhead

In 2023, Otago Polytech student Cliff Lochhead followed in the footsteps of his father to Antarctica.

I've always been interested in engineering, and when my kids got older it seemed the right time to give it a go. I went back to studying for a New Zealand Diploma in Engineering (Mechanical) at Otago Polytechnic, and then an Antarctic project came out of the blue.

In February this year I spent four weeks at Scott Base as part of an Otago University-Otago Polytechnic project that aims to develop small, low-cost, easy-to-deploy drilling instruments to collect ice samples rapidly, and at a scale not previously possible. It is hoped that the collected data will lead to better understanding of ice sheets and how they might change in the future.

The project needed a polytech engineering student to make high-pressure nozzles for a waterblaster unit so it would be suitable for use in Antarctica, and to develop baling buckets to remove water from holes in the ice. So I applied to do this, I got the internship, and then went with the team to Scott Base to test the equipment we'd developed.

I'd always been interested in visiting Antarctica. My father, Noel Lochhead, was part of a team that helped rebuild Scott Base in the summer of 1979-80 and I grew up hearing about those stories. When I left school I trained on the West Coast as an outdoor pursuits instructor so I'd done mountaineering and I've got a lot of practical skills.

It turned out to be the highlight of this year. It is quite momentous just how vast it is down in Antarctica. You step out of the plane, look around, and the whiteness goes on for as far as you can see. I was in touch with my father on Facebook from Scott Base, sending photos.

Mostly the equipment we tested was successful, we've made some minor changes, and I'll be part of the team returning to Antarctic this coming February for more tests. We'll camp about 30km from Scott Base so that will be a bit more challenging.

It is a three-year project and the following year we will be taking ice samples. I'm likely to be there as a core team member. I've got one more semester to go to finish my diploma, and my future work now lies in mechanical engineering. It's been so worth doing.

Charlotte Fermanis

Charlotte Fermanis (Ngāpuhi) became mum to baby Amaia after four years of trying to conceive.

Amaia was born on 25 October at St Thomas' Hospital in London, just across from Big Ben, and we are loving getting to know each other. It has been a long pathway to being parents, but so worth it in the end.

My husband, Ezra Fermanis (Ngāti Toa), is from Titahi Bay in Wellington and I was brought up in Christchurch. I'm a financial manager and Ezra is an IT manager and we came to London five years ago. The plan was that we would do some travelling, have a working holiday, before returning to New Zealand, having a baby and settling down.

Things didn't pan out like that. We stayed on in London and we spent a solid four years trying for a baby, with no luck and so many tests. The tests were inconclusive, it was unexplained infertility. We were in the dark and didn't know how to move forward. Every month of a negative pregnancy test is hard, it can really consume you and we did our best not to let this happen.

We decided to do IVF at the beginning of this year. So we knew that 2023 was either going to be a really good year, with a baby at the end of it, or a really hard year with more rounds of IVF and more uncertainty. We did the IVF privately because it takes a long time through the public system in the UK. Ezra was working for LinkedIn at that time and we were very fortunate in that they have a generous support package for staff doing IVF.

IVF is really tough, physically and emotionally, and it takes the joy out of making a baby. The pregnancy and childbirth was a breeze in comparison.  We were so lucky because we were successful on the first round; we have a beautiful baby out of all this and I still can't believe it.

I love the slower pace of being a stay-at-home mum, spending time with my baby, having lots of cuddles. I have a good milk supply and she is putting on lots of weight. Ezra mostly works from home and he is able to be around during these precious early weeks.

Amaia is already so loved by her whānau in New Zealand and we are bringing her home for a visit in February. There is so much to celebrate at Christmas and New Year, it feels surreal.

Dove Chen

Champion barista Dove Chen opened his own coffee roastery in Hamilton in 2023.

I've always loved coffee. From the time I was about seven years old I started drinking instant coffee with condensed milk and eating coffee-flavoured lollies and ice cream.

It has been the basis of my life's work. In October I opened my coffee roastery, Grey Roasting Co, in The Sheds at the new Made Market in Hamilton East. It is a passion project, a dream come true.

I came to Hamilton in 2002, from Shenzhen in southern China. I was 17. I went to Melville High School, then to Waikato University where I did a degree in economics. I planned to go home but I fell in love with the smaller community of Hamilton and stayed.

A lot of my close friends were baristas, and I wanted to learn about this. I got into a franchise café at Farmers in Hamilton. They offered training and it was a great start. Then I took a step up to buy Grey St Kitchen in Hamilton East in 2013.

I trained for barista competitions and won the New Zealand barista championship in 2017 and 2019. I had a lot of support in my training; it took a village to help me get there.

After a while I started roasting my own beans under my Grey Roasting Co label. It's all about curiosity for me, roasting better utilises my sensory skills and feeds my thirst for challenge. It provides more control over quality and consistency.

It was a side-hustle, Rocket Coffee Roasters in Hamilton did our roasting for us, and I began to supply other places as well. Then I sold the café to concentrate on roasting and fund this next move. It has taken three years to get here. 

I get my beans through a green bean importer in New Zealand. We're still very small, roasting 400-500kg a week.  It's the first time I've been solely in charge of the roasting, doing a daily blend and five or six single origins. We were pretty lucky that our first roast was good. I love learning and experimenting, and I will always love drinking coffee.                                                                                                                                                       

Anna Coddington

Auckland singer-songwriter Anna Coddington (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue) turned 2023 from bad to good with amazing support, a children's book project and a new album.

On 27 January, we lost our house in the Auckland flooding. Everything in the downstairs living rooms was destroyed, including my guitar, which I am still sad about. It is a Larrivee, I have had it for 20 years. It got completely submerged and the ceiling fell on it.

We were overwhelmed by the enormity of what happened. But we have had the most amazing support; it was like people's kindness and generosity rushed beneath us like a human safety net and it didn't allow us to fall into despair, to feel down and out.

After such a bad start to the year, some good things happened. A friend of my sister offered us an apartment in the city, and we were so, so grateful. It was just up the road from Auckland University of Technology where I am studying for a law degree. I had been about to defer my studies after the flood because it all seemed too hard. But I took the apartment's proximity to AUT as a sign to continue and I have just finished my second year.

The really uplifting project was my Christmas books for kids - Blue, Blue Christmas and He Kirihimete Kahurangi, published last month by Penguin. They're about showing Santa how much fun it is to have Christmas in sunny Aotearoa and I began working on this during the Covid lockdowns. Penguin liked it, and brought in Story Hemi-Morehouse as the illustrator. She is brilliant.

This evolved as a bilingual project, with a companion book in te reo Māori, which I am always up for. Te reo is a lifelong learning path for me. Our sons, Arlo and Eddie Ray, have been in Māori medium education since they started their schooling.

Everyone in the family is happy and well, my partner Dick Johnson got a new job, we are now in a new home in Grey Lynn and I have just recorded a new album with my band, Anna and The Appreciations. It is a really fun, upbeat album, it's bilingual, about half of it in te reo Māori. It hasn't got a name yet, and it will be released next year.

This year has been a good experience in gaining perspective.

- As told to Denise Irvine