Snap.
That's how Steven remembers the moment his tongue ended up on the front page of the next morning's New Zealand Herald.
"It was a set-up, they kept saying 'poke your tongue out', but I didn't want to. I put it out for a second and some smarty pants must've had a very quick camera."
He wasn't too bothered, but his wife Hendrica had travelled to Auckland with him and was horrified when she saw the newspaper outside their hotel room door the next day, Steven said.
"She just said 'oh my God', put on her dressing gown and starting hoovering up all the Heralds down the hotel hall. She got a few, but then I was like, 'come off it, don't do that. This is a seven or eight-storey building, you'll be here all day'."
Steven, now 80 and living on Auckland's North Shore, has fond memories of his four-decade flying career.
Kaikoura-born Steven started that career in 1952 when he won a coveted spot on the Royal Air Force's Kiwi training programme. The following year he sailed to the United Kingdom, where he served on various postings as well as in Malta and on bombing missions in the British colony of Aden (now part of Yemen).
He later worked for Aden Airways, where pilots called themselves "boy scouts" because of the all-khaki uniform, and flying took place only before 1pm because of the heat, Steven said.
Insurgency against British rule eventually drove him out of the colony.
"I was there about 18 months but bombs starting turning up in thermoses and school bags. It was time to get out."
A friend asked him to work for Cathay Pacific in 1965 and he remained with the airline for 27 happy years.
That service was acknowledged on Friday, when a ceremony marking the airline's 30 years' service to New Zealand included Steven greeting the captain of an incoming Cathay Pacific flight at Auckland International Airport.
He was proud to do so, Steven said.
"It was a fantastic airline to work with. We were like a big family."
