Getting better...

It has definitely been a quiet week this week. I only ended up taking that afternoon off work - I was feeling well enough on Tuesday to go in (and I knew that the backlog of tasks would just keep on piling up - it is the main issue with being off - you still have to do the work when you get back in to the office!), and just took it easy, trying not to stay too late on any one day.

I didn't go to hockey on Thursday (and I think I haven't endeared myself to the coach as I had the Phoenix Sci-fi Board Gaming evening on Saturday, clashing with this week's match, and I chose Board over hockey...), and have had early nights all week - I think I'm now pretty much back to normal (though it did take my body a couple of days to be persuaded that it wasn't going to get an afternoon nap every day of the week!)

I had a couple more steep learning curves at work (assisting with the evaluation of two quotes), but I think I'm getting better at tackling them, even if I do seem to spend far too much time out of my comfort zone!

I'm getting to know my colleagues a lot better now - I know which ones are likely to respond to emails, which ones will actually listen to phone messages, and which ones will not do anything unless you are face to face with them. I'm also getting a good number of friends across the teams that are based on my floor, not only within my team, but also from different departments. One is another ex-pat - I'm not sure how long he has been in NZ, but he hasn't lost his British accent at all, nor his love of cricket. He was therefore very interested to learn that I am related to Frank Foster (he is my great-great-uncle) - I'm not sure how much of his enthusiasm is his very dry humour, but he has printed off a number of the Crick-Info statistics, and also pointed out that next year will be 100 years since the England/Australia match where Foster and Barnes decimated the Australian batters.

Board last night was good - we learnt a couple more new games, one of which was incredibly easy to pick up, and the other will need quite a few more plays through before I understand all of the tactics involved!

I've also had the first harvest of my broccoli - I've picked two heads, and we had the first yesterday with our lunch. I'm hoping that some of the smaller heads on one of the plants will grow now that I've taken the main one off, but if not, we are going to be having a fine meal of broccoli stem at some point soon! The capsicums are still not big enough to be picked, but were, I discovered, weighty enough to topple the plant into the broccoli - I've now staked it upright, but I don't know if the roots have been damaged at all. We shall see!

Today has been very relaxed - I made cheese biscuits for lunch, and they had pretty much all been eaten before they cooled. They are definitely far too morish!

It's going to be a busy week ahead - there are a number of major projects at work which all come to a conclusion next week, but I'm hoping to be able to get away to meet up with a university friend who has been out here for a couple of months with his job, and is now taking a well deserved holiday.