To withdraw myself from myself

Busy times

2012-01-15T17:04:00.015+13:00

Happy New Year!

It has been a busy month and a bit, and I have rather neglected the blog... After moving in, we had a week to clean out the old flat (no issues with the final inspection - huzzah) and then get the house ready for the arrival of my parents for Christmas. The week also included the last orchestra committee meeting of the year, an evening tea with the ex-landlady, the last Sci-Fi meeting of the year and the wedding of our ex-next door neighbour's son.

We had a fantastic time with my parents - we were incredibly lucky to have 10 days of glorious sunshine before we got caught by the tail end of a cyclone. This meant that we were able to spend Christmas Day on the beach as well as do all the tourist sights of Wellington with the sun shining and the sky blue. We started our Tiki Tour on Boxing Day; travelling first to Napier, where we had supper overlooking the harbour,

got to see some fantastic Art Deco

and took a wine tour (no photos of that - the wine was too good!).

We spotted black swans and ducklings at Lake Taupo

We stopped by the Huka falls

and then saw some amazing geothermal pools at Wai-o-tapu, near Rotorua.

(we have a room which is painted the same colour as that last pool...)

We had a slightly damp time in Auckland, as the cyclone was settling in for the long haul, but enjoyed catching up with family, and also introducing my parents to the Parnell Chocolate shop.

New Year's Eve was interesting - we spent it in Te Kuiti, which is just outside Waitomo. It was not the most exciting of towns, particularly if you are looking for somewhere which will serve food (that isn't just a takeaway)... So, we spent the last hours of 2011 at the motel room, eating a microwave supper (the motel rooms only had microwaves, rather than fully functioning kitchens) and playing silly card
games. An absolutely perfect way to spend the evening!

Unfortunately, because of the amount of rain that had fallen, the Black Water Rafting that I had booked was cancelled; instead, we went on a walking tour of Ruakuri Cave, with a very entertaining guide, who on his own admittance had partied very well the previous evening. He certainly needed his flask of coffee!

Our next stop was Mount Taranaki; we were incredibly lucky with the weather, because we arrived there on the first day that it hadn't rained. Whilst the mountain was still shrouded in cloud, we were able to go on a couple of walks, one which was certainly damper than the lady at the DOC site had led us to expect (full blown fording through streams which were now gushing rivers...). But it was well worth it when we climbed the side of a waterfall at Wilkies Pools and saw the cloud clearing above us:

We then headed back to Wellington, a round trip of 1779 km!

Our final excursion was to Kapiti Island - I'd been looking forward to this trip for months, and wasn't disappointed. We got to see loads of birds, and hear even more:
North Island robins followed us all the way round

Saddlebacks were incredibly noisy in the trees as well as popping over to see what we were doing

The Weka were everywhere, particularly when they thought there might be a chance of getting something to eat!

And, best of all, whilst waiting for the boat to take us back, we got to see the Takahe, with their chick; there are less than 250 of these birds remaining, so to know that the conservation work on reserves such as Kapiti is working is fantastic.

Then it was back to earth with a bump as we took my parents back to the airport and got ready for the first day back at work after three weeks off. Since then, we've mainly been focussed on the house; doing DIY (I got to climb all over the roof painting the rusted areas with a solution designed to turn the rust back into iron; I was then supposed to paint it with a primer to stop it rusting again, however, it has either been raining or blowing a gale ever since), fixing the dud battery in the house alarm (we thought it might have been a bit of a bad introduction to the neighbours to have the alarm go off during a power cut, particularly if it was on one of the evenings that we were out) and turning the garden back from a jungle into something that looks a little bit more respectable.

I know I owe photos of the new house - will get them up at some point - promise!

Yay!

2011-12-08T20:37:00.005+13:00

As of about 2:00 this afternoon, we joined the ranks of those who are in debt by really rather a huge amount to the bank - our house purchase went through with only one last minute hitch; the bank didn't fax the solicitor to say that the mortgage had been paid into their account, which meant that they couldn't confirm the transaction with the seller's solicitor. All sorted out before I could get *too* twitchy about it, though!

All I can think of at the moment is this xkcd comic (click to make it readable!):

When one door closes...

2011-11-23T21:26:00.002+13:00

Buying a house in New Zealand is interesting to say the least, compared to the UK.

For a start, there is the phenomenon known as the Open Home (I am aware that they are prevalent in the States, too, but not at all in the UK). This is where sellers throw open the doors of their houses for half an hour to an hour, usually on a Sunday afternoon, and allow people to look round. Usually the sellers are not on the scene, but your local friendly estate agent is there to greet you - you look round on your own, rather than having the 'here is the kitchen, here is the bathroom' experience. These open homes are advertised in various property press magazines, and on a good day, you can daisy chain five or six of these together. Whilst the agents also hand out little pamphlets on the houses, a notebook is essential to keep track of the salient points of each house and to stop them all blurring into one big property by the end of the day. (I have filled up over half a notebook, one page to a property, with the houses we've looked round since early September!)

Estate agents do also show you round properties, but most of them seem to focus on the open homes as their way of getting many people through the door for less effort on their part.

Then there is the process to actually buy the house. In NZ, your offer is made as part of the contract, which means that, once you have negotiated the price and any conditions (usually checking council documents, building inspection and arranging finance, though you do also usually go into the offer with a pre-approval on your finance, so this is a case of sorting out the paperwork and getting a valuation on the property if required), it is a binding contract. You then have a set period to fulfil those conditions, usually five to ten days. If you confirm to your solicitor that you are satisfied in those conditions by the end of that time period, then the contract goes unconditional, and you pay your deposit (which you then lose if you end up pulling out of the contract for any reason). Then, on the agreed settlement date, you pay the balance (or get the bank to transfer the money to the solicitor - for some reason they won't even let it touch my bank account...) and take vacant possession (unless you are buying the house for renting, in which case you may opt to keep the tenants). Then you get to move in!

We've managed to go through a couple of interesting variations to this process whilst house hunting.

The first house that we looked at was owned by a lady who had put her house on the market because she'd seen another further up the coast that she wanted to buy. Unfortunately, she hadn't put an offer in on it, and by the time we put our offer in (three days after it had gone on the market), the house she had fallen in love with had sold. Rightly or wrongly, the estate agents persuaded her to go ahead with the sale anyway, and she signed the contract, inserting a clause that stated that she had to put a conditional offer in on another property in ten business days before we could go unconditional. However, over the next two weeks, she had a change of heart (possibly pushed by her teenage son, who wasn't as keen on moving as his mum was...), and ended up not putting in an offer. We had a suspicion that something was going wrong when, five days before the deadline, she was still quibbling over the property that she was interested in, concerned that it was in an earthquake zone and at risk of liquefaction. Given that her current place was just two streets away from the main Upper Hutt fault line, we couldn't really see what the fuss was about. But, she failed to meet her condition, which meant that our contract was void, and she took her property off the market. All very disappointing, particularly as I'd already relandscaped the garden in my mind...

That was on the Wednesday. Our estate agent doesn't work on a Thursday, but on the Friday, he took us round three properties, two of which we liked, one of those very much (great location, recently refurbished inside, small but usable garden, large enough for our book collection *and* guests - it ticked all the right boxes). On the Saturday, the agent called us to say that someone else was putting in an offer on the house that we really liked, and did we also want to put in an offer? At that point, we said that we would wait until we'd been round the open homes on the Sunday as we didn't want to tie ourselves down and miss out on other properties (there was at least one other which I was very interested in from the internet details). After the open homes, the one from Friday was still our favourite, so we asked the agent whether it was still possible for us to put in an offer. He said yes, and came round that evening with the paperwork.

Because we were now in a multiple bid situation, we now hit something slightly new again compared to the UK process for buying a house. We had to put forward our best and final offer, which would be presented to the seller in a sealed envelope. The seller would then open the two offers, and choose the best one to proceed to contract with - no playing each buyer off against the other to get the highest price (and therefore no gazumping, either).

On Monday evening, as I got in from work, I had a call from the agent to say that our bid was the preferred, and, because we hadn't had anything tricky in the conditions we wanted to put forward, they were proceeding straight to signing the contract, which would be lodged with the solicitors in the morning.

So - slight panic mode, as we had five days down for our conditions. I called up the builder who we had already contacted as part of the work we had done on the previous property. He had space available on the Tuesday, as someone else had cancelled, and so I took a half day off work to be able to go up to the property to receive the verbal report (the written one followed over email in the evening). There were a couple of issues, but nothing major, and we were able to use those to get a slight discount on the property price.

On the Wednesday, the valuer went round to appraise the house - his report came through on the Friday, and by some strange coincidence, it was exactly the same amount as we had offered for it... We were then left hanging over the weekend to find out whether the bank was going to approve the mortgage - we already had the pre approval, but needed them to give us the go ahead on this particular property. We had to have everything sorted out by the Monday evening to meet our five day deadline...

The bank kept us hanging on until almost the last minute - with 50 minutes to go on the Monday, they approved the finance, but we still then had to get the documents over to the solicitors and then wait for them to tell us that we could pay the deposit to the estate agents. We were able to go unconditional just after 5.00 on the Monday - a week and a day after sitting down with the estate agent to put in our offer.

We now have two weeks to get ourselves ready and to formalise the mortgage paperwork before we complete the contract on the 8th December - from viewing the house to moving in will have been four weeks. Quite a bit to do, particularly given that we have two Sci-Fi social events this Saturday, plus an orchestra concert next Saturday. But I'm starting to work through the tick list - ordered the removal van and handed in our notice on our rented house today... Calm, orderly, and I'll try not to panic at all!

Two years in...

2011-11-06T09:33:00.005+13:00

I'll try to get a bit better at blogging - a month is really too long between posts...

Last night marked two years since taking off from the UK, tomorrow morning marks two years since we landed in New Zealand. Tomorrow, I take my lunch hour to go to the Wellington branch of Immigration New Zealand to apply for our full blown Permanent Residency visas which will allow us to enter and leave New Zealand whenever we like. (confusingly, they've changed the process since we landed; under the terms that we got our visas, we have Permanent Residency, but needed to apply for our Indefinite Returning Residents visas; now, under the new rules, we are only Residents, and need to apply for our Permanent Residency visas...)

I still have days when I have to pinch myself to convince myself that we are really here. It just seems so surreal that we are walking around half a planet away from where we were born and raised. And I still have days when I walk round with a great big grin on my face, usually those when the sun is shining and the the wind is blowing enough to stream out the various New Zealand flags around the capital city.

The last two years have gone by so quickly, and I really feel that we have settled in completely. We have a fantastic group of friends, particularly within the sci-fi community, and I believe that our very active social life is one of the reasons that Wellington truly feels like home, and this has been mirrored in conversations with other migrants; those who have settled and don't spend half their time looking back 'home' are those who get out and about, meeting people and making friends.

I have been incredibly lucky to land a job that I enjoy (well, about 80% of the time, which is far more than most!), and the likelihood that this will turn into an ongoing career (helped a lot by a very supportive manager and overall head of department, both of whom are as ambitious for me as I am for myself!). Given the number of jobs that I applied for, and the near miss with the job that collapsed just after we arrived, I believe that I have really fallen on my feet.

We are currently house hunting, so will shortly be setting down further roots when we in-debt ourselves to a bank. The area that we are looking in is further away from Wellington, but the longer commute is offset by better property prices and some lovely houses.

Of course, I miss the UK, but for me, it is always going to be friends and family that I miss, not anything material. The internet has been a brilliant way of making sure that the friendships that we have can continue, despite the distances between us. Skype is a great modern invention - free video calls anywhere in the world? Even the concept was only a Sci-Fi idea twenty years ago (a quick look on Wikipedia states that the first webcam was developed in 1991...), yet the weekly call home to both sets of families is now an integral part of our life - I would hate to think what it would cost if we actually had to pay over and above our monthly internet charges!

The last month has been busy, not only with the usual social activities (plus a few dinner and play dates with people from the board-gaming group), but with house hunting. New Zealand has a great tradition of Open Homes, where people who are selling houses have public viewings for a short, advertised, period of the day (usually about an hour). This means that, with a bit of careful planning, you can get round five or six houses in an area in a long and slightly exhausting afternoon. You do get to know all the estate agents, too - there's quite a few that we are on first name terms with now! The process of buying houses is slightly different to the UK, but that is a whole new post, and will wait until we have reached the end of the journey (I don't want to jeopardise anything - superstitious much?).

Superstar!

2011-10-09T15:21:00.006+13:00

Regular readers of my blog will know that I really do love my wildlife. And here in NZ, that primarily means birds.

One of the rarest birds here in NZ is the Kakapo. There are just over 130 of them left in the world, and are all on two colony-islands off the coast of New Zealand. They are flightless, nocturnal parrots, and are incredibly engaging, intelligent and full of personality.

Viewers of the BBC Natural History Show 'Last Chance to See' (Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine following in the footsteps of the radio show of the same name which Carwardine and Douglas Adams did 20 years previously) will remember the episode of their encounter with Sirocco, a male Kakapo, who, after being nursed through an illness as a young chick, imprinted on humans, and now is not interested in other kakapo at all.

For those who haven't seen it, this is the relevant clip (the title says it all!):

Because Sirocco really doesn't seem to find other kakapo attractive (he even has his booming bowl by the pathway between the conservation volunteers' sleeping quarters and the outside loo!), he is now the spokesbird for the conservation programme, and he is currently "on tour."

He's spending a month at Zealandia, and John and I went to see him last week. Sadly, because he is nocturnal, they had to have dim lighting; good enough for us to see him, but we weren't allowed to use flash on the camera, which meant that I didn't get that many photos which weren't either blurred or black.

However, if Long John Silver had had a kakapo as his parrot, I suspect that he might not have been taken as seriously:

He is just as engaging in 'real life', constantly hunting for the next macademia nut. His handler was in the enclosure to talk about him and to introduce him to his visitors; she is an excellent show-woman, and was able to give a fascinating talk about Sirocco and the kakapo in general. His enclosure has a live stream from the web cam thanks to Three News. It's only available from 8.30 pm NZ time, probably running till about 10.30-11pm (I know that my colleague had to change the time that he was going to visit because poor Sirocco isn't getting any sleep - Zealandia is just too noisy with all the birdsong during the day!)

It was a fantastic evening - hopefully not a 'Last Chance to See' (Kakapo live for 80 years naturally), and well worth the visit.

Geek and Proud!

2011-09-15T18:30:00.000+13:00

This is my blog post for the Speak out with your Geek Out week, a movement set up, initially in reaction to the latest (well, it was the latest, but that was a couple of weeks ago, so I'm sure there's been another one since) geek bashing post on the internet. I'd link to it, but I've since discovered that the lady who wrote it gets paid per person who clicks onto the page, and suffice it to say, I don't want her to get any more money!

(I had intended to do multiple posts this week, but as this is the first night I've had in so far, and I'm not going to have another evening 'off' until Sunday, I think it's just going to be the one!)

The week is designed for all of us geeks, of whatever flavour, to consciously post about our hobbies and to show the world that we exist. Whilst there are enough of us who are loud and proud about being a geek, there are also plenty of people, children, teenagers and adults, who think that they are the only ones. There are also plenty of people, children, teenagers and adults, who still think that being geeky, particularly if it is to do with Sci-Fi / Fantasy, is a legitimate target for mocking. I had an example of that this very week, where a friend was very disparaging of the fact that I was going to be staying in on Thursday to watch the NZ broadcast of the first Doctor Who in this second-half series. If I'd said that I was staying in to watch whichever Rugby World Cup game was on at the same time (quick Google later - Russia vs USA), would I have had the same comments? Fortunately, I have a good enough relationship with my friend (and a thick enough skin) that I could take his attitude in the tongue in cheek manner in which it was obviously intended, but I was a little bit disappointed that the comments had come up in the first place.

I was fortunate in that my parents had plenty of sci-fi and fantasy round the house when I was young; I look back on the bedtime stories that I was read, and the majority of the ones which stood out seem to have been sci-fi or fantasy of one sort or another. That didn't stop me from being teased about it at school, but it meant that I always knew that I wasn't a complete outcast - if my parents liked it, it had to be ok!

From that young age, with the discovery of (amongst many others) John Wyndham, J.R.R. Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Robin Jarvis, Roald Dahl, I moved on to Terry Pratchett, Ursula Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clark and so many more. I read the school library out of sci-fi and fantasy books - it was a very proud moment when the head librarian asked me for recommendations for more books to get in. As a family, we watched series such as Red Dwarf, Robot Wars, Neverwhere, Crime Traveller and Scrap Heap Challenge. Now, as an adult, my primary reading material is either sci-fi or fantasy (though at the moment, my bedside book is called Cooking for Geeks, all about the science of cookery, and I'm reading a business book on the way to and from work), I very rarely watch anything that doesn't have some form of sci-fi or fantasy content, I go board gaming once a month (and occasionally have friends round for 'in between' gaming sessions), I belong to two science fiction clubs, as well as an orchestra (slightly classical-music geek, too) and I'm starting to turn into a bit of a craft geek, just because I don't have enough things going on (I am teaching myself to crochet, and really rather loving it). So - I may be a 'scatter gun' geek instead of a one-hobby, in depth geek, but I'm still proud of my obsessions.

So - why it is important that those of us who are loud and proud about our geekly ways are able to shout about it? We need to show those who are being teased, whether it is gentle mocking or outright bullying, that there is nothing to be ashamed of, and that they are not alone. The internet is a great socialiser for this - there is a world of knowledge and connections at people's fingertips that just wasn't there when I was a teenager, but there are still people who feel alone, or ashamed of not being 'normal' in what they enjoy.

However, I have news for them. Anybody can be a geek, about pretty much any subject - it isn't just those of us who have the entire Terry Pratchett collection, or who can quote whole chapters from the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or lines from the Goon Show). How is the football fan, who plasters his bedroom wall with posters of teams through the ages, goes to every game he can, sleeps under a team duvet and has replica home and away strips hanging in his wardrobe any different to a Star Trek fan, who has posters of the stars hanging over her bed, watches every episode when it comes on TV, sleeps under an Enterprise duvet and has a replica uniform hanging in her wardrobe? It just takes knowledge and enthusiasm to be a geek, whether you recognise that's what you are or not.

I sign off with one of my favourite quotations from The Divine Comedy (MasterMind) (another latent obsession of mine): "So tell me what the hell is normal, and who the hell is sane? And why the hell care anyway? The dreams that we have had are gonna prove that we're all mad, and that's OK."

What a match!

2011-09-11T16:44:00.002+13:00

Wow! We're just back in from the Ladies' Finals - and I can truly say that it is the closest game of hockey I have ever played. We were 2-1 down at half time, with excellent play from both teams. We came out of half time with a bang - two goals in quick succession (one from a penalty stroke) got us 3-2 up. Then, with 10 minutes to go, they scored from a penalty corner. The ball was flying up and down the pitch as the minutes ticked away; every time it got up the opposition's end, I was longing for a last minute goal, then as soon as it started coming back our way, I was determined not to let one through. Then full time whistle blew.

For the Finals, it couldn't just end on a draw, so each team had to take two players off the pitch, and we had another six minutes of play, with the 'Golden Goal' rules (i.e. first team to score, wins). We kept on pushing, with a couple of really close misses, but at the end of the six minutes, it was still a draw. So, another two players each off the pitch, and another six minutes of play. Still no goal.

Then, the moment I'd been dreading; penalty strokes. Each team picks five players to go alternately against the goalie. No pressure at all, then! The walk into the goal each time was the longest of my life - I could hear the supporters cheering from the sidelines, but could only concentrate on the little white ball sat on the penalty spot. And I let the first one in... (I moved in the right direction, which was small consolation) We'd missed our first shot, so now we were 1-0 down. Our second shot went in, their second shot went wide. Our third shot went straight to the keeper's pads, their third shot was lifted into the left corner - somehow - I'm still not sure how - I got my hand to it and knocked it clear. Our fourth shot went in, their fourth shot pinged off of the post. Our fifth shot went wide. So - 2-1 up on the penalties - now down to the last stroke... And it went wide!

So - Upper Hutt Ladies are champions of our grade, and, more than that, we go up the grade into the Premier League next season. A fantastic end to a wonderful season of hockey. I think our supporters would have appreciated it not being quite so wearing on the nails!

5-1

2011-09-05T21:23:00.002+13:00

We're through to the finals!

Not doing too badly for a team that came up the grade at the start of the season...

It was a really good match, not just because of the fantastic score line, and the fact that I really didn't have to do a huge amount - but because both sides played nicely. There were no temper tantrums on the pitch, even when people got knocked or tripped in the heat of the game (one spectator did point out that the rugby field was behind us...), there was no answering back to the refs (who were fair and even handed throughout), and after the match, a number of the opposing members wished us good luck for the finals. Roll on next week!

4 Years ago...

2011-09-01T22:42:00.002+13:00

I promised - From this day forward, no matter what life holds for us, I pledge to give you my support, friendship, faithful companionship and undying love.

In four years, we have seen many changes from life, but that promise is still as sincere and as true as the day I spoke it. Here's to many more years to come, and I'm looking forward to the next life challenge.

In other news - we finished the round robin at the top of our grade in hockey, so it's semi finals this week - please keep your fingers crossed for us Sunday morning...

We had our orchestra workshop last weekend - it went brilliantly. We had a fantastic teacher for the oboe sectionals, and I have learnt so much. I was even enjoying the Firebird by the end of it (rather relieving to understand that the professionals have ways of 'cheating' their way through the music, too). It is such great fun to be able to spend a whole weekend playing music and feeling a whole orchestra improve together - the difference in our playing between the Friday evening when we did our initial tutti run through and our final rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon was immeasurable!

Spoke too soon...

2011-08-16T18:47:00.003+13:00

Me and my big mouth...

As we got into last weekend, I started spotting weather warnings on the news. It was hailing and snowing on Sunday night, and on Monday morning, we woke up to a light icing powder dust of snow on the hills:

This in and of itself is unusual. Whilst we do get snow in NZ (we have a thriving ski-industry), the last time it snowed in Wellington to any major level was in the seventies, and before then in 1936. No wonder, then, that we were a little ill-equipped to deal with the snow which fell steadily through Monday - it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get home thanks to a broken down train and then frozen points (normally it's about thirty minutes door to door depending on when I arrive at the station). There was still snow on the hills when I left for work this morning, and I got a dumping of hail on me as well as I left the house.

One of my colleagues lives up the hill on the other side of the valley from us; she left early as the weather looked like closing in and they had had the snow settle overnight, making conditions very slippery going up her road. She called me when she got in to say that it was snowing very heavily in Lower Hutt and I might want to make my way home sooner rather than later. I didn't think a huge amount of it - we're pretty much at sea level, and last year we only had a couple of frosts over the whole winter, so I thought that everything would have melted by the time I got in.

Fortunately, I did take her advice (more warnings from National Office about the weather also helped to convince me) - when I got home, I was confronted with a white blanket of snow:

The Ambulance Station over the road

Our Pohutakawa tree

The garden

The very surreal sight of a fruiting Lemon tree (with a feijoa, olive and fig behind it) covered in snow. All the trees are now in the greenhouse - they may be hardy, but probably not to this extent!

The media is calling this a once in a lifetime blast - snow has got as far as Auckland ('The Winterless North') - I'm just very glad of a good gas fire!

Expectations...

2011-08-08T10:41:00.002+13:00

Well - the day of my last post was the coldest day in Wellington on record, so it was definitely a good day to stay in and read - I got 120 pages through the book - I may even pick it up again this week (it hasn't grabbed me so far...)

But the weather has flipped quite considerably - the daffodils are out, as are the snowdrops, the trees are starting to get their Spring green. It isn't quite Spring yet - the weather can't make up its mind as to whether it is going to be warm or cold (for my hockey match yesterday, I baked under all the goalie gear - we then went over the hills to the Wairarapa (the local wine growing region) and went through both a hail and a snow storm. However, the signs are there; as well as the flowers, the days are getting noticeably longer, and the wind isn't quite as chill as it has been. It does seem very odd to be coming out the other side of Winter without having really had a Winter at all!

Wintry weather

2011-07-25T20:56:00.002+13:00

It's cold outside (well, cold for here - I am sure that my Canadian and UK friends would beg to differ - why, it's not dipping that much below 0, and it was a whole +5C when I went out to play hockey yesterday), we have had snow across much of the country, and, yes, as per the UK, a good chunk of the workforce (mainly on South Island) got to stay at home due to the roads being shut. It's the winter holidays, which means no orchestra tonight, so it is the perfect time to curl up by the gas fire and enjoy one of the perks of being a member of SFFANZ - my review copy of the latest George R.R. Martin arrived at the beginning of the week. At over 950 pages, and hardback, it's not one which I can carry on the train (without doing my back an injury), but I'm sure that the sofa cushions will prop it up perfectly.

It's a small world, after all...

2011-07-14T22:36:00.003+13:00

I'm sort of getting used to the fact that Wellington is like a village. That there is a high likelihood that two people from completely random sides of my life will know each other, usually through another, totally random, facet of theirs. I can take the knowledge that now, over 18 months into our lives here, I am going to meet someone that I know every time I walk down the main street. That I will see a colleague or friend when I go shopping on a Saturday. And I like it. It makes life a lot more friendly and a lot less anonymous.

What I'm not going to get used to is meeting someone at work, and finding out that they used to work round the corner from me in Bristol. Or than someone else used to live not five minutes' drive from my in-laws on the south coast. That's going to get me every time...

And the hockey team is currently at the top of the grade - we're going great guns as we head into the second half of the season!

Catch up...

2011-06-26T21:51:00.002+13:00

It has been incredibly busy once again; this weekend we had four different 'engagements' happening at the same time; a hockey/cinema fundraiser, a Ceilidh being run by a couple of members of the orchestra, a work social and the monthly Phoenix committee meeting and social. We opted for the Phoenix social - John is on the committee now (and was standing in for the Secretary whilst he was away), so he couldn't really miss it, and it also gave us the opportunity to pop in to see another friend (and give him a lift to the social).

We've had a mixed few weeks with hockey - a couple of draws were a bit frustrating (especially last week's, where the opposing team scored the drawing goal with less than a minute remaining!). We are still bouncing around the top of the league (there are only three points separating top 6 out of 8 teams!), but we're going to have to up our game if we want to ensure we get through to the semis and finals at the end of the season.

We've had our orchestra concert; a gorgeous rendition of Alfred Hill's Viola Concerto (part 1) (part 2 and 3), which has very rapidly become one of my favourite pieces of music. We also played Bizet's L'Arlisienne Suite; most people know the first movement, but the fourth (Carillon) has a fantastic wind section which I got to play the second oboe part for - one of the few pieces where the second oboe part isn't in octaves or thirds to the first! All great fun; and now we have a couple of weeks off before we get into practising for the weekend workshop - the Firebird Suite and L'Apres Midi d'un Faun, which I'm very much looking forward to!

We also had our week away up in Auckland (a few photos in the previous post); a brilliant Sci-Fi convention weekend, where we got to catch up with old friends and make new ones. It is always nice to get to spend a few days where insanity is the norm and conversations are wide ranging from the serious to the silly. We then stayed in the Parnell area to unwind from a very hectic few months at work, and to do some touristy bits and pieces.

We had a superb tourist boat trip around the harbour; it included hop on and hop off on a couple of islands, so we have walked up a (probably extinct) volcano. Rangitoto Island didn't exist 600 years ago, and the lava fields are still very 'raw' (I got a nicely grazed knee from slipping on the clinker on the way back down!), with the vegetation in some areas in very early stages of growth (you can still see the lichen that will rot into hummus, which in turn provides the basis for small seeds to bed on). It does mean that in places it looks very bleak, but in others, particularly right at the summit and down on the shore line, there is an abundance of vegetation. Not so many birds, but, according to one of the signs, this is more due to the fact that there is currently not enough fresh water to sustain significant numbers.

We also stopped off at Motuihe Island, which is in the process of becoming a nature reserve (at the moment, the walking tracks are more hope than anything else - we got our feet very wet pushing through long grass until we got down to the beach and decided to take a short cut back across the sand and rocks!). It was very peaceful, though - there were only four of us on the island for a couple of hours until the boat came back to pick us up! On the way back to Auckland Harbour, we were treated to a pod of dolphins playing around the boat, which was absolutely stunning. It's the first time I've seen them close up, and they were definitely playing, including diving under the boat several times, and doing back flips out of the water. One of my 'must do' items ticked off very unexpectedly!

For my birthday, we went to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, the first aquarium in the world to do a perspex 'tunnel' through the aquarium so that the visitors can see the fish going overhead. They had a stunning collection of sharks (one of their 'extras' is to go cage or free diving (depending on how brave you feel!) with them - another of my 'must dos' but slightly out of our budget range for this holiday!), and even had some baby carpet sharks which had only recently hatched (the mini aquarium that they were in still had one shark in its egg - you could see the shadow of the baby!)

We did also find the most stunning chocolate cafe in Parnell; their cafe menu had about six pages of different chocolate drinks! We only managed three visits over the week - we may have to make further trips back next time we are in Auckland!

Some Auckland photographs

2011-06-26T20:54:00.003+13:00

Because I've been so bad at writing words recently, have some photos of our recent (a few weeks ago now!) trip to Auckland...

We travelled up north by train, which was an incredibly relaxing way to go. Mount Ruapehu dominated the scenery for about half an hour of the journey.

The Skytower from the Rose Garden park in Parnell.

Rangitoto Island, a volcanic (now believed extinct) island off of the coast of Auckland; it didn't exist until roughly 600 years ago!

A thrush at the top of Rangitoto Island, which had very little birdlife (according to the signs, because of the lack of fresh water), until we got to the summit, and then there were small birds everywhere! Most of them were paying very close attention to a couple of backpackers who were having an early lunch break...

The silvereyes were also more interested in breadcrumbs than they were with me and the camera.

On the way back to Auckland harbour, we were treated to a pod of dolphins who played around the boat for about ten minutes. I got a lot of photos of empty water!

Even though our hotel wasn't near fresh water that we could sea, there was a small kingfisher sitting outside the window on the first morning.

Speeding through the year

2011-05-31T19:54:00.003+13:00

Can someone explain to me how it got to be June tomorrow? Life continues apace, particularly since we didn't get raptured last week (disappointingly, my desk with its mountain of work was still there when I got back in on Monday morning...). Though apparently the countdown is now on until October, when we get to go through it all again!

Hockey is going well - though the game on Sunday was a teensy bit stressful, not the match itself, but getting there. Rather than it being at our local astroturf, we were playing at the national hockey stadium the other side of Wellington. Whilst we have played there before, this was the first time for me driving there. I knew roughly where I was going, and I'd looked it up on the map, but I am not one for keeping directions in my head. What I should have done was write out the instructions from Google, but I have a sat-nav, so, I thought, no need. Unfortunately the sat-nav decided that it was going to take an early holiday, and didn't even find a satellite until after I'd driven into Wellington and off the wrong junction of the motorway, onto a one way system, which wasn't labelled as such. I discovered this the hard way, turning round in a car park to try to get back onto the motorway, and seeing that I was turning into the path of oncoming traffic. Fortunately, this being Wellington on a Sunday morning, it was one car, still quite a way away from me, and I was able to pull up onto the pavement whilst I worked out what the heck I was going to do! The sat-nav glitched in and out of contact with the satellites, so I'd get an instruction, and then it would all disappear again. What I hadn't realised was that at some point it had decided that it wasn't going to take me to the stadium, but was instead going to head back towards the previous location we'd visited, most of the way back home! I realised this when I suddenly found myself back on the motorway, heading in the opposite direction, luckily just before I passed the last turn off for 8 km. However, already being 5 minutes late for the warm up, I might have been a tad stressed by this point! Reprogramming the sat-nav didn't take too long, and it gave me a couple of directions before dying completely, but those were sufficient to take me to a location I recognised, and from there I could muddle my way through, arriving with 10 minutes to spare. It takes me 8 minutes to put my goalie kit on...

So - last time I trust technology - I sent John out to the AA shop (he's on holiday this week) to pick up our free allocation of road maps that we get for being members! Hopefully my next journey will be slightly less stressful when we go back to good old fashioned drawings. On the plus side, we won 5-2...

Ooops...

2011-05-15T20:38:00.002+13:00

I know, I know - it's been a few weeks - sorry! Things have been a little bit crazy recently, both at home and at work. Very long days at work + active social life = not a huge amount of time at home, and my brain hasn't been hugely active in order to get a blog post written...

Since I last posted, we have had another couple of friends come to stay. This was a lovely weekend, as I'd not seen my uni flatmate since 2002, far too long a time. We went back to the seals and also took a trip round Zealandia. We were treated to a gorgeous display of bellbirds, and I may have even caught some of their song on video (I haven't had a chance to get it onto the computer to see how good the sound was!) - I wasn't able to actually catch the *birds* on video as I think I need to practice a little bit on catching moving objects; I did get a lot of shots of empty branches and out of focus leaves!

I've also been having fun with hockey - we ended up finishing the initial round robin top of our grade (without letting a single goal in), so we have gone up to the next one. Sadly, we didn't win our first game in the higher grade, but it was very close (and should have been a draw, but I'm not allowed to criticise the ref's decision ;-) ), which gives us the confidence to know that we are playing at the right level, rather than potentially coming up a grade only to be knocked back down again at the end of the season.

We're enjoying the freedom that the new car is giving us; we have been out at friends' houses for the last two Saturdays for playing board games (I've got a new game which I'm really enjoying, a re-release of a game which I'd played with my cousins which I was a child; it's called Survive; Escape from Atlantis, and is great fun - as you get to attack other people's characters with sea monsters, sharks and whales, you can make silly noises as much as you like!), and have also been able to help another friend with his house move.

We're gearing up for our next orchestra concert - fortunately, I'm not having to do too much practice as I've already played two of the four pieces before (Slavonic Dances and L'Arlisienne), and the remaining two don't have too difficult a piece for the oboe. Which is a good thing, as I'm not getting that much time to play outside of rehearsals.

Seals

2011-04-25T20:16:00.005+13:00

We had visitors this week - two of our UK friends have been in NZ for a couple of weeks travelling round and they arrived in Wellington on Sunday night, flying in in one of the autumn's first gales (it was apparently a bit of a heavy landing...). They were staying with another friend up in Upper Hutt, but I booked myself a day and a half off work (unfortunately I had meetings on the Monday morning) and met up with them for a bit of sightseeing. It was bitterly cold, and we almost got blown away up on the look out, so, once they had had a look around, we decided that an indoor venue would be a little bit nicer, and we headed down to Te Papa for a couple of hours (which I'm now getting to know quite well! There is still something new each time we go, though, so it doesn't ever get boring - this time, we visited an exhibition of the photographer Brian Brake). Then, a quick trip up the Cable Car to the Botanical Gardens (some plants still in bloom, even this late in the year), and it was time to head back to the Hutt for some supper. We visited one of our local Indians, Little India, and had a very pleasant evening.

The weather was better on the Tuesday (still windy, but there was no ice in it), and so we headed round to Owhira Bay, south of Wellington itself, where the map said there was a seal colony where the seals spend the winter months. We parked up, and began walking - there was a track which could be driven on, but only for four wheel drives and motor bikes (we saw a couple of each, but we were able to share the path easily).

The air was very clear from the Bay, and we could even see South Island and the snow on top of the mountains.

The wildlife was out in force, with cormorants sunning themselves between fishing dives.

The tide was going out, and had left behind this beatiful starfish. It was still damp underneath, so I got the bottoms of my jeans wet and put it back in the surf - I couldn't leave it for the seagulls!

Even though the wind had dropped slightly, the waves were still crashing on the rocks - this wasn't a place for going surfing!

We headed on round the bay, and came across a Seal Watching tour coming round the bend the other way. They told us that there were a number of seals very close by, and, indeed, when we rounded the bend, we nearly walked right over one pretending to be a piece of driftwood

and another lying in the middle of the pathway at the very aptly named "Devil's Gate." The signs up told us that we had to stay further back than 20 m, and not to get between the seals and the sea. Fortunately, this one was very much enjoying his doze and barely blinked as we walked between it and the side of the cliff (we left it its escape route to the sea, just in case!)

The sea was still whipping round the rocks when we crested the hill through the "Gate"

and when we looked down, we spotted a number of seals below.

This one was very much enjoying his snooze in the sun, so much so that he really didn't mind me getting in close for this shot.

Then, as we were watching, another seal came out of the surf onto the rocks in front of us.

We were also very lucky to spot this Little Kingfisher who was very interested in us as we passed.

The seals certainly weren't phased by us at all - one distinctly appeared to be posing!

As we turned to head back, a yacht appeared sailing round the bay.

I am sure it was far calmer sailing further out from the rocks!

It was a glorious walk in the late autumn sunshine, and a place that I definitely want to visit again.

Chilli Jam

2011-04-17T19:50:00.006+13:00

With about ten pots of chilli plants (most of which have at least two plants growing in them, many have three), plus my five pots of tomatoes (and the two little ones which have grown from 'windfall' tomatoes, I have had quite a glut of fruit sitting in the fridge. Whilst John may beg to differ, there are only so many chillies that you can put into a dish without it becoming inedible. And so, I took a look on the internet for a recipe which would use up the chillies and tomatoes and be something which we both could eat (John not liking the taste of tomatoes, and me not liking my chillies to be overly hot).

I found this recipe over at BBC Good Food, but it called for ingredients which I didn't have (red wine vinegar for a start - who leaves their red wine open long enough to go sour? ;-) ). So, I decided to have a play (using the Good Food recipe as a basis) and got together a 'take some' recipe for Sweet Chilli Jam which didn't turn out too badly, even if I do say so myself.

Ingredients:
Tomatoes (I used cherry, as that was what I had growing)
Chillies (There are at least three different types growing in the garden - some of which I think are more of a sweet chilli (i.e. less hot) than the others) - approx three - four times the amount of tomatoes
Capsicum / Salad pepper - I used one large and one small - orange and red look nicer than green, but I don't think make much difference to the overall taste.
Ginger - I used a couple of teaspoons of pre-grated stuff, but fresh would have been even better
a few cloves of Garlic
Red Wine
Sugar - Approx 100g for every 150-200 ml of Wine
a squirt of tomato ketchup

Roughly chop up the solid ingredients (leave the seeds in for the tomatoes and chillies) then blitz them in a food processor - they don't have to be puree, but should be reasonably runny.

Add into a thick bottomed saucepan with the liquid ingredients - the amount of wine should be enough that the solids can easily move around, but aren't too 'sloshy'.

Bring to the boil, and simmer for 50 mins, stirring every 5 or so so that it doesn't stick on the bottom of the pan. After 50 mins, the mixture will have reduced enough that it starts to go thick - keep stirring until thickens and looks like molten lava. (about another 10 minutes)

Decant into sterilised jars (I found it easier to pour into a glass jug first). Half a bottle of red wine made about 600 ml of finished jam.

Goes very well with cheese and cold meats...

Car!

2011-04-17T19:31:00.002+13:00

It's been nearly 18 months since we arrived, but we have finally got our hands on a car! It has been a little bit longer than planned, as the friend who was going to be selling it to us delayed a little while... (about six months!)

Whilst it has been nice to think that we have been kind to the environment in either using public transport, Shank's Pony or car sharing, it has started to get a bit wearing (particularly when yet another train is delayed or cancelled, or when you are trying to juggle four full shopping bags on a tiny bus), and there are only so many times that you can get someone else on the hockey team to carry the goalie kit to and from training and matches.

So, we are now the proud owners of a Ford Mondeo, and this last week has been brilliant. My 20 minute walk to / from TKD is now under 5 minutes; my journey to hockey (train and walk) is now 7 when on the way out, it would be 20 mins - half an hour (depending on how long I waited at our station), and on the way back it could be anything up to 45 minutes (as the end of hockey practice and the trains did not tie up at all) - I now no longer have to wait on a cold, dark station. This weekend, we did our shopping, including a trip to the library across town, in 2 hours (normally at least 3, and the library trip would usually add another half hour), and were then able to go up to Upper Hutt to the cinema (We went to see Paul, which was only showing late in our local cinema. It's a good film - full of geeky references, with some really nice touches.). Today, as well as the hockey match (which we won, 13-0...), we also headed out to the friend who sold us the car (a half hour car journey or an hour and a quarter on the train) for lunch and a quick spot of board gaming.

Whilst we aren't going to be overly frivolous with the car (petrol is not quite as dear here as it is in the UK, but it is getting close!), we suddenly now have a whole load more freedom to get out and explore some more of this beautiful country - I can feel some more photo heavy posts coming up!

Hockey...

2011-04-03T19:14:00.002+13:00

The hockey season has well and truly started now. I'm in the seconds team again, but, due to the way the pitch gets divided out during practice, get to train with both the firsts and the seconds, depending on who is using the goal at the time.

Our first match was technically last weekend, but the opposing team defaulted (i.e. they weren't able to get enough people together to make up a team), and so we won 5-0 without having to go out into the cold and the rain.

This week was much better for playing hockey - blue skies, with enough of a breeze to stop it being too hot, without that biting icy wind which I know will come later in the season. This was a good thing, as I was playing twice, once for the firsts (standing in for their goalie, who was away), and once for the seconds. It's very nerve-wracking to be asked a couple of days before a match whether you are able to play, and I'm just very glad that there was enough time between games that I wasn't going directly from one to the other.

Both games were good in their own way - the firsts game we drew 2-2, which was a bit frustrating as we had been dominating for most of the game 2-0, but two very quick goals off of two penalty corners put us level pegging. I did save a few others, so the scoreline could have been a lot worse. The seconds game we won 1-0, but the match was much more even with neither side really having overall control. I'm very pleased, though, we have two very good players at the back, and so for that game, I didn't have to actually do a huge amount apart from tell them where to go!

Overall, though, a good start to the season - I hope that we'll only improve as we get to gel as a team; we have a number of new players this year, so it will take a while to get used to everyone's playing styles.

Luffa!

2011-04-03T18:49:00.007+13:00

I couldn't let the summer completely disappear without a quick post about our luffa plant. I haven't treated it very kindly, I do have to say - it is a vine plant, and I'm paranoid about letting it grow 'wild' in the landlady's garden or greenhouse. So it has been pot bound, and has sulked at me all summer (flowering but not really fruiting; fruits growing but withering before they got to any size). But then one fruit did start to grow, and, although it never got very fat, it did get to be almost the length of my arm. It then seemed apparent that it was not going to get any bigger, and the luffa itself was trying to flower, but the effort of flowering and fruiting at the same time was definitely too much for it.

So - I found a nice website which told me how to prepare a luffa, to turn it from this:

into a loofah to take into the shower with me.

It was far simpler than I imagined - I peeled it:

- a little bit harder than it should have been, but I think that the size of the luffa meant that it didn't have a solid 'core' for me to press against when I peeled, and so I missed little bits.

Next, I squeezed out the middle jelly like insides, and attempted to get most of the seeds out (I've saved them for next year, but I'm not sure whether they were mature enough). Then I left it on the windowsill to dry:

And that is it - I now have my very own loofah:

It may not be long enough to clean my back thoroughly, but for a first try, I'm very proud of it. And it works perfectly well in the shower :-)

The luffa plant was so pleased to have the burden of the fruit taken off that it has started flowering again already. I'll move it into the greenhouse when autumn really starts setting in and see if I can keep it growing through the winter.

Filling the Basin for Christchurch...

2011-03-21T21:54:00.010+13:00

I certainly didn't intend it to be nearly a month between blog postings - sorry!

Things have been very busy here - initially, I was helping out at work with our earthquake response, which has led to late evenings and a Sunday shift; and then the hockey season restarted (I hadn't realised I was quite unfit), and the publicity communications for our orchestra concert needed to be sent out, and there may have been a few games of online Scrabble in there, too...

But, last weekend, John and I ended up in the Basin, where we watched a charity Twenty 20 cricket match between the Wellington Legends and the Christchurch Invitation XI to fund raise for the Christchurch Appeal. Cricketing stars, both national and international (such as Shane Warne) took part, as did a whole host of others, such as Tana Umaga, an ex All Black captain, who certainly proved his sporting talents, with one wicket being taken off of his bowling, catching another whilst fielding, and then getting two boundaries (I can't remember now whether they were sixes or fours), Russell Crowe, who coached the Christchurch side.

The day was absolutely gorgeous, and they allowed families onto the pitch to play before the main event:

The TV cameras were, of course, out in force - this was being broadcast live.

I tried to find where they were selling the T-Shirts, but the stand was hidden by the crowds.

A lot of the action happened at the other end of the pitch to us - but we did get to see a lot of people's backs!

And we were close enough to the TV screens and scoreboard to not be missing out on any of the action

Wellington were in black, Christchurch in red, and the umpires were in yellow:

I'm quite proud of this action shot...

We got a treat just before the end of the first innings when the game was interrupted by the Stig walking onto the field, with the full "Some say..." build up (which I can't now remember!)

and revealed himself to be New Zealand fast bowler Andy McKay...

The poor batsman who was facing him decided that he would be safer wearing the Stig's helmet

but didn't last long, as that meant he couldn't actually see what was coming at him!

There is an online video of the over here

During the break, our Prime Minister, John Key, got to face Shane Warne, with $100,000 at stake - if John got a boundary, then Fujitsu would donate that amount to the Christchurch appeal. There was a predictable amount of 'sledging' beforehand, and it was played for the crowds; he did however, get three boundaries off of the over, which started with an underarm bowl and Shane claiming he'd got confused after going 10 pin bowling the day before... Ian McKellan was umpiring, in a deck chair, and one of the fours did very narrowly miss him - I expect that Peter Jackson had a few conniptions at that!
There's a video of the over here

I did take a few shots through our video camera, but I am having a few issues with editing it all together, so that may take a while to come through...

The Wellington batting then started

with Martin Freeman (who will be playing Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hobbit film) as one of the umpires. He is on the left here - you can see why he might have been chosen for the part of the Hobbit!

Midway through the innings, the announcer mentioned that Ian McKellan was one of the team going round with a bucket, and he was then picked up on the big screen. I thought to myself, "I recognise that pagoda", and turned round...

I didn't go up and bother him - he was surrounded by people for well over half an hour, and genuinely taking his time to talk to everyone who came up to him.

Overall the event raised over $500,000, and was the best cricket match I have seen (just pipping England beating Australia with the last ball about six years ago!) - the weather was perfect, the atmosphere electric and just great fun to be a part of.

Earthquake

2011-02-27T13:09:00.002+13:00

I have been writing this post in my head ever since Tuesday afternoon, when I felt my first earthquake, which devastated the lives of so many New Zealanders. It's not any easier when I try to actually get the words onto the computer.

Wellington is just under 200 miles away from Christchurch, but the top of our 12 storey office block swayed gently as though we were on a calm sea. Barely noticeable unless you were aware it was happening (several colleagues on the floor missed it), yet a couple of minutes later, a colleague said "The last time I felt the ground move like that was when Christchurch got hit in September." Then the news started rolling through - Twitter and Twitpics first, then the mainstream media. The realisation struck us all at about the same time; it was lunchtime, at the height of summer - the central business district would have been packed with office workers enjoying their lunches and tourists checking out the sights. We had been incredibly lucky with the timing of the September quake; this one was going to be far worse. (And then, looking at the later pictures of people's houses, collapsed, or with boulders and earth through them where the hillsides had disintegrated, and considering what could have happened if the quake had happened at night, and whole families sleeping in those rooms, makes the heart stop.)

The afternoon was difficult - I have colleagues with family in Christchurch, and we all have friends down there, as well as an office of colleagues. The phone lines were down, though some texts were getting through, and it was a tense time as we gradually found out that those we knew were alive and well. There are so many stories of escapes, as well as far too many of those who didn't get out.

The numbers are unimaginable for those of us who aren't there; as of today, 146 confirmed dead, an estimated 62,500 people without water, 100,000 have no sewerage services, and 30,000 homes are without power (Source - Stuff website). I don't know how many homes and buildings are destroyed; a Christchurch based friend has said that 25% will have to be pulled down.

It is just heartbreaking.

Extermiknit!

2011-02-20T20:21:00.004+13:00

I realised that it is nearly March, and I haven't yet shown off about my Christmas / January project :-)

A friend from the Phoenix Sci-Fi group pointed me towards the Extermiknit website, and it looked like a really fun toy to make. My knitting isn't, on the whole, hugely successful; to my name, I had one hat (which I do wear fairly solidly during the winter), a pair of gauntlet gloves which I knitted on the wrong size needles, and therefore have yet to be joined up (I have buttons to do so, just haven't yet got round to it), a cardigan which is the back and about half of one of the sides complete, and a shawl which needs a lot of tidying up before it is wearable. Plus four or five patterns which I haven't yet started!

And now, this:

It took me about 30 hours, all told, mainly in front of the TV (of course, watching Dr Who, but also rewatching my Planet Earth DVDs, which I adore) or listening to the radio and comedy CDs, and a chunk of that was learning how to make the bobbles (once I'd memorised the pattern for those, it got a lot faster). In fact, I learnt a lot of new techniques on this, including knitting on double pointed needles (I had attempted to do so on one hat, which didn't get past about three rounds, but that was because the wool I bought was completely unsuitable and kept on snapping), making the bobbles and making an I-Cord. My Stich 'n' Bitch and Knitters' Bible came out very frequently!

He is very cuddly (given that this is NZ, I managed to get some cheap washed wool for stuffing it with - no factory-made stuffing here!) and rather enjoys his lordly position on top of the book case. He's not perfect - I made a couple of interesting errors on the way round (including managing to twist the knitting at one point - but in the end that helped as I needed to add some extra stuffing after I'd closed him up - the twist made the ideal opening!), but I'm very proud of him. And, not counting the time, he cost me $2 for the wool (I bought a bulk lot for pretty much $1 each ball, including postage) and about $3.50 for the stuffing (again, that includes postage).

Cicadas

2011-02-20T19:54:00.003+13:00

It is definitely the height of summer here - the scent of barbecues is in the air every evening, the gardens around us are a riot of colour, and the cicadas have hatched. We went all of a sudden from nothing to the almost deafening sound of cicadas in all the trees and bushes around us - they start up just as I'm heading to work, and keep going until the sun has gone down. After not being able to see any last year, this year they seem to have lost their shyness, and are clinging to anything which could be remotely seen as being tree-like. The neighbours' wooden fence was covered in them when they first hatched, and the telegraph poles still have a number clinging to them all the way up. One even came and investigated our washing (though it didn't like us peering at it, and flew away rather rapidly). They really are beautiful

The stick insect (well, I say 'the' - I don't know if it is the same one...) came back to the olive tree as well.

The garden is definitely being successful - I have dug up the onions, and pickled a whole load of them, the chillis are storming away (I have at least three different species growing at the moment), I have been eating tomatoes most days this week, the olives and lemons are growing, and even the fig is getting in on the action - there is one solitary fruit growing, but I'm not going to hold my breath, as I've got to this stage with figs before and they've always fallen off. I'm hoping that the warmer weather here will help it on its way!

Light posting...

2011-02-06T22:19:00.002+13:00

I'm afraid that posting is going to be light over the next few weeks - work is getting incredibly busy, and all of the various clubs and societies are now back again after the summer break. So, usual apologies in advance.

We've got our new pieces for the April orchestra concert - we are playing Schubert's 6th Symphony, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte and Mozart's Clarinet concerto. The oboes don't play anything in the Mozart, which is actually a good thing - both the Ravel and the Schubert are full of oboe solos, and the usual first oboe is going to be away for the concert, so I get to do them all by myself... I think I'm going to have to fit some time in for some heavy duty practice into the evening schedule! The pieces are lovely (or will be when we aren't sight-reading), so I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into them.

I did get to take part in a fine Wellington custom this week - Wellington is known as the Windy city for a very good reason, and this week we had winds of over 100kph for a few days. Due to the way that the buildings are laid out, you can often find that the wind comes at you from multiple directions at once, which can be very interesting, to say the least. However, let someone who is not from the city, such as the Australian supplier who came over for a meeting last week, comment on the wind, and the response is usually along the lines, as both my colleague and myself said, at pretty much the same time, "This? It's just a light breeze..."

Chrysalis update...

2011-01-30T17:14:00.006+13:00

I've been keeping an eye on the Monarch chrysalis on our fig plant - it has been hanging there, green and gold all week, blowing in the wind, dripping in the rain rain as well as basking in the few sunny days we have had.

Then, this morning, it had changed colour:

The wings of the Monarch were clearly visible through the 'skin' of the chrysalis.

So - I kept on popping out all day to keep an eye on it, then, in the last hour, this happened:

You would never think that something so large could fit into something so small!

I left it drying its wings, and when I came back out to pick mint for dinner, it had moved round the tree.

It was tentatively testing out its wings, as well as trying to find the best position on the leaf.

Unfortunately, it had a lot to learn about the Wellington winds (something that a caterpillar can safely ignore!), and as it was trying to swing itself up on top of the fig leaf, it fell off and started crawling round my olive plant.

As I know that there is at least one spider round there, I decided that I wasn't going to be the ethical naturalist and just stand by, so I put my arm down and let it climb on.

(apologies for the blurriness of this one - I am very right handed, and even taking a photo with my left hand was difficult!)

It crawled around for a bit, but seemed to show no inclination to take off, and the little barbs on the end of its feet were actually rather sharp, so I let it back onto the fig tree. Even though I put it on the top, it decided very quickly that it wanted to go back underneath (probably more sheltered and less visible to birds)

One curious thing that I noticed - this butterfly had only four legs! I'm not sure whether the final pair was folded behind the wings (I didn't see them when it was exploring my arm) or whether something went wrong when it came out of the chrysalis or even when it was pupating.

I hope it does survive - it is such a pretty butterfly!

Picture Post

2011-01-24T19:20:00.021+13:00

I know - it's been two weeks - sorry!

From being very quiet a couple of weeks ago, the social life has now bounced back after the summer break, and everything is busy again!

We took a trip last weekend to Stonehenge Aotearoa with the Sci-Fi group.

This isn't just a replica of the Salisbury Plain Stonehenge, but is of itself a working henge, aligned to its position in the Southern Hemisphere.

There is a beautiful central tile to align yourself with everything:

From there, you can look through the hole in the central obelisk, which is aligned to the South Pole:

Next to the Obelisk is the Analemma - the white tiles mark the north-south meridian, and at 12.18pm (or 1.18 in the summer) the shadow falls on the yellow line which gives the day and the current zodiacal sign.

Just outside the main circle is the Moon Stone (which marks the maximum extent of the shadow that the obelisk casts in a full moon) and behind it is the Seven Sisters, which mark (when standing on the marked spot next to it) the point where the Pleiades rise - also known as Matariki, they mark the beginning of Maori New Year in June.

Outside the circle are six heel stones - when standing in the centre of the circle, they are in line with the horizon, and they mark the rising and setting of the sun during the equinox and solstices.

The countryside around the henge was beautiful - there were only a couple of farmhouses in sight. I can't wait to go back at night (at some point, I'll try to see if any of the astronomical societies who use it are having open evenings) - the amount of stars visible when there is so little light pollution must be stunning.

Then, on the Sunday, I went out with a colleague and her husband around the Waiuniomata Water Reserve. This is normally closed to visitors, due to the need to avoid contaminants in the water supply, but for eight days a year, you can take guided tours of the reserve. The forest was stunning - rimu and rata trees towering overhead (there were others, but my memory isn't good enough to remember what they were called!)

We learnt of the history of the reserve as well about the trees and plants - the huge amount of work that went into providing drinkable water for the Wellington region.

To dig this 3.2km tunnel, which links the Orongorongo Valley to the Wainuiomata Valley (and their respective water supplies), huge efforts were made - they had to transport the materials 45 km around the valley to the mouth of the Orongorongo river, and then a further 22km up the river bed. There were two teams, one working on the Wainuiomata side, and the other on the Orongorongo side, meeting in the middle; the skills of the engineers were such that they met exactly - not bad for something finished in 1924!

We had the Ongaonga, or New Zealand Stinging Nettle pointed out to us:

If you fall into this, then it's not just a case of a mildly painful rash - the Ongaonga is very poisonous, and has killed at least one person. One of the volunteer rangers, the one who pointed the nettle out to us, said that he had been on a tramp (NZ hike...) with his group, when one of them had fallen into the nettle. Despite wearing trousers and overtrousers (it was raining), he was badly stung and had to be helped home where he was ill for a week. Not a plant you want to tangle with!

On our way back to the car park, we spotted a beautiful dragonfly on the ground - it was huge!

Speaking of insects, my fig tree has got a guest...

I'm going to be keeping a close eye on that for the next few weeks - I'm looking forward to seeing what emerges!

(EDIT - a quick Google search tells me that it is the chrysalis of a Monarch butterfly...)

Not much happening...

2011-01-10T21:00:00.004+13:00

The summer sun is shining (sorry to those in the Northern Hemisphere!), the cicadas are singing (though not as noisy as last year - I think we must have been in a mass hatching year - the difference is really dramatic) and the garden is green.

On the right are (front to back) Mrs & Mr Kiwi, the Luffa (in the middle of the picture - it has to be out of the way of any other plant, otherwise that questing vine will find something to twine against - it is very Triffid like in its quest - it would be interesting to see it on a BBC type time lapse photo, as I know it moves rapidly; I moved it twice off the lawn on Saturday, and it had moved back about 90 degrees between morning and mid afternoon, and then mid afternoon to evening. It was windy, but not *that* windy!), the Fig (by the watering can), then behind the Fig are the Lemon, Feijoa and Olive (is it a photography crime to have a tree growing out of a tree's head?). On the left is the army of chillis (in front) and tomatoes (behind - though they have now been moved into the greenhouse for their own safety - something is nomming up the tomatoes faster than I can eat them - the current score is Pest 3 - Jo 2...)

We had a garden visitor at the weekend - this large stick insect was on Mrs Kiwi:

Apart from that, it really has been quiet. Back to work - as though the holidays had never happened. None of the clubs and societies are back yet, so there has been a lot of DVD watching, a bit of craft work (I'm waiting for a final bit to arrive from Trademe before I can show you...) and a lot of relaxing. Very welcome!

Ngā mihi o te Tau Hou ki a koutou katoa

2011-01-01T00:00:00.000+13:00

Happy New Year to you all.

May 2011 be full of peace, love and joy, with enough time for some fun along the way.

I've enjoyed a relaxing week off of work, and even managed to get up to the Hayward's Scenic Reserve again for a two hour walk - I found a track that I hadn't spotted before, and ended up sitting for five minutes listening to the sound of the cicadas and a Tui singing its heart out. There are worse ways of spending a New Year's Eve.

Christmas Break

2010-12-28T12:11:00.001+13:00

A belated Happy Christmas to everyone! We have had a very lazy few days; we didn't end up getting to the beach on Christmas Day due to one thing and another (getting up late, opening presents, popping over to the neighbours for a quick chat which lasted an hour and a half), and ended up spending the afternoon over at a friend's house discussing the world and everything in it with him, his daughter and son-in-law. He has the most unusual Christmas tree - his flatmate has a life size Dalek, and they had decorated it with tinsel and bows. Sadly, I didn't have my camera on me, so you will just have to imagine the sight! It was a very gentle and relaxing way of spending Christmas.

Boxing Day included a trip to the Garden Centre (very domesticated!) - I had been given vouchers for Christmas, and, as they had a Boxing Day sale on, I thought I'd take full advantage. So now, in addition to the olive, feijoa and lemon trees, I also have a fig and two kiwis (kiwi fruit are one of those which need a male and female in order to get fruit). I am getting a veritable orchard!

Yesterday we took our first trip to the cinema since we arrived in NZ, to see Tron Legacy. We also saw it in 3D, the first time that I've been to see a mainstream film that way (3D shows at theme parks and specialist ones at the IMax notwithstanding). Overall, it was a fun 'popcorn' film. It wasn't setting out to make any deep and meaningful statements on the meaning of life and the principles of existence. It was a simple 'good vs evil' film, with many overt nods to Star Wars (bearded Jeff Bridges in a robe looked uncannily like Alec Guinness, and one of the weapons near the end had the potential to be a light sabre) as well as the original Tron film (which I haven't yet seen - one to add to the library list). The 3D was beautifully done - nothing hugely flashy, just added depth to the background, and stunning 'up and over' in the chase sequences. The music was fantastic (I'll be getting hold of the soundtrack), and a lovely nod was having the band, Daft Punk, cameo in a scene where they needed DJs. Whilst it may not be a film which changes the world, it was a very pleasant way of spending a few hours.

After the film, we went out to a restaurant which a friend had recommended. Han River is a Korean restaurant in Lower Hutt (no website, otherwise I'd link to it). It's the first time that we've eaten specifically Korean cuisine, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The restaurant was pretty much empty, but we did go to eat at 6 pm, so it wasn't surprising. The food was delicious - we had dumplings and radish rolls to start with, then a shared main course, called a 'Steam Boat'. This was a small wok set over a small gas burner filled with a broth of beef, dumplings, glass noodles and vegetables, which we ladled into our own bowls with rice and a selection of cold side vegetables (I am very intrigued by the pickled Daikon, and will have to attempt to make some of my own!). The flavours mixed together very well; there wasn't a high level of spices (my choice, as I have had a few issues with heartburn over the last couple of weeks and didn't want to aggravate it by choosing something which could have been overly hot), and it was a very tasty meal. We finished up with a dessert of rice-dumpling-cakes stuffed with a nutty ice-cream (the outside of the cakes was a chewy paste rather than being crunchy) and a 'Persimmon ice', which, rather than being the sorbet we had assumed, was actually a whole Persimmon which had been frozen and then stuffed with ice-cream! Overall, it was a superb meal, and, as we took advantage of the BYO status to provide our own wine, cost us only $60 for all three courses. We will definitely be going there again.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

2010-12-19T19:50:00.002+13:00

No - not gloating (much) that it is currently averaging above 20 degrees whilst friends and family are struggling with being snowed in, having difficulties getting to and from work, and the dreaded spectre of Winter is far away from the Antipodean shores. (Even if it has spent today throwing it down - no need to go out and water the tomatoes at all - just like the British Summer, then!)

This time next week, it will be Boxing Day. Yet, it just doesn't feel like Christmas at all. This is an obvious issue about moving to the other side of the world - it is going to take more than one hot and sunny Christmas to counteract 27 cold and dark ones. Even with all of the Christmas parties (we've now had all of the different society ones, plus our work Christmas bashes), the presents bought (I think this is the first time I've not run around like a headless chicken the week before Christmas still struggling to work out what to buy!), the cards up on the side, and the tinsel out in a bag on the living room carpet (ok, I'm not the best person in the world at putting up decorations!), I am struggling to actually make myself believe that I have 4 1/2 days of work left before 2011 starts. (And about 10 days' worth of work to complete in that time...) I think that part of this is that almost all of the Christmas cards we have been sent, even those from within NZ, show wintry scenes; holly, red-robins, pine trees covered in snow and the like. Which doesn't really equate to blue skies, pohutakawa and roses... Still, I'm sure I'll get there - possibly on Christmas Eve when heading home from work!

One of the nice things about working in the civil service is that there is an enforced shut down between Christmas and New Year. Whilst it isn't 'gifted' holiday (as it was for the company I worked for in the UK), which means that if you don't have the holiday available to take, it is unpaid leave, it is nice to know that everything closes down for 10 days - I am going to need the break!

Zealandia, Take 2...

2010-12-15T21:05:00.019+13:00

After a pretty grotty Saturday (the first time that I'd hung out the washing in the hope that the weather would get better before our shopping trip, and then had to bring it all in, almost as wet as when it went out a few hours later when we got back in), Sunday dawned bright and sunny. Various businesses in Wellington have signed up to an online Advent Calendar which gives a different voucher every day during Advent, most of which are valid until Christmas Eve. One of the ones near the beginning was a two for one voucher for Zealandia, and, given that our last trip was a bit of a wash out, we thought that, seeing as the weather was fine, we'd have another go.

There were Tui everywhere hopping around the flax bushes and eating the nectar. Far too busy with what they were doing to bother about the tourists coming to stare at them!

The warm weather and sunshine meant that the Tuatara were all out enjoying themselves (in as much as a reptile can...). Some were a bit easier to spot than others!

(Yes, there is a baby one in that last photo...)

The scenery, as always, was stunning.

The valley along which the Sanctuary runs just seems to go on and on - the second photo is taken about a km into it, and you can just see the houses which are in the Sanctuary road in the far distance.

The Kaka were out in force at the feeding posts

The Sanctuary, as well as being host to endangered (and otherwise) birds, is also preserving plants. There are over 50 different types of fern - though I think I've only caught two - the silver fern (Ponga) (though I didn't see the underside, so I might be wrong)

and the black tree fern (Mamaku), which really does lend itself to being arty!

We finally got to go to the Morning Star Mine (it was too wet last time), which is an old gold mine (or at least the entrance to one - you can't get very far inside). A volunteer is stationed at the entrance and gives you a hard hat (the entrance way is very low!) and a red-light torch. The mine itself is filled with cave weta (and the occasional large spider - I didn't shine the torch on those for very long as I don't think John would have wanted to see what was right by his left shoulder! The reason for the red light (and the lack of photos) is that the cave weta are nocturnal and therefore are very light sensitive. But we have finally gotten to see some weta in their natural environment (and everyone at work was asking what the fuss was about - they all have woodpiles which house hundreds of them!).

The Sanctuary does also have 'Weta Hotels' - hinged logs which have glass plates in the middle, meaning that you can open them up and see the weta snoozing inside. Unfortunately, the glass doesn't then lend itself very well to allowing photos - I'm not sure that this one came out too well...

The middle of the Sanctuary is a large dam and lake created in order to be a major source of water for Wellington.

However, a while back, they worked out that the dam was sitting right on the fault line, and that probably wasn't the best place to be storing a large amount of water, particularly as it is not that far from the Central Business District... So they drained most of the water away, and it is now home to a large number of ducks (none of whom wanted to pose for pictures!)

As well as the Tui, there are a number of other native birds who are nectar feeders, most notably the Stitchbird (with the beautiful Maori name Hihi) and the Bellbird, also called Korimako. Zealandia has set up a number of nectar feeders with mesh which allows the smaller birds to get in and out, but means that the Tui can't squeeze through and steal all the food!

On the left is (I think - I'm not 100% certain) a Hihi, and inside the feeder is a Korimako.

A much clearer shot of the Korimako!

We were able to stand and watch the birds for a good five - ten minutes as they darted in and out of the feeders, and flew from branch to branch waiting their turn.

Given that Spring is definitely over and Summer is just getting its teeth into the season, you wouldn't think that there would be that many birds still nesting. However, this female blackbird was so intent on getting dried grass for her nest that she really wasn't fussed about us being around her (she hopped away when we were too close for comfort, but as soon as we were more than a couple of feet away, she stopped bothering about us)

There was also this gorgeous dragonfly-like insect - bright red and sitting on a leaf enjoying the sun.

The afternoon vanished in a flash - we had barely got a kilometre into the Sanctuary (it is about 3km long) before we realised we had to turn round to head back or risk being locked in. Rather than just head back the way we came, we took a bit of a detour round a slightly longer (and less well travelled) path. We passed a sign warning us that there were falcons nesting, who were very protective of their chicks and inclined to dive bomb visitors. Fortunately, we later learnt from a guide that the chicks had fledged, so they don't dive bomb *quite* as much as they had in the past! I was a little sorry not to see them (I wasn't sure whether I could hear them or whether that was another bird - the whole valley was filled with birdsong the whole time we were there).

But the Sanctuary had saved a final treat for us before we went to find our coffee - as we were walking round a bend in the track, we spotted a sign telling us that there was a little pool in the undergrowth which birds used as a bath, and if we were very quiet and still, we might get to see one. It didn't take too long for the undergrowth to start rustling, and a North Island Robin popped out to have a look at us. It was incredibly inquisitive - getting within a foot of us before it decided that the insects in the leaf litter were far more interesting! And unlike our trip to Matiu/Somes Island, I was actually able to get it in focus!

We also got to see the tail (we think!) of a Wellington Green Gecko as it whisked back into its hole (a bright green flash was about it!) and a couple of Kakariki which have just been introduced to the Sanctuary.

We had barely covered a tenth of the trackways within the Sanctuary, and there are still a number of native birds we haven't seen. So, on the way to get our coffee, we bought year-passes, which mean that we can go back as many times as we like (3 times will cover the cost of the pass), and also get a discount on the night tours, where you get to see the Kiwi (of which there are about 100 in the Sanctuary) and the Morepork (called Ruru in Maori). I'm already really looking forward to going back!

Don't Dream It, Be It...

2010-12-13T21:35:00.004+13:00

Yes, yes, I know - I'm now over a week overdue on this... This is last week's post - I will do this week's once I've had a chance to play with photographs :-)

The reason for overdue-ness is a combination of being insanely busy over the last week and also, when we were at home, an almost complete Internet fail - in the end I spent an hour talking to two nice people from Telecom (I got transferred to the 'Complex Internet Problems' department - it's always nice when it isn't just a 'turn it off, turn it on again' issue which makes you feel very silly when it works!), fixed the problem (with the DNS connection) on Windows, and then had to work out how to do it with the two Linux netbooks. I did get some help from a friend - he sent me over how to do it in another version of Linux, which gave me enough pointers to work it out on our versions - slowly but surely I'm getting a little geekier!

So - last weekend, we had our trip to see Richard O'Brien in the Rocky Horror Show. I've been bouncing about this since it was announced in August - Rocky Horror is one of my favourite musicals (and, though I love the film, I much prefer seeing it live), and the chance to see R.O'B. in the Criminologist's role was too good to pass up. We had fantastic seats - right in the middle of the row, without too many tall people in front of us. We went for the 6.30 showing, which may have been a mistake - we had got dressed up, but there weren't that many others! There wasn't any audience participation (again, another symptom of the early showing - hearing from other friends who went to different shows, we were a very quiet night!), but, after the initial disappointment (I do like hearing how the different actors respond to the heckles), it was a great show.

There were some lovely takes on the scenery - my favourite was the mini versions of the castle which were wheeled across the stage during 'There's a Light', progressively getting bigger, until the largest one, which was on a ladder to allow Riff-Raff to sing his solo through the top window. The model also reappeared at the end when the castle takes off...

Juan Jackson as Frank was probably one of the best I have seen - one of the reviews claimed he was "too butch", but I disagreed! He had a great take on the role and a fabulous singing voice - I'd gladly watch him in the role again.

R.O'B. was great as the Criminologist - not quite as slow paced and drawling as I'd hoped (I'd imagined him playing it in the same vein as the 'host' in 'The Crystal Maze'), but still just stunning to see on stage. The audience went wild when he first came out (as they apparently had done in every show). He had an interesting take on some of the part - he sang a number of the lines, which I wasn't expecting. He did stay in his denim suit and tails for the whole show (which I was glad about - I don't think seeing seeing him at 69 in stockings and suspenders would have been the best vision of the evening - memories of Neil and Christina Hamilton come to mind!). However the absolute screaming moment for me was the curtain call, when he came out carrying his guitar and performed the TimeWarp - the whole audience was on its feet, even those who hadn't really worked out what to do!

Overall, it was an amazing evening - I'm looking forward to the next time it comes back to Wellington!

There are photos and videos at this website - none of R.O'B. as he only had one rehearsal with the full cast before the run started in Auckland!

A Plucking Good Evening

2010-11-29T21:07:00.006+13:00

Friday was the first of our 'ticket' nights out - we bought tickets way back in August to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, who have been doing a New Zealand tour. If you haven't heard of them, this is a troupe of eight ukulele players, who play instruments from 'soprano' (or 'teeny'), right up to 'bass' (or 'guitar'). They have been going for 25 years this year, and they still look like they are having as much fun on stage as the audience are watching them. We were at the Michael Fowler Centre, which is a glorious modern venue - the main auditorium is set out in native wood, looks absolutely beautiful, and whoever designed the seating layout actually thought about knee-space rather than "how many people can we cram into here".

The group were fantastic, as always. They have a great rapport with each other, and just the slightest glance can get the audience howling. Their repertoire stretches all the way from the classical (they played 'Dance Macabre' for us, as well as reprising their Proms 2009 Audience Participation Ode to Joy - unfortunately, because they didn't hand out the music beforehand (just expecting the audience to find it on their website), most of the audience who had brought ukuleles weren't actually able to join in, and it ended up almost being a trio from the audience vs eight of them on stage!), theme music (They did the theme to 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', and a brilliant version of 'Shaft', though fortunately, they did not add in their usual gag on mining - definitely the wrong week to joke about that...), hard rock (Wheatus's 'I'm just a Teenage Dirtbag') and many more (including a New Zealand song called "Now is the Hour" which had a fantastic audience response).

There are plenty of excellent videos on YouTube featuring them (some from them directly, others bootlegged...) - one of the reasons that I love them, not only because of the humour, is summed up by a quote from Peter Brooke Turner:
"We thought, `Well, why can't we do songs by the Velvet Underground or the Sex Pistols? And what we found was that the ukulele's sort of a musical lie detector ... if you strip everything away, by playing it on a ukulele you can tell if it's a good song or not. Surely the sign of a good song is that it can just be simply strummed through and sung, and the essence is still there."

These were two of my favourites from the evening:

A great take on Life on Mars...

I adored their second medley - it was new to me :-)

Sadly they didn't play another of my favourites, similar in theme and style...

Now go and look at their other stuff on YouTube, and maybe even go get their CDs / DVDs! :-) And I'd definitely recommend that you get tickets to see them live next time they are your way!

We had an absolutely brilliant evening, a great start to a fun weekend; Phoenix group PIG meeting on Saturday, and I got to play with a video recorder on Sunday trying to get a video uploaded for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra competition. I managed it - just - after a number of major hiccups (wrong file types, corruption when I tried to convert them, and then a corrupted source disk made for a bit of a frustrating afternoon, particularly after I'd spent a number of hours recording the videos to start with!) I then went and looked at some of the other auditions that people had put up, and I can safely say that I am not going to get through to the final - they make me look like a beginner! But it was a good learning curve for the next time they do this (this is the second time they have run the competition, so I can be reasonably certain that they will do it again).

I managed to miss another earthquake - one of my friends even texted me to ask if I'd felt it... I don't know - I've been here a year and still not felt one! (though given the mess down in Christchurch - they are over 3,000 now, and the aftershocks are expected to go on for another 2 years... - I think that I can live without it for the moment!)

And it is starting to get immensely surreal - we are really heading into summer now (starting to overheat under the duvet at night; short-sleeve shirts are the order of the day in the office), and I'm seeing so many posts about snow and ice from my friends and family back in the UK. It definitely doesn't feel like we are on the very slippery slope to Christmas!

Pomp and Circumstance

2010-11-24T20:40:00.002+13:00

Aaaand whooops! I had intended to get this sorted on Sunday, but procrastination and online gaming got the better of me...

We had our orchestra summer concert this weekend - a fabulous evening devoted to the Last Night of the Proms. The first half was the serious music - the Hornpipe from Handel's Water Music, The Walk to Paradise Garden from A Village Romeo and Juliet by Delius, and Elgar's Enigma Variations (we played twelve out of the fourteen variations).

Then we all donned additional colourful and / or patriotic gear (I don't think my Chinese jacket or John's fez counted as British, but we could probably argue British Empire, just!), including our two lead violins, who dressed up as a King and Queen (and, of course, we all stood when they came in!), and one of the other violins who donned a dressing gown and a deer stalker hat. Plenty of sparkly wigs and tinsel were also in evidence, and a number of the audience had also got dressed up. We opened the second half with Pomp and Circumstance, and the audience got their vocal chords in gear with Land of Hope and Glory.

Then the Sea Shanties, with everyone bobbing up and down for the hornpipe, and the obligatory horns and squeakers (I might have contributed to that a little bit - the oboe doesn't play until 64 bars into it, so I had enough time to blow a party squeaker :-) ). The clarinet cadenza was thoroughly played up, with the orchestra members settling down with books, with knitting, cleaning instruments, etc. The conductor actually got out a vacuum and cleared his podium of the various bits of glitter which had fallen on it through the course of the evening... Rule Britannia at the end went brilliantly - even if most of the brass managed to miss out the late arranged repeat (and were able to cover for it by the conductor turning to the audience and tell them that we were starting again because they weren't singing loud enough!).

Then Jerusalem, God Save the Queen and Auld Lang Syne, and the concert was all over, bar the vacuuming up of the glitter and silly string and generally trying to get the church back into a state in which it could hold a service the next morning!

Overall, it was a fantastic concert - everyone really enjoyed themselves, and we have already asked whether we are going to do it again next year! There may even be photos - there were a few people with cameras out, and if any of them find their way to the orchestra website, I will post a link.

I just wonder whether the organist found the squeaky balloon that went down the back of the organ pipes in the middle of the Sunday service...

Orchestra is therefore over for the summer - we have a long gap until we go back at the beginning of February - I shall have to make sure that I don't let myself get too rusty! And possibly even take the time off to have another go at learning the accordion...

Summer is on its way

2010-11-14T17:47:00.002+13:00

The first cicada of the summer started outside our house today. It wasn't noisy for very long (either it decided that it wanted a lie-in, or one of the blackbirds spotted it as a tasty snack for one of the many fledglings in the trees around us), but it is hopefully a sign that the consistently warmer weather is on its way. At the moment, it is gloriously sunny during the week, and then is horrible and grey over the weekend!

But the signs of summer are starting to come through, particularly in the greenhouse. We have had our first meal of spinach, with a bag full in the fridge waiting for the next stir fry. My tomato plants have now got a couple of flowers on them, as does my lemon tree and my olive tree. How many of these flowers will actually become fruits remains to be seen - I think the lemon may be a bit small for bearing fruit this year, and the olive only gave us five or so fruit last year, so I'm not expecting much more than that this (though at least I know how to prepare them for eating now!). I've also spent a chunk of today outside potting up numerous chilli pepper plants - I've now got about ten pots with multiple chillis in each. I'll be very disappointed if I don't get at least one chilli con carne out of that lot!

One Year!

2010-11-07T14:04:00.004+13:00

Wow. One year ago today, we landed in New Zealand.

A year ago, we completely uprooted ourselves. We had nowhere to live, and our available possessions totalled what we could carry in our suitcases and hand luggage. We had quit our jobs, and therefore had a finite amount of money to survive on (and most of it still in my UK bank account waiting for the exchange rate to pick up). We had left behind all of our friends and family and had moved to a city where we knew no-one, and a country where we knew less than ten people.

Written out like that, it seems completely insane that we even thought about moving halfway round the world.

We have had a very steep learning curve along the way, and things haven't always been as smooth as they could have been. However, things could have been a lot harder and a lot bumpier at a number of different points along the way.

So, a year on, I have absolutely no regrets. We have found ourselves a lovely place to rent, and are able to consider buying a house of our own, probably in another six months. I have got a great job, which, though it may be intensely stressful at times, is also one which I am now able to consider making my career. We have made a huge circle of friends, and, whilst we, of course, miss our friends and family, it is not in the sense of wishing to be back in the UK, but more wishing that they were out here with us, and able to share in the joy of this country.

We celebrated our anniversary in fine style - New Zealand celebrates Bonfire Night as well, so on Friday, we went out for a restaurant meal (we went to one of the Wellington Wagamamas, which overlooks the sea), and then to the Wellington Fireworks Festival. The event raises money for the Wellington Free Ambulance (in most areas, you have to pay if you need an ambulance; here in Wellington, thanks to charity donations, it is free), and included fairground rides and stalls, as well as a crafts fair and a section for the emergency services to provide public service information (the fire brigade did their "why you don't pour hot water onto a chip pan fire" demonstration - they got a very impressive ball of fire coming out of their mock kitchen; the ambulance service were doing a free CPR session - currently Wellington sits at fourth in the 'cities you are most likely to survive a heart attack in' statistics - they want to make it first; the police service had the wreck of a car which had been driven by a drunk driver then came off second best in an argument with a tree - they also had information boards on the accident, which included not only a reasonably graphic description of the injuries that killed the driver, but also then include the detail that the friend who was sat behind the driver was trapped by his mate's body, and had to wait for that to be extracted before they could cut him out of the car!). The whole event was also hooked up to the local radio station, so there was music playing out of the loudspeakers, including a specially composed piece of music, timed to play out with the fireworks exploding. The fireworks themselves were absolutely stunning; probably one of the best events that I've been to in a long time. It was a lovely way to celebrate being in the country for a year :-)

Braae and Birds

2010-10-31T21:06:00.002+13:00

Last Monday was Labour Day here, our first public holiday since the Queen's birthday in June, and a much needed break from the daily grind.

We began the weekend in fine style, with our monthly Phoenix board gaming session. We took along Alhambra, one of the two games which we gave each other for our wedding anniversary, and which looks like it is becoming a favourite, at least amongst the members of the group who have played it. We also played a game which is new to me, and which I didn't do very well at, but in itself is great fun, called Dominion. It's a card based game, where the rules are easy enough that you can understand what you are doing within a round or two, but there are so many different tactics that it will take a few games before I'll really get going! I'm looking forward to next month already!

Sunday, we had planned to spend very quietly, after a reasonably early start Skyping the folks back in the UK. However, as I went out to hang out the washing, our South African next-door neighbours came out and said that they were having a braae (pronounced "bri" in the evening, and did we want to come? They have been talking about holding a get together since we moved in, so of course we said 'yes'. A braae is very much like a British BBQ - cooking over hot coals / wood. But very different from the NZ BBQ, as BBQs here are mainly cooking over gas - to the extent that our neighbours have to call round some of the other folks in the street to let them know that they are holding a braae and not to call the fire brigade! Everyone was bringing something, and we were promised some traditional South African food. The evening started early - we went over at about 5:00, just as Gary was lighting the fire, and we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine with a glass of wine with them and their other friends and neighbours, both South African and Kiwi. It was a very jolly evening, with plenty of wine being drunk, a great deal of laughter, and a lot of food being eaten - I particularly enjoyed the South African sausage, which one of the other South Africans gets his butcher to make up from a specific recipe, and the Pap, a porridge-like food eaten with a tomato based sauce. We didn't end up leaving too late (about 10.00), but as the party had started at 5, it felt a lot later than it was!

The Monday dawned a typical public/bank holiday gloomy - however, it wasn't actually raining. The sun did make a few attempts to break through the cloud, so we decided to head out to Matiu-Somes Island (it has a dual Maori-Western name), a nature reserve in the middle of Wellington harbour. We had to get a catamaran ferry over from Petone

The island isn't very big

with a small wharf for the boats to moor against:

Small as it is, there is an even smaller one just off the edge. The Maori name for it is Mokopuna Island, which is far nicer than the Western one - Leper Island, due to the exiling (and death) of a Chinese worker there after he was diagnosed as a leper (though that is now believed to have been a misdiagnosis).

Because Matiu-Somes is a nature reserve, we had to go through the same bag checks that we did at Zealandia, making sure that no mice had got into our picnic bag. Then, after a short wildlife lecture with photographs by one of the Department of Conservation workers (most of which seemed to consist of him telling us what we weren't likely to see; "This is a tuatara, but it will be too cold for him to be out," "this is a skink, but it is too windy for it," "this is a North Island Robin - we introduced 35 of these to the island, but unfortunately, due to a lack of insects for them to eat, we only have 7 left..."), we were allowed out to wander round. There was a stern injunction not to miss the direct ferry back, otherwise we'd be charged $80 for the regular ferry to divert to pick us up!

The island was full of bird song, amazingly loud and clear. So many of the birds had absolutely no fear of people at all. This blackbird fledgling was very happy for me to take a picture of it, after it had eaten.

This bird let us get within a foot or so of it before it got up and wandered off. It is also the first bird that I have ever heard sneeze!

The Kakariki were everywhere, and far more interested in food than they were in us.

As a number of the paths were grass based, there were a number of sheep kept on the island as lawnmowers.

The views from the edge of the island were gorgeous - Te Papa o Tara (or, more prosaically, Shag Rock) was covered in seabirds - mostly seagulls, rather than terns or shags.

There were a number of boats out enjoying the day.

Matiu-Somes has a very interesting past; it was used as a quarantine station, both for people and for animals, and was also active during both world wars, both as an internment camp for 'enemy aliens', and also as a degaussing station (the entrance to Wellington harbour was mined during WW2, and not all of the mines have been found!), and an anti-aircraft gun placement:

The island also has an important lighthouse on it - it is ideally placed to guide ships in to the harbour, with a three coloured beam - white if the ship is coming in at the right angle, but set so that there is also a red and green light if the ship is veering off course (to the port and starboard respectively). The lighthouse is no longer manned, apart from by the seagulls, but the tramway which took supplies up to it through the bush is still visible (in the third picture).

The island is also home to a huge number of sea and water birds, most of whom seemed happy to pose for photographs:

But, on our way back down to the ferry, we took a short cut down a track where the DoC had been doing some logging and clearing out of the underbrush. There was a very happy blackbird picking over the turned up soil, who followed us down, presumably to make sure that we weren't going to steal any of his worms. Then, as we got to a bend in the track, this bird appeared in front of us:

I was absolutely delighted to be able to recognise it from the lecture we had had earlier as one of the 7 remaining North Island robins on the Island. It was very friendly (even if it didn't want to sit still long enough to be able to be photographed - that was the best picture we got of it!), and came up incredibly close to see what we were up to. We were able to watch it for about 5 minutes before it got bored and flew away.

We then headed back down to the wharf to wait for the ferry and to sit in the sunshine:

It was a fantastic way of spending a public holiday; incredibly relaxing, and so wonderful to be able to see more of New Zealand's native life.

The rest of the week has been as busy as always; I once more had something on every evening from Monday through to Thursday. This included catching up with an ex-colleague after work on Tuesday, and having a work Halloween event on Thursday evening (it didn't finish too late, and was really nice to be able to catch up with colleagues who I don't normally get to see), as well as the usual orchestra and TKD.

Yesterday we had our Phoenix monthly PIG social, this time with a Halloween flavour - I attempted to make these. The taste was good (as long as you like sweet things!), but I don't think I'm ever going to make icing cakes a career - I've been finding bits of blue food colouring all over the kitchen today! As I also made my coconut and cherry cookies, and some salmon and cream cheese dip (probably one of the easiest 'posh' recipes I have *ever* made!), I have spent most of today washing up - I managed to dirty pretty much every utensil, plate, pot and pan that we own!

And in three hours, it will be November - where on earth has the year gone?

Why so busy?

2010-10-21T20:57:00.006+13:00

I reflected today that tonight (Thursday) is the first night which I don't have anything 'booked' since last Friday evening. I should be feeling more exhausted than I am, but I find that doing so much actually keeps me energised. I've found that being active after work helps me to unwind so much more than just sitting at home - the act of concentrating on something else, rather than letting my brain stew over the events of the day, helps it completely forget. Whilst I should be able to leave work at the door of the office, sadly, that gets harder and harder as things get busier.

So, going to orchestra and playing the Sailors' Hornpipe (it's very fiddly by the time the oboe joins in, because the nice slow interplay between the violin and flute at the start has disappeared when the clarinet begins and speeds things up!), or going to TKD and focusing on getting a flying turning kick right (I can do it when kicking with my left leg, but not at all with my right - the complete opposite of all of my other kicks, where the left is distinctly feebler than the right), or even going out to a sci-fi film evening with friends and watching a silly children's movie (this time it was "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief", actually a really good fun film - plenty of funny moments, with some great cameo acting, and didn't really feel like it was made for kids at all), really helps to turn off the day in the office and give me something else to think about. And that was all just this week!

We also managed to get out to Zealandia on Sunday. This is a fantastic wildlife reserve, created with the long term view in mind, and with the aim of restoring just a little bit of New Zealand to the way it was before man started destroying things. They may not be able to bring back the extinct species, but they are really doing their bit to keep ones on the endangered list alive. The whole area has been encircled with a predator proof fence, specifically designed to keep out introduced mammals. The plant life is closely monitored for noxious (introduced) weeds, things like brambles, gorse and budlea, which are not native to NZ, and which very quickly spread and took over from the plants already here. It turned 15 this year, and the people who have set it up and who work and volunteer there now know that they are not going to get to see the park in its intended glory. Nor will their children, but maybe their grandchildren will start to experience it as it should have been. That's not to say that they aren't already having successes - the Kaka (parrot) population of the park has grown from 17 to over 100, and they have been reported as far away as New Plymouth. The sharp rise in the number of Tui in the Wellington area has also been credited to the park.

They were holding a free open weekend for all 'locals' (i.e. people living, or saying they were living, in the Greater Wellington region); unfortunately, we weren't able to make the Saturday, as we had shopping to do, and then had friends over for food and board gaming (a great evening had, much wine drunk!). When we woke up on Sunday morning, the weather looked grey and manky, but not being ones to let a little bit of rain spoil our plans, we still headed out on a train and bus trip across Wellington. As we got closer and closer into town, the rain and the wind picked up - definitely not the nicest of weather to be exploring 30km of walking track...

By the time we actually got to Karori, it was lashing it down, and we were very glad that Zealandia has an indoor exhibition as well as the outside tracks. The exhibition itself was very interesting - they could have arranged the speakers for the various video displays more effectively, but overall it was good fun, and highly informative. Then we ventured out into the wet to see what we could see, and whether there were any birds who would be as foolish as the humans in walking around in the driving rain. The answer was a pretty resounding "No" - aside from a few Tui and a number of ducks, we did get to see a Bellbird feeding (the first time I've seen one, though I've heard a few before), and we ended up at the Kaka feeding posts just in time for their lunch. Though, we did very nearly miss them, as there were two sets of feeding posts, and they decided to dine at the other one, whilst we stood in the rain hopefully gazing at empty bird tables! Fortunately, we gave up just in time, and started heading back to the main centre, and caught the last couple eating.

The food is kept underneath a metal lid, and the birds have to stand on a "trigger" shelf in order to get the lid to open - the trigger is weighted for the Kaka, and is far enough away from the food that the smaller birds can't stand on the trigger and reach the food at the same time. This is to ensure that the Kaka get the majority of the food which is intended for them (particularly important at the moment as it is the breeding season). You can see the Kaka on the left in the second photo opening the lid. However, some of the more intelligent blackbirds have learnt that if they work together, they can eat - one stands on the trigger, and is just about heavy enough to open the lid, and the other nips in and gets the treats!

I also got to see a Tuatara, or rather, its tail. It was sheltering under the trees, and the volunteers were pointing it out for visitors - the spiny tail looked very much like a branch, and I'm pleased to have been able to pick it out. Next time I hope to see the whole reptile!

By this point, we were both pretty much soaked through, and so we headed back to the centre for coffee, cake, and a sit in front of the heaters before we ventured back out on the journey home.

Whilst it wasn't the nicest of days to visit, and we couldn't get up and see the weta cave - an old gold mine which apparently has plenty of these creepy crawlies for us to look at - it was an enjoyable experience (well, I enjoyed it - I think John didn't like getting wet as much as I did!), and we definitely want to go back when the weather is a bit warmer and sunnier.

Just a short one this week...

2010-10-12T21:16:00.006+13:00

We have a house inspection tomorrow (our fourth "six monthly" inspection in a year...), so we have spent a good chunk of this evening cleaning - the oven now gleams (mostly), the windowsills are free of mildew (it's very tough to see how bad they are getting when they are covered with a net curtain all the time), the carpets are vacuumed (though with the brown on brown swirly pattern, it's very difficult to see when they are dirty), and the bathroom is as clean as it is going to get. I wonder what will be picked up as being wrong this time!

We had a great weekend this weekend - we were borrowing a car, so were able to do a massive shop on Saturday, not only at the supermarket, but also going down the road to Petone and buying bulk loads of rice and oil. The rice was great fun - not only did it come in a cloth bag (with a removable plastic inner), which meant that we can reuse it, but it also came with a free spoon. Not, as I had assumed, a scooper or a plastic thing, but a metal dessert spoon (good job we bought two bags - we'll get one each!). It reminded us of the "Shades of Grey" universe created by Jasper Fforde, where everyone has their own spoon that travels with them wherever they go...

On Sunday, the weather wasn't as good as we had hoped, but we still took the car out for a bit of a spin, heading up the coast to Paraparamu, along windy coastal roads, with sharp drops down to the grey and stormy sea below (at some points the waves only just not breaking onto the road itself), stopping off at a chocolate factory (which wasn't as exciting as it looked from the road - the factory part wasn't open, so we could only look through the windows at the silent machinery and purchase from the gift shop (though the manuka honey filled chocolates are delicious)), and then heading back home across country. Along a road which, on the map, looked like it was a reasonable short cut back into the top of Upper Hutt, along the Akatarawa Valley. What the map failed to show was that this was not a particularly wide road (just over a car's width of tarmac, with a slight buffer of gravel on either side). It was also really quite a windy road, with some amazing hair pin bends, and there were enough trees right up against the edge of the road that it was difficult to see if anyone was coming in the other direction (which, due to the aforementioned lack of width to the road, could have made things interesting). Oh, and on one side, there was a very rocky cliff going up, and on the other side, a very deep drop into the valley below... I think that John's knuckles didn't stop being white the whole time! It was particularly nerve-wracking given that we were only borrowing the car, and didn't want to end up with it in an accident, in the middle of nowhere!

We did, however, get to stop half way along at a place called Staglands, which is a nature reserve. They had a cafe which you could get to without having to pay the entry fee (given that the weather wasn't that brilliant, we thought it best to leave exploration of the wildlife park for another day). We had a very nice "Hummingbird" cake, which was a mixture of banana and carrot, with a lovely seeded icing on the top, and my hot chocolate was lovely and rich. The balcony for the cafe backed out onto the reserve, so we were able to look out at the various birds who were feeding from a sugar water mix.

Silvereyes, Blackbirds and Tui were all sharing the food:

There was also a family of peacocks

and this family of ground birds by the car park (I don't know what they are - I will look them up later if I have time)

It was a lovely stop off point, and it was also nice to find that, once we were back on the road, there were only a few more twists and turns before we got back to a road with a white line down the middle and we were out at the top end of Upper Hutt.

Still, the journey, whilst a bit scary at times, has really whetted my appetite for exploring, and I am looking forward to us getting a car of our own so that we can take more trips out and start seeing more of what this country has to offer.

October already!

2010-10-05T20:50:00.002+13:00

Wow - I am having trouble accepting that it is October already. Two and a half weeks until Labour Day (hooray - public holiday!), and then the very slippery slope to Christmas.

I had a great time at orchestra on Monday - still playing first oboe until the real first gets back from holiday next week. Our next concert is going to be a Last Night of the Proms one, and we ran through the Sea Shanties this week. Including the "Home Sweet Home" oboe solo, which is one that I absolutely adore from the LNotP. And I got to play it - I was over the moon! I've enjoyed playing the first oboe solos for the last few weeks - I might have to see if the real first oboe wants to share in the next concert...

The weather has picked up fantastically now - we've had a few days of glorious sunshine, including the weekend, so I took the opportunity to go out for my first real run since we arrived. In fact, my first real run in over a year - the lead up to moving meant that the running really slacked off. I didn't quite manage to make 5K, (running - overall, I covered just over 7, but that included the walk back home) and I was definitely slower than I had been (I managed 33 minutes before my legs overruled my brain and slowed to a walk), but it was really invigorating, and I'm very much looking forward to the next time I can get out. I am going to have to look at getting some new insoles, though - I have a lot of blisters! My legs are also only just starting to forgive me... Part of my run took me back along the Hutt River, and I managed to see two kingfishers as well as an inquisitive silvereye once I'd started walking. It really is a lovely area to run in - either completely flat or gently undulating, and beautiful scenery to run past.

We may get a chance to explore further afield this coming weekend - we are car-sitting for a friend who is holidaying in Oz - it is going to be lovely to get the chance to have wheels underneath us (particularly for the weekly shop - I am really going to be stocking up on the heavy items!)

I'm also very excited - Richard O'Brien is going to be the narrator for the next NZ tour of Rocky Horror, and we've got ourselves tickets for the Friday night. It's going to make it a really fun few weeks - we start with the orchestra concert, then the following weekend we are seeing the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, and then the weekend after that is Rocky. Yays!

Heee!

2010-09-28T21:16:00.003+13:00

Well - the hockey prizegiving on Saturday went very well... That's the first cup I've won since primary school, and it even has my name engraved on it! I'm chuffed to bits.

The rest of the week has been interesting - I worked from home for two days due to a severe sore throat and lost voice - it was amazing how much more productive I was when I didn't have to talk to people or answer emails! The illness did mean that once again I didn't get to TKD - I'm feeling very part time at the moment. I'm looking forward to the warmer weather and a possibility of not being ill quite so often, particularly mid week!

Saturday was very busy, cleaning the house, cooking and generally preparing for John to host the Phoenix Sci-Fi PIG social, while I was off gallivanting at the hockey prizegiving. The idea had been for me to come back in time for the end of PIG, but sadly some colossal muck ups by the train company (like not running the hourly rail replacement bus that I was meant to be catching) meant that I got back a little bit (only 60 or so minutes) later than intended...

That in itself meant that Sunday was a little bit quiet, spent mainly on the sofa catching up on webcomics - very relaxing and much needed!

And it's now less than three months till Christmas - yays!

Mostly photo post...

2010-09-22T21:09:00.006+13:00

Another busy week has just whizzed by. Exciting developments in the greenhouse - I now have three tomato seedlings and a whole load of Pak Choy and basil. Still waiting to see how much of the spinach will survive, though!

Life has been as busy as ever - even with getting my Thursdays and Sundays back, there doesn't seem to be enough time to do everything! We took advantage of having a free Sunday to get in some extra shopping - as well as a little bit more supermarket shopping (it's all very well being green and walking to and from the shops, but it does limit what you can carry home, and how many special offers you can grab in one go!), I had an impulse buy of a new mobile phone - my old one has got to the point where the battery won't last two days, which gets very expensive in electricity in recharging! So, given that one of the electrical shops had a sale on, I am now the owner of a "Hot Pink" (read "80's leotard lycra pink") Nokia. I'm very pleased with it - it isn't a flash "does everything including making the coffee" phone, but it makes phone calls and sends and receives texts, and even has a little radio and MP3 player. And, of course, with the colour, I am never going to misplace it!

We had a great board gaming night on Saturday - the group seems to be getting bigger and bigger every month! Of course, some of my satisfaction did come from winning two out of the three games we played, and one of those was very comprehensively. The Upper Hutt Sci-Fi movie night on Tuesday was Clash of the Titans (the new one). I have to say that I'm glad that I didn't see it in the cinema - I'd have resented paying for it - but as a film to watch with friends, and take the mick out of, it was really good fun. The dialogue was pure cheese, the characters mainly two dimensional (very few of the characters were even named on screen), but it was pure escapism (and still nowhere near as bad as Alexander!)

We had our second rehearsal for the "Last night of the proms" concert - very interesting for me, as neither other oboe was there (co-inciding holidays), and it transpires that in one of the pieces, there are a large chunk of oboe and cor-anglais solos (the cor being cued on the oboe part so that it can be played) - whilst the music itself wasn't too tricky to sight read, the trouble was working out when I'd get a chance to breathe!

The weather has been a bit up and down over the last week or so - we have a day of bright blue skies and sunshine, and then, as with last night, the temperature will suddenly drop - there was snow on the hills around Wellington overnight (it all looked very pretty from a distance, but probably not so nice for my colleague who got stuck on a closed road!). But not as bad as they had "down south" over the weekend - the snow was so heavy that it actually brought down the roof of the Southland Stadium (scroll through the pics for some spectacular shots). Fortunately none of the people inside were hurt when it came down.

So - to prove that Spring really is here - here are some shots of the flowers in the garden:

Here's my mini-hedgerow of trees...

and the bare soil interspersed with little bits of green in the greenhouse - it's actually greener than that now, with seedlings starting to poke their heads through the earth.

And this has amused me for the last few weeks, and I finally managed to get a nice day when I remembered to take the camera out with me - bearing in mind that you can tell the height of the tree by comparing it to the lamp-post next to it, I think that this rather successfully knocks the traditional student cone-on-a-statue trick into a very large cocked hat! (you may need to click on the pic to see the detail...)

Back to work...

2010-09-14T21:19:00.002+13:00

Well, the week off disappeared with frightening speed. I got a lot accomplished - all of my seeds planted out, either in pots or directly into the ground. I have a feeling that the green fuzz showing above the soil in the corner of the greenhouse is more likely to be weeds than my bok choy, but I can live in hope! Unfortunately, they all look the same at seedling level, so I'll have to wait for them to get a bit bigger before deciding whether to uproot or not. Pics may come next week when there may be something more to show than bare soil! I also managed to relax a lot - it was so nice to get the chance to completely switch off.

We did a huge walk on Saturday going round car yards in Lower Hutt - we hadn't meant to walk as far as we did, but ended up going for about 2 hours. We just got back to the front door when it started raining - perfect timing! We then had a friend round for an evening of board gaming - which ended up going till gone 2 in the morning! Then up early for the weekly Skype call home - I'm actually really pleased that I got up, as the Daffodil Express steamed past just after 9 am - it's a once a year event, with a steam train taking passengers from Wellington to Carterton for their annual daffodil festival. Tickets are a bit pricey ($70 / person return), but not bad for a 2 hour train trip. May be something to think about for future years!

Of course, back to work with a bump - I definitely chose the right week to have off, as I came back to a plethora of group emails about the Christchurch earthquake - it sounds like it was absolutely manic for the whole week. Part of me is a little sad that I missed out on it all, but I'm not *that* upset! I'm now looking forward to our next public holiday, which is Labour Day at the end of October. Then the downhill slope to Christmas!

We've also had a teeny splurge - we've picked ourselves up a nice second hand PC. It's not even close to top spec, but it was very cheap (and obviously, now kept out of landfill for a few more years), and will do for John to be able to scan and edit his drawings, for us to be able to access our terabyte drive (for some reason, when plugged into the Linux netbooks, we could read it, but not write to it), a number of the DVDs which friends have sent us over the last few months (most of which the Linux system decided didn't exist), and for me to be able to play my Windows based PC games.

Week off...

2010-09-08T17:22:00.006+13:00

Half way through the week off - I had intended to blog sooner than this - sorry!

Our chocolate session on our anniversary was good fun - 45 mins of questions around the Butler's Chocolate brand, and how we thought it could be improved, then fifteen minutes or so of trying out different types of their block chocolate (sadly, none of their truffles, which would have been gorgeous!), and we got paid for the privilege! Some of the money went straight away on to a lovely anniversary curry - a great way of celebrating three years of marriage.

The rest of the week was amazingly busy at work as I tried to make sure that everything was in order for taking a week off. Fortunately I left with most things complete, and I'm reasonably confident of coming back to not too large a pile of paperwork on Monday!

Then, Saturday, we woke up to the news that the Canterbury region, and Christchurch, had suffered a huge earthquake. Whilst quakes are reasonably common in NZ, this one is the strongest one since the Napier quake in 1931. Fortunately, whereas in 1931, over 250 people died, this week, only three people were seriously injured, and (as far as I am aware - I can't see any reports) none of those were fatally. We were able to check on our friends who live down in the Christchurch area, and, though they have structural damage to their buildings, they were unhurt. The damage that has been done is huge, and it is going to take a long time to pick up the pieces, but things could have been far, far worse. We were very lucky that the quake hit overnight (4.30 in the morning), which meant that there weren't large numbers of people around to be hit by debris, or being inside buildings when they collapsed.

There's an interesting video from the GNS showing the now visible fault line:

It's going to take a long time to clear up the mess, and my heart goes out to all of those who have been affected.

The rest of this week, so far, has been pretty quiet - I'm enjoying not being in work, and have taken the time to potter in the greenhouse.

As the broccoli had started to flower

and Spring has definitely arrived (we have seen both Monarch and Red Admiral butterflies this weekend), John and I hiked over to our local garden centre and I went shopping... We came back with: a lemon tree (bought with birthday vouchers from friends), onion sets, bok choy seeds, tomato seeds and peanut seeds (the latter two being "patio kits" which included the pots to put them in). Plus compost to fill my pots up for potting up my feijoa, olive and chilli bush, and to plant out chilli, capsicum and luffa seeds.

So now, the broccoli is all gone (I made soup with the last of it this afternoon), I have planted in rows the spinach seedlings which seeded themselves from last Easter's batch, most of the onions are in the ground, the various other seeds are in pots, and I just have the bok choy to go! Now I have to remain patient and not want to keep on checking them to see whether I have any patches of green above the surface. And, I suspect, my fight with the oxalis will start again now that the broccoli isn't spread all over the soil...

John and I also took a trip up to the car yards of Upper Hutt. Now that I have finally transferred our money out of our UK bank account (the exchange rate wasn't amazing, but it was the best it had been since Easter, and the interest rate over here is far better!), we are going to get some wheels underneath us. Tuesday was just a recce trip, to get an idea of prices (we had been offered a car up in Palmerston North for $5,000, but that's quite a way to go on public transport just to see a car - we wouldn't have any idea of whether we liked it until we took it for a test drive); and there are a number within our price range. We aren't going to rush into it, having been badly stung before, we'd rather be a bit more cautious and make sure we are happy before we buy (and will definitely be taking any warranty that is offered!)

An amazing weekend

2010-08-31T21:01:00.002+13:00

Yet another very busy week; sadly, not out as much as I had hoped, as I suffered a recurrence of the allergic reaction (with now no idea of what could have caused it - I had avoided all the things which I had believed to be the triggers before...) - fortunately, this time, I recognised what was happening much sooner, and was able to get enough antihistamines inside of me to stop me turning into a Star Trek extra again (it would have been good timing, with the National NZ SF Convention this weekend...!) Sadly, though, it meant that I couldn't go to TKD - I didn't want to scare the children!

Fortunately, as I'd been able to "quiet" the reaction, I was able to head to hockey on Thursday, which was very important, as, despite my doom and gloom in my last post, we did actually make it through to the semi-finals, on goal difference. (a very good ego boos as a goalie!) We had a really good practice, with a good turnout, which was excellent for team morale. Sadly, the semi finals were our last match, as we got knocked out 2-1. But give that we were one stage further along than we had originally thought, and we were without a number of key players (including yours truly...), we did very well!

I wasn't at the hockey match because it was the weekend of the orchestra workshop. The weeks of preparation for Shostakovich 5 were all aiming towards three very intensive days of playing and socialising with musicians from all over the country.

We started on the Friday night, and I had the immensely satisfying experience of walking across Wellington's Central Business District (about 20 mins) to the pub that I'd 'nominated' for my supper (by virtue of having a 20% off voucher) without having to do more than a cursory glance at a map at the beginning of the route. This may not sound like a big deal, but for anyone who has seen me go into a shop and then turn the wrong way when I come out, it is a fairly fundamental feat of navigation. And I only needed to check the map for getting from dinner to the school where we were playing at the final stages. It is such a great feeling, knowing that the city is starting to 'click' - I'm nowhere near 100%, even in the small CBD, particularly when people navigate me by shop names, but I am getting there.

The first evening was a play through of the whole symphony - whilst our orchestra has been rehearsing in preparation, for a number of the musicians, this was their first chance to see the music, so it was a sight reading rehearsal for a lot of them.

Saturday was rehearsing in earnest - after an initial play through, we split off into our instrumental sections, and had a morning's tuition from musicians from the NZ Symphony Orchestra. This was a fantastic experience - just to be able to chat with someone who plays the oboe for a living, get hints and tips from her, and to learn that even professional players struggle with some of the nastier passages, was worth the workshop fee! We then merged the oboe and bassoon groups into a double reed workshop, and in the final sectional session, we merged all of the woodwind section. This let us build up the woodwind parts of the whole symphony, and really gave me an in depth understanding of the music before we rejoined the rest of the orchestra for a final play through of the day. And the difference between the morning and afternoon "Tutti" rehearsal was astounding - it was difficult to believe that just one day would make that much difference to the sound we were making. It felt like we were 'concert ready' at that point, and the rest of the rehearsals would just be icing on the cake.

The evening was spent with a social event; a quiz, food, and lots of laughter - really good fun.

Sunday was another intensive morning and half afternoon of rehearsals as a full orchestra, ready for playing the finished work to friends and family mid-afternoon. The final concert went really well, after a slightly shaky start (we had a few counting issues, probably a result of a weekend of intense concentration!). The music just flowed so well, and, even as a performer, it took my breath away. The third movement, the Largo, is believed by some to be a requiem for those who died under Stalin's regime, and the mournful theme which recurs throughout (starting off in one of the most haunting oboe solos - next time we play this, I want to have a go!!) really brought that idea home to me. The ending of the movement, where the theme is picked up by the harps and the celeste, actually brought tears to my eyes!

Overall, the whole experience was mind blowing - extremely exhausting, but such an incredible learning curve, and such fun! I can't wait for next year...

After the concert, I headed back into Wellington, as John, who had elected to go to the Science Fiction convention instead, had let me know that a group of them were planning to go out for a curry for supper, and did I want to join them? Not being one to turn down an invitation like that, I met up with them all at the convention hotel, and we had a great meal at the Balti House, which served up one of the best peshawari naan breads I have ever eaten! After the meal, I snuck in to the final two events at the convention, the presentation of the Sir Julius (thank you John...) Vogel awards (the NZ Sci-Fi and Fantasy awards), which was great fun (and we knew four of the winners), and the closing ceremony.

This week is already shaping up to be busy - work is as manic as ever, John and I have a wonderful way of celebrating our third wedding anniversary on Wednesday; we have managed to wangle our way onto a chocolate testing survey at our local Butler's - we have an hour and a half to do taste testing and give our opinions, *and* we get paid for it! No hockey on Thursday, but I'm out on Friday at a colleague's leaving do.

Then, gloriously, I have a week off - with Spring already here (there is yellow pollen along the edges of the pavements, the daffodils have been out since the weekend, and a large number of bushes have flowered already), I want to have a good go at the greenhouse and get seeds in. I probably won't do broccoli again this year; whilst it has been lovely to be able to eat fresh broccoli most weeks, the plant does take up rather a lot of space in the greenhouse! I think I will be buying my seeds based on the plants not trying to take over when my back is turned!

Highs and Lows

2010-08-22T19:12:00.003+13:00

Wow! Well, as I said earlier, it as been a very busy fortnight. I've been out most evenings - my fault for trying to cram too much in!

Work has been excellent - I have completed a major project, with the final sign off happening on Friday. It has taken a lot of effort over the last six months, not just from me, but from a lot of people across different departments (I have been given permissions to play around with time-sheet reporting to analyse just how much work has been done on it!), and, with the ink not yet dry on the signature sheet, we are already seeing the benefit of it. A very satisfying end to the week!

Hockey has definitely been on the down side of the highs and lows of the fortnight - we lost last week, and should have won this week, but the other team scored off of a foul (they kicked the ball, and then scored) - the ref was looking directly at it, and claimed that she didn't see anything. We definitely played the best we had for a long time today, so not a great finish to the season (with the draw, we won't get through to the finals). All very disappointing, given how well we started the year.

Tae Kwon Do, on the other hand, is going from strength to strength. It transpires that the examiners at the last grading weren't very impressed with the Wellington clubs as a whole, particularly with their power and technique. So there is a change of ethos within the club, and we are doing a lot more work on those critical areas, which means that the training sessions are much more of a workout, and, from my point of view, a lot more fun (I think that some of the other members may beg to differ, looking at how tired people were by the end of the session!). My knuckles have just about forgiven me for the pounding I gave them on the pads on Wednesday... There's also another club member, who has been off sick for a while, who is at my level, and is also hoping to grade at the next examining session, so I think we are going to be working very closely together.

Orchestra has been fun - we only have one rehearsal left before the workshop next weekend. I've finally taken the plunge and bought some new reeds - I was very impressed with how quickly they arrived, but I haven't really had a chance to test them out - first time playing them will be tomorrow!

We have had two board gaming sessions over the last fortnight - we had friends over to supper last week, and went over to another sci-fi member's house last night. I learnt two new games, one at each session, and really enjoyed both of them (despite not winning either...). Yesterday was also the "Book Sale Day" for the Wellington Mission - a charity book sale where they take over an exhibition venue in order to sell off books for $2 (given that a new book will sell from anything from $30-70, and even second hand can set you back $7-20, you can imagine how popular this was!). John and I took our bags down and spent nearly $100 between us, and were then travelling round the rest of the day laden with books.

Our big excitement of this week was taking part in Wellington's food festival, Wellington on a Plate. We had bought tickets for "Dr Grordbort's Venusian Hunting Party", an evening of entertainment by the Weta team and very high class food at a local restaurant. If you have not come across the Dr Grordbort universe before, this comes under the sci-fi sub-genre of "steam punk". Effectively looking at futuristic scenarios, but set from an Edwardian or Victorian viewpoint. So, corsets and laser guns, clockwork rockets and solar topees. The Dr Grordbort universe is specifically focused on Empire expansion, but out on Venus and the Moon. The weapon of choice is the laser gun, either the Pomson 6000

or the Righteous Bison

We got to play with the pretty toys (and managed to avoid blowing anyone's head off...), and also meet the geniuses behind them, from Greg Broadmore, the designer (who also was the lead designer for "District 9") to Tom, the general manager, Warren, who is one of the team who actually builds the guns and models from the designs that Greg comes up with, Ann, who runs the Weta Cave, and who organised the event, and, for a brief period, Richard Taylor, who is the head of the whole company. I might have done a teeny little fan-girl style "Squeee!" when he came in through the door. But I was very quiet and I don't think anyone noticed... It was a fantastic evening, and I am already looking forward to doing it again next year!

Placeholder post...

2010-08-19T12:00:00.001+13:00

I know, I know - I'm a bad blogger! Things have been astoundingly busy over the last couple of weeks - I promise I will get a proper post up on Sunday afternoon which will include social highs, sporting highs (and lows) and our evening out with some of the Weta crew (with photos).

But needless to say, things are going very well, and I am still slightly reeling from rushing past both our 9 month in NZ milestone and my 6 months at the Ministry. I'm not sure where the time has gone!

2010-08-08T22:42:00.002+13:00

It has definitely been a busy week! There wasn't much chance to stop and breathe until Friday evening, either at work or in my leisure time.

We had a good Shostakovich rehearsal – I'm starting to get really excited about the workshop weekend, which is only three weeks away now. It's going to be great fun – the music is already starting to come together, and after a whole weekend of playing, I think that the concert on the Sunday afternoon is going to sound fantastic.

Our Upper Hutt Sci-Fi meeting on Tuesday was really interesting – we had a good discussion on politics in Sci-Fi, which didn't end up in any sort of argument! I really enjoy the chats that we have – they are very wide ranging and cover most different types of SF; books, films, TV and graphic novels, and I'll always come away with ideas for new things which I really ought to get round to reading at some point!

Tae Kwon Do on Wednesday was brilliant. Some of the junior belts are grading this week, so the first hour was putting them through their paces, including a good half hour of fitness (I finally felt out of breath after the warm-up!). The second half, after the juniors left was a huge amount of self defence. The NZ TKD uses self defence a lot more in training than the UK TKD, to the extent that it is tested in grading from almost the start, whereas in the UK it isn't tested at all. So I have a lot to learn with this, and Wednesday's lesson was excellent for that. It was absolutely exhausting – we were doing “take-downs”, which involve using your legs to scissor your opponent, and then the momentum to finish the attack. However, doing that for an hour does put a lot of strain on the leg muscles, particularly the thighs – I've only just been able to walk properly again today!

Hockey on Thursday was ok – however, it would have been nice for the practice to have carried through into today's game, which we lost 3-2. Rather sadly, we were just out-played (and frustratingly by a team which we beat very well last time) – they had three very good break-away runs down the pitch, and they ended up with three on one and two on one in the goal, and there was not very much I could do about it! We spent a lot of time up their end of the pitch, but just couldn't convert to goals (thought to be fair, their goal keeper was very good)

The weekend, by contrast, has been a little bit more relaxing. Aside from food shopping, and hockey this evening, we've managed to keep it very low key. Lots of Dr Who watching (John has been getting plenty of old Whos out of the library), and some real brain de-gunking on silly internet games. Much needed, particularly as the next few weekends are going to be very busy (in a good way, of course!)

We had some sad news this week, too. Our neighbour, Shirley, died after a brief illness. I was a little bit shocked about it, not only because we hadn't realised that she had been ill, but because I had just been thinking that it had been a while since we saw her (the last couple of times we'd popped round to redeliver mail or to check our meter, she'd been asleep, which apparently was a symptom of her illness), and that I ought to pop round for a chat and take her some baking. But at least she had her family with her - her son and daughter-in-law came over from Australia to be at her side.

So, all very sad, but it could have been a lot worse. And it does mean we will be getting new neighbours at some point - Shirley's son has said that they will be selling her house as it would be very difficult for him to be a landlord from Australia. Sadly, we aren't yet in the position to be able to buy, but it will be interesting to see what her house does sell for, as it will give us a better idea of the range that we will be looking at when we do finally get ourselves into the market.

A quick update...

2010-08-01T19:01:00.003+13:00

As it looks like I'm not going to get a chance to blog this week (out every night up to Friday), I thought I'd get updated whilst I can...

It's been an interesting few days since I last blogged - very stressful at work, with trying to get people (who have their own priorities and tasks) to see that what I'm asking them to do shouldn't be relegated to the bottom of the to-do pile! But I managed to leave on Friday having got one major thing accomplished (with a few hours to go before the drop-deadline), and a reasonable way through another one. Plus the possibility that I may be able to take a few days off at the beginning of September to play in the greenhouse and get everything ready for Spring.

Friday night I had a little trip out with some of my colleagues, celebrating a birthday. We went to a trendy pub on the Waterfront, and were sat outside, looking out at the water whilst the sun set. Given that we weren't in August by that point (so, for northern hemisphere readers, still in the equivalent of January), I was really rather impressed! I did have to put my coat back on after the sun went down, and was very glad of the space heaters, but overall, it was a lovely feeling.

The journey back home that evening was interesting - I have signed up to a text messaging service from the train company which alerts me to any issues on the line that I travel on. As I got to the station, my phone buzzed, and the text told me that there were delays of up to an hour, due to "an incident" somewhere between Petone and Taita. Given that Waterloo is pretty much in the middle of those two stations, I was not hopeful of a decent journey back! Fortunately, my train was on the platform, even if the departure board just had "delayed" for the departure time, so I was at least able to sit in the warm. With about five minutes to go before the train was due to leave, my phone buzzed again, and the updated text said that the delay was now 30 minutes. The train did leave on time (which made me glad that I hadn't hopped off to pick myself up a chocolate bar!), and, after checking for tickets, the guard then wandered back through the train saying that, although we were currently running to time, the "incident" was a gas leak at Waterloo (my immediate thought being relief that it wasn't an "incident" as I understood it from many years of travelling on the UK trains, which is usually used in conjunction with the word "fatality"...), and there were five trains ahead of us on the line, so it was likely to be a slow journey. I had been keeping John up to date with the news (huzzah for having a phone at last!), and so was able to warn him that I was likely to be a bit late. However, the journey was smooth, and we didn't spend any time stopped between stations waiting for a signal light to change. For all the dire warnings, we arrived at Waterloo only five minutes later than timetabled - not a bad improvement on the hour that I'd originally anticipated!

Saturday was great fun - we had a relaxing morning - one of my colleagues has given me the first half of the Dr Who finale (which I missed due to hockey) on memory stick, and has also, as an added bonus, given the second half, and the first episode of Sherlock, about which I have heard many good things. The slight downside is that it was recorded as a Windows .avi, and the Media Player that we have on the Linux netbooks is missing a critical codec, meaning that it can play the sound, but not the picture. So, I spent a lot of Thursday evening trying to fix the issue, and then a very kind friend in the UK was up till very late BST (gone half past 12) trying to find the answer. I have the downloaded files now, but have not yet had a chance to install them...

Then off to the shops for our weekly food shopping, and back home for lunch and for baking in preparation for PIG SIG. A very jolly evening was had - very enjoyable chatting - discussions ranging from computer based geekery, to Bab5 and Buffy, to Time Team, and various other historical shows. And then the other random nonsense which does fill the evening - great fun! We were only up the road this time, so were able to walk back (the last bus was the bus we took to get up there at 7:00!) - the air was clear, and there was only a slight chilly breeze up in the hills to tell us that it was still Winter.

And then we woke up this morning to find that it had all, as the brilliant saying goes, turned to custard. Flanders and Swann got it exactly right with "August cold and dank and wet, Brings more rain than any yet." There were definitely ice crystals in the rain as I stood on the hockey pitch! At least our dedication and efforts were rewarded with an excellent game played and a 3-1 win (and I'm still cross about that 1, as I should not have let it in!)

A nice hot shower later, and we then had a friend from the Upper Hutt Sci-Fi group come over, and we have had a very pleasant afternoon chatting about Sci-Fi.

And now, after complaining last week that we wouldn't have anything left to watch now that Dr Who has finished, we have found out about an NZ Sci-Fi show, called "This is Not My Life", which plays on Thursday, and repeats on Sunday. The first episode was, according to reports, very good, so we are going to give it a go this evening.

To finish - the below poster was on one of the noticeboards at work - I absolutely loved it, and felt that I had to share it with you! (You may need to click on it to see it properly)

Whoops!

2010-07-28T22:45:00.002+13:00

Not sure where that last week went - I think I blinked and missed it!

We had a brilliant Board Gaming session on Saturday - I even managed to win one of the more strategical games (but I think that was a fluke!) as well as one of the easier tactical ones.

Hockey was not quite so good on Sunday - both sides ended up sending people off injured, and if I was able to see the barging (from the opposition, of course...), half way up the field *after* one of my contact lenses had fallen out, I'm not sure how the ref missed it... The 1-1 draw was respectable - I'm cross about letting the goal in, but conversely, our attack had many more missed chances to score.

But at least I got to see the Dr Who finale afterwards as consolation (I still haven't seen the first half of that, but never mind...). Not sure what we will do for Sunday evening entertainment now, though - both the Dr Who and the history of NZ TV which followed it have now finished...

Monday's orchestra was a good chance to practice counting - the Shostakovich begins with a slow string section, and a lot of time was spent on that before we got near the woodwind! (Poor John was a lot worse off - he had 187 bars rest before his first cymbal crash - he brought a book...)

Tuesday's evening in was filled with watching The Space Museum, a Billy Hartnell 4 part Dr Who story, which John had managed to get the Hutt City Library to buy in for us (they are incredibly accommodating in their requests, and have bought the three things that John has requested very quickly!)

And now we are at Wednesday, and I've had another hour of TKD. I am still playing catch up and trying to shake off six months of inactivity, but it is slowly coming back (I hope!). I'm still making plenty of mistakes, which is a little embarrassing, but I will get there, and as I'm not anticipating doing any grading for at least the next six months, I've got enough time to get back on form!

Catching up!

2010-07-22T20:39:00.002+13:00

I'm aware that it's getting later and later in the week when I finally manage to get a post up - I'm having to juggle quite a few nights out, and when I have an evening off, it is usually difficult to get my brain together to get my thoughts down on screen. (I write plenty of blog posts on the train in my head that are gone by the time I get into Wellington!)

So apologies for the delay this week - I've got Thursday off from hockey as I've just finished a two day training course, and decided that I couldn't get in later than I normally would on a Thursday, with a dead brain, eat, get changed and get out in under an hour!

It has been another busy week - the hockey match on Sunday was late (7pm on the other side of Wellington), which meant that I missed Dr Who (booo!) We didn't play particularly well, either, which was very disappointing, and we lost 1-0. This means that we have to win all of our remaining games in order to have a chance of getting to the finals (tricky, but not impossible; I am a bit sad that I am going to be missing the semi-finals, though - it clashes with the orchestra Shostakovich 5 weekend)

We started rehearsing the Shostakovich this week - we are preparing for a weekend long workshop with tutors from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - I'm very excited about it (and only a trifle miffed that it means that I can't go to Au Contraire, the NZ national Sci-Fi convention. John has opted to go to Au Contraire instead...). It is an interesting piece of music, and ranges from very difficult chromatics and jumps to some lovely, much easier and more tonal, sections, often within a few bars of each other.

Tuesday we had the Upper Hutt Sci-Fi film night, and this time we watched a film which John had had recommended to him, called "Man from Earth" by Jerome Bixby. It was an amazing piece. Almost the whole play is set in one room, and it is essentially the same 8 actors talking, for 87 minutes. The premise is very simple - a university professor has resigned unexpectedly, and his colleagues (all scientists/professors with different backgrounds) show up to throw him a goodbye party. When they press him for a reason as to why he is leaving, he tells them that he is actually a Cro-Magnon man who has lived for 14,000 years and who has to keep moving to stop people realising that he doesn't age. The rest of the story is his friends reactions to his revelations, both professionally and emotionally. It is a really simple premise, but the execution of it is just absolutely beautiful. I would really recommend it to anyone - it brings Sci-Fi away from special effects and big budgets, and pulls it back to the cerebral (some of the light hearted parts of the film felt a lot like some of the Sci-Fi chats that we had, particularly at university - throwing an idea into the air and seeing where it would land).

I had another TKD session this week - I've actually managed to have two in a row now! Last week's was very intense, and the instructor was away, and the assistant instructor took the class instead. He has a very different style to the instructor - I did a lot more press-ups last week! This week's session was very focused on form - we spent half the lesson practising circular blocks. I still have a long way to go just to pull myself back to the standard that I was at in November - I have fallen into some very bad habits :-(

I've even managed to do a bit of knitting this week - at this rate, my cardigan will be finished by midsummer!

More relaxed (photo heavy!)

2010-07-13T23:01:00.018+13:00

This last week has been a little more relaxed than the previous, not so much at work (though I was able to take Friday afternoon off in lieu of the time worked on Sunday; however, when I totted up my hours for the week, even without working Friday afternoon, I was still only 20 minutes off working my contracted hours for the week anyway!), but in my non-work time, I unexpectedly found that I had more time to spare than normal.

Monday we didn't have orchestra, as we are in our 'post concert holiday' (coinciding with the school midwinter holiday when a good number of people go away skiing), so I took the opportunity to make a large batch of pumpkin curry (and washed it down with an even bigger gin to knock away the effects of the all day meeting!)

Tuesday was our Upper Hutt main Sci-Fi meeting, which was great fun. We had a round table discussion of the books we'd read and TV/Films we'd watched over the past month, and I was able to join in a bit more this month thanks to the number of sci-fi books I'd got for my birthday, plus, having been lent the fourth book in the Foundation series (Isaac Asimov), I really had to read the first three (I'd only ever read the first, and that was a very long time ago) to get myself up to speed. (the same chap who lent me the fourth has passed over the fifth, and I've devoured that one as well - twenty minutes in each direction on the train every day is sometimes not enough when the train pulls into the station at the cliffhanger point of the chapter!) We then had a discussion of series and serials within Sci-fi (using the Foundation as a starting point, as Asimov started writing it as a series for a magazine) - very interesting!

The Wednesday evening was supposed to be TKD, but, after walking 25 minutes with the wind and rain soaking my back, I got to the hall to be met by the instructor who said that the school was doing some electrical work, and there was no power! So - 25 minutes walk back again, this time with the wind and rain in my face - I was very wet when I got in!

Then Thursday, I had a text whilst at work from the hockey coach saying that as it was so wet and windy, he was cancelling training for the seconds team. As I train with the firsts as well (staying in goal the whole session), I had a lot of backwards and forwards with my contact on the firsts team, trying to find out whether there would still be a session for me to go to with them. After being reassured a number of times that it was definitely on, the training was cancelled as I was about to walk out of the door to get the train! (Could have been worse - it could have been cancelled when I got *on* the train!)

Friday was our normal evening in, and the relaxation for me was extended by having the aforementioned afternoon off. I spent some of it browsing the Wellington shops (going into the more upmarket clothes shops is a fun way of spending some time, though I wasn't so sure about the children's entertainer who was singing off-key with a slightly out of tune guitar!), and then about half an hour having a lunchtime soup whilst staring out at the harbour

Our hockey match was on Saturday this week rather than Sunday, so poor John was left to do the food shopping by himself as I headed up to Silverstream, where I was then picked up by the coach and taken all the way up the Kapiti coast to Paraparamu. The match itself was an absolute nailbiter. We took a while to get into our stride, and the opposing team managed to score (though the penalty/short corner that they were given shouldn't have been given against us, and the goal wasn't technically a goal, either (it was too high over the backboard), but we aren't allowed to complain about the ref's decisions - we'll leave that to the footballers!) reasonably early into the first half. We had so many chances to score throughout the game - it kept on skimming past, bouncing off the post, or being saved by their very able goalie - as I didn't have a huge amount to do in the second half but watch the team playing up around the opposing goal, my blood pressure kept on going up as the minutes ticked by - we couldn't afford to lose again, as our position at second in the table is only held by one point. Then, with 15 minutes to go, we equalised with a brilliant goal, and I'd resigned myself to a draw. Because it was cold, our coach was doing a lot of regular substitutions, and one of these ended up with our sweeper playing a lot further up the field than she usually did. And, with less than a minute to go before the final whistle, she managed to score - an absolute thwack of a goal, too! So - almost the opposite of last week's game, both in score-line, and in the timing of the goals, but we definitely deserved to win this won. Not many games left before the end of the season now - and our position is definitely not secure - we are one point below the team at the top of the table, and the rest of the matches have not yet been updated, so I don't know how closely the rest of the pack is snapping at our heels!

But, with both Saturday and Sunday activities taking place on Saturday, we had a nice clear day stretching in front of us, which is a real novelty at the moment. We had already arranged to Skype a friend, which was brilliant (it is just as surreal to see bright evening sunshine in the UK now as it was to see snow outside when we were basking in 25+ C heat in the middle of winter!), and I was also able to catch my aunt online just before she headed to bed.

It was a glorious day - almost springlike in feel, with clear blue skies and a sun which was warm once you got into it (though the shade was a very different matter!), and as I'd not been up to the scenic reserve since before I started work, I decided that it was the perfect day for a walk.

One of the big differences between the UK and NZ winters isn't the cold (it is actually warmer than the UK winter, but due to the lack of insulation both at home and at work, feels a lot colder), or the wind and rain (I complain about the necessity for starting to build an ark, but again, it probably isn't as bad as a typical UK November), but the trees. New Zealand does have its share of deciduous trees, which have shed their leaves:

but far more evergreens

and, even in the depths of winter, some bushes and trees are still flowering

This meant that the walk through the Reserve had a very different feel to it than going through a UK woods. Yes, it was wet and muddy

and the mini waterfalls that run through most of the lower levels were a bit fuller than they were over the summer

but otherwise there wasn't a hugely different feel to the Reserve than when I'd been walking a few months earlier. The birds were out in force, enjoying the sun as well; the Kerukeru, the Tui, the Piwikawa, the Silvereye and the Grey Warbler, all filling the air with their different songs. There wasn't the "quietened down for the winter" feel at all. In fact, the Reserve was actually busier with walkers than when I was walking over the summer - possibly because everyone was determined to get out and enjoy the sunshine while it lasted!

I made it up onto the fire break, which was actually nicer to walk on than by the end of the summer - the path wasn't as slippery underfoot thanks to the rain dampening down the dust. In fact, it was clear to see where the rain had fallen and gouged out deep ruts in the path.

The air was incredibly clear from the top of the hills, and in one direction, I could see all the way across to the Rimutakas

(sadly, the zoom on my camera isn't as good as my eyes - you will have to imagine the snow topped mountains in the distance there!)

and on the other, I could see all the way across Lower Hutt and over to Wellington

(I get to go round the curve of that bay every morning on the train)

I even managed to stop and watch a couple of Silvereyes feeding on the flowering gorse - they were very intent on what they were doing, but still managed to hide themselves away from the camera (this was the best snap they let me take!)

My round trip up the Reserve and then back down the firebreak took me about 2 1/2 hours, and I was still home before 2:00 - I had time to make some cookies for our neighbours (who had sent round a fish pie earlier in the week), and we went over there for a late afternoon chat. When we got back, I was able to make a chicken pie for supper, some jam tarts for after (with the leftover pastry and some of the jam that they sent us back with!), and still had time to watch Dr Who. A very relaxing end to the weekend!

And - as a final couple of photos before I sign off for the week - I managed to finally remember to take my camera in to work on a good day, and can give you a couple of snaps of the view that I see every day (bear in mind that the camera has issues focussing through glass)

This is the Interislander ferry coming in to port - the building in the foreground is the central train station, and you can see the Rimutakas with their snow in the distance.

This is the sunset - the sun going down behind the office sets the hills in front of it alight with a pink glow.

There are worse places to work! Though I have to admit that I jealously guard my desk that has this view - most other people in the building are not this lucky!

Busy week!

2010-07-05T21:41:00.004+13:00

It seems like I haven't stopped since I last posted - really a week ago?

It has been a manic week - fortunately with no lasting effects from the health scare (apart from slight jitters any time my head itches!). I haven't had a chance to get the doctor's appointment sorted out - I still need to send off the forms to sign up to the surgery, but I need to give them a call before I do, to make sure that if I do sign up, they will actually be able to fit me in reasonably soon to do the allergy tests, otherwise I'll look a little further afield!

Work has been insane, preparing for a major meeting which happened today (and all went as well as could be expected). I've put in a lot of extra hours, and am hoping to be able to get some time off in lieu for it all!

The Sci-Fi group had a Mini-Convention at the weekend, which was brilliant fun - a great chance to get together and chat about anything and everything (and occasionally a bit of Sci-Fi) - a really relaxing afternoon. (and the idea of going out to Dominos and getting 20-odd boxes of pizza for lunch was just pure genius!)

We couldn't stay for the whole event, though, as we had to get back up the train tracks and out to St James' Church for our second orchestra concert. The repertoire for this was really wide ranging - as well as "The Unanswered Question" (which I moaned about a few weeks ago), we had various bits of jazz (including Gershwin, plus a solo singer), light music (including a rather fun piece called "The Parade of the Sandwich-board Men" (sadly, no links on YouTube, or anywhere else that I can find, but it's definitely worth listening out for), and a medley from "Chicago".

We also had a surprise sprung on us - at the end of the sound check, our conductor announced that we were going to add a new piece to the concert, which we had not rehearsed, and which was not in the programme.

Whilst it was originally a piano piece, he had it scored for orchestra, and was sure that we would be able to play it just fine.

This piece was 4'33".

I really enjoyed it as a piece - I'm not sure whether the audience was quite as appreciative (though they did all clap at the end!), but it made me realise how little we actually stop to listen and to think (probably the only other time we actually have that level of enforced silence when we are in a social group is during the Remembrance celebrations). Interestingly, there was very little shuffling, coughing or whispering during the performance - it really did feel still and quiet.

And, of course, the fact that we could play the piece perfectly helped! ;-)

Sunday was equally busy - our hockey game didn't go as well as it should have done, as the opposing team scored the winning goal with less than 30 seconds on the clock. A great shame as we were dominating the match for most of it, and were just unable to get past their excellent goalkeeper. It didn't help that one of our wings got sent to hospital 15 minutes before the end, either (suspected broken finger), as, understandably, our concentration was broken, and we were also a person down on the field! (I don't know whether she is ok yet, though - have to wait till Thursday). So, a moral victory (we really *should* have won!) even if we don't get the points for it! Unfortunately, the loss means that we are now firmly placed at second, with three teams tied in third place snapping at our heels! If the tournament continues through the second half in the same vein as this, then it is going to be incredibly close!

The one thing that did make the losing a little more bearable was that the weekend was absolutely gorgeous, weather-wise. The sun came out, and, once the chill of the morning had worn off, it was really warm. When I got back from the hockey match and had my shower, I ended up putting on shorts and a t-shirt to potter round the greenhouse in! I did have to put a jumper back on after about 3.00 when the sun started disappearing off the house, but for those few hours, it was just lovely. The Tui were out in force around the hockey pitch, almost drowning out the refs' whistles with their song!

The good weather isn't going to last, I know (nasty front moving down from Auckland!), but it was wonderful to have just that one weekend where we were reminded that the sun is still there and it will be bringing the Spring with it one day soon.

Testing out the NZ Health Care System

2010-06-29T19:29:00.005+13:00

Hmmm - it has been an interesting few days! Whilst the usual bits and pieces were going on (more of which later...), I've also managed to suffer a fairly nasty allergic reaction to *something*. I have mutated from human to Klingon to doing a passable impression of Odo from Deep Space 9.

It comes to something when you can look like an extra from a sci-fi series without any sort of makeup!

After trying over the counter antihistamines (from a lovely pharmacist who really took the time to explain what she was selling me, and why it was the best one - and the fact that it was the cheapest had nothing to do with it!), and waking up the next morning with the swelling *worse* rather than better, I decided that it was probably time for me to visit a doctor.

Unfortunately, one of the jobs that I had been putting off was signing up for a GP! It meant that at 7.30 this morning (after letting my colleagues know that I wasn't going to be in), I had to try and work out which Health Board our area of the Hutt Valley falls under, and then try to find the closest doctor to us. And then see if they had spaces. Unfortunately, unlike the NHS, you can't be certain that when you need to go to a doctor, that they will have space to see you (they are only funded for a certain number of patients - when they reach that limit, it is at their discretion as to whether to take you on).

Fortunately, the closest doctor to us also happens to be the newest, and they are only about half way to their quota.

Unfortunately (this is turning into a game of Good News/Bad News, isn't it?), what they didn't have was an appointment for today for me to actually see the doctor. So, the very helpful receptionist (who called me back five minutes after I left an answerphone message for them - the one and only time I left an answerphone message for our doctor in Bristol, it took them over a day to get back to me!) gave me a freephone number for a nurse, and also the address of a walk in centre in Wellington which I could just go to without an appointment.

After a brief chat with the nurse (who did a check that I wasn't suffering anaphylaxis), she suggested that I did go to the walk in centre (a bit of a pain given that it is a train and a bus ride away, and I wasn't especially happy with appearing in public!) so that a doctor could check that it wasn't serious.

So - off I trekked - wearing a very low brimmed hat - and made my way over to the emergency drop in centre. In NZ, you have to pay for your appointments - when you are registered, that price is reduced, but for the drop in centre, it is $83 (without any sort of benefits card). Which is the equivalent of a week's groceries for us.

Whilst this is bad news in that we could have done without the hit to the wallet (Good News - the tax office had given me over $400 refund for my overpaid taxes, so we had the money to cover it. We had also known about this system of paying for doctor's visits, so it wasn't an unpleasant surprise when I turned up at the surgery!), it was good news in that the knock on effect is that people do only go if it *is* an emergency, and the waiting room was empty when I arrived.

So I went in to see the triage nurse (when it does get full, then they see you in order of medical urgency, not waiting time, as the large notice on the wall told me), and as I walked out of her room, the doctor showed me straight in to his one - I was in and out in under half an hour, and that included the time it took to get me onto their computer system and for me to get my prescription afterwards.

The doctor was very thorough in his consultation, and concluded that I may, indeed, be allergic to *something*. What it is, though, he really couldn't say - I have now got to make a list of everything, animal, vegetable and mineral that I have come into contact with over the last 5 days or so, and use that as an elimination tool, in conjunction with my regular GP when I get that sorted out. He also prescribed me little pink pills (very cute!) which I can already feel have helped reduce the swelling.

So, overall, for a first go at the NZ Health System, I am very impressed - it is efficient and gets the job done - yes, I may have to pay for it, but for the service I got, I don't begrudge them the money.

Other news this week - we won 2-1 in our hockey - we are still hovering at the top of the league (not the very top - the teams above us also won (though the table still hasn't been updated properly, so I'm not sure whether we are second or third...). We had a great PIG SIG with Phoenix - we're still meeting new people, and I had a great long chat with a fellow Time Team enthusiast, which was great fun. We are in the final week before our concert with the orchestra - we had our first full play through of the Unanswered Question - I still don't like it, but I don't think it is going to scare the audience away as much as I'd first thought!

We also had fun at work - it being the 25th June, our CIO decided to have a Mid-Winter Christmas get together - she provided the cold meats, and each floor was given a different food to bring (we had breads and spreads, other floors provided salads, cheese and biscuits, desserts etc.). Then we all got together for an hour in our lunch-break - it was a great chance to relax and socialise with other teams who I don't normally get to meet up with. Very enjoyable, and a lovely way to celebrate being half way through the year!

Evening off...

2010-06-24T19:00:00.002+13:00

Well - I've just been called by the hockey coach, and he has said that he isn't able to get the goalie gear to training, so I have an unexpected night in!

This is a good thing, as I am starting to feel very sore from my first evening at TKD in over six months. Thanks to the generosity of my parents, who have given me the money to cover the fees, I have started training again at my local TKD group. It's a great group - so far they have been very friendly and welcoming. There are a number of significant differences in UK and NZ TKD, mainly around step sparring, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of them. I'm also sure that *next* week, I won't forget all but the most basic of patterns - incredibly embarrassing! The group is small enough that Juniors and Seniors train together for an hour, and then the Seniors stay on for a second hour to continue training - 2 hours a week will help lift my fitness (sadly I can't train on their other day as orchestra clashes - exactly as it did in the UK!) I think it will be a while before I am either competition or grading ready, but that is probably a good thing, and it just feels so great to be training at all (today was the first day in ages that I didn't find myself getting wound up at work, even with bureaucracy frustrations).

We had a Sci-fi Board Gaming meeting on Saturday, with the biggest turnout since we joined. Fortunately it was in a house which could accommodate everyone - if it had been at ours, we'd have really struggled! We had three sets of games going, and it was a brilliant atmosphere.

Hockey went fantastically on Sunday - despite the hideous weather (it rained stair-rods for the whole first half) - we won 5-1, which would place us at 2nd in the league if they ever updated the league table! So all definitely to play for in our last two matches (I don't know if we have another set to go - we've not got any more scheduled, but I don't know if they get half way and then do a second draw)

Orchestra is on the downhill run to the concert - we had a good rehearsal on Monday, and, even though I'm still not confident about my ability to play a number of the pieces, I think that overall we are making a good sound (hopefully, the audience will, too!)

We are now past the Midwinter Solstice, as well as Matariki (the Maori New Year) and the days are getting longer (theoretically - I'm still mainly leaving the house in the dark and coming home in the dark, but I can't really expect to see much difference in the light levels just yet!) At work, we are having a "Mid-Winter Christmas" tomorrow, organised by our CIO. This is a pot-luck lunch (in case anyone thought we were having a free meal at the tax-payer's expense!), but should be a good get together at lunchtime, and a nice way of celebrating the turning of the year.

Another Year Older

2010-06-15T21:09:00.002+13:00

Yup - I had my birthday middle of last week - my first Winter birthday! Fortunately, the weather, which has been lousy for about the last fortnight, cleared up spectacularly - the sky was bright blue, the sun was warm (hot enough for me to go and sit by the sea for fifteen minutes at lunchtime), and the air was so clear that I could see all the way to the Rimutakas, which are a range of bigger-than-hills, smaller-than-mountains at the far end of the Hutt Valley, and were glinting with fresh fallen snow (the road around the Rimutakas had been closed due to snow overnight). Just a shame that I didn't have the camera with me - I realised later on that it was the clearest that it had been since I'd started work! And the weather has been downhill again ever since - the gas fire is on pretty much all the time we are at home now.

There are three of us at work who have our birthdays around the same time, so we have each had a little mini-celebration, with everyone on the team bringing in things to eat. I've made good use of the building's oven, and I now make my bite-size cheese scone mixture at home, cut them out, pack them up, and then take the raw pastry to work to cook. This works really well - having the scones warm is just glorious!

As we had our Phoenix sci-fi meeting on my birthday (so the usual meal out couldn't *really* be termed as a celebration itself - that's my excuse), we also had a takeaway on Friday, which involved us going over and trying our local Indian. The CurryStar is just the other side of the train tracks, so about a ten minute walk door to door - reasonably priced for a curry house, and with a really good range of dishes (all, aside from the traditionally spicy ones, with a range of heats; mild, medium, Kiwi hot and Indian hot...). The dishes were a brilliant size, and the Peshwari Naan was so full of fruit and chopped nuts that it looked a bit like a bready mince pie! I definitely think we will be going there again...

Hockey has been interesting this week - I caught the ball on my knee in training after the ball was flicked at close range (I blame the coach who was telling me to run out towards the attackers!). Fortunately, after an initial "is it broken?", I was able to get an ice-gel pack on it, and, whilst it did swell up that evening, it had gone back down again by the morning, and I only have some reasonably spectacular bruising for my pains (not nearly enough given how much it hurt, but better than none at all!) It was definitely ok for me to play with on Sunday, which was a good thing, as we won 4-1. We've finally got a positive goal difference, and we are sitting at third in the league after four games (with only one point between us and the leader). Unfortunately, we haven't yet played either of the teams who are ahead of us, so we've still got a way to go!

Long Weekend

2010-06-07T15:35:00.002+13:00

It is nice to see that New Zealand has the same tradition of public holidays as the UK - it's a long weekend here, and it has rained pretty much steadily for Sunday and Monday (so much for my plans to head back out to the reserve to see what has changed since I was last there four months ago!) We have managed to celebrate the Queen's Birthday, though - we had some of our sci-fi friends over on Saturday evening for an impromptu board gaming and socialising session, and yesterday I cooked my first roast dinner in ages (the kitchen still smells faintly of roasted chicken).

It has been a busy couple of weeks since I last wrote properly - only having a couple of nights in a week does help the time pass quickly at the very least!

As briefly mentioned, I went out to a Ceilidh the Saturday before last with some of our orchestra friends. Sadly, John wasn't able to go, as he'd fallen in the rain and taken the skin off his knee - not too badly, but enough that he wouldn't have been able to dance on it, and he decided that he'd rather go to the PIG SIG that was happening at the same time, where he wouldn't just be sat on the sidelines watching everyone else have fun. The Ceilidh itself was great fun - unlike most ones we'd been to (at birthdays or weddings), where the dancing was secondary to the celebration (and therefore the eating and the drinking), this one had the chairs laid out in a 'no nonsense' ring around the outside of the dance hall, and very few people actually sat out any of the dances. There were a good proportion of the dancers in kilts, reflecting the number of people who have Scottish ancestry. The dances themselves were a mixture of ones which I already knew, others with familiar moves, and some which were completely new. Everyone was incredibly friendly, particularly given that I'd come without a partner, and only knew a few faces around the dance floor. It did help that the first few dances were of the type where you swap partners on a very regular basis, so I got to know the faces, if not the names, of a good number of people there. It was a very enjoyable evening, and I'm already looking forward to next year!

Hockey has been interesting these last couple of weeks - we've had a very poor turnout at practice, last week because it was throwing it down with rain, and this week because we didn't have a game yesterday, and so a lot of people decided to take the night off. Whilst this is very frustrating for me in terms of teamwork (if we don't practice as a team, it makes it a lot harder to gel together in matches, it is very good when one of the people who doesn't turn up is the first team's goalkeeper - I've had two weeks of very intensive workout!

John and I went up to the Upper Hutt Sci-fi meeting on Tuesday - a new set of people to meet and get to know (although one of them is the husband of one of the flautists, and another is one of the violinists at orchestra (who very kindly gave us a lift there and back), so we didn't feel like we were stepping completely into the unknown! It was a good fun evening, if a little bit cold (the temperature on the heater didn't get above 16 all evening), and I'm looking forward to the next one.

Work has been very busy, too - I definitely feel that I've earned this day off. It's still "good" busy, but it would be nice to stop having quite so much piling up!

We've had a couple more encounters with NZ wildlife - a small hedgehog nosed its way round our lawn last week, and this week, on our way back from the shops, we spotted a praying mantis crossing our path. I'm sure that drivers going past must have thought we were very odd as we crouched down to look at the tiny insect!

Placeholder post....

2010-06-02T23:13:00.002+13:00

Ok - it's been busy. Work and social life are getting incredibly heavy at the moment! So I hope you will forgive a lack of bloggage for this week, and I'll put up a double length one at the weekend, when not only do we have an extra day off (huzzah for the Queen's birthday) to make up for the fact that we didn't have any in May whatsoever, but I also don't have any hockey so won't be dashing out for a good chunk of Sunday...

In summary, though:
Ceilidhs = fun
Hockey = 3-3
Orchestra = mild panic as we realise we have a month till the next concert
Upper Hutt Sci-fi = more new faces and names and insanity
Income Tax IR3 tax return forms = evil

And in other news...

2010-05-26T23:13:00.003+13:00

As far as the weekly round up has gone (which does seem to be getting later and later each week - sorry!) - our hockey match this week went really well - we had a full squad (though not enough for subs as well), and played a really close game. There were multiple chances for both sides to score, but we managed to get in the only goal of the game (there were certainly a couple where I couldn't work out how I'd managed to save it, as I'd not actually seen the ball coming in! And one amazing one that one of our defenders stopped when I'd got pulled out of position - she was almost on the goal line, and then managed to get most of the way back up the field with the ball).

We hosted Board this week, which was brilliant, as always. We had pretty much a full house, with ten people around two tables (we could probably squeeze in a couple more people, but we'd start running out of seat space, even with being loaned chairs!) Didn't learn any new games this week, but consolidated a couple that I've learned recently (even if I have a very long way to go before I have a hope of winning!)

Orchestra was good (no "Unanswered Question" this week!), and we are out this weekend with a group from orchestra who are hosting a Ceilidh on the other side of the hills - really looking forward to it!

Work is still incredibly busy, with a number of projects on the go, both major and minor, I'm definitely putting in more than my alloted hours in the week!

After my weather post last week, it has definitely taken a turn for the worse - cold and wet, though not as bad as elsewhere, particularly on South Island, where roads have flooded and towns have been cut off due to the amount of rain that has fallen. It was a bit amusing yesterday on my way home, after hearing on the news that one of the sea-front roads in Petone (one of the districts between us and Wellington) had flooded, to listen to the forecast, and, after a summer of glorious days being described as "Fine", the evening for Wellington (which ended up being rain so hard that it woke me up) was described as "Changeable". Our forecasters definitely don't believe in wasting words!

"Typical" Sci-Fi meeting?

2010-05-25T21:15:00.006+13:00

WiseWebWoman asked in the comments to the last post what a Sci-Fi meeting is like - I'll do my best! The Phoenix group here in Wellington is divided up into the main monthly meeting, which is held in a central Wellington venue, and Special Interest Groups, which include the Board gaming group, a video group, a writers' group, Bibliophiles (a book discussion group) and "PIG", which is a social get together, eat and chat group. The SIGs are mainly held in members' houses, rotating around the main members of the group.

NB - John and I go to the main meeting, Board and PIG, so I can't really comment on what happens in the other SIGs.

Since we've joined, I don't think there has been a "typical" main meeting. There have been presentations (on "sci-fi" weaponry which is being used or developed now; on the manned space missions); discussions (on "Speculative Fiction" and whether it is just another form of "Science Fiction" for people who don't want to be labelled as Sci-Fi writers); silly games (limerick writing; "20 questions" with a Sci-Fi theme), and, of course, the all important post Christmas pub get together and then last month the AGM.

PIG is very social, and seems (in my experience), to have the greatest turn out in terms of numbers. Everyone brings along food (there seems to be a baking challenge going on at the moment, with some fantastic cakes being created, and devoured!) and drink, and just generally chats. Conversations are wide ranging, and certainly not Sci-Fi limited.

The Board tends to run along the lines of everyone gathering over the course of half an hour or so; some bring along their evening meals to eat, and everyone brings snacks and drinks to share. After general chit-chat, we decide what games to play, depending on who is there, and what games have been brought along. Then we split into groups (there is usually enough people for two sets of games) and get playing. Usually a bit (or a lot...) of wine is consumed, and there is a lot of laughter and fun.

I think that the atmosphere is what typifies the various groups that we go along to. The tendency is towards openness, friendliness and a genuine welcoming attitude, whether the meeting is in a "paid for" venue, or in someone's home. There is a real community feel which comes with having a common interest (I also get this feeling with the orchestra, both here and back in the UK), even if this interest ends up being a the periphery of what we chat about during the course of an evening. I know that this warmth and acceptance has gone a long way in helping me to feel at home here.

I hope this has answered your question, WWW!

Seasonal defiance

2010-05-19T20:53:00.004+13:00

With winter very much on the way in, rain and chill mornings now a certainty, I was delighted this week to find that there are some areas where there is a last ditch defiance against the encroaching season

We haven't yet put the heating on (to the amazement of a number of friends and colleagues), but I don't think that it will be long before we start, particularly as we are hosting the board gaming group for Phoenix Sci-fi this weekend, and it's probably not fair to ask friends to sit in the ice-box all evening...

The birds are starting to gather for their migration - I don't know which birds here are seasonal and which brave the winter through, but there is a definite congregation on the roofs of the office towers around where I work - not only does the block opposite ours look like it is auditioning for a Hitchcock film, but they are also gathering on the roof of our building. Right over my head. The squeaks and chirrups are at just the right pitch to trigger my sensitive hearing, and I think I will be glad when they have taken off for warmer climates!

Work and social life are busy in equal measures - we have also joined the Hutt sci-fi group, who do a video evening locally to us once a month, and also have a monthly "presentation" evening. There is a small "cross pollination" from the Phoenix group, but we actually were persuaded to join by the husband of one of the flautists from orchestra! We had a narrow loss in hockey, but given that we were a person short, had three players who hadn't played in a long time, and our star centre forward got concussed by a bad tackle mid way through the first half, I think we did very well to only lose 1-0. The pitch was all the way out in Paraparamu, which is about an hour's drive north from here, right at the end of one of the train lines. The coastline was spectacular - the bay round Hutt is so calm that I'd forgotten how stormy the sea can be. I'd definitely like to visit the area properly, but it may wait for the spring or summer (possibly even a train trip on the free Christmas train...)and the certainty of a nice day.

It's a quiet week in politics...

2010-05-11T22:14:00.003+13:00

Well - following the British election from the other side of the world was interesting, to say the least. Although John and I didn't get to vote (we didn't sort out our proxy/postal forms in time), we were in good company, as nor did the rest of the ex-pats on this side of the world - the volcanic ash cloud also stopped all air mail (including postal votes) from getting through until it was too late. For myself, I have mixed feelings about not voting - when the election started, I really didn't care, as I didn't think I could make much difference, and it didn't feel right in voting when we are no longer living in Britain, and don't have any intentions to return (at least, for residency purposes) However, as it got more exciting (and we love the BBC Radio I-Player - we aren't able to access the TV version from outside the UK, but the radio is fully available - we listened to the News Quiz and the Vote Now Show, which kept us fully informed of the more interesting parts of the campaign), there was a small twinge of regret that we wouldn't be part of probably one of the most gripping UK campaigns to grace the political theatre in recent years. But, hey, we may still get a chance if there is a re-election in the next year or so! It was nice to be able to watch the results unfolding in real time (I was not alone amongst my colleagues in having the BBC Live website open on my PC throughout the day), even if the end result wasn't as decisive as the build up would have suggested.

The rest of this week has been pretty quiet - a draw in hockey (fortunately, a friendly, so it didn't count), but I did manage what has to be one of the more spectacular saves of my career, managing to knock the ball out of the air with my left (padded) hand as it whizzed past on a very acute angle. Even the opposing coach was impressed (as was I - I hadn't even consciously seen the ball move!).

We're starting to delve into the pieces for the next concert - we are doing the Shostakovich Jazz waltz, which I'm really pleased about. We've also got a very mixed bag of pieces, some of which are nice, and some which are less fun, both to play and to listen to - the most extreme of this is the Unanswered Question:

in which the woodwind, trumpet and strings are playing at different speeds, in different keys and with different bar lines. Not sure how well it is going to go down with a paying audience - it isn't going down well at all amongst the woodwind!

Winter is starting to grip Wellington - the temperature is definitely dropping in the evenings and mornings - however, it is still sunny and warm during the days (just a shame they are spent in an office!). I have been assured that the fine weather won't last, and we will get our share of wind and rain, but I will be happy if the depths of winter stay away for a wee while longer - I am enjoying the spectacular sunsets and the ever changing colours of the sea too much :-)

Six Months!

2010-05-05T21:21:00.002+13:00

Well, six months ago today, John and I left the UK. The time has flown by, and yet it also feels like we have been here forever.

I've gone back through my old blog posts, and it amazes me how much happened in our first month or so - I had forgotten how quickly the various job "incidents" had happened. And, after all that, I think I've landed in the best job for me. It may have its ups and downs, but the downs don't last that long, and the ups are very good. So it all worked out for the best!

I still absolutely love it here - we have a gorgeous house in a perfect area, my commute to work is amazing (every time I get a window seat, I get to spend 10 minutes staring at the sea, with colours which range from deep grey, though all the shades of blue you can think of to a salmon pink this evening as the sunset reflected off the near-still waters), and we have got a fantastic social life.

I do occasionally have wobbles where I wonder whether we have done the right thing in uprooting ourselves and moving so far away. However, those wobbles don't last long, though I do still miss friends and family, and wish that the distance wasn't quite so far for those home visits! All in all, happiness is the overriding emotion, tinged with a little bit of disbelief that we are actually here!

We had another excellent win at hockey this week, with a very early start (9.15 meet up for a 9.45 whistle) - 6-1, with a moral 7th goal that was disallowed after the other team claimed that we'd done something wrong beforehand that the ref had missed. I was too far away to see what happened (I have difficulty in picking out anything detailed past the halfway line), so I don't know whether they were correct or not. Though the scoreline seemed quite heavy our way, I didn't get to rest for the game, as they had a number of very good players who came very close to scoring on a number of occasions. However, our defence has clicked in a brilliant way - I knew where both of the backs were the whole time, which meant that I was able to really push out to stop the attackers becoming a threat. A good game all round! There was a Tui singing away in the trees behind the pitch, which, combined with the warm sunshine (after a very chilly start, a reminder that we are actually in the depths of autumn and heading into winter, though you wouldn't know it to look at the blue skies) made it a lovely start to the Sunday.

And, finally, NZ has started broadcasting Dr Who! We've now seen the first episode, and are therefore only four behind the UK. Enough for me to still have to avoid spoilers at all costs, but at least not too bad - we aren't going to have to resort to filesharing to get our fix...

Getting better...

2010-04-25T20:26:00.006+13:00

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.

That's better

2010-04-19T20:44:00.002+13:00

Well, after the doom and gloom of last week, this week has been a lot better. A lot calmer at work, and lots of social events to keep me busy.

We had our monthly sci-fi meeting, with a very interesting talk on manned space flights by someone from the Astronautics Association of New Zealand. John and I decided that rather than me coming home to eat, and then us heading back into town, we'd treat ourselves to a pub meal at the Occidental, just round the corner from my office, and on the way to the sci-fi meeting main reason for choosing - they have cheap food nights on Tuesday and Wednesday...). The pub was crowded, but the very helpful bar manager found us a table whilst we were ordering our drinks. We had plenty of time before the meeting, and it was nice to relax, have a chat and watch the occasional Dr Who trailer running on the silent TV behind the bar (the series starts here on the 2nd May - yay!) About 20 minutes after we ordered, the bar manager came out to apologise and say that our food-order had blown off the counter, and they'd only just found it - so to make it up to us, she was going to get us a free drink each! Given that the place was heaving, and we had plenty of time, we hadn't even started to wonder where our food was. But the free drinks were very nice, and our food turned up 10 minutes later - we'll definitely be going back again!

I had a great hockey practice on Thursday - we had a trainer in specifically to look at providing goalie coaching, so it was a very intensive practice, with a lot of diving to get me nice and bruised... That then translated into a very good game on Sunday - with only 10 players, we still managed to win 6-1, which after the disappointments of the last few weeks was a brilliant score, and will hopefully get everyone's morale up for the rest of the tournament.

We had friends round for dinner on Sunday, which was lovely - these were the people who very kindly lent us not only the mattress and bed-clothes whilst we were waiting for our stuff to arrive, but various kitchen utensils, all the stuff that you forget you are going to need. We had a lovely time, but not too late as we needed to get to work in the morning.

Today has been interesting - I woke up with a stinking head cold, and managed to get into work, only to be sent home at lunch time (my first day off sick in over a year). It is annoying as I had things which needed to be done, but as my head was nearly hitting the keyboard, it was the right move - I slept for a few hours this afternoon, and am going to have an early night this evening whilst John is out at orchestra practice (very frustrating as this is our first night back after three weeks off, and I was looking forward to trying out the new repertoire - however it definitely wasn't a good idea to try to play, nor to share my germs with the other members of the orchestra!)

Hmmmm

2010-04-10T22:14:00.007+13:00

Well, that was definitely an *interesting* week. Not one that I would wish to repeat if I was totally honest, but one which has pushed the learning curve, both at work and at home, and which I hope has given me enough experience to be able to cope next time!

Essentially, I got my tender launched. The one that was the first job given to me after I was hired, and which has taken me two months to get sorted out (not helped by the fact that crucial paperwork appeared to be missing) and put together. I got it released into the wild on Thursday evening. The first criticisms appeared Friday morning. Including from people who had QA checked it and signed it off! It didn't help that this week also saw a number of other procurement projects getting to vital stages, all of which needed advice or assistance. So I spent all Friday bouncing from meeting to meeting or trying to get messes untangled. Unfortunately, there was still a lot left to do when I finally gave up and decided that as I'd done my hours for the week, I was calling it a day.

Sadly, the stress sat with me most of the weekend - it came and went in waves (I didn't sleep Friday, spent all night at work in my dreams, and then woke up on Saturday knowing how I was going to fix things. That led to a good Saturday until I was dropping off to sleep and remembered about one problem which I hadn't sorted out! That then knocked me out on Sunday...), which didn't do my general mood much good. Being beaten 7-1 at hockey certainly didn't help, either, especially as only one of those was a "deserved" goal - I just wasn't on top form (to be honest, neither was the rest of the team!).

The frustrating thing was that when I got in to work this morning, it took me about half an hour to get everything to a point where I was happy (not completely sorted out yet as I'm still waiting for one response from a colleague), and was even able to tackle a couple of other big projects. So I needn't have put my blood pressure through the roof at all! Hopefully next time this happens (and I'm certainly not naive enough to think that this is going to be the only source of stress for me even in the next couple of months, let alone the rest of my career), I'll know that I can handle it, and not try and work out how quickly I could get a job at the local supermarket!

It also did help getting a phone call from the head of the national contracts unit who spent a little bit of time reassuring me and also pointing out that one of the first criticisms I'd received, although possibly justified, (regarding information in the properties of the tender documents, which, as I don't use properties at all, I didn't even think to check!) did come from someone who doesn't seem to spend much time doing anything else other than criticise (he even knew who it had been without me telling him), so I could therefore not take it too much to heart!

In an attempt to cheer myself up over the weekend, I went looking for Noel Coward songs on YouTube (they'd been mentioned in a Counterpoint quiz that we'd listened to on the I-player). I then found these, which I'd either completely missed when they were first broadcast, or had completely forgotten about (I hadn't even known he could sing!). Whilst "London Pride" did induce a small bout of homesickness (I don't even *like* London, but I adore the song), the rest of the songs definitely helped my mood.

A more positive new experience we had this week was finally getting to see in the market a Feijoa. We have drunk Feijoa juice, but not actually seen the fruit in the flesh. So, of course, I had to buy one to try.

The fruit doesn't look all that amazing from the outside:

however, when it is cut open, it has a small surprise:

The taste is completely new - John didn't particularly take to it - sort of a cross between a smooth Kiwi and bubble gum! Definitely one that I'd like to repeat, but at $7.99 / kilo, I think I'll wait for my tree to start fruiting...

I did find this rather fun website which tells you how to eat a feijoa (very useful for an ignoramus like me who did try to eat the skin first up - not pleasant!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-05T21:15:00.002+13:00

I hope that one and all have had a very happy and peaceful Easter weekend. I was definitely ready for the four day long weekend by the time Thursday came around. I'm still trying to get a major project launched, and trying to get people to make decisions is interesting! Still, that's all part of the fun of being in the civil service, and certainly nothing surprising.

We had a very nice lazy day on Friday - it was so good not to set the alarm at all and just wake up when my body had decided it had had enough sleep. I didn't quite lounge as much as I'd expected, and definitely didn't stay in my pyjamas until lunchtime (although part of that was due to someone from the hockey club borrowing the goalie kit, so I really had to be dressed in order to answer the door to him!) I got quite a bit of writing done, and it was good to be able to get my creative juices flowing again.

Saturday was our usual shopping day. I also got some baking done, making coffee and walnut buns to share with our neighbours (although I didn't actually give them to Shirley until Sunday and Gary and his wife until today) I pottered in the greenhouse for a bit - I think I may have got on top of the caterpillar problem with a minimum of fuss (and some very happy sparrows...), as after my mega blitz last week, and a few that I'd missed which I threw out on Saturday, I haven't had any more rear their heads. I've now got four capsicum peppers growing on my pepper plant, which I'm very excited about - I have a vague hope that they will be big enough to eat by next weekend, but it will probably end up being another week just to make sure they ripen.

Easter Sunday was a lovely day - the clocks went back, which meant another hour in bed, and I was fully rested when I got up to Skype my family at 8.30 in the morning. They had been very generous and used the online shopping facility of our local supermarket to buy us chocolate eggs and a lovely bottle of bubbly, so we had chocolate for Easter morning. (which is, of course, the whole point of the celebrations, is it not? ;-) ) Then, after the call, I got out our slow cooker for the first time - this was a wedding present which I'd never got round to using. However, when I cooked our last joint of silverside beef, a number of websites said that this was a perfect cut to put into a slow cooker, and I thought that a lazy Easter weekend would be the best time to try it out! Everything went into the pot (apart from the potatoes, as we both wanted roasties), and it sat on the side in the kitchen for the rest of the day, slowly doing its thing. When the time came for us to have supper, the joint was so tender that it actually fell in half as I lifted it out of the pot. I'm definitely using it again - I'm an instant convert! (now that I google slow cooker and recipes, it seems that pretty much anything that has a sauce element to it can be made in the cooker.)

Staying with the domestic theme, I iced the buns that I'd made, and took a selection round to Shirley - I've not seen a lot of her since I started work (the tendency to come home and either head straight back out again or to veg has meant that I've not been as good a neighbour as I could have been), and I feel a little guilty that she recently had a fall whilst out shopping, and we hadn't known about it (we could have offered to help out with shopping etc for her). Still, she was in a very bright mood, and we chatted with her for over an hour. We had a friend over for supper, too, one of the people we've met through the sci-fi group. He brought wine and board games, and we were eating, drinking, talking and playing through till about 1 in the morning. All in all, a great way of spending our first Easter in New Zealand.

Today has also been successful one in a slightly different way - after an early start for me (my body is definitely in shock from the hour change - it woke up at 8am, and wouldn't go back to sleep, even after the very late night we'd had), and a leisurely morning, we headed out to the slightly more industrial area of Lower Hutt to investigate mattress sales. We'd been told that there were a few shops over there which sold mattresses for slightly better than the $1,000 that we'd been finding, and as there seems to be a proliferation of Easter sales, it was a good time to go and investigate. We've managed to save up enough from the slight excess between our outgoings and my income to cover something cheap, so it was worth going to have a look and see what we could find. And, sure enough, we are now the proud owners of a mattress that will actually fit onto our bed - it is going to be delivered on Wednesday and cost us just over $400 including the delivery fee. I am really looking forward to not sleeping on the floor any more!

So, overall, we have had a very good Easter weekend; I am, however very glad that it is only a four day week this week coming - I think I need another weekend for a rest!

Firsts!

2010-03-30T20:30:00.005+13:00

Well - this week has had a few firsts in it:

We have had our first orchestra concert, with a lovely programme of suites and serenades. The audience wasn't large, but everyone seemed to enjoy listening to the music as much as we liked playing it. And the husband of one of the violinists is doing an audio recording qualification, so his class were practising with our concert - we might even get a CD out of it! We had a chat and social afterwards (Known as "bring a plate", which does include bringing something to go on that plate - an American supper), which was lovely and friendly. The next concert is going to be a Jazz one, so I'm looking forward to that, but I think that someone else is going to have to do my counting for me!

I had my first league hockey match. We lost 3-2, but didn't play too badly, given that we hadn't played together properly as a team (and the practice on Thursday seemed to mainly be spent playing 'getting to know you' games...). Only one of the goals shouldn't have gone in, and I did save far more than three, so I'm happy with the way that I played! It will be interesting to see how the team develops over the season.

I had my Introduction to the Ministry on Friday - this was actually really rather fun. Rather than just sit and be lectured to, part of the morning involved going round the Ministry main office (the IT Group is actually sat in a separate building, about 10 minutes' walk away) and talking to the people working there, and then feeding back in a presentation (involving posters, glue, coloured pens and glitter!) to the rest of the group. It was really interesting, and great fun. As well as the rest of the lecture (which included some info on gifts and ethics which I thought was self evident, mainly because I have to deal with it a lot in contracts, but other people hadn't heard about, and we ended up having quite a debate about!), we also got to go round the Parliamentary offices (also known as the Beehive). The Minister wasn't there, but we did get to meet four of her Privy Secretaries, and they explained about their role and how the Ministry and the Minister fitted together (and also the reason for them needing information as a top priority whenever there is a Parliamentary Question that needs to be answered - there are less than three hours from the question being asked to it needing to be given to the Minister to answer it in Parliament!) Sadly, we didn't get to go into the debating chamber, so I shall have to be a tourist at some point and do that for myself!

I also had a two day training course on Wednesday and Thursday, which has given me a better groundwork for the work that I need to do on contracts. Which is a good thing, as we also have a new member of the team (though I am still the new girl, as she has moved internally), and she is taking on the administrative part of my job (which wasn't very big to begin with!), and I will be concentrating more on the high level and strategic part. A definite shove outside of my
comfort zone, but I am now confident that I can do it!

Autumn is definitely on its way now - there is a definite nip in the air in the mornings (though, in general, the late morning and afternoon is still up in the high teens / low twenties C, so it isn't cold by any stretch of the imagination!). I'm learning the difference between a Northerly (wind coming down from the North end of the island - usually warmer, occasionally bringing a gentle rain and low cloud/fog) and a Southerly (wind coming from the South Island, usually come straight from Antarctica, and occasionally still carrying a penguin - it is *cold* and is the type of wind that goes through you without stopping to say 'please') It is also getting darker, very quickly. In the last week, I've gone from a half-light in the mornings to near blackness when I wake up. The light fades very quickly in the evening, too - it's not going to be fun when the clocks go back on Sunday.

But I'm still getting a chance to get out to the greenhouse on the odd occasion - I'm starting to fight a battle with caterpillars - at some point over the summer a butterfly got in, and my broccoli is covered with caterpillars of all sizes (all a lovely bright green that blends in with the leaves!). Fortunately, they aren't too difficult to pick off (some have fastened themselves down with silk, but it doesn't take much to get them to let go), and I now have some very satisfied birds in the garden! The broccoli does seem to be able to take the munching, but I'd rather not be bringing up the next generation of butterflies to eat next year's crop! I now have three capsicum growing on my pepper plant, too, with a few more flowers still in the process of opening. Very exciting, particularly as the capsicum in the market are showing a marked sign of being at the end of the season - the prices are starting to skyrocket, and the quality is going downhill very rapidly (it is now difficult to find ones that I could confidently say would last the week, even in the fridge, and as I cook with peppers on average 5 meals out of 7, I dread them disappearing completely!)

It's a short week coming up at work, and then Easter - I am really looking forward to the four days off. We haven't got anything definitely planned (tentative discussions from someone at sci-fi to be doing "something"), and I can't wait for the lie-in on Friday morning!

Ups and Downs

2010-03-21T19:57:00.002+13:00

It has definitely been an interesting week this week. Work has had some highs and lows, as has life outside of the corporate world.

Lows included hitting my head against the brick wall which is the Student Loans Company - these people have no concept of the fact that I am not telepathic. They sent me a letter, dated the 10th March, stating that my next loan repayment was due on the 10th March... And then when I went onto their website to try to make a payment, it wouldn't get to the point where it would let me put in my card details, so I couldn't make a payment anyway! It also took quite a bit of looking to discover that they charge a whacking great percentage if you are paying from a "for'n" bank account. So, I have sent them a long email, with scanned payslips showing deductions attached, asking them to tell me how much I owe them in total (due to the way the loans are administered, nothing gets updated until after the end of March, however the interest still mounts up), and then I'm going to pay off the balance using money (eventually aimed for a house and car deposit) that is still sat in the UK waiting for the exchange rate to pick itself off the floor. It will just be easier that way!

I also had a meeting first thing Monday morning, in which I needed a Senior Level decision, and had stayed late on Friday and came in an hour early on Monday to prepare for. Unfortunately, my item was 8th on the agenda. Items 3 and 4 involved a colleague of mine who, partially due to his length of service in the field, takes his own, very singular view of events. Quite often the opposite to what was actually decided. Because of his expertise, there is a tendency amongst the people that he works with and for to just defer to his judgement. However, our CIO is not one of those people, and she wanted a full explanation of item 4. Which took the remainder of the meeting time and then some. Very frustrating, particularly when my bit would have only taken five minutes. Fortunately, the delay has allowed me a bit more time to think about the project, and hopefully I'll still be able to get a decision before my next deadline!

Another low turned out to actually start climbing up towards the highs... I got asked to pop into a meeting with one of my colleagues regarding an email I'd sent her. The email itself was fairly innocuous, asking her to confirm the contracts that were held against her budget code. Unfortunately, there turned out to be a couple of cans of worms hidden in there, one which was easily solvable (even though it will require a chunk of paperwork), the other which just got messier and messier as I kept on digging! It also required me to learn how to use the Oracle financial system, and is going to have an interesting outcome, whatever we decide to do. So - whilst it was a headache which I could have done without, it has become very intriguing, and has also highlighted an urgent need for process chance (which we were aware needed to be done, but, because it will lead to extra work for some people, was difficult to put across), and I think I now have enough ammunition to get it to stick.

However, even with the lows, there have been very many more highs this week. They have included:

Getting confirmation from the insurance company that they are going to pay out the claim on John's mouldy boots. Which is a good thing, given that the chap who was looking at them (and who has found a way of cleaning them rather than having to take them to bits and put them back together again) actually fixed them over the weekend. (He said that he wasn't that fussed about the payment, but as he'd put in so much work, I'm very pleased that I can actually give him something back!)

Spotting that my capsicum/pepper plant not only has flowers on it, but now has a pepper growing! (unfortunately, the position of the pepper and the flowers means that I can't actually take that good a photo, so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like...)

Getting the chance to have a free guided tour round the New Zealand Supreme Court. The neighbour of one of my colleagues works in the court, and, as part of her duties, has to lead the tour - it was her first go on Friday, so my colleague said that she'd bring along some friendly faces! The Court is a fascinating building - it is split in two, with a modern building at the front, which was only finished this year (Prince William got to do the official opening). The modern part is a glorious piece of architecture - copper twining decorations round the outside to represent New Zealand trees, a glass entranceway into the lobby, which has copper round the walls, and a glass window through into the courtroom (symbolising "transparent justice") - this window has some clever chemical in it, which, when a switch is flicked on the judge's bench, turns the window opaque, in order to protect witnesses if necessary. The courtroom is a miracle of acoustic engineering - it is shaped like a kauri cone, with overlapping diamond panels made from sustainable New Zealand silver beech. The engineering that they have done means that from anywhere in the courtroom, a speaker can be heard as clearly as if they were sat next to you. The whole building is just beautiful, and a demonstration that modern architecture needn't be ugly! We then went round the Old High Court building, a Victorian structure which, after being abandoned for over a decade, has now been restored, using traditional techniques where possible. We were taken down into the holding cells, where the tables and benches in each cell were covered in the graffiti of the accused. (I could have spent *hours* reading it all. My colleague found names of people that she'd been with at school...) The interior of the High Court is very Victorian, and obviously designed to impress and overawe anyone (prisoner, jury or press) who was visiting. (The Press bench was also covered in graffiti, but slightly less crude than that which was down below...) Overall, it was a brilliant tour, and I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting our area of the world!

Getting confirmation that I'd got onto the Seconds team for hockey. (though given that I am one of only two goalies who show up, I'd have been very upset if I hadn't!)

Having another brilliant Board session with the Sci-Fi group - one of the members is moving house soon, and she brought along a number of bottles of wine that they'd been given, and hadn't actually got round to drinking. One of them was two years older than me, so, of course, I had to try it! It was delicious - almost sherry-like in look and flavour, but not in strength. The other *mumble mumble* bottles of wine were also very good :-) (it is lovely not to be driving anywhere!)

Going round the Pompeii exhibition at Te Papa. I won tickets to visit here a while back, and as I was aware that the exhibition was finishing soon (and that the Easter holidays are coming up, so it was likely to get swamped by school children rather than just visiting coach parties), we decided to head down. The exhibition was excellent (though I am glad that I didn't have to pay for it, as I think the entry fee was quite steep!), with artefacts ranging from every day items (pots, pans, amphora) to coins and jewellery, frescos, and carbonised food. The information displays were also very well laid out, with timelines of both the Roman Empire, eruptions of Vesuvius (with a lovely map showing where the different lava flows had gone), and the final days of Pompeii (including, of course, excerpts from Pliny). There were translations of the various bits of graffiti on the walls, as well as interactive computer displays, and a 3D animated film of the explosion (though, apart from a couple of bits of flying pumice and a bird, there didn't seem to be any real point to it being 3D...). They also had a few of the body casts, separated off from the rest of the exhibition. Whilst I'd seen pictures of most of them before, I don't think that anything could have prepared me for seeing them in the flesh (so to speak). The reality of them was completely overpowering - I know that I now have to go to Pompeii and Herculaneum for real to see it all in situ.

Wow!

2010-03-14T20:37:00.004+13:00

Where did that week go?
Time has just flown by, and I can't believe that we are at the end of yet another weekend!

Things have been incredibly busy at work, in both good and bad ways. It is good in that I am being given more projects to do, and people are learning that it is my job to help them, but bad in that I am not having a chance to sit and look back over things and consolidate them; I'm always moving on to the next bit and hoping that I'm not making too much of a mess of things! Next week I've got a number of training courses, and I hope that they will help put things in context and give me a better idea of where I need to be coming from. I had a very interesting meeting with my equivalent in a different agency; the agency had run a similar procurement project a few years ago, and he had a number of lessons learned that he wanted to share. I've since learned that I need to take his opinion with a little pinch of salt (his reputation isn't that great across the sector), but it was definitely useful information.

We've also had a little bit of turmoil as a press release from the Minister regarding efficiency savings was interpreted by the media as massive redundancies - fortunately, we have a very good CIO who took the time to have meetings with the IT group and explain what was really meant and to allay any fears (she did point out that, with the savings that had already been found by the finance team, if they did have to have redundancies, then at most it would be six people, and she had already had (by show of hands) far more than that from people looking for early retirement!)

The social side of the week has also been very busy; we had the general Sci-fi meeting on Wednesday, which was, as always, good fun. Then Thursday, I was out with hockey - we didn't get a great practice in as it got dark, and it turns out that the pre-season pitch only has two floodlights on them, both at one end. So we had to finish early, which is a bit frustrating when you've paid a train fare to get there! Fortunately, someone was able to give me a lift home (which was even more appreciated when I realised how far out of their way they had gone!), which was a good thing, as I'd just watched the last train for an hour go past when they announced that they were cancelling the rest of the practice. This week's practice will be at a closer, and better, pitch.

Friday was interesting - we had a spectacular storm which blew in from the South Island - it really was a case of the sky suddenly going black - we were able to watch it rolling across the city. Thunder, lightening, hail and tornadoes (though I didn't actually get to *see* the tornadoes as they just over the hill and hidden by the low lying clouds - the damage they did was incredible, though, including lifting roofs off of buildings "like paper" according to one news report - fortunately in that case, a school, the kids had been let out for the day about half an hour earlier, and there was pretty much no-one about, meaning that no-one was hurt. In fact, across the whole of the two islands, there was very little injury given the scale of the storm). I was working late anyway, and quite thankful of allowing the worst of the rain to blow over. However, the storm had done its damage, and when I got to the station, it was bursting at the seams with people. I ended up standing next to a perfect stranger, and asked him what was going on - it turned out that a tree had come down across the lines. This had taken the power out further up the tracks, and the train company were trying to work out what to do. We got chatting, and, after a while, I (very cheekily) asked whether I could borrow his mobile (and pay him for the text) to let John know that I was going to be late - knowing KiwiRail, we could easily have been there for a couple of hours, but I didn't want to risk leaving the platform to look for a public call box, just in case they put something on while I was gone. The announcement then came through that the company could get us to Petone, which was only about half the way to my stop. They were then going to try to sort out replacement buses (but given that it was Friday rush hour, it might take some time) Ashley then said that as his car was parked at Petone station, did I fancy a lift home? Now all the rules of common sense said that I should have declined (particularly as he knew that I didn't have a phone), but common sense wasn't soaking wet and absolutely shattered from a long week at work (and didn't have a husband at home waiting for his birthday pizza!) And, to be honest, he was a very nice bloke, and we had a great chat all the way home. So, no worries :-) And another indication of how nice the Kiwis are as a race!

The birthday pizza that I mentioned came from a fantastic company called Hell Pizza - www.hell.co.nz - their pizza names include the seven deadly sins, the seven circles of hell as well as various other amusing names. For me, however, the big intrigue was that they do dessert pizza. This turned out (once I'd scraped all the toppings back on - the delivery guy had held it on its side!) to be a sweeter pizza dough with chocolate and vanilla custard and various cooked berries. It doesn't sound like it should work, but it definitely does!

Whilst we were eating our pizza and enjoying "Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra" (much worth watching - I definitely recommend, even if Mr BB had a few tuning problems with his singing...), there was a thunderous knocking on the door, and it turned out to be our neighbour's son. He had a plate of nibbles, meat and dips in his hand and passed it over saying "Mum said to give this to you, I don't know why." Very bemused, I thanked him, and (as we were very full from pizza) we put the food in the fridge for another day!

On Saturday, we were invited out by one of our Sci-fi friends to go and watch another of his friends flying model helicopters with his aviation group. Whilst this had the definite potential to be a "boys and their toys" day, it was really great fun. The skill of some of the fliers had to be seen to be believed (and I do actually have some videos of these on the camera. Unfortunately, none of the films are very good on their own - they need a bit of editing. Which means that I need to find a decent Linux video editor, or wait until we get a *ptooie* Windows PC. So, you will get to see them, it just won't be straight away!) - they were throwing the model helicopters (worth scary amounts of money!) through the sky (and very close to the ground), both right way up and upside down, and, aside from one which didn't get into the air due to a bust giro (in itself costing over $1,000...), nothing crashed or got broken. And we also got a free lunch out of it (the club is sponsored by one of the local supermarkets, who provided a veritable feast, including burgers, buns, crisps, fruit and drinks...) Alex then took us round the Porirua shops again, which was even better now that we had a bit of disposable income to spend! I've picked up some lovely fluffy wool and have just started my next knitting project (having not quite finished my last one...)

Sunday was another early start - I'd been called on Friday by the coach for the 2nd hockey team asking whether I wanted to play in a friendly match - a mixture of both the 1st and 2nd teams. I definitely wasn't going to say no, so was at the pitch just after 9.00. The match itself was great fun, but very difficult, with the ball spending a lot of time down our end. It was very interesting to start to get a feel for the different ways of playing, and realised how much I'd got used to the Bristol Ladies' defence tactics (here, there is pretty much no marking until the players are in the D, which makes me feel a lot less secure, as the team seems to often be on the back foot once the ball does get closer to goal!) But I saved more than I let in (and was only cross with myself with one of the goals), and think that I didn't do too badly given that, aside from a couple of practices, I've not played since September. And, on that part, the 1st team coach didn't think I'd done too badly, either, as she asked afterwards whether I'd mind subbing for the 1st goalie if she couldn't make matches. Like I'd say "no" to that!

Sunday afternoon, after we did our supermarket run, I spent making cheese scones to put on the now empty and washed up nibbles plate from our neighbours. We then spent a very nice half hour or so round at their place chatting - they are a lovely family (even if she says she is having a couple of problems with her teenage son - we certainly don't hear them arguing!), and I think that we are very lucky to have such nice people on either side of us.

And that was last week. It's now Tuesday (I have been writing this post for a couple of days - I hadn't realised that it had got quite so long!), so we've had another orchestra rehearsal. We've only got a couple of weeks to go before the concert, but it does all seem to be coming together now (and I'm now hearing the music whenever things go quiet, which means that it has sunk into my brain!) And my pepper plant has bloomed - when I popped into the greenhouse to get basil and spinach for supper, I spotted that there are a number of open flowers hiding under the leaves. I'll try to get some photos tomorrow :-)

No news...

2010-03-09T20:13:00.002+13:00

Really, it has been a bit of an uneventful week this week. We are really settling in to our routine now; Monday is orchestra (last week was my second week of 'subbing' for the first oboe, this week she was back. I was a little bit chuffed when the conductor mentioned to her that she had been 'ably covered' by the rest of the oboe section - given that I didn't do as well as I'd have liked on the oboe solos that I was playing, it was nice to hear that he thought I'd done ok!); Tuesday is an evening in, when I check on the greenhouse and catch up on any internetting that I've missed by not being in on Monday; Wednesday is either an evening in, or we are out at the monthly Sci-Fi meeting (though when I pick up TKD again, it will be my TKD evening); Thursday is hockey; Friday is another evening in, and making sure that the greenhouse plants are still thriving (the broccoli is now charging me a toll to go in...); Saturday is our shopping day - up to the Farmers' Market for our fruit and veg, then a stop off at the chocolate shop for a drink, and then the supermarket shop - the evenings are either relaxing or out at various Sci-fi events, depending on when in the month we are; Sunday is a day to ourselves, I do some oboe practice, and occasionally wave an iron at some of the more creased clothes that I want to wear in the coming week!

I've now had my first month at work - I feel like I'm finding my feet a bit now. I know the 'usual suspects' without having to look them up on the intranet, though I still don't recognise a lot of people (my poor memory for faces is really haunting me now - it's not good to introduce yourself for the third time to someone, particularly when they only work round the corner from you!). Both my boss and the CIO are conspiring to push me firmly out of my comfort zone whenever they can - I know that it is good for my career, and I will quickly get used to it, but it is still a little unnerving at times, and I do occasionally long for the safety blanket of admin.

The weather is starting to get colder in the mornings (though I was able to spend all bar one of my lunchbreaks last week out on the harbour, reading my book and watching the waves come in), and it is definitely darker when I get up - I just hope that the corresponding Spring is driving away the snow and frost for everyone back in the Northern Hemisphere!

Tsunami!

2010-03-01T18:41:00.004+13:00

Apologies for the lack of a blog update on Sunday – Blogger decided to play around, and would load up the page title, and nothing else *rolls eyes*

So...

The rather overshadowing news of this week was the 8.8 earthquake in Chile which triggered a Pacific wide tsunami warning. It meant we got to see and hear first hand the Civil Defence system which we had been taught about at the seminar not two weeks ago. That same seminar meant that, although we were woken up with the CD warning on the radio news, we automatically knew that, although we are in a low lying area, we weren't in any danger. So it was a case of leaving the radio on and listening for news updates, which happened about once every quarter of an hour or so. I did think I faintly heard the warning sirens in the distance, but it might have been my imagination! Fortunately, as events showed, whilst we did have a tsunami, only the Chatham Islands had anything over a meter high.

It was very interesting to listen to events unfolding over the next couple of hours - I have a short cut link (mainly because I'm interested in the local earthquakes) to GeoNet (link) which also has tidal gauges to monitor tidal waves. You can see the events unfolding here:

Usually the lines are pretty flat (as they have been adjusted to take into account the tides)...

The radio was also quite amusing - at one point they had a reporter up on the hills overlooking Wellington harbour, and he'd obviously been told that they had set aside a three minute segment for him, and he was determined to fill it, even though he had nothing to say!

It is very comforting to know that, even though this turned into quite a non-event here (in Wellington the waves reached 30cm), if it had been bad, the emergency planning was there.

Now, it is just really a hope that the devastation from the earthquake in Chile can be contained and that the death toll does not rise.

In other news, I've had my first full week of "flying solo". All things considered, it hasn't gone too badly. I don't think I've made too many mistakes (only one obvious one, and that was due to me not finding out enough about a contract and relying on other people's opinions - fortunately I was able to clear it up within a very short space of time without too much fuss and bother! Lesson learned for next time...), and I've managed to impress the boss with the fact that I know how to use Excel and Project (he did get very excited when I showed him a couple of pivots that I'd used to get some data out of our unwieldy database, and a series of formula to flag time periods when contracts were expiring) My workload hasn't got too heavy yet, either, which is good, and means that I can work on some longer term projects which will make my life easier in the moths to come.

Orchestra was fun this week - I sat in for the first oboe, and didn't manage to fluff the solos too badly (apart from one piece, which I hadn't realised we were going to be playing, and where every note was an accidental and awkward fingering!)

I also had the trials for the hockey teams - not quite the trek all the way out to Trentham, this one was at the hockey club where we had the sign up session, and only a couple of stops up the line. It was a good session - great to get back into the pads again (and these are *posh* pads - not quite top of the range, but getting there! I've never had 100% body coverage before...), and I did manage to make a couple of good saves. And let in a couple of doozies as well... I wasn't good enough to get into the firsts, but then I wasn't expecting to - their current first goalie is amazing! Kerry (the guy who hired me) was watching the trials, and very kindly gave me a lift back - given that my other option was to walk (I wasn't going to wait for an hour and a half for the next train which was going to be a bus anyway), I was very grateful. And he then invited me out for drinks the next evening - he was going to be watching the NZ/Oz 20:20 cricket, and was meeting his mates at the pub beforehand. It transpired that one of the people he met up with was a contractor who had been doing my role a few months ago, and the other was also a procurement consultant. It is nice to know that, even if I don't decide to stay here for the very long term, there are consultancy roles available when I have built up enough experience (as Kerry said - the government will always need to buy things!)

The weekend was spent pottering - we had hoped to get out on the Sunday to a regional park where they were having an open day, but when we looked at the distance on the map, and the fact that the start point for the guided walks was 2km uphill from the road (which was already well over an hour's walk away), we decided to give it a miss! There are some gorgeous purple flowers growing on the tree which sits just into our neighbour's garden.

And the plants in my greenhouse are really getting going, particularly my broccoli

and my pepper.

We've also had a bit of an insect explosion - as well as the cicadas deafening us in the trees outside, these moth like insects were all over our lilies

and this little fellow was buzzing around the greenhouse

Looking at the length of his sting, I decided that the prudent course of action would be to leave the door wide open until he stopped head butting against the glass and flew out!

And another week gone!

2010-02-21T12:30:00.003+13:00

Time flies when you are having fun...

This week has been really enjoyable on a number of counts. I've finished my handover training at work, and am now "flying solo" as the lady who was training me has now left. I actually got a couple of practice days as she was off sick on Monday and Tuesday, which was a nice way of easing into it! (though a little frustrating when people came up looking for her wouldn't accept my help as "Julia knows what is going on, so it's easier if I just speak to her". They don't have that option now!) My boss has already decided to push me out of my comfort zone, just a little way, in asking me to help him sort out a dispute with one of our suppliers. I'm fine with the facts gathering, report writing and recommendation making, it's the sitting in front of the suppliers and telling them that they are being completely unreasonable is what slightly worries me. But I'm sure it will be easier once I get a better grip on what is going on. It's also very difficult for me to get my head round my new "status" - for all of my working life, my role has been administrative, and I've always had in my head that I've been "low down" on the status structure (even when the role hasn't been lowly, I'm still used to being seen as at most a couple of levels up from basic receptionist), and I'm now having to flip to the fact that my manager's manager is the CIO for the whole IT group, and three levels above her is the Minister. But I'm sure that will come once I've got a bit of a better handle on the role.

My enjoyment of the week has also been helped by the fact that I'm starting to get the hang of getting up in the mornings, remembering that I need to be heading to bed by 10pm and keeping my brain in gear all day.

We've also been pretty busy all week, hence a lack of posting until today!

Orchestra again on Monday - as interesting and fun as always. I've now got the first oboe parts, and need to spend some time today actually practising them ready for rehearsal tomorrow! (First oboe is away for two weeks, so I really need to look at the solos that she has - there are a lot of them!)

On Tuesday, we went to a seminar run by the good folks at Settlement Support. This one was on Emergency Preparedness - what to do if the earth shakes or the water rises... Apparently the Hutt Valley is prone to flooding on a reasonably spectacular scale; fortunately, we are far enough away from the rivers that we are only going to be affected in as much that the public transport will go up the swannee and make things difficult to get to work. The tidal waves should stop at the railway line a way back from us, so, again, we will only have problems with transport. Earthquakes may be a bigger problem, but only if they get to house or road/railway destruction levels. But we do now know what we should be doing and what sort of items we need to keep handy, and also how long we can expect to wait before help arrives in the event of a major scale disaster (3 days). And we got fed some really rather yummy pancake rolls and chocolate biscuits :-D

Thursday I had my first practice with the Hutt hockey club - this was quite an adventure! The training wasn't being held at the pitch that I had been to on Sunday last week, so I had a 20 minute train journey up the tracks to Trentham to the pitch there. The weather was hockey-typical (grey, rainy...), and I didn't get a great sense that there would be many there, particularly when I arrived five minutes before training was due to start and I was the only lady there! (The men were training before us, and they had a turn out of eight people...) In the end, there were four of us. Two of the men stayed behind and we had a three on three game, which was great fun - lots of running about and no being able to hide at the back! I even managed to get two goals in, which I was very pleased about (even though our side lost incredibly badly...)

We finished about fifteen minutes before time, as we were all getting a bit cold and wet, and there wasn't a huge amount that we could do with just the four of us after the men left. Unfortunately, no-one was heading back to Lower Hutt, so I had to go and catch the train back again, just as the heavens opened completely. I trudged back to the station, only to see the signs up saying that they are doing bus replacements. Unfortunately, the bus stop is the other side of the station from the shelter, and because I couldn't trust that the buses would be running to a similar schedule to the trains (it taking longer to go by road), I had to keep on nipping out in the pouring rain to check whether the bus was coming. It was made a little worse (for my frustrations at least) that the timetable that we picked up three months ago is now out of date, and the train that I was waiting for now only runs on a Friday, meaning that I had an extra half hour wait anyway. And one of the local drunks saw me at the shelter and decided to come over for a chat. Well, I say "chat" - more of an incomprehensible mutter from his side with me nodding and making appropriate sounds when he stopped! (and before anyone starts worrying, I was in no danger from him - he was holding on to his bags of bottles too tightly to ever be a threat, and I had my hockey sticks in my hands!)

Fortunately, the bus that was heading to Upper Hutt showed up, and the conductor suggested that as they were going to be the next bus heading back down towards Wellington, I might as well get on now and start warming up. I did get another drunk sitting next to me as we started to make our way back to Waterloo (this one so drunk that he was having difficulty taking the few paces up the aisle to fall into the seat), but I was able to ignore him better as I had my book out - he didn't really get the hint and kept on talking to me, but didn't really notice that I wasn't responding very much. It was still a very late night back, and unfortunately, the rail replacement after business hours is going to happen for the next few months whilst they do some major track work (they are bringing in some new trains, and laying new tracks to help cope with the extra volume) So, I'm very much hoping that someone will be going my way next week!

And last night, to round off the week, we hosted the Board SIG (Special Interest Group) for the Sci-fi society. It was very nice not to have to travel to get to the meeting, and was brilliant to have everyone round to show off our place. We played some really enjoyable games - I was playing a new one, which really rather complicated rules - however, once we got into it, it wasn't too confusing - one of those games where it is easier to play than to describe! The party ended up finishing at about half twelve, but it really didn't feel that late. Looking forward to the next one!

What a week!

2010-02-14T14:01:00.002+13:00

Well, I make no apologies for the lack of posting this week - I've been exhausted! This whole going to work lark is a lot tougher when you have gotten out of the habit of getting up and thinking all day...

In spite of the tiredness, it has been a good week. I'm finding my feet within the Ministry, though I despair of ever knowing who everyone is (there are about 300 people in my building, and there's another MoE building round the corner). There also seems to be far too many Peters around! It took me till Wednesday to get set up with a login and email - I have a phone number but no phone, which is interesting!

The office that I'm working in is lovely; just five minutes from the train station, and I'm right up on the 12th floor. My desk is in the corner of the office (right by the CIO of the whole division), and, aside from one building, which is slightly lower than us, I have an unimpeded view of the harbour and the sea. Great efforts are being made to not spend the whole time staring at the view, but I do have to admit that it happens on occasion!

I'm getting a good handover from the lady that I'm replacing, but I think that it is going to take me a while to get used to all the systems and processes (particularly as a good chunk of them do seem to be bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake), and the computer systems that they use, both the main database and the internet links, are shocking - I've not had to wait 20 minutes for a web page to load in a very long time! (and given that the main database is only accessible over the web, it's not as though I'm only using the internet for personal use...)

It is also very intriguing that their personal use of internet policies aren't consistent - Gmail is banned as it is a webmail (which I understand), but Yahoo and Facebook aren't. Still, I'm not going to complain too loudly, as it is nice to be able to look at Facebook on my lunchbreak, particularly when it is raining. When it is sunny, though, it is much nicer to head out to the harbour and eat my sandwiches looking out over the sea...

There is also a little bit of office politics, as is usual in a company of that size. I am doing my best to steer clear - we shall see how easy that gets when I'm dealing with people more regularly :-S

Outside of work, we have also been very busy; our second orchestra rehearsal on Monday. The second oboe has already said that she doesn't want to play first at any point, so I will have to practice both first and second parts in order to be able to stand in for the first oboe when she is away. I've also been landed with a huge dilemma - the orchestra has an annual workshop weekend where they work in sections with members of the Wellington Symphony Orchestra to put together a concert over the weekend. Unfortunately, this year, it happens to be on the same weekend as NatCon, the NZ national science fiction convention. I don't have to decide straight away, but I want to do both!

On Wednesday, we had a sci-fi meeting in town - a semi-serious presentation for the first half, and then some silly games for the second.

Then Saturday, after a reasonably early start to get the vegetable shopping done, we had a lovely day with one of the sci-fi members - he was over our way getting sausages from our local butchers (these are apparently the best sausages in Wellington - when we have a bit more money, I'll be getting some to see for ourselves!), so he treated us to a coffee, and then, as he had his car, drove us round a couple of shopping centres, including a very nice bulk buy shop (similar to Macro) which I'm sure we'll be visiting again!

And today, we had a small lie-in, and then we were out up to the hockey club to get me signed up for the new season. This came care of Kerry, who had hired me, who is also president of the club and who spotted that I played in goal when living in Bristol. The people at the hockey club are really nice - its a mixed club of all ages and abilities, and they have multiple teams as well, so I should be able to find something that sits with my limitations as a goalie. Plus, as they do have a number of people who play in goal, they do specific goalie training, which, aside from a one day coaching session, I have never really had. They didn't have any goalie kit there today, though they do supply the kit for practices and matches, so I had a good run-around on the pitch, and came to the realisation that four months or so without any major exercise does not do good things to the fitness levels! Fortunately, as well as the hockey, and the TKD once I have the money to cover the club fees and insurance, the job comes with free membership to a local gym, so I'll be able to get there during my lunch break, once I've got myself a bit more settled into the job. And I may even join the local squash club if I've not completely exhausted myself!

Quiet week

2010-02-07T19:55:00.007+13:00

Apologies for the lack of posting this week - we haven't really done a great deal since Monday - trying to save money!

I'm really looking forward to starting work tomorrow, not just because I know that it is going to be a fun job, with a good atmosphere and colleagues, but also because I am really needing the brain stimulation and the reason to get up in the mornings! Having said that, I have really enjoyed this last week, where I've let myself lie in as needed - the knowledge that the temp agency wasn't going to call to give me a last minute assignment helped in me ignoring the alarm clock...

We discovered our local Chinese supermarket on our walk to orchestra on Monday, and so we detoured there yesterday as part of our weekly shop - I think that John regretted offering to carry the things that I bought - I topped up on all the bottled stuff that I've been missing (dark soy, rice wine and rice wine vinegar, Thai green curry paste etc...), and it was really rather a heavy shop! Still, enough to keep me happy for a while.

Whilst we really didn't do anything yesterday to celebrate Waitangi Day, we did go over to one of our local parks to join in the celebrations for Te Ra o Te Raukura, which celebrates the Raukura, the white feather that people of Taranaki descent wear, and the passive peace resistance movement. In reality, though, it was more of a summer fete - we missed the traditional Maori singing and the haka, and just ended up wandering around the various stalls (mainly food, but a lot of health and community based ones, as well as a couple selling arts and crafts) and listening to a couple of local bands (mainly Reggae for some reason). We had mussel fritters for lunch - quite literally mussels mixed into an American pancake style batter, and then cooked in a griddle. They were really tasty, though they could have done with a bit of chilli sauce to liven them up a bit! Then an ice-cream for pudding - the sellers had a very clever machine which combined the Mr Whippy style ice-cream with frozen fruits - the fruits were placed in the tip of a metal cone, and then the ice-cream was squeezed through so that they mixed together - very tasty!

As we were over that side of town, I suggested that John came up into the Hayward Reserve, as he'd not actually been there. Sadly it was nowhere near as peaceful as normal, as the strains of the Reggae music floated up into the trees. I wondered what the birds and cicadas made of it!

We did get spotted by a Piwikawaka, though he did sit with the sun behind him, so the picture I got isn't brilliant:

We also spotted a cicada in full view - normally they hide away, but this one had probably only recently hatched:

The forest was full of mushrooms - I think that the heat after so much rain had really brought them out. Unfortunately, only one of the photos that I took came out - the camera was having much more fun focussing on the leaves behind...

We also heard a grey warbler, or Riroriro to give it its Maori name - we didn't see it though. This is the bird that I have heard every time I've been out there, and yet not been able to work out what it was (it is a lot harder to do a search when you don't know what the bird looks like, and the links don't all have the song on them). The song is amazing - whilst each one follows the same general theme, the individual songs are all unique.

We didn't spend very long in the reserve, as it was very hot, adn we didn't have any water with us. However, I'm glad that we came out when we did, as it let us get this photo of a Monarch butterfly

which I am very pleased with.

It has now been three months since we arrived in New Zealand - at times, it seems like we've only just arrived, and at others, it feels like we have been here forever. I think that we have really managed to settle in well, without hitting major culture-shock - there have been ups and downs, of course, but many more ups than down! It will be interesting to see what happens over the next three months (and beyond)!