Quiet week

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)!

Happiness...

I always knew that emigrating would bring mood swings, and it hasn't all been me bouncing around like a little puppy. There have been moments where I have wondered whether it was all worth it, and what we were really doing so far away from friends and family.

Fortunately, those moods don't tend to last very long...

Yesterday was really a euphoria day :-D I got into town ready to meet up with my new colleagues. Whilst I'm not going to be starting until the 8th Feb, Kerry is leaving on Friday, and wanted to introduce me to Kevin, my new boss, who started on Tuesday, and also the lady who is doing my job at the moment, and who will be moving on on the 18th to study in Oz. I also had to meet up with my HR rep, who needed to get some paperwork from me, and also get me to correct a mistake I'd made on my tax form (it really is confusing until you've had it explained to you!)

I arrived a tad early, and so had a bit of a chat with the receptionist whilst I waited for Fiona to come downstairs. She's just finished learning level one of the NZ sign language, so it will be interesting to see if we can get together and find out what the differences between OzLang and BSL are. Then I headed into the break-room with Fiona to go through my paperwork. This was the first "bounce" point. Most break rooms have a kettle and toaster, a microwave if you are lucky. This one, with a floorprint of at least three quarters of our house, not only had the above, but two huge fridges, a dishwasher, a toasted sandwich maker, an oven and an outside patio with a BBQ! One of the team was about to get married, so they were going to have a celebration morning tea for him, and someone was making scones - the smell was amazing! I'm actually going to be working on the twelfth floor, and this was on the second, so I think I will need the exercise on the stairs just to work off all the extra goodies I'm going to be eating! (plans already afoot to take pre-mixed cookie dough in...)

There were a number of conversations regarding the fire drill that they had just had, and I was able to talk about the Innogistic fire drill which had actually included a real fire... Cue being jumped on with excitement at the thought of another fire warden on the team, so I might have accidentally put my hand up for that... But only if I get paid to go on the First Aid at Work course - the receptionist is also about to go on one, so I might get to sneak on that with her (I am missing my First Aid qualification - it lapsed in October, and I don't like the fact that I'm not longer qualified). Not even started yet, and they are going to pay for my training!

Then the next major bounce point - Fiona had talked to the payroll team, and had got me a definitive statement of how much I am going to be paid, both for my first week, and then on a fortnightly basis. There was a little bit of confusion on my part; I had got the fortnightly one almost bang on (not bad given that I was working with last year's tax figures), but the first week was quite a way out. Then Fiona pointed out that I'd miscalculated the number of days, and I'm actually going to be paid for two more days than I had anticipated. So we are going to be nearly $400 better off in that first pay packet! It still doesn't get us out of Challenge 3 (below), as we are still going to get quite close to the bottom of our bank account before I get paid, but it does mean that we shouldn't ever hit the red.

Then Kerry, Kevin, Julia and I went out for a coffee, and we just yacked in the coffee shop for an hour. We did occasionally touch on work (in particular, some of the team building and social events that happen on a regular basis - the last one was that each floor had to create their own golf hole - my team won the best overall, with a map of New Zealand, which included a (full) paddling pool as Lake Taupo; the testing team used some of the computer equipment to rig up a mechanical device which randomly spat the ball out in a number of different directions! I'm waiting to be sent over some links to information that I need to read over the next week so that I'm not going into it completely blind on the 8th.

After we'd finished, and they'd all gone back to work, I took advantage of being in Wellington to go over to the Central Library. Now that I have an employer here, and have my offer letter to prove it, I can have a library account that I don't have to pay for. And I got out two books on playing the accordion - whilst I'm having fun footling around, and am starting to get the hang of some of the key jumps, I'm also aware that I could be picking up some very bad habits, and I want to see if I can stop those before I start.

By the time I got home, I was almost bouncing through the ceiling, and, as it was a glorious day, I decided after lunch that I wasn't going to stay indoors, and instead went off for a little walk up the Hutt Valley River. Well, little. It ended up being about ten miles and took just under four hours. But it was brilliant!

The flowers were out,
















the butterflies were flying, and occasionally landing long enough for me to get a decent shot of them




and the view down the river was amazing!









Sadly, I didn't get very far along the river, just between the Kennedy Good Bridge and the Pomare Rail Bridge - the two lines above where it says "Lower Hutt".

Next time I do the walk, I will definitely make it an all day, and probably catch the bus to the start of the river.

It's not as peaceful as the scenic reserve or the hills, mainly because the trail runs between the river and the main road into Wellington! It's also more densely populated; not only are there housing estates dotted along the first part, but also people are naturally taking advantage of the gorgeous weather to go for a swim. But it was very enjoyable for all that, and had the distinct advantage of being pretty much flat all the way!

My legs are punishing me today, though, so I've been a bit quieter, getting some writing done (an attempt to get a short story written before a competition deadline on Sunday), and I may even get the third Maori lesson done :-)

Huzzah!

Sorry for the silence over the last few days - I didn't want to jinx things when they seemed to be going so well (having heard of people who had got to reference stage and then been told that the interviewer hadn't actually got approval for the job!)

I had a few problems with taking the tests for the Ministry job; the outsourced company did not believe that Linux was a valid operating system; whilst I could take their practice tests without a problem, as soon as I tried to start the real thing, I got a splash screen telling me that as I wasn't using Windows or a Mac, I couldn't proceed. Unfortunately, all the library internet computers are also Linux as it is a free system which has a much lower virus risk than either Windows or a Mac (and is therefore preferable for a system where anyone could download anything!). However, when I talked to the HR lady, she did not have a problem with them setting up the tests for me to do in their offices.

So on Monday, I headed into Wellington to take the online tests. This was in a different building to the one where I had had the interview, which is a good job, as the interview building was right in the middle of the area where Prince William was visiting and the crowds were heaving! The tests themselves were a lot nicer than the practice ones, and, although I didn't finish the numerical one, I was a lot happier with how they went (and, despite what I had been told at interview, they were just numerical and reasoning, there wasn't a psychometric test there at all). I left the offices in glorious sunshine about an hour and a half later, and the crowds for William were still there (his flight had been delayed due to fog at Wellington airport). However, I decided not to hang around - I'm not the best person in a crush, and it's not as though I'm that fanatical about the royal family!

By the time I got home, the test results were waiting for me - I got 54/60 for the verbal reasoning (and all six were ones which I wasn't sure about on the check-through), 37/40 for the numeracy (but I ran out of time after doing question 37...). When I spoke to Kerry on Tuesday (he'd been off sick on Monday), he actually opened the email with the results in whilst on the phone; his reaction - "54 out of 60? That's good. Numeracy? Well now, that's just showing off!"

He's been talking to my references (both of them were from my previous company - it's been quite tricky having two references from the same job, but as that was over 5 1/2 years, and I've not the foggiest where to direct people for Sure Start (particularly as the DfES has significantly changed over the last few years!), I didn't have much choice...), and then had to get final sign off for the job. Which is why I've been waiting to let everyone know how it was all going!

But I got a phone call from Kerry this morning - the formal offer letter is now in the post. I'm not going to start until the 9th Feb (or that week), but I'll be meeting up with Kerry and Kevin, who is taking over Kerry's role and who will be my boss, for coffee next week. The icing on the cake is that he has got a significant increase on the salary - his reasoning is that no-one in the department was allowed a pay rise last year due to the recession, and so he wanted to get the raise in early in case it was the same situation next year! It's far over and above what I was expecting, even after he said that he was going to try to get me a bit more, and will definitely allow us some significant spending and saving money on a monthly basis. The joy is that my first payday (they pay fortnightly) will be just before the money runs out in our NZ bank, meaning that I won't have to transfer the rest over from the UK until the exchange rate is back in my favour (it seems to be getting better, but then it's had little rises over the last couple of months, and then slumped back down again!)

In other news, we have also had the delivery of our goods from the UK - the delivery men arrived half an hour early, and, even with having to turn the lorry round and come back as they'd missed the house the first time, they were still gone in 40 minutes! So far (touch wood) we've only had three significant damages, and all were mildew related - one of my coats, John's leather boots and one of our holdalls. We've still got a couple more things to check, but *touch wood* we should be all right. We're still unpacking - I thought we'd packed a lot more coat hangers than we did, so we are going to have to go and find some more. We've also got to earthquake proof our big book-cases before we can load them up (just bracket them to the wall), and probably pick up a few more cases to replace the ones we couldn't ship. The one little bummer is that the mattress that we had borrowed (and were going to buy off of our friend) is actually about half a foot too big for the bed! So we are going to be heading to the Salvation Army to get a second hand one to tide us over (a little bit icky, I know, but even with the higher pay, we'll have to wait a few months before we can afford a new one - I hadn't appreciated how expensive they are!)

I also had another walk yesterday; with some glorious sunshine instead of our promised rain, I wanted to see if I could get a bit of ridge-walking done. This walk was definitely one for appreciating colour. The sunshine filtered through the trees, highlighting particular details, like the huge buttresses on this tree, which I had to scramble over to avoid falling off the edge of the path on the other side


The tree did need the buttresses - it seemed to go upwards forever


When I got out to the ridge, I headed back towards the radio masts, and took one of the paths that headed down the other side of the hill. The contrast between the two sides was amazing, even in just a short space of time; the air was cooler, and the breeze that little bit stronger. Rather than the scrubland on top of the ridge, or the dense forest of the reserve, this road had a mixture of trees,


including this amazing manuka tree in full bloom,


bushes and flowers




I also came across a phenomenon that I have never seen before. Whilst heading up the hill back towards the ridge, the sun was eclipsed by a particularly bushy tree


Now, what isn't particularly visible in this photograph, and I believe that I only really saw it because I was wearing my sunglasses, which have a dark green tint to them, is that along the high cloud, the light was refracting off the crystals, and the cloud was striped electric blue and pink. I've tried to crop the photo down to the specific area of the cloud and then had a bit of a play with it to try to get the same effect as if you were looking through my glasses:


It isn't quite the same (the colours that I saw were more delineated and crisp), but I hope that you can get an idea of the vision, and can understand why I was standing there for about five minutes with my jaw hanging open! I haven't been able to find anything similar to it on the Google images, so if anyone can tell me what causes this phenomenon (and therefore whether I'm ever going to see it again!), I would be very grateful!

Back up on the ridge, and as the clouds passed overhead, they cast their shadows on the hillside, deepening and emphasising the folds in the land:


The route back home was interesting to say the least. I had spotted a path that I'd wanted to follow (at the up or down decision on the walk I did on the 4th Jan), and so happily took it this time. The path forked a few more times, and I started to get a little bit concerned that I'd gone wrong (I wasn't lost. Just directionally challenged...), particularly when every path that I tried to take to get me back to the entrance did an Alice through the Looking Glass and just led me further and further away, on the wrong side of the "V" shape of the reserve. Any sensible person would have retraced their steps at this point and gone back along the familiar path, but I never make any claims for being sensible! I was getting a bit more worried when I started going through land that was obviously being used for logging; had I strayed onto private property without realising it? Fortunately, I bumped into an elderly Scottish gentleman who was taking his English pointer for a walk. He asked me if I knew where I was going, and I confessed that I thought I'd taken a wrong turning. He very kindly directed me to his garden, and said that I could get out to the main road that way. After startling his wife (who obviously wasn't expecting to see a rambler appear!), I was out on the main road, and headed home. Lesson obviously learnt - I shall be a bit more careful next time I'm exploring!

Another walk post

(Hopefully I have updated my Blogger settings correctly - apparently Google doesn't know where New Zealand is and, after I changed my settings to say that I was here, it decided that our time zone was GMT-8. Only 21 hours out, then...)

This is just a quick one - as it was such a lovely day, I decided to take another walk up the fire break to see if I could do a bit more ridgewalking. Unfortunately, it was a little too hot for that, and so I decided to come back down the reserve again.

It was absolutely glorious in there - the trees shaded the heat from the ground, but it was still warm enough to remind me that this is summer...

The whole reserve was serene. The wind gently rustled in the canopy overhead, occasionally dislodging a dry leaf, which, as it fell, sounded like rain. There were the ever present cicadas, performing the aural equivalent of a rainbow, always ahead and slightly to the side, but never visible. The birds, again, were all around, but, apart from a Piwikawaka and a Kereru, who both came over to say hello, were only audible. But I could hear the Riroriro, the piwikawaka, the ever present tui, and one with a very distinctive call that I cannot identify from anywhere on the internet!

It was just fantastic, and I know where I will go after a stressful day at work in order to unwind and feel at peace with the world!

Walk to Work Week

Three posts in two days... Don't worry - this outpouring won't last!

This week it is Walk to Work Week (there was a reason for me mentioning that I had walked in in my post yesterday...) - an effort to get the country walking rather than sat in traffic queues.

The intentions are very sound - show people how easy it is to walk a mile or two, and they might do it more often, rather than driving in.

And I have walked twice - this morning's walk was slightly quicker - bang on an hour and a half, rather than 1 hr 36 mins, and slightly shorter (5.73 miles instead of 6) as I cut the corner off...

However, part of the way the site works is to calculate how much carbon you have saved by walking instead of going by car - this doesn't help as a motivator for me, as I come in by train, and that train will run whether I am on it or not!

It also gives you a calorie counter, which is just depressing - so far this week, according to it (I did sneak in my walk to the station last night as well), I have burned off 1278 calories, which is only 6 and a half cupcakes. Doesn't really seem a lot for three hours of exercise when you put it like that!!

I also get a bit frustrated with the site, as I use a website called Map My Run to measure how far I travel (it also does lovely things like calculating calories based on your weight, height and age, rather than the rough calculation that W2W gives you...), so I *know* that I travelled 6 miles on Monday - however, as the W2W site only lets you put in a time, rather than a distance, and it then calculates an average distance from the time, it stole a whole 0.7 miles from me as I walk faster than the national average! So I have to then recalculate a time compared on the distance I've walked {sigh}.

I did find this morning's walk interesting, though - the sun shone, which instantly meant that it was nicer than yesterday, but today, I knew how far I had to walk. Yesterday, I knew the map, but not what it would feel like, nor the landmarks along the way. Today, my brain knew how far it was, my muscles knew how far it was (and were already yelling from yesterday), and the blister on my foot knew how far it was (indeed, it invited a friend to join it, so I now have matching pairs!)

However, I still really enjoyed it. I will try to walk in tomorrow and Thursday as well (I can't on Friday, as I have to be in work early in order to leave early for TKD), depending on whether it is sunny or not (I'm not doing an hour and a half in the rain again!) and on whether my legs will actually walk that far...