I drove!

Carly and I bought a vacuum on Trademe, the rough equivalent of eBay in New Zealand. We got a good deal on it (25$) but there was one catch. It was in Porirua. When you look at it on a map, it's about 20km away. NOTHING! you say. However, without a car, that's equivalent to a 15 minute bus ride to the train station, followed by waiting, followed by a 22 minute ride on the train, followed by more waiting, followed by another 10 minute bus ride. All told it was going to take about 90 minutes to get there, 90 minutes to get back on top of the hassle of wrestling a vacuum cleaner on public transit.

The other big factor was cost. Two people, 18$ each was a lot when you consider that we'd seen rental cars advertised for 29$. So we decided to go explore the world of rentals. Calling around we found a few that had cars on the lot, but the 29$ price was for a minimum 7 day rental. the daily price was 44$. Still, only 6 dollars more than the public transit option and it frees up the day with unlimited transportation!

Two problems of course, 1) gotta pay for gas. 1.72$ a litre is the going rate, so it has to be a small car. 2) I haven't driven right-hand-drive cars since 2005, and rarely in the city at all. This worried me quite a bit, because I've been having a lot of trouble adapting to this as a pedestrian.

So we arrive at the rental place (Rent-a-Bargain, think older cars, small lot, one guy working there) and pick out a Nissan Sunny. 100000km on the odometer. The nice thing is, we do all the paperwork, and there isn't any additional fees, insurance etc. tacked on. It's the price quoted.

A quick aside: New Zealand really isn't big on inflating the price after it's given. I'm not sure if there are laws against it or it's just culture, but when you see a price, that's what's coming out of your wallet. Tips are only done for exceptional service, taxes are included in the price, extras are typically shown upfront and only if they are truly optional. It means the cost of living looks to be higher, but when you go to the restaurant for example, and see a 25$ plate, you need to keep in mind that that there's 30% of tax and service tacked on there (i'm sure the fact that there's no tipping is a large part of why so few restaurants have "table service" and most places have you order at a counter before your food is brought to you)

Anyway, so we get in our car, and a few things happen. I screw up and reach over the wrong shoulder for my seat belt, i flick the wipers to signal left and i completely forget where the rear view mirror is. I was so busy reminding myself which side of the road i'm supposed to be on that the little muscle-memory tasks in driving were completely forgotten.

The rental place had put a bright yellow sticker on the dash that said "KEEP TO THE LEFT!" and i'm not ashamed to say that probably saved our life more than once.

Overall though, driving in Wellington a lot like driving in Montreal. Tight streets, people in a hurry but something you can easily get used to.

We took the time go explore a bunch of the suburbs we'd been wondering about but not had a chance to check out. Upper Hutt, Lower Hutt, Johnsonville, Porirua, Whitby all were done. Everything is rediculously close here. The hutts were knocked off almost immediately (nice, but no what we're looking for and too far) Whitby looked nice, but again very far from downtown. Porirua seems to have some very rough and very nice neighborhoods, it'd be a challenge to figure out where to go.

Johnsonville was actually a lot nicer than we expected. We'll have to go back and spend more time there.

All in all, it was a relatively uneventful trip... no driving down the wrong side of the street (done that before :P ) 1 close call when I was getting out of a mall and no honks. A success I believe.

Still don't want a car here though....

Floating on my Own Little Island...

I knew that working remotely was going to be a challenge. I knew that working from 6am to 11am (luckily soon to be from 7am to 12am once Canadian Daylight Savings Time kicks in) was going to be rough. What I didn't expect was that my greatest frustrations would be my inability to get the job done... I can remember how hard it was to balance everything going on locally (e.g. face to face) as well as the constant flow of emails and IM pings etc. The meetings they are being called into are pretty much constant and being set to "away" most of the time is normal in the office I left.

Sadly, those same IM pings are the only way I have to communicate with most people and sometimes the answer to a simple question is what's stopping me from getting a pile of work done. It's the nature of working remotely I gather. I have other things I can work on while I wait, but sometimes, when I have users asking me questions that I can't immediately answer, my need to help people out gets all uppity because it would have been so much simpler had I been local.

I'm glad this position is only temporary, I can't imagine how people deal with these situations long term.

African Stew

One of the nice things about being a "House Husband" as it were is that I can take some time to explore some aspects of cooking that I wouldn't otherwise get into. I have, on my daily blog checks, a number of cooking / recipe blogs. Occasionally, I'll find one that peaks my interest, cut and paste it into my wiki and hope that I'll eventually get to make it.

Arriving in Wellington, I find myself with a surplus of time some days I decided that cooking was probably my best, if not healthiest, option.

So armed with the recipe (taken from Lex Culinaria) I decided to take some of the produce grown in New Zealand, some with Maori names like Kumara (sweet potatoes) and combine them in a way I'd never thought of.

Add some couscous as a side and you get an incredibly flavorful vegetable curry (easy to convert to vegetarian as well!).

You can check the recipe at Lex Culinaria, there's some good photos as well, but I'll also cross post it here. Turned out GREAT! (I left out the chick peas because I ran out of time and the lime juice because I didn't have any on hand) I added some carrots because they had looked nice in the market. Really, you could throw almost any vegetable in here and it would likely work. The trick is the peanut butter, spices and raisins.

• 1 teaspoon Olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 large yam or sweet potato, cubed
• 1 large waxy potato, cubed
• 4 celery stalks, diced
• ½ green, red or yellow pepper, chopped
• 1 medium zucchini, cut in quarters lengthwise and then sliced in fat chunks
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 & ½ cups strong chicken broth (if I'm using regular broth, I just simmer it for a bit to concentrate it a bit)
• 1 980 ml can diced tomatoes in juice
• 1 540 ml (19 oz) can chickpeas, drained (optional - I don't add it as I really don't care for chickpeas)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons chilli powder
• 2 teaspoons ginger, minced (or 1 teaspoon dried ground ginger)
• ¼ teaspoons black pepper
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 4 tablespoons peanut butter

1. Heat olive oil in a large pot and add onion, potato, sweet potato, celery, pepper and garlic. Cook & stir for a few minutes.
2. Add broth, tomatoes, zucchini, chickpeas and spices. Let simmer for 25 minutes. Add raisins, peanut butter and tomato paste. Cook for 5 minutes more. Stir through lime juice. Serve.

I'm a teacher!!!

Ok thats misleading. i was alreay a teacher, what i meant to say that i am now a registered New Zealand teacher. The NZQA paperwork turns out was completed end of September (27th) but for some reason i didn't receive my report till October 17th. However as a result of this unexplained delay by the time i got my report the Teacher's Council had my report for 2 weeks and they had been finalizing my registration.

So as of Friday October 17th, you can find me on the registration files with the Teacher's Council as a Provisional Registered New Zealand Teacher. Provisional means i need to get 2 years of experience before i can apply for full registration; all new teachers here in New Zealand fresh out of Teacher's college are also considered provisional.

Well you say, that sounds nice but what does that mean.
It has a two-fold effect. first off with provisional registration it means i can now teach for as long as i want, up till this point i was limited to 10 full days/20 half days of relief work. if i used those up before becoming provisional i would have to stop relieving until my registration came through. so now i can do relief work with no limits.
secondly (and this is the big one) i am now allowed to apply to permanent jobs. so on Monday i plan to hit up the Gazette for the new posts and start applying for permanent jobs. there are quite a few with the phrase "beginning teachers welcome" so i might as well try. it would totally be amazing if i could get a job for january. ^^

the first day of relief or here is some stuff i learned

So the first day of relief is over. it was educational, no pun intended. for example i must remember to take into account the slight variations on the english language.

"once I have checked your work please put it in the bin" (and then i pointed to the bin). this worked fine until i forgot to point to 'the bin'. turns out the previous children were to polite to mention it and just put the book where i pointed. this young lady though got quite upset "i don't want to put it in the bin". its just over there i responded, put it in the bin. "why do i have to put my book in the rubbish", she was quite upset now. right so the correct phrase is not "put it in the bin", or "put it in the basket" its "put it in the box". the other two mean trash to them.

so there was the newbie mistake of the day. now for teachers coming over here i have learned something important. yes you need to go through the NZQA and register with the Teachers Council. but that's about it, TeachNZ website says nothing more than that. so when the school asked me for my MoE number i went blank; i hadn't read anything about that.

MoE number is the Ministry of Education number. you need to put it on all the paperwork. do not panic if you do not have one; after a frantic call to the ministry at 4pm on Friday it turns out that the MoE number is automatically generated the first time your pay info comes through the system. so on Monday when the school enters my name and bank info for my relief pay I will have a MoE generated.

also i have decided that Year 2-3 is more my thing...the new entrants are...well its more like kindergarden but you have 6 years olds who go completely limp and refuse to acknowledge you when they don't want to do something. if you are looking for an Ontario grade 1 type class you may want to stick to Year 2-3 over here.

Things i'm taking home after 1 day:
1)my Maori is going to need a massive jumpstart,
2)they don't have 100s carpets (never heard of them),
3)teachers physically take hand (ie. i saw a teacher grab two boys, pull them apart, drag them both to the door and order them out to run 5 laps; they were 6, i was a little shocked),
4)teachers touch and hug kids all the time.

the other thing which really blew me away was the trust. a child in my class missed leaving with the group for after school soccer. the other teacher scolded her for goofing with friends instead of going to line up for soccer and said "well i guess i'll have to drive you up". i said (i was curious) how far away was the stadium and she turned to me and said "oh not far, could you walk her up the hill"....hold up you're going to just hand me a child and tell me to take her to where she needs to go, no calling parents, needing a note and all that jazz....YES!!!!! finally a country thats not so overprotective it seems stupid.
turns out her older brother missed the group too, he ended up grabbing her instead but still i was blown away by the different attitude.

what i took away from today. keep an open mind, everything is different enough here so be prepared for anything.

update on relief teaching

and i got a phone call at 4:30pm today asking me to sub tomorrow. and i'm also on the hook for an activity.

i just made a mad dash down to the library for books on Canada. time to pull out the little random fact booklet project.

oh and i thought i should mention something to the teachers who read this. kiwi teachers get 3 weeks a year of sick leave but there is something else thats going to make you drop everything and move here.

if you catch an illness from one of the kids in your class you call in sick but it is not counted to your sick days. nope not making this up, talked to a guy who does teacher payrolls. teachers here end up with months and months of sick leave because they don't have to count the stuff they catch in class. as an end result a teacher nearing retirement with 4-6 months sick leave finds an accomodating doctor who says "too bad you are too ill to work for the next 4-6 months, you had better take time off" and bam they use their sick leave and oh look i'm retired.

Relief teaching or subbing in NZ

so since monday i have been calling schools, asking if i could stop by and drop off a cv, meet a principal, take a quickie walk around, etc.

now everyone we've spoken to said "oh yeah we need teachers". was this an over generalization?

wednesday at 2:30pm the school i visited monday called me up and asked me to do a year 2-3 group October 30th. today i visited another school at 10am and as i was walking out the door the staffing coordinator i met not 5 minutes before said "hold up are you free ...let me get my book". so in a 10 minute span i got another days work on November 4 with years 5-6.

um ok ^^ i can deal with this. one thing that i didn't know though was that it appears i'm on my own for activities, at least for the Berhampore school. i'll have to check Te Aro.

In Ontario if you sub the teacher leaves the day plan which has the duties, notes, a scheduled class day, including which books to do, math pages, etc. looks like i'm on my own for coming up with activities to get me from 8:50am-3pm. this could be fun/scary...

Island Bay

So i've spent the last 3 days going to schools introducing myself to principals, dropping off CVs, and expressing a general interest in relief teaching (subbing for those of the CDN persuasion). Children and teachers are awesome everywhere but i was a little shocked at how barren some of the classes i've seen are.

i mean i came out of teacher's college being hammered into the idea that "print rich" environments were the way to teach. it was balanced literacy, student work, diagrams, word walls, etc.

so today i went to see Island Bay school...PLEASE GOD I WANT A JOB THERE!

ok lets go back a step. first off the classes are beautiful, full of fun stuff both student created and educational. 2nd off, organic garden of native plants...which leads into the specialized art teacher who takes each class for two solid days a term and does art using said native plants and animals.

they do swimming lessons as part of school curriculum, swimming! they have a nice library, the school is built over 3 different areas due to the hills which sounds complicated but its so nice and breezy and open, nothing cramped. the town of island bay itself is pretty, its older home but unlike some neighbourhoods its well maintained and lots of plantings and trees.

oh did i mention its a community of artists. it turns out that NZ curriculum basically states that the community chooses what the children should learn, then the teachers incorporate it as much as they can into science, language, math, etc. so in a community of artists its no surprise that they want their kids to experience it in as many mediums as possible. one class was making designs for/and cutting out material for soft toys...did i mention they were all 7 years old?

i could go on and on. island bay is definitely the suburb that has impressed me the most. i'm going to throw blaise onto a bus and bring him down there today or tomorrow, he has to see this place.

Botanical Gardens Spring Festival

It's spring here in Welly and Carly and I found ourselves with a little free time so we headed up to the Botanical Garden for some site seeing and some photos. I learned how to play with some of the new features of the camera, specifically how to set it for AEB (Automatic Exposure Bracketing, essentially it snaps the photo 3 times, including one under exposed by a stop and one over exposed by a stop) which made it much easier to find the right lighting. It was a gorgeous day, not too much wind and the crowds were light.

Along the way, Carly got asked if she had a pen. After that conversation, she came back to me and said, I think that couple is french Canadian. Turns out not only was she right, but they were from Ottawa ! We chatted, exchanged stories and I pointed them to several good restaurants, both in Wellington and Ottawa.

A good day all around.

As always there's a complete archive of the photos here.

Somethings you Need Eventually...

And some you need right now. When we first moved into our flat, we made a list of the immediate needs and those that could probably wait. The idea was that we'd buy the immediate new and buy the rest on trademe or in second hand stores. The list looked something like this:

Immediate:

• Mattress
• Desk x 2
• Chairs x2
• Everything needed for the kitchen
  

... and that was pretty much it. Everything else, bed frame, couches, dining table, chairs even sets of dresser drawers was on the later list. We wanted to live more reasonably (and recycle whenever possible) and it didn't seem like a big deal to wait on all of those.

Fast forward 3 weeks and certain things have been moved to the Immediate list. Surprisingly, the couch was at the top of the list. We'd originally figured we'd buy some one's second hand Ikea sofa for 100-300$. No Ikea in New Zealand and no equivalents means that not only is the second hand market for couches quite cut throat but the prices are quite a bit more than we expected as well. Example: We were bidding on a one or two year old couch. We found the EXACT couch new for 999$ (remember, taxes are included in prices here). The auction ended with the couch being sold for 650$!! And this is far from the only example of this.

Looking at our situation, we quickly came to the realization that buying used wasn't going to work. Back home, we spent a LOT of downtime on our comfy couches and not having a place other then the office to hang out was straining. So, today we went out and bought a couch that will last us our entire say in New Zealand. What's better, with a little luck we'll end up being able to sell it for a good chunk of change.

I'm not giving up on buying off Trademe and from second hand stores... yet. It appears that many of the buyers on Trademe are in fact owners of second hand stores. There was one buyer with 18 couches in his recent transaction list. How am I supposed to compete with that?

Crafting Blog

Its been requested from multiple people to do a blog for my dress i made recently. but i make random weird stuff all the time too. Blaise suggested i combine the two and just post up stuff when it happens.

So i give you
http://mysocalledcraft.blogspot.com/

those old enough among us may get the reference.

I'll try and track down and post past weird things i've made; the original spider-pillow, the transformer cushion, some of the cosplay costumes i've made, etc.

enjoy ^^bb

I Think These Hours are Going To Kill Me.

A quick side track about the work arrangement I've made with my employer. As I may have mentioned here previously, I'm working out the rest of my employment contract remotely. However, given that we're between 12 and 13 hours ahead, I end up having to work some odd hours.

Right now, with NZ daylight savings time having just kicked in, my work hours are 6am to 11am, NZT, which is 1PM to 6PM Ottawa Time. However, come the time that Ottawa moves back an hour into standard time (they are currently in DST) my work hours will shift to 5am to 10am.

Now for those of you who have known me a while, morning person is NOT a qualification often applied. That being said, I'm trying it out to see. So far, over the last 4 days it's not gone as well as planned. Daylight Savings kicked in this weekend here in New Zealand, which is a bit of a kick in the sleep pants as it were, since we'd only just gotten over the jet lag from coming here in the first place. So I tried to go to bed at 10:30, failed, didn't sleep much on Monday. Ended up getting up around 10..

Tuesday, tried to go to bed at 10:00, but 1 sleeping pill and 3 hours later I was still wide awake. I finished the book I was reading, ended up passing out and getting about 4 hours sleep spread over 6 hours real time. Got up at 8:30.

Wednesday I made it to bed at 10:30, having forgone coffee and caffeine for most of the day (had a bit of tea) and discovered the joys of earplugs. Fell asleep, slept, and got up at 7 this morning.

If i keep this up I think I'll be able to manage 6 am until the switchover in canada.

The alternative is to ditch the morning life completely and start working nights. Midnight to 6am seems more reasonable, and would line up with the beginning of the work day in ottawa (8am to 2PM) so that might work. I haven't flown it by my boss yet though, and there's some social and logistical issues with that..

I leave you with a sneak peak of photos I took in Picton. A blog entry about the weekend is forthcoming.

observations on life, specifically the kids of NZ

During our treks so far we have seen more unsupervised kids on the street than I’ve seen for years in Canada. And I’m not talking teenagers, I’m talking kids in the 8-10 year range. I saw a boy about 9-ish playing a violin on a street corner, and 4 hours later he was still there; not a parent in sight. And there was this really great group of girls in the 8-10 year range just wandering down the street together, giggling like mad at pictures of male models in shop windows. Little four and five year olds were walking multiple meters away from their parents and running up to talk to them before wandering off again. I found 3 kids about 4-5 years old in a toy aisle in the Warehouse playing with the stuffed toys, no where in sight an adult. “New Zealand would be a great place to raise a kid”, said Blaise. I’m inclined to agree.