Two Canadians Escape to Kiwiland

Christchurch Earthquake.

2011-02-24T11:41:00.003+13:00

The big one hit. 6.3, 5km depth right in the heart of Christchurch during a work day. Wes and his fiancee Alex are both ok, though their house is a mess (structurally sound though so there's that)

Anyway, not much to say about it other than to point out that the country as a whole is in shock.

Here's the best collection of photos I've found to date:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/02/christchurch_earthquake.html

and here's the Wikipedia article that seems to be the most factual account so far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canterbury_earthquake

Rescued by the SLSC! Kitsurfing Misadventures...

2011-02-22T10:38:00.002+13:00

Here's a quick post I made to the Wellington Kitesurfing mailing list about my adventures yesterday. To re-iterate, I'm ok, my gear got lightly damaged but nothing unrecoverable and it was a great learning experience.

went out at Seatoun yesterday on my 10m. Wind was dying so I grabbed my big board and went out (lots of people on 12s and a 14 and 16) Things were going pretty well until I hit a lull just beyond the rocks (think it's called Temple rock?) started kiting downwind to keep the speed up, but the board got snagged in the kelp, and I ended up pulled off of it. As I was struggling in the kelp to get my board, one of my lines snagged the small rock that juts out about 20m out of the main formation, so I couldn't relaunch. Drifted to the rock to untangle but the kite slipped in behind the big formation, all 4 lines snagged there.

The bridle snagged on the rocks as well, so I swam toward the rocks, climbed them, untangled all 4 lines, wound the lines then worked on freeing the kite. btw that rock is mostly barnacles and mussels. Not something I'd recommend.

Finally, got everything cleaned up as best I could, hopped in the water and started swimming to shore but could hear the outboard motor of the SLSC boat coming. Thank god, that was going to be a long swim.

I kept the entire kite inflated, but in retrospect, speaking to various people, it would have been wiser to deflate the leading edge and use the struts for floatation.

Once again I'm super thankful for everyone who came over to check on me, help and give me tips! Also thanks again to Brian who called SLSC to fish me out. This just re-affirms my decision never to kite alone. I'd have been right stuffed if i'd been the only one on the beach.

Christmas miracles - part 1

2010-12-29T15:51:00.000+13:00

For us this year we had two Christmas 'miracles'. The 2nd one was more impressive but i'll let Blaise tell that one.

I'll handle the 1st one.
We had been to Raglan earlier this year. We arrived at the end of the tourist season and we had left with a less than good impression of the locals. They all seemed cold and putting in the bare minimum of service. We thought it was in part due to being the end of tourist season and they were sick of people coming in but a small part thought that maybe Raglan was just "one of those places".

I would like to set the record straight and say now that Raglan is a wonderful place and i recommend you go there.

What happened to cause this change of opinion. Let me tell you...

It was December 25th. Blaise was on the never-ending quest to find wind. My Christmas plans involved knitting in the truck. It wasn't a glamorous Christmas but it was fine by us. Our initial lunch plans to get fish and chips was thwarted by everything in Raglan being closed. Fair enough it was Christmas day and we did have food so we headed back to the estuary to wait for wind and prepare our Christmas feast. Hard-boiled eggs, lunch meats, cherries, sprite and chips. As we sat looking at the water the British couple next to us (also waiting for wind) got a text saying "come to the town hall, they're feeding travelers". We had 2 hours at least for the outgoing tide so we packed back into the truck and headed into town.

We arrived at the town hall thinking " a plate of turkey would be nicer than hard-boiled eggs" but when we walked in we thought we might be in for something a little more grand. There were long tables laid out and decorated. Each plate had a small ornament or gingerbread cookies on it. As soon as we sat down people came around with juice, red and white wine and bubbly (and according to Blaise "not the cheap stuff"). They had 2 guitarists playing away and finally a gentleman stood up and welcomed us to the 1st annual Raglan Christmas dinner. He announced that for dinner we had a wonderful feast: a full spit lamb, mussels on the 1/2 shell, sushi, a roasted pig, a hangi, a full salmon. Our mouth's were watering and the two young German boys sitting next to me were in throes of rapture. They had been living in their car the last 2 months (a nissan sunny) and the hadn't a lot to spend on decent food. When we got in words could not describe the food laid out. On top of what he had announced there was salads, potatoes, breads, side dishes and an entire dessert table in one side of the room. Loaded with food we hurried back to our table to devour our feast while the servers who weren't serving started singing Christmas carols with the guitarists.

Just when i thought this can't get any better we heard "ho ho ho" and 2 Santas walked into the hall. We were right up by the main stage and on the stage there was a huge tree surrounded by what we thought were stage prezzies. Again we were wrong, the Santas got to work taking all those prezzies and handing one each to each and every person at the tables. I got a violet mist spray, poor Blaise got a pen and notepad. The two German boys got a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and a tape measure. A young man across from me got a bone necklace of two dolphins swimming...stunning. A very offended woman younger than me got wrinkle cream (i think she missed the point). The families were really cleaning up, the gifts kept piling up in front of the kiddies.

On our way out we asked the gentleman "what gives" (in more polite phrasing than that) and he said it his idea to get the people who were alone on the holidays a family dinner. Turns out Raglan has a poverty issue and a homeless issue. He wanted those people to have a true Christmas experience; then he grabbed all the seniors from the retirement home and figured he'd invited travelers from backpackers and the like to come as well as we were away from our families. He then got everyone in town to help, he told them he didn't want money, in fact he wouldn't accept money, he wanted donations of food, gifts and time. And boy did Raglan come through. We were blown away.

For the 2nd Christmas miracle you will have to get it from Blaise. It's a really good one!

Dolphins and Sharks

2010-12-28T15:15:00.000+13:00

One nice thing about NZ is that we have different types of animals including dolphins. Here in Wellington I've actually had the privilege to see a pod of dolphins swimming in the harbor near Soames Island. We also had Moko who was a pretty famous wild dolphin who enjoyed swimming with people in the water.

Moko passed away earlier this year and when Blaise read that he mentioned that it would be cool to swim with dolphins. Now Blaise is not a swimmer, he can swim, very well in fact but hanging in the water is not his cup of tea. I on the other hand love being in the water and couldn't pass up this opportunity. A quick google search had brought up Tauranga as the place to go for swimming with wild dolphins so on December 23rd we had a date on a boat to go out to look for dolphins.

We arrived, grabbed a set of fins (we had our own masks and wetsuits) and scurried aboard. The boat headed out through the marina heading to the other side of the harbor to pick up the rest of our passengers. It was a large luxurious boat with lots of space and cabin area. The crew was made up of Stewart, the skipper, and 5 marine biologists. The goal was to get out of the harbor, find a pod and dive in. This boat had a high success rate, they found pods 90% of the time and swam with them 75% of the time. We had high hopes.

It was the first nice day in almost a week and the whole crew was looking forward to getting back out on the water. We left the harbor and almost as soon as we got out of the entrance we encountered a maternity pod off common dolphins (they are smaller dolphins, maybe 2/3 the size of a bottlenose dolphin). It was quite large almost 30 animals and lots of newborns and babies. They were freaking adorable. Skipper Stewart explained that the babies keep up with the pod in a clever way. They hang out just behind their mother's fin and the slipstream coming off of it pulls the baby along. Stewart encouraged us to whoot and cheer and clap as it tends to make them come along and stay close to the ship. He was right, they played in and around us for over 30 minutes.

Department of Conservation (DOC) forbids swimming with pods with babies so we would have to go out to find another pod. Finally the boat headed out to sea and we all felt really lucky to have seen dolphins so early. The crew was great, they gave us a nice continental breakfast and spent the morning bringing us hot drinks. All very knowledgeable and talkative including Shannon, a young Canadian marine biologist.

The hours passed and there was no dolphins. We saw a fish work up which was pretty neat. Imagine an inverted pyramid with the huge base on the surface and the tip down in the ocean. It is full of swim swimming frantically on the surface, it looks like the water is boiling. And of course there is a tonne of birds there feeding off the little fish. Skipper Stewart and crew kept heading towards them because they are a sign of something feeding off the fish school and often are dolphin pods. Sadly there was no dolphins. We continued to circle the waters but nothing :(
Blaise saw a hammerhead shark come to the surface and much to his delight it was confirmed by a couple of the marine biologists so he felt pretty stoked about that.

Finally after about 4 hours the crew apologized and headed for home. They wondered if the storm of the last 3 days had forced the pods farther out to sea and they hadn't worked back in yet. We were all pretty disappointed, especially after that awesome morning start. Well you can't force nature. We headed back into the harbor, were offered another go out at half price (which we might take up in the future) and headed off to find wind for Blaise.

postscript: later that afternoon we found out that a shark (not a hammerhead) had attacked a snorkeller in the water at one of the beaches in town. he fended it off with his knife and minimal injuries but they shut all the beaches down in the Tauranga area. I'm kind of wondering if the dolphins knew something we didn't.

Napier: Sun, Cherries, Sharks

2010-12-27T17:42:00.008+13:00

Carly here, as its my part of the story seems necessary that I write it.

We came out of the Rumatakas and pulled into the beach next to the Bach that we had rented last year with my parents. Like many kiwi spots the "no camping" sign is often not strictly enforced. Better yet i had remembered that site having a public toilet so we pulled in in the dark, did a drive round and no loo. We drove up to another public toilet, used it and came back and set up the bed. Did we mention how much gear we had? we ended up chucking a lot of it into the front seat.

After a somewhat sleepless night (we were both jumpy from every sound) we awoke to a beautiful sunny day in Napier. we found the loo a few feet from the truck. ah night time. We were here so i could dive in the Napier Aquarium. Last year we had seen that you could go in during feed time but sickness and a lack of a log book/NAUI card had kayboshed it that time. This time i was ready, all my gear, my NAUI card and my logbook.

We showed up at the Aquarium waaaaay to early but i was told 12:30 on the phone. I was told we would suit up and enter the pool at 1:50 to check for buoyancy and then go in and feed at 2pm. Matt, the staff person, was a nice fellow. So nice that he lent me a weight belt and weights when i realized i had left my integrated weight system at home. I paced around the back in the staff only area. Backs of aquarium smell like zoos if they smelled of fish and seaweed.

Finally the time arrived, i had had my briefing earlier.
1)what to do if the manta ray gets a hold of your glove while eating from you (you let him pull it off, hide your naked hand and swim over and get it when he spits it out).
2)how to feed the shark (take the whole fish tail first and stab it into his mouth, you may have to do this a couple of times)
3)stay off the tunnel!!!! (it scratches easily from anything)

I popped in and followed Matt and the bucket across to the feeding area. There was quite a crowd including my favourite camera man.
We fed those fish. I was not keen to try feeding the 'pet ray' though it was impressive, take a deep breath, remove regulator, put a chunk of raw fish in your mouth, give the "up" signal and stay still while he swims in your face and takes it out of your mouth. The sharks also were full and wouldn't come over to me for the 'stab fish in your mouth'. I was undeterred, i threw chunks of fish everywhere and the bigger fish came and put on a show.

i'm the one with the red stripe.

please note the fish in Matt's mouth (he's the one on the right) and thats the pet ray about to come up and grab it.

Finally when the food was gone i headed around for a bit of a swim. Had to show off a little bit, the kids were fascinated by a diver in there so i proved how strong i was with a one-finger handstand.

i continued my swim about stopping to give a fan a treat.

the only downside to the swim was that at one point i had issues with bobbing up and down, the weight belt had shimmied around to the front, when i finally got it back on right i figured out why it had slipped. remember that handstand...not my weightbelt...one weight had slipped out. on the plus side it hit the floor not the expensive tunnel.

we ended the day by driving back down the road to find the girls who sold cherries last year. they were cheap and delicous and much to our delight they were there still so we bought another kilo and headed out to Tauranga where we had a date with a man and a boat...

Head North You Say? Part 2: Getting to Napier.

2010-12-26T19:32:00.002+13:00

As it was raining quite heavily in Wellington, we decided to drive over the Rumatakas to the Wairapa (via the mountain pass from hell) in a vehicle that we didn't know, in winds upwards of 70kph. It all worked without a hitch and we found ourselves in the sun as the rain hadn't crossed the mountains yet.

We decided to hit up Castlepoint, a famous surfing spot that I'd been meaning to check out for a while now. Getting there was longer than expected (there's a misconception we have that 100km = 1 hour of traveling because in Canada that's very often the case. You're driving down 400 series highways upwards of 110kph which covers any traffic you might hit) Here, it's more likely that if you budget an hour for each 60 km you'll be closer to being right. Especially when you're in a 15 year old diesel that can only go up most hills at 70-80 kph.

The trip was worth it though.

(yes, this was for you Denyse)

It's a really beautiful spot. The small village around it has just enough of everything to be a nice destination for a summer weekend; The beach is long and mostly abandoned and there's a tidal flat that gets completely drained during low tide. There's actually a fairly strong trade in fishing charters, which has lead to another example of Kiwi ingenuity:

That boat's about 40 feet long, maybe bigger. The trailers are pulled by tractors with double and triple back wheels into the ocean so they can launch. Much like a system we saw for tour boats in Abel Tasman, but much, much bigger.

It was a great place to start our trip, and, luckily, didn't put us too much off course for our first major stop. Napier.

Head North You Say? Part 1: Transportation / Lodging

2010-12-26T19:18:00.004+13:00

Wow. Time to dust off some cobwebs.

As many of you know, roadtrips are one thing that Carly and I both really enjoy. In the past, we've gone to Raglan, Hamilton, Foxton, Taupo and other exciting places. Heck, our honeymoon was one giant roadtrip! Each time, we became more autonomous, first staying at hotels, then camp sites, then, during our last trip, sleeping in our Legacy.

The legacy was a terrible experience, but the idea of being completely self-contained stuck. Combine this with an unhealthy obsession with the concept of an off-road capable mini van that I've had since we first came to New Zealand on our honeymoon and you get this:

It's a 1996 Mitsubishi Delica. Essentially, Mitsubishi has taken their off-road offering, the Pajero and slapped an L300 body on top of it. I've been looking for one basically since we got here, and, two weeks before we were scheduled to go, this showed up on trademe. I bought it pretty much outright, and, after an inspection, knew well the issues it had.

After picking it up, I drove it over to O's to get some basic work done on it to make it worthy of our trip. New CV boots and new front shock absorbers went on. The next day, (the day before we were scheduled to leave) back at home I did the oil, filter and air filter. I went to start the engine to drive the truck off the ramps. No go. Nothing. The dash lights would light up but no turnover of the engine. Long story short, two days, a car alarm specialist and an auto-electrician (both mobile btw, as it would have been impossible to tow the truck out of our driveway) we were ready to go.

We decided to keep the middle seat and build a wooden platform for the back. The plan was to use the middle seat, spun backwards (it does that :) ) and the platform for the inflatable mattress, storing everything underneath. It mostly worked.

The problem is that Carly and I are both planning on making the most of this vacation by going diving and kiting respectively. This means we have a LOT of gear. Add camping gear, clothing, chilly-bin and cooking supplies and we very quickly realized we'd overpacked. We've since trimmed down and stowed most of the cruft we are never going to use on the trip, but we still have it in the car, which makes life a bit challenging when setting up for the night. The good news is we're taking copious notes of what's used, what's not, what worked and improvements we can make for next time.

But, at least we were on the road!

Next up, Napier.

Housing In New Zealand

2010-11-08T08:28:00.003+13:00

... From a Canadian's point of view.

As many know, Carly and I spent most of the month of October working through the purchase of a house. Progress was being made, offers and negotiations concluded and we were simply knocking out the conditions one after another. Financing: no problem, title: a few surprises, but nothing major.

Then the builders report came.

A bit of a step back. New Zealand has had a very checkered past with their housing. Up to the 1950s, construction was fairly standard. Wood siding, framed up houses on a cement pad. No insulation, no central heating and you'd be lucky if the house was more then a 100sqm. BUT! it was built properly with proper materials.

Then things started to change. People started wanting other cladding, different heating options and building became bigger business.

I'm not sure exactly when things went south (most websites point to the late 80s early 90s) but new trends and materials were embraced and a streak of houses were built. A number of issues were found with them. The monolithic cladding (stucco and the like) wasn't appropriately done, the techniques weren't modified for the weather and rain (Funny how if you take a style of house popular in Arizona and migrate it to windy, wet Wellington it may not do as well) and various cost cutting measures were implemented that ended up compromising the structural integrity of the houses.

The problem with all this is that it continued in one form or another from 1990 through to the early 2000's, when a report on the issues was put out by the government and action started.

Now it's a major issue, political and in regular life with various lawsuits, remuneration schemes from local and federal government and a lot of very unhappy home owners.

here's a whole bunch of info if you're interested:

http://www.dbh.govt.nz/leaky-buildings-and-weathertightness

http://www.dbh.govt.nz/about-weathertightness-background

http://www.consumerbuild.org.nz/publish/buying/buyinghouse-weathertight.php

Now back to our story. So the house we were looking at was built somewhere in 2002 or 2003.

It had some of the tell tale signs of potential issues but overall at first glance it looked like it wasn't going to be an issue. It had traditional wood siding, no stucco or the like, though it had a few accent panels that we knew were going to be an issue, but not a large one. However, the building inspection pointed out 2 important things.

The weatherboarding had been left cracked and leaking for an extended period of time
The house was built during the period where houses were framed out of untreated timber.

So, the house had had moisture and water in the insides of the most exposed wall and the timber was in all likelihood rotting inside. Only an invasive examination (taking down the interior walls) would prove it for sure.

On top of the structural issue at hand, the wood and other products in the wall decomposing made for a significant health concern as well.

We pulled the offer, took our losses and walked away.

I can honestly say this was the first major experience in New Zealand that had me pining for Canada. In Canada, details like central heating, insulation and proper vapour barriers are not optional extras. New Zealand has had a horrible record of complacency in their house building, with the "she'll be right" attitude leading to a developed country with inside house temperatures being well below the World Health Organization's minimums of 18 degrees C.

Couple that with more modern homes (the ones that would have insulation and "relatively" modern heating) being by and large tainted with the stigma of the weather tightness issues and it becomes a no win proposition.

So what options are left? I see two:

Buy an older house (before 1970s) and reno to our standards. This was our original plan, but it's a popular option, so the older houses actually command a premium, more so if they are of a good size. Couple that with the lack of standardization in windows and you're looking at an expensive proposition
build our own to our own standards. Much more complicated, much riskier. The financing is tricky, getting the section engineered, getting the house plans drawn up to fit the section's slope (because you aren't going to find a flat section in town any more) and then of course, paying a mortgage + rent while it's being built, assuming nothing goes wrong there.

So here we sit. No house, we're out all the fees for the failed purchase and we have no plan.

Whoops! video link included.

2010-10-08T22:12:00.001+13:00

For those of you recieving this blog via email, here's a clickable link for the video:

First Go Pro Movie - Seatoun

as it doesn't look like my embedding it into the previous post worked for all users.

First video using the New Camera

2010-10-08T22:03:00.003+13:00

So my parents bought me a GoPro HD camera for my birthday :) It's a fantastic high resolution camera that takes HD video, interval photos, is tiny and can be mounted to just about any surface or device. I've mounted it to my helmet for now and thought I'd take it out for a quick session in Seatoun. Unfortunately, the quality of the video's marginal because of the water droplets and fog in the case; both problems should be resolved now.

Anyway, there's more to come, including an exciting ride I had this evening at Plimmerton, but here's what the camera can do.

Flash

Wanaka

2010-09-21T10:05:00.002+12:00

Grab yourselves a coffee and get comfy, this will be a long one.

As always, better and more photos are available on my gallery page.

Since moving to New Zealand, we haven't really left the North Island much. In fact, other than a trip down to Picton and a trip to Christchurch for work, we've not set foot down South since 2005.

Every year, a loosely knit group of Kiters migrate towards a small town called Wanaka. They gather to go Snowkiting. For those who don't want to read the wiki page, essentially, you strap a snowboard or skis on, find a fun piece of terrain and get pulled around on a kite. It's a week long adventure that's been going on for close to 10 years. Like most kiting events I've been to here it's fairly low key.

Planning started last summer, talking to various friends here to get a group together from Wellington. My friend Skip volunteered his parent's house and we bought some tickets. Fast forward almost 5 months and we were ready to leave.

Flying to Christchurch was largely uneventful, but when it was time to transfer to our flight to Wanaka, things got a little interesting:

Now, I'm not the greatest flyer in the world, but I manage. The small plane (19 seats) was definitely setting the scene for how small Wanaka was.

During the flight, we got a great view of the southern alps:

You see the strange thing about winter sports in New Zealand to this North American is that you have to drive up the mountain to get to the snow. At ground level, it's 10-15 degrees warmer then where you end up skiing.

I want to take a quick second to say just how incredible our hosts Mary and Roger were. They had 2 strangers (Ryan and me) come and live in their house for 9 days and were absolutely the most inviting and friendly people I've had the pleasure of meeting. In fact, not only did R pick us up at the airport, but when we got in we were presented with a typical Kiwi BBQ Breakfast:

(all kiwi BBQs have a hot plate on one side and a grill on the other, the eggs went on about 2 minutes after this photo was taken)

The night we arrived, I was invited to go out drinking with several other Kiter friends from Wellington, Foxton, Nelson and beyond. As this blog is targeted at my family, I'll save you the absolutely embarassing condition I ended up in by trying to keep up with Kiwis. Suffice it to say Canadians can NOT drink. The next day was a complete write off and I've earned a new reputation / nick name or two. Not my proudest moment, but I digress.

Monday morning and we were ready to head out to Old Man's Range. I'm not entirely sure what the land is, if it's crown land, a farmer's field or something else, but it was the top of a chain of hills with a very dubious road to head up.

One of several gate crossings to get to where we were kiting. This photo is about 1/3 of the way up.

An aside, as much as I made fun of SUV drivers in Canada, New Zealand (and especially people who live in the more remote South Island) has a lot of justification for having 4x4. I've touched on this before with driving on the beach, but the roads to get to the snow were impressively bad; even the commercial hills had roads that required chains and trucks. This photo is of a Land Rover Discovery (definitely a very competent off road vehicle) getting stuck half way up the hill:

Driving up the hill was like driving into the clouds:

I didn't get a chance to take any decent photos at Old Man's range sadly, I was too busy struggling to figure out the basics of Snowkiting.

I'd always thought that because I was a competent snowboarder and a competent kiter, I'd pick it up simply and easily. Boy was I wrong. The wind was light, so the kites I brought weren't necessarily the best; because I had gaps in my kiting knowledge and gaps in my snowboarding abilities, they combined to make snowkiting quite difficult.

By the end of the day, on a borrowed kite, I got my first couple of good solid runs up and down the hill. Unfortunately, just as I was heading back we got hit by a massive snow squall; visibility 0 and I just about ran into an all white kite as I was cruising back down. Packing up and heading back down, I was sore but keen to try again!

The next day, Ryan and I, both still feeling quite tender from the experience, decided to play tourist instead and drove down to Queenstown. It's known as the Extreme Sport hub of New Zealand, but really, it's the closest thing I've seen to a tourist trap since moving here. Tourism is the #1 industry. It struck me as crass compared to Wanaka, but at least the drive in was epic:

Both Wanaka and Queesntown have beautiful lakes:

Wednesday rolls around and It's time to go on another Snowkiting adventure. This time we were off to the Snow Farm. Once again, New Zealand proved that the unusual is not only common, but expected. We pulled over to gather our troops and saw that a car that had parked behind us had a 2 week old baby goat as a pet:

That's Ryan in the Orange and Michelle in the background.

The Snow Farm really is a spectacular place. It's the primary training ground for various nordic ski teams and also has a vehicle testing track for winter conditions. The view doesn't suck either:

My partners in crime and I started setting up:

It was more productive than Monday, but still challenging. Part of the issue of course is that we're not kiting on a perfectly flat surface (like on the water). Rather, we're dealing with gentle hills and valleys. What happens when you get into the valley? The wind goes away. Sitting waiting for a random gust to get our kites back in the air was rather frustrating at times. But experience is experience and at the end of the day we were still cautiously optimistic.

Thursday we had a day of relaxation, having various adventures around Wanaka. A quick jaunt up Mount Iron gave us these beautiful view:

That's Wanaka at the bottom of the hill. We also hit up a movie (Inception, for the second time, highly recommended) at the Paradiso Cinema. It's famous for it's small theatre with old couches, a car and various mismatched movie chairs and it's intermission where they have fresh baked cookies. A great experience.

Finally, Friday and we had perfect conditions. A nice 15 knot breeze, bright sunny skies and -3, just cold enough to keep the snow in reasonable condition. This was the Snowkiting Day!

As always, Kiwis never cease to amaze me. This example of jandal obsession will stay with me for a while:

I borrowed a helmet mounted camera from a fellow Canadian immigrant in Wellington and finally got it working for the day.

The setup area:

The obligatory photo of my kite (i like how it looks on a white background)

A big photo of me kitelooping my way up a hill:

Look at all the kites!!!

A stunning day. The weather went south in the afternoon and quite frankly, it was a good thing as I was completely knackered. It's exhausting!! Because of the topology there's a lot of work that goes into getting the right lines to make it up and down the hills. The terrain is much more unforgiving; legs get tired very quickly, you're spending a fair amount of time getting up and falling when you're a beginner and the kites power needs much finer grained control.

Saturday, our last day before travel and Ryan and I decided we wanted to do some proper snowboarding. Off to Treble Cone we went! It's a hill unlike really anything I've boarded until now. Completely without trees and with very open runs, it's probably the steepest hill I've ever been to. In Canada, the pitch would have made most of the runs a level higher in difficulty, but because there's literally nothing to hit and no where you can really get in trouble, they rate them a little softer.

The thing with Treble Cone is because of the pitch, once you get off the chairlift it really looks like you're skiing off the top of a cliff:

I quickly remembered what I was doing on a board and proceeded to have one of the best Snowboarding sessions of my life:

Another night on the town with Skip and we were ready to head back to Wellington. The day before of course was the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, which we were worried had shut down the airport and stranded us in Wanaka. Luckily, the airport re-opened at 1:30 on Friday so we were homeward bound.

A second small issue arose on Saturday though: crazy strong winds. Wanaka had such a strong breeze that our plane had to spiral to climb to 10,000 feet before we could overcome the wind and make our way to Chch. Landing in Chch and then Wellington certainly made me nervous about the whole flying experience in New Zealand, an issue I've since dealt with .

So that's the trip. What did I think of snowkiting? To be honest, I felt that with my current skill levels of Kiting and snowboarding I was likely not quite ready to take on another variant. It's a lot more work right now then either sport; I think I enjoy them more. I'll revisit in a year or two after I get better at the component bits. What did I think of my trip? It was legendary. our hosts were fantastic, friends (old and new) were all around, I had a great time in a beautiful part of the world and was doing what I love doing.

Some Thoughts on 2 Years of Living in NZ.

2010-09-12T20:07:00.002+12:00

September 11th marks the day we left North America. In 2008, after selling our house, our car, giving away our cats, quiting jobs, we hopped on a plane from NYC to Wellington to start a new adventure.

It's been 2 years now. On the whole, I love it here. It's absolutely been the right choice for us, despite some setbacks. I've made a few notes:

We will always be "the Canadians". The fact is we're both too old to pick up the dialect and speaking patterns of New Zealand. We will always have the canadian accent which makes us stand out. I'm ok with this! It really drives home what people with more than just an accent to differentiate them go through.
Emigrants tend to attract emigrants. Many of our friends (probably 40%) are not Kiwis. The shared experience of leaving your home country for parts unknown is a powerful shared experience.
We've been welcomed with open arms pretty much everywhere we've gone. We've met some fantastic people and helped us out at every turn.
There's nothing quite so much fun as finding something you'd forgotten you'd missed from the "old Country". This recently happened to Ryan and I when we found proper chicken wings in Wanaka of all places.
The number of products you import from the "Old Country" goes down as you find new and different alternatives. The ones we still bring in are more nostalgia and fun and less products that we thought we'd never be able to replace.
Everyone is proud of where they came from. Even people who have come from countries in the midst of war and turmoil, they love the country that it was and can still be. Similarly, I've discovered how much I love Canada and am proud of what we've done.
At the same time, I keep discovering wonderful things about New Zealand. Seeing new parts of the country never ceases to blow me away.

So what does the future hold? Carly and I are both in jobs we like, we've found new passions that keep us interested and we've got a great network of friends. We're thinking very seriously about buying or building our own home. I can't wait to see what the next year brings!

Snowboarding on an Active Volcano.

2010-08-05T18:39:00.006+12:00

A month or so ago, a friend of mine J and his partner S mentioned that they had access to a place up on Mt Ruapehu. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Mount Ruapehu, or just Ruapehu, is an active stratovolcano at the southern end of the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. It is 23 kilometres northeast of Ohakune and 40 kilometres southwest of the southern shore of Lake Taupo, within Tongariro National Park. The North Island's major skifields and only glaciers are on its slopes.

Well that certainly sounds good. It's home to the two major Ski fields: Whakapapa and Turoa. Their accommodations were on the Whakapapa side. I really didn't know what to expect, and, as has become the norm, what I experiences was completely out of my normal understanding of a skiing weekend.

First off, Tongariro National park is a world heritage site, and for good reason. It's completely unique and epic to drive through. The desert road (which I've mentioned before) Lake Taupo the mountains and of course Ruapehu all make for a great setting.

Now, being that the hill is a national park, and happens to also be Maori sacred land, the usual rules around developing don't apply. For one, commercial space is very difficult to get. As a result there are VERY few hotels and none particularly inexpensive. Kiwis, however as is the norm, have come up with a pragmatic solution.

Various clubs (alpine, social, university) have, throughout the years petitioned the Department of Conservation for permission to build Club Huts. The one I was in happened to be one of the earliest examples, run by the Alpine Sports Club of New Zealand, however, there's probably another 30 or so Huts at the base of Whakapapa.

The way it works is that members of these clubs, after paying a yearly rate, can have accommodations for cheap. The benefits, other than a roof over your head, is that breakfast and dinner are included. This was all I was told.

When we got there, I learned the rest of the details. We were 4 to a room, in comfortable bunk beds. We all were assigned basic chores every day, some doing dinner, some doing dishes, etc. and it was all a very relaxed communal without being commune feel to it. There were families, singles, couples. I visited another Hut that a few work friends were staying at and it was all the same. After my last communal experience (Raglan) this was an great change. People were very mellow about the whole thing. it was a very convenient means to an end, and made for a great weekend.

Saturday morning I was awoken by a teen age girl and her 4-8 year old assistants delivering coffee, tea or hot chocolate in bed to all the club members. This was one of the chores :). A filling breakfast of poached eggs, sausages, toast and Spaghetti from a tin (!!!) and it was time to hit the slopes. From looking at the maps, I could see that there was a decent selection of chairs and T-Bars. There wasn't that much snow at the base, so we'd be dealing with rocks. It was then that I realized the second outcome of the national park being a sacred and protected area. None of the land the ski runs were on could be modified in any permanent way. And, as this was a volcano with giant ash boulders, lava flows etc. That meant completely alien terrain on which to ski.

The run topology changes drastically depending on how much snow is on the hill. If there's tons, you're skiing on wide open ranges with some nice undulations. Last weekend however, as there was only a minimum base, we were playing dodge the sharp pointy rocks and had to contend with some deep gulleys, icy conditions and occasional "surprise" rocks taking chunks out of the base of our gear. It wasn't unpleasant in the slightest, it reminded me a lot of spring skiing in Canada.

Which of course brings me to the weather. The mountain is fickle. We started our day around 9:00am, it was approx -2, sunny and looking great. The day heated up and in doing so changed the snow from ice to soft snow. from about 11 to 1 the conditions were glorious.

From about 1:30 onwards the clouds came and covered the mountain completely, and, being over the cloud line, the light went completely flat. So flat in fact that despite specialty goggles, I still had a hard time picking my way down the hill.

Which is just as well, because, after 5 years without snowboarding, my body was ready to pack it in after 5 hours. See, in New Zealand, despite their complaints of long lift lines, you really are only waiting a maximum of 10 minutes to get on the chair. Throughout the weekend we had to queue exactly twice. The runs were about the length of most Laurentian ski fields so we got a fair number of runs in in the end.

We headed back to the Hut where the crew prepared a 3 leg of lamb meal with roasted vegetables and apple pudding. We ate too much, had a few beers and generally relaxed.

The weather settled in for the rest of the weekend, and, by Sunday morning it was raining, +2 to +5 and visibility was about nil. As we had a 4.5 hour drive ahead of us, we decided to call it a success, having had a brilliant day on the slopes.

** An interesting side note, Ruapehu has been most active since 1995, with an eruption in 95, another in 2006, a lahar in 2007(basically a run of boiling acidic water from the lake that's in its crater) another eruption in 2008. Needless to say, they take mountain safely *very* seriously. See the wikipedia article linked above for more info.

i'm digging the knitting

2010-07-31T10:11:00.004+12:00

it's winter here in NZ and while we have had some glorious sunny days we also get some nasty grey wet ones that last for days on end. so after the success of my scarf i wanted to try to knit something else, learn a new skill and all that. i have a full folder on my Firefox bookmarks of knitting patterns, and hats are in that list.

3 of our friends have recently had babies, 2 were early the other waited the full length before showing. so small babies + winter in NZ = baby hats that would definitely be welcome. and i was told baby hats are quick to make.

they were right!!

in all this little hat took about 5 hours of knitting. it was all in the round, and i knew now that proper-sized needles made the job easier! the new part for me was knitting on double-pointed needles but i fooled around with spare wool and figured out the technique. so knit in the round, then transfer to double-pointed, decrease stitches...ta da!

lacking a proper model i have put it on my long suffering cat ^^ as soon as i get it onto one of the new babies i'll post a photo.

The scarf that travelled the world

2010-07-05T09:50:00.003+12:00

in December 2006 Blaise approached me with a request to knit him a scarf. not any scarf, a scarf knitted with a binary pattern. he had found it off one of his sites and it came from a knitting website known affectionately as Knitty.

having just finished conquering the world of scarves (i had a made a few in a pattern i picked up on our honeymoon to NZ in 2005) i was keen to try it. It was knitting in the round and using two colours, both things i didn't know how to do so i was keen for both.

I foolishly promised it to him on his birthday of 2007. after all it didn't look that hard, it was a garter stitch (the simplest knitting stitch) the entire length. i could do that in my sleep.

the birthday came and went, then christmas, then the next birthday...yeah it was longer and harder than planned. I'd get into it for a month and make progress and then lose interest. it was hard, the knitting in the round was a struggle, i kept making mistakes in reading and replicating my pattern so i had to tear out a full row of binary and knit it again. for those of you saying, "why didn't you just leave it?", if you know me you know that's not going to happen.
it got heavy and in the summer in Canada i didn't want to knit it.

it became a bit of a joke, this big thick scarf which he was never going to get.
it travelled with us to NZ and same thing happened, i'd knit a bit and lose interest. but then something happened, i walked into a knitting shop and found another Canadian working there...yeah small world.

i explained the situation, hauled out the scarf and she promptly told me my needles were too freaking long, i needed a smaller round. i had to stretch and pull each stitch to knit, with a shorter round all the stitches were there at the tips of the needle ready to be knit. and with that i was back into it, i passed the halfway point on the scarf. i started down the 2nd side, even with the pattern now being knit upside down it was going fast and then (hallelujahs being sung) it was done...seriously?

i cast off and realized a) i was finished, b) it was huge.

The binary scarf December 19, 2006 - July 5, 2010 - HUZZAH!

my first model was accomodating but not thrilled.

my second model was much happier with his new scarf.

he hasn't translated the code yet, and yes there is a message in the binary, took me about a day to learn some form of binary (i'm not geeky enough to know what i learned but it was a binary alphabet of some sort). i'll keep you posted for when he does.

School Production

2010-06-26T09:25:00.000+12:00

in the life as a teacher there are always things coming up, beyond the class time, the planning and paper work and staff meetings there are things that come up from time to time requiring volunteering more time. a school production is definitely one of those.

Myself and Julia, another new teacher to the school, offered back in February to run production this year and we had a lot of fun over school holidays writing a script. Think Night at the Museum mixed with your typical school play.

there were auditions, rehearsals, prop building, scenery building, teachers in classrooms worked with their kids on each scene and then we had to teach the whole school a song to sing at the end. i got some Canadian content in by doing a simplified version of The Barenaked Ladies - The Big Bang song.

some odd things came up for example how do you transport a giant dinosaur backdrop from a classroom to a school a few blocks away. this thing was huge, he was designed and drawn by a wonderful parent, Julia and I (and Julia's hubbie) painted the big bits but the artist finished his details.

he wouldn't fit in any of the cars any teacher owned, renting a trailer seemed foolish so i did what any sensible teacher would do...i used a bunch of kids.

we drew more than a few stares, and the gusts of wind in Wellington made for some exciting moments. but we made it!

the production itself was awesome...well i'm pretty sure it was, i've never seen it, i was the backstage coordinator. Blaise taped it for us (and the school) but i haven't seen the tape. Mark the principal said it was the best he had seen (but then again it's his job to say that ^^bb) and i totally think he's right.

thanks to everyone who helped make it awesome.

Some Winter Kiting Photos

2010-06-14T21:58:00.003+12:00

The regular crew were out in Seatoun last week and a passer by was nice enough to let us know where he'd be posting the pictures he took. Grabbed a few of them, here they are (all rights reserved to him)

Concert of a lifetime!

2010-06-03T19:52:00.002+12:00

Ok, so most people won't be too excited or won't know what I'm talking about, but Carly and I just bought tickets for what is likely to be Leonard Cohen's last concert tour!

November 1st, we're heading to TSB Arena for what promises to be an AWESOME concert. Here's hoping nothing comes up for November 1st between now and then.

I'm super excited. Also, I have to admit that years and years of exposure by my mom to Leonard's music has had a lasting effect :)

Kitkat discovers fire is hot...

2010-05-23T12:28:00.004+12:00

We have a gas fireplace in our new home in Ngaoi. Its small yet quite potent, kicks out a lot of heat. I've done the sit next to the fire thing myself, doesn't seem hot at first but then you realize you might be a mite close and you quickly move farther away.

Kitkat had gone for her morning constitutional. Its not Canada cold but its getting into kiwi winter, about 14C, you want a jacket but you won't freeze. So she arrived home, a little damp from the morning mist, just as we finished breakfast. Now we had turned the fireplace on to warm up the house and I said to Blaise "its surprising that she doesn't curl up near the fire."

Its true she never has gone near it the last few times we put it on, she's more of a couch cat, so i wasn't expecting her to explore it today. But lo and behold about 10 minutes after i said that a large ball of fur was sniffing the air. She approached from the side, did the whole sniff the air, turn on the spot, lick the fur like she didn't care and then came closer. She obviously recognized this was quite warm but rather than slowly exploring the environment she decided this was excellent and walked straight up the the fireplace and began to nose around the protective plastic cover at the bottom near the floor. It was probably ok where her face was but her ears were high enough to be straight into the heat coming off the fireplace...3...2...1.

Ears suddenly whipped back, hackles went up, cat turned and bolted away from the fireplace. Kitkat discovery of the day, fire is hot. I got a giggle from this one, as did Blaise who had been watching the show. For those of you who think we're cruel, we checked her ears and she's fine, not even a little pink or tender, she also get a 30 minute grooming session afterwards which she really quite enjoyed.

Follow up: cat has discovered optimum point of warm vs not setting ear afire.

Exploring the North Island (pt 2)

2010-04-25T09:55:00.002+12:00

Note: all the photos from our trip can be found on our gallery here.

Having checked out the surfing and New Plymouth in general, and, having slept in the car the night before, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dip at the Taranaki Mineral Baths. Very Alkaline, very hot and very relaxing, we spent a half hour working the kinks incurred from our previous night's makeshift camp. A warm shower after that and we were ready to hit the road.

The drive from New Plymouth to Raglan was largely uneventful, punctuated only once by a stop in Pio Pio for some of the best soft ice cream and frozen yogurt I'd ever had. Not sure if this is the norm in New Zealand / elsewhere, but the machine they had was fascinating. Basically it was a giant funnel where you put vanilla ice cream and frozen berries (The shop was part of a blueberry, rasberry and strawberry farm). Then, what can only really be described as a conical drill bit, sized to fit perfectly into the funnel was lowered into the machine and turned on. Obviously very high torque, it ground the berries into the ice cream and extruded it out the bottom into the waiting cone. It was my first time seeing such a device and the results were delicious.

Now I'd booked our stay in Raglan at a Campsite / Eco Retreat called Solscape. The main appeal was that they'd made their cabins out of what they called "cabooses" and the photos and views made it look quite nice. When we got there, we quickly realized that the "Eco" part of the retreat was what their main focus was. Not a bad thing, just not what we expected. We checked into our cabin / caboose: in reality it was an older 30s-40s style train car that had been cut in two and closed up with a proper wall. Great idea, well executed.

However, I'd accidentally booked us a cabin in the middle of the campsite, which turned out to be quite close to the common areas and the outdoor bbq. We went into town for some dinner and then settled in for the night. It was at this point that the fact that this was also a Youth Hostel became abundantly apparent. The partying started around 9 and didn't stop for quite some time. I had earplugs (thank god) so I ended up passing out fairly quickly.

This is where i'd usually list out the things I didn't like about the place. I'm not going to bother. It wasn't for us, but I can definitely see the appeal for many people so I'll leave it at that and move on with our weekend.

Waking up bright and early, we had some breakfast and headed out to the river mouth to check on the wind. Forecast was to get 13-15knots from the West, perfect for Raglan. The reason Raglan is such a kitesurfing destination is that it has a very strong current in the outgoing tide. This compensates for the lighter winds and makes for marble smooth water on which to kite.

Unfortunately, the wind didn't read the forecast and decided to move SW instead and becalmed the river mouth. I bumped into a traveling Kitesurfing instructor there that I'd first met in Wellington and he and some other tourists chatted up one of the locals to find out where to go. With the info at hand, we all headed out to Aotea. It shares many of the same characteristics as Raglan, though it's harder to get to and doesn't have as friendly a launch spot.

View Raglan in a larger map

The blue route is the one we took. It was an hour of gravel roads and windy passages through the hillsides and farm country. Yet again I thanked the excellent engineers at Subaru for building such a fantastic AWD system into our Legacy.

Once we got there however, it was worth it. A nice wind was blowing through the river mouth, perfect direction and to top it off we met some really nice kite surfers from Auckland who were down for the weekend. They'd kited this spot previously and had all the local knowledge needed. So off we went hiking down the waterline to a decent launch spot. In the end there was 5-6 of us out on the water.

The red kite on the left is me. The wind was dropping a bit so I decided to rig up a larger kite. I was obviously a little excited and rushed the setup and didn't notice a small hole in the canopy of my kite. Launched the kite, got back out into the water and things were going great until I got to the other side of the estuary, where one of the other kiters noticed that was the hole getting bigger. I managed to get back to the launch area (which was about a km from the other side where we'd been riding) and after a rather graceless landing saw the extent of the damage:

I think it was about this point that the wind took pity on me and picked up another 3 or 4 knots which allowed me to go back out on my smaller kite and finish the day in style.

The tide was coming back in, the sun was setting and I'd had a great day of kiting in conditions I'd never seen in Wellington

To be continued yet again....

Finally Exploring the North Island.

2010-04-19T11:10:00.002+12:00

You'd think, having been in the country more than a year, that we'd have become experts of at least the north island by now? You'd think... But in actuality, other then a few road trips with friends and family (Napier, Hamilton and Pauanui) we really haven't gone off roadtripping.

First, I've got to say, I love road trips. I love driving, winging it and seeing parts of the country you don't see from a plane.

Our plan was fairly simple. Carly got back from a Montessori conference on Tuesday, we leave Tuesday night with an eventual goal of getting to Raglan. Known for its surfing since at least the 60's (there's a famous american surf movie called The Endless Summer that is filmed in part there) and in recent times has become a Kitesurfing destination as well: It's got a strong outgoing tide current that makes for smooth flat water and some fast riding. In fact, one of the large Kite / Parasail manufacturers, Ozone, moved their offices from France to Raglan.

We didn't really have any other plans. We wanted to make it somewhere that had diving for Carly and see parts of the country we'd missed throughout our travels.

Fate had a slightly different plan for us though. BEE, our trusty Legacy, had been having a bit of a bad month, having had a failed MAF and an alternator on the fritz. I'd just finished replacing the alternator when I lightly scraped the front tire on Tuesday morning. With a loud hiss, the sidewall of the tire cracked open. As I was on my way to the Kapiti coast with my friend R. (who was already in the car) we decided to deal with it on Wednesday, delaying our departure.

Tuesday night we also discovered that our dryer had kicked the can, with a full load of wet laundry in it. Not an auspicious beginning to our trip!

Wednesday morning, we slapped the spare on the car, drove to Petone where Carly had found a laundry and I knew of a tireshop with a quick turnaround. By 12:30 we were packed and on the road!

Our first stop was Foxton Beach. I'd had a few adventures trying to Kite there before, but this was the day. A beautiful 20 knot NW wind was blowing through a huge river mouth with flat water, good company (I was kiting with The Wind Warrior and a friend of his) and a beautiful sun. We kited until sundown, packed up and headed back to The Wind Warrior's place for coffee and a bit of a social call.

We hit the road around 7, shooting to get to New Plymouth, find a campsite or holiday park and spend the night. TWW had mentioned that the Women’s Surf Festival and ASP Dream Tour was being hosted there and it would be worth the trip to check out some of the action. What we didn't immediately realize was this would mean there'd be 0 vacancies at any of the parks, motels or hotels.

about an hour and a 1/2 before we arrived in New Plymouth we started trying to find a room. No luck. Once we got to the city, we decided that since we had some camping gear in the car, we might as well find a quiet corner and do some real "car camping". So we pulled into the parking lot for Fitzroy Harbour around 10:30 and, re-arranging our baggage, dropped our sleeping bags in the back of the wagon and slept relatively well! Next time we do this we'll make sure to put the kitesurfing boards on the roof, but really, it's about 6 feet long, perfectly flat, and, with an air mattress and sleeping back, was better then expected!

The next morning, after exploring New Plymouth, we decided to go check out some of the surfing action:

To be continued...

His name is MO

2010-04-08T08:21:00.005+12:00

Its been a while hasn't it.

Well here is something exciting ^^ at least from my perspective.
I have a car....I can hear you saying "what?"
I've always been a bus person, its easy, you can sleep, read, daydream and let someone else deal with gas, maintenance and parking. However, with the recent move to Ngaio from Island Bay (I suppose we should have blogged that) my commute to school increased.

BTW here is a gallery of our new home. The commute in the morning went from 20 minutes to 45 minutes, but the afternoon commute home went from 20 minutes to 1:20h (1:00h if i get lucky on connections). I did it for a month and a bit and while i could continue to do it there was a lot of talk of getting me a second car.

The second car also lets me get out of Ngaoi on the weekends to do my own thing when Blaise takes Bee (the 1st car) off to kite surf. In general the freedom is awesome, I take scuba gear in mine and do my thing, he fills his with kite gear and heads out in the opposite direction.

After some initial shopping it came down to the following: small, electric locks and windows, AC, foldable back seats, good gas mileage (oops sorry petrol mileage) and cute...yes that last one was mine.

Shopped around for a bit, trademe, dealers etc and finally found a nice dealer where the man showing the cars spoke to me and actually let me lead the conversation. Huzzah! Ladies don't buy from a dealer that won't talk to you and keeps answering all your questions to the man.

So what did we end up with, everything we wanted and more ^^
Meet MO.

I named him after the character from the animated movie WALL-E. The grill made me think of him. That's his picture beside my MO. Was it geeky and girly, yes, yes it was. His name is MO.

One of the Little Things I like about NZ.

2010-02-17T08:43:00.002+13:00

I walk around barefoot a LOT now. After a good day at the beach, the last thing I want to do is slap on some shoes. I typically will be wearing sandles, but they will inevitably get covered in sand and grit, so, embracing my new found kiwidom, I do without.

I've been to grocery stores, restaurants, bars, shops, gas stations and even the bank barefoot. I'm certainly not the only one either; most weekends I see a good number of adults walking around sans-souliers.

From speaking to Carly, it's a battle in the schools to get kids to wear shoes at all! I know whenever we're out about town, there's a 50 / 50 chance that anyone under about the age of 12 will be shoeless.

It's oddly liberating to be honest, and there's certainly no stigma that I've seen around it, especially on a bright sunny day in the beach towns :) Of course, I'm pretty oblivious when it comes down to it.

Our Latest Insectine Visitor

2010-01-29T08:20:00.002+13:00

About two weeks ago, while watching TV at night, I looked out the window and promptly freaked out. I saw something. Large. Flying just outside our kitchen window trying to get in to the light.

Got closer and realized it was actually a moth, about the size of a bat, pink, and very fuzzy. So, not terrifying, but definitely out of the ordinary. It took us a little while to find what it was, but we've done so: it was an Emperor Gum Moth. Imported from Australia, these guys grow to a wingspan of about 15 cms, have soft feathery antennae and are generally considered to be relatively harmless to New Zealand.

So here's the wiki entry for them:

Opodiphthera eucalypti

Here's some photos found on the internet about them. Turns out they are kind of cute.

The Ritual

2010-01-11T17:04:00.003+13:00

The smell of neoprene mixes with the warm coffee I've just brewed. It's 8:30 and I'm driving up the Coastal Highway heading to Waikanae again. It's become a weekend tradition; wake up early on a Saturday or Sunday, load the car up with gear, get a quick breakfast and hit the road.

Kitesurfing has become a big part of my life. It's been just under a year since my first lesson. Since then, I've gone out 20+ times. Rain, shine, winter, summer so long as the wind's blowing, I head out. In the last 2 months I've really hit my stride. Confidence is up, I'm developing a style and some good endurance. I've gone from 2 to 3 kites, increasing the wind range I'm equipped to deal with to 12-40knots.

I even had my first crazy wind experience, heading out to tackle 30+knot winds. Every time I head out, I learn something new. There's always something to try and as I expand my set of locations, more times I can head out.

I won't always be have the flexibility so I might as well make the most of it while I can.

Christmas Strawberries on the Beach

2009-12-25T20:10:00.004+13:00

Christmas has always been an exciting time of year for me. This year in particular I was lucky that my parents were here for the christmas holidays. Last year Blaise and I were in NZ and we had a sedate christmas; a few prezzies, we made pizza and chilled on the couch.

This year we went all out (many thanks to Blaise who cooked and put up with my over excited christmas buzz). Blaise made his first NZ ham, with oranges and cloves including a side dish of grilled kumara. My folks bought way to many prezzies for Blaise and I. The weather was sunny and warm, the sky was blue, it was summer in NZ.

I had this overwhelming desire to have christmas strawberries on the beach. Not really sure why, not sure where the impetus came from but I had to do this for christmas this year!

So after dinner and a brief recovery time we prepped the strawberries, grabbed the folding chairs and hauled my family down to the beach. ...windy Wellington, i moved to a place called windy Wellington. The wind was gusting, the sand was blowing, christmas strawberries on the beach would not be on the line for this year. However not to be denied my prize i got Blaise to snap a few photos of me eating strawberries on the beach and my parents joined in with good humour.

Christmas - check
Strawberries - check
Beach - check
family - check!

Waikanae with Mom and Dad

2009-12-19T18:28:00.004+13:00

I've been to Waikanae before with Blaise for his kiting but in all honesty i have never walked the beach there.

First off let me tell you the first weekend after school holidays is not a good time to be on the road. I knew this too because last year we left super early on that Saturday to avoid the traffic. So when it took nearly 1/2 an hour to go from Paraparaumu to Waikanae i'm surprised it to me that long to remember about the holiday travels.

Anyway we finally got there and met up with Blaise who had come in our car with his kite gear. The wind wasn't quite up to snuff but he held out hope it would pick up. There was one lone kiter who was going to give it a go and while Blaise hung out near the car and gear, my folks and i headed for a walk down the beach. I had never walked the beach before, my past experiences with Waikanae were launch Blaise then hunker down against the wind on the beach or return to the car. It was a pretty nice walk and i saw lots of the blue jellyfish Blaise had said you could see on the shore (and in the water i might add).

Do they sting you ask? Blaise says "YES" but the ones on shore are usually dead (or dying) and aren't much of a threat. Do i want to step on one barefooted to test the theory...no.

We walked down the boat launch area and then turned around and headed back. Blaise called my mobile (cell) to say that the wind had picked up and he was going to gear up and head out. We arrived back at the cars just as he was suiting up and more and more kiters were showing up. The call had gone out and they all knew the wind had arrived. We wandered down to watch Blaise launch before heading home and for once i wasn't on launching duty, my dad took over and did a great job too.

We watched him zip around for a bit and then headed back home.

Botanical Gardens with my parents

2009-12-18T17:51:00.004+13:00

I hadn't been to the botanical gardens in a while, not since...a while. I had definitely gone between this December and last, and ah yes i remember. I went with Jess and Lauren when they came in August. It was a lot nicer weather this time, still overcast but not the same volume of wind and rain.

When we arrived up at the top via cable car my parents wandered into the cable car museum. You know its weird that i nor Blaise had ever gone into that place before. It was actually quite good, lots of info, not too much to say "oh boring" just enough to make you go "Ooh thats interesting". We spend a bit in there wandering around, taking the occasional photo.

We headed out to the garden and walked the flower path down to the city passing through the australian garden, cacti garden, hydrangea path, main garden, herb gardens...you get the idea. The path eventually takes you back to the city proper after passing through the cemetery that they had to move 20,000 graves to put the highway through. A pleasant walk for the day and I can't speak for my folks but i for one will sleep tonight.

The Parents visit Berhampore / I did what to my ....?

2009-12-15T18:09:00.007+13:00

Last day of school today. And what a doozie of a day. I have been sick for a bit now, a particularly virulent little infection, started off with me coughing up green phlegm, took me off school for almost 2 weeks. And just recently the coughing was really starting to hurt my chest. Before we get into that lets do the fun stuff.

So Tuesday December 15th was my last day at Berhampore school for the term. I had a bunch of kids asking me the day before "is tomorrow your last day?" so i expected (correctly) that presents were forthcoming. And they blew me away with the sheer volume of prezzies and cards, next year maybe I'll ask for a goat. Other companies like world vision do this too.

Anyhoo there was a stage show to be presented at lunch which both my parents had expressed interest in attending. The kids had been working on it for the last week and apart from one forgotten line it was very well done. Later that afternoon after lunch I was starting to feel really pained in the chest area. Like hurting to breathe. So i suggested to my teaching partner (who totally approved bless him) that i would run the last 2 spelling bees and then head to a clinic to see a doctor. Dad who had been collecting left-handed players baseball gloves for us in Canada took a group of excited kids down to practice some skills while i stayed up top to run a bee.

The day ended with some proud spelling bee winners and a pleased as punch teacher (ie. me) wishing the school year hadn't ended quite so soon.

Now onto the bad. My coughing and sore chest. The reason I ended up having pains while breathing was because i have gone and torn the costal cartilage on my 6th rib. The coughing was putting pressure on the area, anyone who has heard me cough knows i put out an enormous woofing cough for someone my size. I finally tore it out Tuesday morning when a particular bad coughing streak hit me in the morning. The doctor says i have to stop coughing and then it will be 2-3 weeks for the cartilage to repair. And to make me feel better he gave me 5 drugs, i kid you not 5. An anti-inflammatory for the muscles, an antibiotic to clear out the last of the virus so i would stop coughing, a pain killer called Tramadol which my mother claims my grandmother is using, and 2 pills to take with Tramadol to reduce the effect its going to have on my stomach and guts. I ended up programming my ipod to whistle at me every time i needed to take a pill because with 5 of them multiple times a day i'm never going to get this straight.

The Santa Run

2009-12-09T11:27:00.005+13:00

Dad and Blaise headed out to Whaikane (sp) to do the kite surfing thing and I hung out with my mom. I had in passing glanced at something called the "Wendy's Santa Run" a charity 2.5km run where all the participants wear felt Santa suits. I can't even remember where i saw the info but when i told co-workers and the like about it they all said pretty much the same thing "i've never heard of that."

I think they need better advertising.

So we headed down to the wharf and as we got closer we could hear amplified voices on a PA system. Well i thought this had to be the right place. As we tried to get our bearings on where they would run from I glanced left to the wooden bridge that connects the water to the city. Like a train of ants ran a bunch of people in red, zig zagging in lines down the ramps. This was definitely the right spot. As mom and I debated whether to walk over there the fastest of the pack came out right beside us, as luck would have it we were on the running route.

We took a few pictures, male santas, female santas, little santas and a few little elves.

They did their run around Te Papa and came back along our path and headed to the finish line. A couple of Santas stuck out, the group of moms with their babies in prams, they had decorated them up with gold garlands and the older child had a fairy outfit on and a decorated push scooter to use. A couple who upon their run back decided they were warm and they took a dive off the pier into the water below, we tried to get a photo but they jumped to fast. And finally the lady we will refer to as chesty Claus. I'm sure she was going for a costume prize but two rules 1) think about body appropriateness and 2) if you can't jog in it why did you design it.

The only time she moved faster than a walk was the last 20 meters to the finish line.

Still a pretty fun thing to watch and every jogger seemed to have a good time. If you are Wellington next December check it out.

Two more Canadians kind of escaped to Kiwiland

2009-12-08T09:52:00.001+13:00

My parents have arrived!! That's right we're bringing over family now. Well they are not the first my brother Jess had that honour back in August.

They arrived at 8:30am on Tuesday (December 8th) and will be here 30 days! How sweet is that. We have christmas, our summer atm, a trip to Napier planned and lots of stuff in and around Wellington.

So they got in and we headed to their place in Newtown where they began to unpack. We headed downtown organized their banking, got a cellphone for them, met Blaise for lunch, picked up their rental car and headed to our home in Island Bay for a visit. Mom was impressed on how they have built on the hills; she feels Halifax could learn from them. Both were suitably impressed by the views off our decks, Dad in particular couldn't get enough of them. He was so impressed he collected my outdoor beanbags, borrowed a hoodie and headed out for some fresh air.

He got comfy and then bam! nap time for an hour and a half, I think jet lag caught up with him. He wants to get rid of the cherry tree blocking our view on the lower deck and if the property management gives us the go ahead I'm sicking him on that tree.

Dog Whisperer

2009-10-05T12:47:00.009+13:00

Our last day in the Cook Islands. I thought i should devote a moment to the plant life. On our walkway from the main road to the house there is hibiscus in 5 different colours, fragipani in yellow and pink (that's what they make the flower necklaces out of in the Cook Islands), coconuts and the above plant (which i think must be related to a bird of paradise).

Anyhoo onto the subject of this particular blog entry. We dropped the chariot off around 1pm and headed back to the beach house. We had put 300km on that thing, the island is only 36km round so we drove it a few times. It had been a lazy morning and the early afternoon was also quite lazy but finally we decided we shouldn't waste our last day so we decided to walk across to the little islets we could see from the house.

We waded across the water to the first islet and upon arriving were greeted by two very friendly pooches wearing collars. Shrugging our shoulders (dogs in the Cooks are pretty relaxed and free wandering) we headed to the back of the islet to see how close we could get to the reef edge breaking on the lagoon. As you can see we got pretty close to the thing.

We decided to cross the three islets and return to the Muri beach spot where Blaise had been launching kites. Our furry friends had followed us the whole time we were walking and when we started to cross to the next islet they followed us. Now the water was not deep, chest high at best and the distance wasn't that great. To my knowledge dogs are good swimmers, see doggy paddle, so much to our surprise we found our doggy friends were not the best of swimmers. You would think that dogs living on an island would be swimmers. Anyways we had nicknamed them Shorty and Stubby, Shorty kept trying to climb onto Stubby or me and Blaise and Stubby didn't like his ears getting wet, he kept shaking his head to get the water out which made him sink.

At one point we found them a rock they could climb up onto.

We gave them a chance to rest and Shorty (the black one) had a real hard time coming off the rock, he only hopped down when we got far enough away from him, and even then he kept trying to climb on top of one of us. We arrived on the 2nd islet and as we walked down the shore we were joined by a third dog and then a fourth one. All wearing collars and friendly thought the 4th one looked a little skinny.

It was by this point we started our theory. Local dogs followed the tourists out to the islets during low tide as they went exploring but then got stuck there and couldn't get back even during low tide. So when we showed up they came out of the trees with the hopes they could follow us home. So with 4 of them in tow we started our walk across the water to the third islet. One of them broke off leaving us with three. Stubby and Shorty did their thing, shaking his ears or trying to climb onto us. By this point we getting very amused with our collection. On the third islet we could spot the Muri beach resorts so we headed to the crossing. Now here was definitely deeper; it came up to about my neck, not a far distance though. So we set out, Stubby, Shorty, the new skinny one and Blaise and I. I was carrying the backpack on my head and things started off well. Blaise got across with the skinny dog. He took off at a run as soon as he got ashore, guess he was eager to get home.

Stubby (the ear shaking one) was hanging back with Shorty who was doing his jumping onto Stubby trick. As we got further away from them Shorty lost his nerve and turned back to the islet, got there and started to howl. Stubby also turned around and headed back to join him. I looked at Blaise, he looked at me, took the bag and smirked and headed to the resorts. I turned around and headed back to the dogs.

Both got up to see me when i got ashore back on the islet, Stubby was happy to see me and dove back into the water but Shorty just wouldn't do it. I petted, called, coaxed and nada so I headed back with Stubby in tow figuring someone else would rescue Shorty. Half way across with Stubby I heard a yelp and Shorty had launched into the water after us. He reached us and then panicked. He jumped on Stubby who was trying to desperately keep his ears dry. His shaking his head was sinking him and then Shorty jumped on him, they both went under, doggie panic ensued.

Having enough of this I grabbed one under each arm like a footballer, after an initial struggle they realized that they were not drowning anymore and they calmed down.

By this point Blaise and a couple of other tourists were standing on the shore enjoying the show of me carrying two dogs and Blaise had the camera out.

Shorty made a break for shore as we got close enough and headed off home (we assume) but Stubby needed a little more help. Then he followed us...everywhere...he followed us up the path to the road, he followed us down the road, up our driveway, up the stairs of the house...we had a problem. We went inside and Stubby stayed on the deck resting. "Well at least we'll leave tonight," I said, "He'll head off when he realizes he won't get fed."
He spent an hour on the deck before standing up and stretching and heading off down the driveway. And that is the saga of Shorty and Stubby.

No diving...to much wind...boo!

2009-10-04T11:09:00.004+13:00

Due to the high winds, which Blaise likes, the boat from the dive shop had to be taken out of the water. I was waiting for the pick-up which seemed to be running late, I walked back up to the house and gave them a call. For future reference leave a phone number so they can call me for cancellations.

So we had a morning now to kill. I was already wearing contacts, seemed a waste to take them out so we decided to go snorkeling again. We had to find a new spot today as the wind was churning up the water enough to make it hard to see anything (and the fish were hiding). So we headed further south looking for a more protected, windless side. The south coast turned out to be much calmer but still we plowed on. The west coast though was amazingly calm. We pulled up to a nice beach with lots of coral visible and the water surface relatively calm. Three small Cook Island kids (the oldest had to be 4, 5 tops) were playing in the water. They were friendly and ran over to say "hi". We put down our gear on the sand and waded out. We snorkeled and once again were blown away by the fish life. Blaise again had a cluster of fishie friends, we saw the Picasso Triggerfish, tonnes of wrasse and of course the butterfly fish. There was a needlefish (similar to the cornet fish i saw the day before but smaller), big bluefin trevally and scissortail sergeants. Basically a whole new set of fish. The odd thing was that we saw completely different fish species. For example on the east side of the island there was tonnes of threadfin butterfly. On the west side of the island I saw very few of threadfin butterfly but tonnes of racoon butterfly fish.

A cute little wrasse (threespot or sunset, not sure which subspecies) came up to me. I mean right in front of my mask, just hovering there was a cute little fish. So in my excitement I bubbled "Blaise" and pointed at the fishie. The cute little fishie ...BIT ME! I mean it wasn't hard or anything, it was just surprising. Blaise who had been looking at this spectacle the whole time was laughing at me. Turns out they enjoy eating a banana out of tourist's hand so maybe he thought finger = banana.

We got back out of the water to sit on the sand for a while. Blaise took a nap for a bit and I hauled out my little 2 string stunt kite he had bought me. The wind just took the kite and it whipped back and forth. The three children immediately came running over squealing with delight. The oldest one, a girl, was delighted and hooked and stood in front of me holding onto the strings. Blaise at one point wanted his turn so my young friend and I took over the job of launching it. Then the young lady demanded her go "by herself". Blaise agreed spot her which turned out to be a good thing. She was capable of holding onto the strings even though they pulled quite hard but she did sort of launch out of the water from the pull (I know that experience) at which point Blaise grabbed her and held her down. She flew the kite until her auntie called her "to stop bothering the tourists and time to go". I took one more turn and managed to put it into a palm tree. Blaise's exact quote was "man i'm glad you did that to your kite and not me". We got it out with a bit of strategic pulling and a lucky wind gust.

When we returned home Blaise called me in a loud urgent tone, he had discovered a rather large cockroachy friend. No sorry thats wrong, it was a large cockroach.

Minutes later we saw a baby house gecko, the type that eat insects...I really hope he was a smart little baby because I'm pretty sure that cockroach could have eaten it. If you squint you can see it below the speaker's left corner, tiny green thing. Click on the pictures to get the full size version.

I begged for a sunset takeaway dinner. We stopped at the takeaway we had seen each time we went through town, grabbed 2 burgers and a chip and headed to the north-west shore to watch a sunset. We were a bit late for the red clouds but it was pretty nonetheless with light streaming through the clouds. It was a great end to the day that didn't have scuba ^^bb

The Best Waffle Ever!

2009-10-02T18:00:00.000+13:00

Strange thing about travelling you find the weirdest things; in this case we found the best waffle in the world at the Nui Market in Rarotonga.

After my dives that day we hung out on the beach for a bit.

The wind picked up a little so we attempted to get Blaise's 14m kite up (I'll let him tell that story) but even with the female kite surfing world champ (I'm serious) who happened to walk by and try and help launch it just didn't go.

We had been very good about eating at home the last few days, breakfast, lunch and dinner so we headed into town on our chariot to find some dinner. We passed a little harbour of wooden boats so of course we had to stop and take a photo of them for my folks.

Note the storage box for fish.

We had been told about a $10 steak that was mind blowing so we were planning to do that but as we drove in the open air market was packed full of people and bbqs. Curious we stopped for a look. The Pacific Mini Games had finished and the closing ceremonies were to be held tomorrow but tonight was a large cook out. There was about 15-20 food bbq/stalls set up, all selling $10 plates which included some combination of pork chops, chicken, beef, Rice, Taro, chow mein, salad and potato salad. A hurried conversation and steak was off the menu, we each grabbed $10 and headed to a different bbq person. I was delighted with mine and I loved the taro, kind of like a super dense bread, tasteless with a spongy texture. Blaise did not like his taro (or mine, he did try both) so I got all the taro in exchange for a pork chop and some rice. I'm pretty sure I got the better end of the deal.

After dinner we kept walking around looking at the the stalls selling things and happened to walk by one vendor that was advertising waffles. In a moment of psychic linkage we agreed on waffles and walked over to the vendor. A very friendly couple made us a waffle using a fancy waffle iron that spun and twisted into the heat. It made the best, i repeat the best waffle we had ever had. So good that we went back to a) compliment them and b) ask if they would be there tomorrow so we could have another.

Sadly they would be gone tomorrow, it was their wedding anniversary and we couldn't begrudge them that, but hey we got to enjoy one that night. We finished the evening with a giant pink cotton candy (which they call Fairy Floss here). Awesome end to the day.

Dive Rarotonga - 2nd day

2009-10-02T17:23:00.004+13:00

Another awesome day with the awesome guys at Dive Rarotona, Charles again was my personal dive master. I had been worried because yesterday the weather was so awful. Its not like rain affects you scuba diving but the lack of sun reduces your visibility and the waves can cause currents underwater you have to swim against and animals tend to stay hidden.

But worry not my diving listeners, by lunch it was again tropical, warm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, the scuba gods were with me again!

My personal chauffeur came to get me, we packed up my gear and headed off to the boat. I was told that we were going to be going back to Edna's Anchor for the 2nd dive because an older couple was coming out to experience scuba diving. They spend an afternoon in the pool learning the gear, then each has an instructor beside them as they swim in the ocean no deeper than 12 meters. Anyhoo Charles and I were going to have to be at Edna's Anchor for the 2nd dive but the first dive we went to a place called Mushroom Forest. Massive strange coloured corals and of course ....FISHIES!!!

There was another Triggerfish that hung out with us for an urchin lunch. We saw a Spanish dancer that was actually floating/flying in the air like it was supposed to as opposed to that lazy one from the other day. A massively huge Napoleon Maori Wrass that made Charles look excited and the best part...a school of 200 Convict Surgeon fish. It was a sparkling ribbon of fish and swimming with them was a single large cornet fish. I figure he was pretty safe hanging with them, any predator was more likely to get one of the convict surgeons than him.

We headed back ashore to do our surface interval and wait for the other two people to show up. We headed back out to Edna's Anchor and Charles and I headed off in the other direction from last time. This time was just as cool, I saw a moray eel swimming by and pointed him out to Charles (i got a double okay symbol on that one) and at one point I looked back and saw 4 huge, long white fish swimming above us. They looked quite long and toothy, I knew not shark but I wasn't sure what, quickly swimming over to Charles and grabbing his leg I pointed up to show him what I had seen. Again I got 2 Okay symbols. Turns out what I had spotted was some barracuda which Charles called Big Eyed barracuda. Not to be outdone Tommy the Triggerfish, the big one from my first dive in Cook Islands showed up demanding his urchin lunch. As he was meal was being prepared I looked back and there was the huge school of convict surgeon fish swimming by us. I knew it was the same group...how do I know you say, the same dang cornetfish was hanging with them and we weren't too far away from that earlier dive sight. I was torn between going to pet Tommy or watching the silvery school, I managed to do both. Not to be outdone by my awesome fish spotting skills Charles managed to find under a beautiful rock formation some Spotfin Lionfish which were pinkier and "fluffier" looking than the spikey lionfish of two days ago. There were two just hanging out but this was a definite no touch fish (highly toxic venom in their spines).

Again awesome dive, can't do it just justice in a blog description but simply amazing.

Tropical Thunder Storm

2009-10-01T17:21:00.003+13:00

Small island, large mountain peaks and a massive thunderstorm. This storm, every time it thundered the house rumbled and shook. There was an hour period where it seemed like an earthquake was happening with disturbing regularity. On the plus side there seems to be a lot of wind at the moment. If the lightning stops Blaise might get a chance to get his kite up.

Dive Rarotonga - 1st day

2009-09-30T12:10:00.001+13:00

It was Wednesday September 30th. Blaise was sleeping in bed and I was up early and just itching to get going with my day. Why? I was going scuba diving in the Cook Islands today.

So I highly recommend Dive Rarotonga to anyone visiting the Cook Islands. They were recommended to me by Island Bay Divers here in Wellington. I thought why should I use them because they are on the opposite side of the island and there is a dive shop just down the road but let me tell you I am ecstatic that I used Dive Rarotonga. The owners came to get me in the morning and drove me to their shop. I had brought a lot of my own gear: wetsuit, fins, mask, snorkel, knife, etc. so all I really needed was the BC, tanks and regulators. The staff were friendly and showed me a cool way to package my gear for transport. We went down to the boat in the harbour where I expressed nervousness about a boat entry. I had done the practice on a pool edge; it seemed higher from the boat itself. After a thorough briefing we suited up and waded out to the boat. The water was sooooo warm. We zipped out the channel and were into the ocean proper, the dive spot was not far from the harbour exit and Jason, the guy who would stay on the boat helped me gear up, buddy checked me and walked me through the boat entry. After the initial feeling of panic as I was rolling backwards I realized that this was actually kind of cool and I love boat exiting now. I got a personal dive master, Charles, and another staff member, Henry who swam behind us. Turns out I came in a slow season so I got essentially private diving. These guys do the dives so often that the older fish know them; in particular the Triggerfish (named Tommy) came up, he was big. Seriously big, about ½ my size and he knows he gets fed. They cut a spikey urchin for him to eat and then there was a swarm of fish feeding and they’re so engrossed that I could put out my hand and touch them.

The water was warm, even 18 meters down I was warm in a 3-2 wetsuit. And visibility was 30m!! So clear and blue and full of fish…words cannot express the amount of fish species I saw. I will do a fishie sum up at the end of what I saw over the 2 dives.
We came back up and returned to the harbour to grab another tank and sit on the short for a SIT (Surface Interval Time) to release nitrogen from our bodies. They gave me hot chocolate and some cookies. I even got an added treat of seeing Blaise who was trying to find the police station to get his Cook Island drivers license. So I got to squeal to him for a while and bounce around like a fool explaining what I had seen so far. Back out to the ocean we went and went to another dive site where I saw even more fish, different corals and a …TURTLE!!!! I saw a Hawksbill turtle swimming through the water 15 meters down; anything I see after this is icing on the cake, I saw a turtle!

We returned to the shop where they had an excellent system set up for rinsing gear and setting stuff out to dry. Charles my dive master/buddy then proceeded to sit down with me with the fish charts and books and show me exactly what we saw, he put up with all my questions and kept going to get new books to show me the fish I was asking about. They suggested I leave all my gear with them for the rest of my stay so I wouldn’t have to bring it each time and that way it would dry thoroughly between dives. So nice of them and then they were going to drive me home but Blaise showed up on the scooter to take me home. So they said “We’ll pick you up Friday on the road, see you then.”
And I get to do this four more times, this is incredible.

A short list of what I saw (grey ones have pictures, click on the grey word):
Hawksbill turtle
Manta Ray (but only the back end as it swam away)
Moray Eel
Spikey Lion fish
Tommy the triggerfish
Pineapple sea cucumber
Multiple varieties of Butterfly fish
Multiple varieties of Wrasse
A lazy Spanish Dancer(it didn’t move but its supposed to flap around like a butterfly)
Ghost coral
Christmas tree worm
Trumpetfish
Peacock Grouper
Yellowfin Tuna

Day 1 - Tsunami, Scooters, Clear Blue Water

2009-09-29T13:27:00.000+13:00

Around 10ish we were woken by a phone call from the property management cleaner who was on her way over, we got out of bed (Blaise cursing the roosters) and got dressed. The cleaner showed up and we headed out to explore the Muri area of Rarotonga. As we were walking out the cleaner received a phone call and told us casually that there was a Tsunami warning for the west side of the Island. Ooookay. At this point we didn’t know about the earthquake or how bad Samoa would be hit.

We walked quite a bit, there is only one main road on Rarotonga, did the east coast, was on the south coast and I was starting to get sore feet. We waited for a bus, turns out the word “island time” seemed to be appropriate, it seemed to take forever to get there. It was $4 per person one way (no on and off privileges) and while on the bus looping the island Blaise and I decided a scooter was going to be more economical over the long run. We rented one from Budget for the rest of the week.

We wanted to get some local info from the surf shops on where Blaise could kite but no one seemed to open. In fact a lot of them looked boarded up and abandoned. Again later on we realized that people had prepped for a tsunami and shut up shop.

We bought some groceries, we had a plan to use our kitchen a lot and not eat out a lot, headed home, dropped off the groceries and headed back to one of the nice white beaches we had seen on our walk that morning. We set up towels, went for a walk/swim in the crystal clear blue lagoon water and were blown away by the number of fish that swam around us. Blaise was like a small child pointing out fish here and there…after his initial nervousness about them circling him. Some tanning, I headed back out to take photos of the fish, the water was so clear that some of them turned out! Have to come back here with snorkeling gear; have to get Blaise some snorkeling gear.

arriving in Cook Islands

2009-09-29T13:25:00.000+13:00

We got in extremely early (12:05am), got through customs relatively quickly and were met as promised by a driver who took us to Muri Tamaariki Villa on the East coast. He unloaded our bags and went to get the key out of the bbq only to discover that the key wasn’t there. No worries, he used his cell phone and called someone to let them know the keys weren’t there. We settled down on the patio furniture, looked over the bay in front of us and commented on how warm and lovely it was. Half an hour passed, then an hour…then another half hour. Blaise and I walked around the house looking for an open window. We found on and did the "pop the wife up" to be thwarted by a bug screen. We walked down to the main road to see if we could flag down a car and Eddie, the property manager pulls up quite apologetic. The date switch confused the property management staff and they thought we were coming in after midnight the next evening.
We got in, settled in brushing aside Eddie’s apologies that it hadn’t been cleaned (it looked fine) and fell into bed. A few short hours later the roosters went off. Turns out there is a large wild chicken population including roosters, who go off when they hear another one. There was a lot of roosters.

Sometimes Plans Work....

2009-09-01T10:23:00.003+12:00

And sometimes they really don't. I was trying to build some adventure and suspense for our hordes of readers and frankly, failed.

So the 3 special guests are:
Carly's brother J and his lovely G/F L. Those who know a little bit about J will know why this is such a special occasion by itself... and to be able to meet his significant other for the first time simply rocks. The weather has been flaky as ever (spring weather in Wellington has its manic moments) but good food, good company and good beer makes most things fun :)

The third special guest is a new, permanent addition to our household, KitKat. (I've been trying to catch a reasonable photo of her for the last 4 days, no dice so far). Carly's been working on the property management company and the owners of the house we're in for the last month and a half to get permission to get a cat. She didn't tell me so as not to get my hopes up (I've been feeling the lack of animal companionship quite keenly of late). We finally got said permission last week. In a classic case of serendipity, the next day, one of her students' mothers contacted her in a panic because the person that had signed up to take their cat as they moved across the world to the US had backed out at the last moment. With 5 days to sort a new home for the cat, things were getting tense. Seeing this as an opportunity to pay back Karma for finding us a new home for our Canadian Cats at the last minute, we gladly accepted the task.

And a task it's been :) She's a 3 year old tortoise-shell Persian/Siamese mix. Mostly an outdoor cat, she's been quite skittish the last few days, hiding under our bed or in our closet. Weirder, as soon as the lights go out, she's been meowing constantly until the morning. I know it's to be expected for such a major change, but I miss my sleep. We'll update as things get ironed out with her and I'll try and get some photos up asap.

Special Arrivals.

2009-08-26T08:46:00.002+12:00

We're busy prepping for 3 new arrivals (No, Carly's not pregnant). We bought a fold out futon for the office (thank you trademe!), I'm fixing the light well in the office with a temporary wall so there can be a little more privacy and I'm looking at buying a spare door. Oh, and we're cleaning like mad.

The upside of all this is there will be exciting / cool /beautiful photos from our upcoming trips and adventures. The downside is I don't want to spoil the surprise so you'll need to keep reading for further explanations :)

For the Love of Technology.

2009-08-24T10:50:00.002+12:00

Technology is a wonderful thing when it works. For example, these days I call my parents on my iPhone using Skype. This works about 90% of the time. But when you sit back and think of what's actually happening when I do that, it's quite incredible. Example: Me calling my mom with Skype on iPhone.

From my iPhone, The call goes through the wireless network here at work.
The traffic goes through the network, ending up in Japan (my work's outbound gateway)
The traffic then goes over the Internet, through one of the cables connecting North America to Japan
From there it's routed through to Skype's servers somewhere in the continental US.
Skype's servers route the traffic internally to a server that's local to my mom's Long Island area code
That server makes a phone call to my mom's home line, connecting us.

So using 3 different connection technologies (wireless, wired and phone) over at LEAST 2 major fiber cables undersea, through the entirety of the US to the New York phone system so that I can chat with mom. And somehow they manage to deal with all the variability built into each of those networks, to give us a conversation with less delay than I remember having the first time I called my mom out of country.

Of course, occasionally this wonderful world of technology stuffs up, like today when I was trying to wish Bruce a happy birthday, but generally, it's pretty fantastic.

Oh and all this essentially free, riding on existing services I already pay for.

On Working with one's Hands.

2009-07-27T21:48:00.003+12:00

I started my new evening class this week: Beginner's woodworking. Just like my welding class, I figured I needed to learn the proper way to work with wood, from picking the materials, proper joining, how to make something square and the like. I made my pilgrimage down to Wellington High School for my first class, and, as I sat down at a bench, looked around. Of the 12 pupils, only 4 of them were guys. 8 women who had all manner of reasons for signing up. One wanted to build the furniture she'd been looking for but couldn't find anywhere in Welly. A few had specific pieces they wanted to build or restore. There was an upholsterer who decided she wanted to expand her knowledge. One woman, whose partner had been to numerous of the Intermediate Woodworking sessions (basically a structured way to use the tools while working on whatever project you want) decided she was tired of waiting on him to finish the projects he wanted done, so signed up herself. The woman sitting next to me decided she needed woodworking to advance her career; she worked in the film industry but because of recent cuts to big movies being made in Wellington, needed more skills to be more versatile in the tighter job market.

We went through the shop basics, safety, a walk through of the tools. It's incredible how much I learned just on that walkthrough. Little questions I'd asked myself about the finer points of making tables and the like, for example how did you join a bunch of pieces of timber and yet get it all nice and flat? Table sander. What was the difference between a C and F clamp? What's the proper way to hold a chisel? I'm sure many of these seemingly obvious things bring out holy wars in the woodworking circles, but for someone who's new at it all, having someone experienced tell you at least one side is a life saver!

I thought back to my schooling and how the one thing Lycee didn't have was any sort of hands on shop class. I picked up some here and there, with family resources close at hand for the most part. Simple things that I took for granted during my basic projects, like how to properly cut using a hand saw, became obvious once someone showed me how.

As I was chiseling out my first housing joint, I looked down and felt really happy that I was finally learning to use some of the tools my grandfather had left me. Every time I figure out a new tool, I think back to him smiling as I was putting the wheels on one of my first model airplanes using proper washers and nuts. It really feels like I'm following if not in his footsteps then at least in his interests.

so 7 more weeks of beginner's woodworking, of which 3 will be building a basic tool tote as a "first guided project" before we move on to projects that interest us. I will be building a set of 4 rolling drawers for under our bed, which, hopefully, I'll be able to integrate into some underskirts to make for a nice finished look. I'm already signing up for the Intermediate's class :)

All Quiet On the Southern Front

2009-07-20T09:23:00.002+12:00

Our 10 month anniversary of moving to NZ came and went. No fan fare, not really even noticed to be honest. I think this is a good thing. I won't speak for Carly, though I think it's a pretty safe bet we agree, but I certainly don't feel like an outsider anymore. Our act of immigration, which once defined who we were within New Zealand has become an interesting fact. We know where everything is, we know the local geography, heck, people ask me for directions!

I look at people with backpacks, maps and confused faces and smile now. I'm excited to share the cooler parts of the country with friends and family, looking up things to do and new places to explore.

The regular day-to-day however, is as it ever was. We go to work, we come home I cook (sometimes) exciting meals, Carly makes tasty baked treats. Wes has added some great flavour to our little domestic lifestyle, but overall, life has settled into a very happy, comfortable groove. It's not a rut though, things are still changing up often enough that I'm on my toes.

Most of the things we missed about Canada are now fond memories that we've either come to live without or found local replacements. A few of them we've had to make ourselves (Chicken wings. I bought a fryer just so I could make my own :) ) but mostly with the help of family and friends back home we're well taken care of.

I guess the point of this post is just to say that things are going well, we're happy and we are in the right place :)

How to Start Kitesurfing.

2009-07-20T09:17:00.002+12:00

A friend of mine recently asked me for my opinions on how to start kiting. I figured it might be good to have my thoughts on a website that's indexed by google so more people can get my opinion. Most of the stuff you'll find here is an accumulation of good information from the locals here so it may have some wellington specific content.

Ok, first off, find yourself an IKO certified instructor and get yourself signed up for the basic lessons. Usually it'll be 2 days worth, one using a trainer kite of some sort and one on the water.

I personally bought myself a trainer kite before the lessons so that I knew the basics of flying a foil kite. I bought a Peter Lynn land kite, but they have since put out an EXCELLENT trainer kite called the Impulse, it's what all the instructors here use.

http://www.peterlynnproducts.com/

Once you're comfortable flying a kite, get the lessons and find out what kind of kites are appropriate for your area. There are three types of kites, C-Kite, Bow Kite and Hybrid, with radically different characteristics.

C kites have more power but don't handle gusts very well, so it's easy to get in trouble with them. Bows have a wide variety of power so they are better for inconsistent conditions. Hybrids try to do both, though they tend to be more complicated than most.

I have a 14 sqm hybrid and a 10m bow, if i'd known better when I was starting I would have stuck to 1 type.

Boards are a lot easier to pick. Get a big one to start, as it'll be easier to get on the plane quickly and it's a more forgiving board. My first one was a 142cmx42cm board and I was up and running quicker than the other beginners that started with me. Your snowboarding skills will come in very handy, though I hope you like riding switch, because that's what you'll be doing 50% of the time ! :)

So now for costs. You need:

1 or 2 kites (most people start with 1 but it's frustrating because you have to wait for the "perfect" wind for that kite. having 2 different sizes lets you get out more often and get better faster) (make sure they come with lines!!)
1 board
1 seat harness
1 leash
wetsuit (depending on temperature)
safety gear (impact vest / helmet, optional but highly recommended. I ride with a vest but no helmet yet because I can't find one that fits)

Optional gear:

Booties
gloves
trainer kite

In Kiwi dollars (currently around 0.75$ CDN to a kiwi dollar)

I got both my kites for 1050$ each used, in good nick (with lines)
my first board was 400$ (lost it) my second was 600$
harness i bought new (don't trust used harnesses) 189
leash was 40$
wetsuit depends on local climate (i have 2, paid 250 for the summer one and 500 for the winter one)
impact vest 189 new
booties 70
gloves 60
trainer kite 200

And yes, Carly knows about all these expenses :)

So total expenses when I started was about 2000$ kiwi, but i started with 1 kite (it took me about 2 months before i got fed up and bought my second one) I'm now completely sorted and it's cost me closer to 3200 before the wetsuits that i use for all other watersports

Now, things I learned:

When you are just starting out, stick with the major brands, you'll have an easier time of it. Get one of the brands that's most popular in your region, likely there will be a good rep for that brand for maintenance issues.

If you're going to buy 2 kites, buy the same brand and if possible model. I have a lot of trouble still switching from one to the other because they fly completely differently

Boards are the least important piece of the puzzle when you are learning, pretty much any big one will do.

Buying used is good, but make sure you can look over the kites. if there's damage, make sure it's professionally repaired. If it's got a lot of damage (say more than 2 repairs requiring sowing, or 1 full length of kite repair) walk away.

be patient, practice flying the trainer, and listen to the other kiters at the beach. You'll very quickly figure out who to listen to and who's an idiot. When in doubt, either rig the smaller kite or tune your kite for LESS power, not more.

You're going to get in trouble, know your safeties. make sure you do a dry run or two of the safeties in good conditions before you need to use them when you're in trouble.

Wait for the right conditions. Too light or too strong for your kite will be frustrating. bow kites have a good range of conditions, but keep in mind that gusts can be as much as 15knots over the average)

One of Those Facts They Don't Tell You About Immigration...

2009-06-30T20:29:00.002+12:00

Your immune sickness stays in your country of origin. Really. I've been sick more often in New Zealand in the last 9 months than I had been in the last 3 years of Canadian living. Thinking of it logically, it makes sense. The germs that we have in NZ are different strains from the North American ones, our bodies aren't used to the new climate, there's different pollens etc. in the air. It doesn't help that we have a drafty, potentially moldy house, but really, I believe it's the lack of immunity that's been doing me in...

I think Carly has a definite advantage as she's exposed to a seething petri dish of illness. Ahhh elementary school, it's definitely got its ups and downs :) She's probably contracted and recovered from more colds without noticing than I can remember having in my life.

So yes, I'm sick. I'm at home right now recovering from another very minor cold. Official rules at work state that if you are displaying symptoms that might be attributed to Swine Flu (I won't go down that rat hole... ) so I worked from home yesterday but today wasn't able to get any work done.

The Kitemare.

2009-06-23T21:32:00.003+12:00

Being in the Southern Hemisphere has it's perks but the close proximity to Antarctica isn't really one of them. You see New Zealand is about as close to it as you can get and Antarctica is a windy place that likes to share its breezes with us. So whenever wind coming from there (e.g. from the south) comes to Wellington, the temperature drops by 5-8 degrees, the wind picks up speed and generally makes it pretty unpleasant.

SO! What better weather to go kitesurfing in! To be quite honest, after 3 weeks of unnaturally calm weather, I had a jones on for some kiting, regardless of the conditions.

The conditions were looking good, at least as good as winter Southerlies get. Forecast was for approx. 20 knots of wind, bitter cold and some light rain. Throwing all my gear in the car (including new gloves, my booties a thick, full body wetsuit and my oh-so-sexy neoprene cap-with-ear-flaps) I headed out to pick up T and M and off we went for our first ever kite at Petone.

Petone's not a great beach it turns out. Despite having a nice football field to setup our kites, the beach itself is mostly shells (can cut a kite to shreds), there's tons of logs and other debris and a tree line about 10-15 meters up from the waterline.

The wind started off very light. In fact, we sat around debating if it was even worth rigging up. In the end, having the biggest kite (thus having the lowest wind requirements) I decided to rig and launch. Out on the water, with about 14knots of wind, I was having a good time of it. The water wasn't too cold (probably 10-12 deg) and the waves were reasonable.

Then Trouble started. The wind started building very quickly gusting strongly as it came over the hills. Within 15 minutes it went from 14 to 20-25 knots. Gusts were pulling kiters off the water.

I managed to get back to the beach, but once there things got worse. The wind was so strong that no matter what I did, I was getting dragged. Fighting a losing battle, I was pulled through (and over at times!) the debris, my kite getting snagged on an old stump. Dislodging it sent the kite in a mad kite loop (basically, the kite will start spinning rapidly, creating TONS of power) and quickly cleared the tree line.

I'd had enough, I pulled the safety on my kite, the bar flew out of my hands and the kite crashed down behind the trees, into, it turns out, a model railway layout. Luckily my friend T had seen it all happen and was rushing to grab the kite and make sure I was ok. I was uninjured, I had no idea about the kite, my lines were caught in trees. Suddenly, another kiter signaled to me that he was in trouble. Like me, he'd been tricked into rigging too big a kite and was about to replicate my experience. Unclipping from the safety line, I ran to his rescue while T dealth with my kite.

We got him landed more or less safely (I got some rope burns on my ankle from his lines) and we both headed to where my kite was to assess damage. Surprisingly, there's very very little. A few pinholes in the canopy (easily fixed) was all my big kite sustained.

It felt like i'd been fighting the kite for 20 minutes, but really it was more like 5. It's incredible, when you're in trouble, how much time slows down. At no point did I feel like I was out of control. I knew what to do, how to do it and what would happen when I did. I have my instructor, Kavae from ONU Kitboarding School to thank for that.

I learnt a couple of very important things however:

when in doubt, rig the smaller kite first. If you need more power, THEN go to the big kite.
Kitebuddies are your lifeline. At the end of the day, we all look out for each other and will do what it takes to be safe.

The day ended well, however. After deciding Petone wasn't for us, M and I raced up the coast so that I could get "back on the horse" as it were. We ended up at Raumati beach, which was STUNNING. Gorgeous sand, no obstacles for miles and lots of other kiters out on the water. A reasonable session later, any fears I had were erased and my love of this sport confirmed.

What I Woke Up To This Morning.

2009-06-13T10:52:00.003+12:00

Click the image or here for a larger version

Quite literally Smoke on the Water. Now to do something about the lack of Fire in the Sky.

Easy Go Easy ... Come?

2009-06-08T12:10:00.002+12:00

People who have known me a while will know that I've always been very self concious about my weight and that in the period before moving to NZ I've been working on getting down to what I considered an appropriate weight for someone my frame and height.

For those of you knew to me, At my worst, I weighed 245lb. 111.13kg. This was right after Carly and I had moved into our first apartment, after years of eating terribly and not doing a whole lot of exercise in University. Through the next 4 years I tried a variety of diets, including low carb, protein power and a variety of exercise programs. They all worked to a certain extent (the low carb thing worked well until I started putting carbs back into my diet, then it exploded) but none of them really got me beyond my first plateau of 220. Still, 25 lb is nothing to snease at. Anyway, the thing they all taught me was that a) I'm a boredom and stress eater and b) the act of tracking what I ate was doing me more good than the fad diets.

So, fueled by a desire to loose some more weight to be more competitive in climbing. I found some links relating to the "hacker diet" which claimed to apply the princples of engineering to dieting. Really it boils down to looking at what goes in, the effect it has on the system and how much leaves through daily activity.

Long story short, before we moved to New Zealand I was down to 205lb, feeling pretty good about myself and had developed a whole batch of new eating habits and methods of cooking.

When we first moved, we didn't have a car, we lived fairly centrally and I had a job where I could take long walks after I'd finished my tasks for the day. I ate as I had in Canada (e.g. keeping me at 205lb reliably) but the marked increase in exercise meant I dropped down to a record low of 193lb. I liked how I looked and felt there and figured that was my ideal weight (Carly would get upset if I lost much more)

Now things have changed. I no longer have much time to walk, I have a high stress job and I'm no longer cooking or shopping for just Carly and I. Shopping for 3, with Wes having radically different eating habits to Carly and I has allowed me to sink into a lot of bad old habits. I snack more, I don't watch the portions like I used to (because I'm cooking in larger quantities etc...) mean that I'm now back at 202 :(

SO! Today I start documenting what I eat again, with emphasis on reducing my calorie intake and thinking about food again. Hopefully that plus starting a new climbing regimen will get my back in to the low 190s before my trip to the Cook Islands (damn you swimsuit season :P )

What a rough month.

2009-06-03T17:12:00.002+12:00

Well, it's over, so now we can look back and try and salvage some good out of what has probably been our hardest month since moving to New Zealand, if not ever. As many of you know, Carly and I had to make an emergency flight to Canada, something we're still recovering from. On top of that, we had the house flood, which STILL isn't fixed, we had a 3200$ mistake on our income tax, our car needed fixing and we came home to some of the worst weather Wellington's seen.

But through it all a couple of things made me smile.

While we were in Canada, as the most emotional times were starting to wind down, Carly turned to me and said: "I'm ready to go home". I asked where she meant, and she said: "Back to Wellington".

When we arrived, after 24 hours of straight flying, landing in windy and rainy conditions in Wellington airport, despite it all, seeing the ocean and the mountains released a ton of tension from my shoulders.

In fact, every time I have a rough day of work, or things don't quite work out or we get another "surprise" I look out the window, check out the ocean, the waves and sigh. It's good to be here.

This Old House.

2009-05-21T17:45:00.003+12:00

We've been discussing purchasing the house we are currently renting with various friends and family. The location, the style (open concept, "modern") and the relative cost were all things that were quite appealing. We knew a bit of the history of the house (it had been on the market, but the owners decided to rent it instead) and we knew it had a few problems (the flood).

However, while working from home a few days ago, I took a break to clean my kite. It was a nice day, not too much wind so I took it out to the driveway to brush off and fold. While out there, one of our neighbors happened to notice what I was doing. Her son, it turns out, owns a kitesurfing shop in Perth Australia and we started chatting.

After a little bit, things turned to real-estate (as they always do) and I asked if she knew anything about the house we're currently in. Turns out there had been an offer on the house that was pulled... after the builders inspection.

It would appear that the house we're currently in is what the kiwis call a "Leaky House". In the late 80s early 90s there was a rash of builders and developers that put up new housing with several major design flaws. The one that's causing our problem is that the roof doesn't have any kind of overhang, it's basically a direct connection between the outside wall and the roof. The house has rain gutters, but when they overflow, the water goes DIRECTLY DOWN THE INSIDE OF THE WALL. You can just imagine what kind of mold and damage 20 years of that does to a house. Gladly, we haven't really seen any of the effects we're supposed to look for (respiratory issues, funky smells etc) so whatever is happening isn't leaking into the living area.

This was found when they put moisture meters around all the windows. Law suits have been happening all over the country for issues like these.

Long and the short of it was that this was the last nail in our dream of buying this house. We're still planning on buying property in NZ eventually, just not this place. I'm still holding on to my dream of building our own place on a section somewhere in Island Bay, sadly land is pretty hard to find around here and it gets snatched up fast :)

I saw a seahorse in the sea

2009-04-25T19:45:00.003+12:00

Today being Saturday, it meant i was about to take my first ocean plunge. I arrived at the shop at 9am and began to collect my gear and 2 tanks of air. Our instructors talked in a foreign language about southerlies, swells, visibility and names of places i had never heard. however, after a bit they decided and off we went.

Turns out we ended up going to Whitireai bay, which Blaise is familiar with because he has kite surfed there. we arrived, geared up totally (this means 14mm of wetsuit), cross-checked, were briefed on the skills we would practice and then waded into the water to be weighted.

...heavily weighted...i ended up with 6 big weights pulling in at about 14 kilos (about 30 pounds). we had to take off our weight belt on the surface and then put it back on. its a relatively simple procedure, grasp the free end in your right hand, bring it right to your hip, lie on your back and "turn away from the nasty weight belt". do it fast btw because thats a lot of weight on an arm and you drop it....well you don't want to do that to the instructor who is marking you. by doing this manuver you rotate it onto your back and then you can float face down (with your respirator in), all the weight safely on your back and re-clip the belt.

did i mention that 30 pounds? in the waves which are moving around you and in full gear which makes it really quite frustrating to get it back between your wetsuit and buoyancy vest. as i struggled away trying to get it on (and not drop it!) a strong wave hit my foot and i guess i hadn't tightened the flipper enough because it pushed around off my foot and became a charming anklet bracelet. Now i was really struggling i was being spun in circles cause the one flipper was getting pushed around like a rudder. i couldn't get upright for fear of dropping the belt. all i could do was breathe through the respirator and keep working on the belt. i knew the instructors wouldn't let me float away. i was breathing hard, swearing through the respirator. my instructor said i was very 'creative' in my wording, he could hear me underwater as he swam up to me through the water. he grabbed my back leg and was holding me still and getting my flipper back on and i kept fighting the damn weight. 30 pounds is hard to lift when you can't rotate your arms fully backwards and can't move in any real direction. i eventually got the d*mn thing clipped and tight enough not to slip off. i used a pile of air though in my struggles, the tank started at 210 psi, and dropped to 160 psi in that 5 minutes; i ended with my tank at 70 psi. as a comparison my 2nd dive later that day i started at 200 psi and ended at 130. you can see by the numbers i was really sucking the air desperately that first dive.

ok that was the bad but it wasn't really bad. onto the fun stuff ^^bb

getting down still seemed slow but i was definitely going down. so much weight that i had to inflate my buoyancy vest so that i could get off the bottom and actually swim. the visibility was horrible, less than 0.5m; on the plus side the instructors pointed out that we essentially got the worst visibility we could have ever gotten so it could only get better. we lost my dive buddy at one point so we even got a chance to practice lost buddy procedures (we popped out at the surface about the same time, he was fine). we went down essentially touching the next go and the instructor had us all connected when we swam.

compass work: i rock! seriously. i had a busted compass on my guages (i get a new one for tomorrow) but i was still able to follow it and arise less than a meter from the dive flag. the 2nd instructor gave me his arm compass and sent us off on a mission. pick a direction, swim that way without looking across the water surface, use only your compass, swim about 20 kicks, do a 180 and get back to the flag. i surfaced about 50 cm from it. my dive buddy was meters away and the other 2 didn't do much better, one girl was swimming in circles (quite literally). why did i do so good? i'm the slowest swimmer by far of our group, i have the worst buoyancy control of the 4 of us but because i'm a slow swimmer anyway i just kept kicking at my speed and reading the compass. turns out i got it right because by going slow it adjusts (and you too) more accurately and you stay on course. HUZZAH!!! Instructor Roy was actually extremely vocal in his praise for my compass skills, i felt so awesome.

the swells above us were getting worse and rather than trying to swim across the rough surface Graham said we would just swim in along the bottom of the ocean. so linking it up so we didn't lose anyone we headed in. i was between the 2 big guys so it wasn't hard work (remember i'm the slow one, i was literally being pulled along), so i got to enjoy looking around as best i could and i saw a wandering anemone. looked like a big soft tubular plant with white hairy looking feathers on its head. "cool" i thought as it moved back and forth with the waves. then i felt a squeeze on my hand, i stopped and there was Instructor Graham with his hands in front of him. It took me a sec to see what was the hold up, in front of him was this beautiful tiny little seahorse. it couldn't have been bigger than my whole hand and it floated amongst us 5 divers, Graham gently moved it towards my mask when it started to float away. I was so calm for a moment, it seemed like a perfect moment. We let it float away and continued into shore.

my first 2 ocean dives. better each time and that second time i saw "FISHIES".
i like this scuba thing.

Cook Islands Here We Come!

2009-04-24T12:51:00.002+12:00

Carly and I have just booked our flights and accommodation to our first vacation out of New Zealand: We're heading to the Cook Islands!

We're flying out on the 29th of September and coming back on the 7th of October. We'll be staying at a bach owned by my kitesurfing instructor (bach being local lingo for a rental cottage / villa) The idea is to stay in the lagoon most of the week as it offers pretty much everything we need. There's Kiting a plenty and because it's a giant reef, there'll be no lack of scuba and snorkeling fun. It'll be most of the way through the New Zealand winter so we'll likely be chomping at the bit for some warm weather and sun.

We've picked the date because it matches up well with Carly's holidays and it's a nice little birthday present for yours truly.

pool time all done, next stop the ocean

2009-04-21T08:51:00.006+12:00

So the last of the pool sessions have finished. the good news is that i have "saved" my last two buddies when they ran out of air. my skills are seemingly up to par, the instructor seems pleased with everyone's progress.

Buoyancy is still hard but i'm told by people i trust that it will improve over time. i was unable to do the optional duck dive recovery of gear off the bottom of the 5 meter pool. i'm not able to equalize as i go down that fast. instructor said it was just something extra to learn and to stop immediately and resurface if you couldn't equalize on the way down. and i'm not too upset to be honest, my dive buddy made it down then couldn't find his respirator got a lung full of water, panicked and rocketed to the surface with an instructor behind him. i passed the duck diving bit though ^^

oh and i can do emergency assent on no air now, well at least i can go up 5 meters ...

Blaise came with me to watch and take photos, poor guy, the instructors realized at the end he was here to watch and said "Oh there is an underwater observation window below us".

DOH! we could have had underwater shots!

speaking of underwater shots, there was a woman doing her underwater photography course and she came with our group to practice on our last night in the pool. our instructor is a pretty laid back guy (with close to 600 dives, movie work, recovery work, research, etc) so he had the 6 of us (4 students & 2 instructors) stand on each others shoulders in a pyramid, 3,2,1. There are pictures of it because he told her he was going to do it so she was there with the camera when we started to build up. The other groups must have wondered what the heck we were doing.
i'll post a pyramid picture when i get a copy.

do not rely on me to be your dive buddy just yet

2009-04-18T10:58:00.004+12:00

So scuba lessons are still progressing nicely.
the theory while dull is going quickly and last night we were introduce to Dive Tables. I must say with a little bit of pride I seem to have the knack for calculating dive tables. The two Danish guys sitting next to me kept saying they'd buy a computer but i was whipping through the problems like no ones business.

We got back into the pool tonight, the 5 meter dive pool. The instructors don't understand why i'm not cold in the water, i show up in my two-piece and everyone else including them are wearing poly-prop tshirts and bermuda shorts. Guess the Canadian in me still hasn't lost her cold resistance.

I'm good at some maneuvers like flushing out my mask and replacing my regulator, i've improved to be good at finding my regulator (turns out the issue was the instructor kept using the phrase tummy button which is really belly button but i have it now). Buoyancy needs works, i'm still popping up and down like a cork. It doesn't help that when i go up when i expected to stay down i take deep breathes and flail around which only increases my buoyancy.

what i failed on...and this is why you don't want to be my dive buddy just yet...is buddy breathing. This is when your dive partner runs out of air and comes to get some from you. Now in the real world when diving the first you'll know of this is when your buddy rips your regulator out of your mouth or is pawing wildly at your suit. In the pool they teach us this nice polite method of swimming up to you making two distinct gestures at which point you should have ripped your back up regulator (the octopus) off your jacket, turned it right way up and be aiming it towards their face. Yeah ... i failed to respond to Roy's (the instructor) signal until he did it twice. Ooops.

But on the plus side when i was signaled to do the same to my training buddy by the instructor he handed me the octopus upside down. You breathe from an upside down regulator you'll have a mouth of water. Now at the time i swear i felt my instructor pulling/pushing my side when i was doing this but i was kind of focused on getting the regulator turned right side up while still blowing "little bubbles" so i didn't really pay attention. When we resurfaced he pointed out to my training buddy that you can't hand the octopus upside down or the mouth of water thing occurs. He however did congratulate me on recognizing the problem and resolving it on my own. He was pulling on me because he had his spare out right side up and was going to jam it in my mouth if i choked on water. YEAH!! i did good on that.

Buoyancy coming full cirlce

2009-04-16T07:55:00.002+12:00

I went through the Red Cross swimming program as a kid. My parents drove me to lessons, i swam huge amounts of distance. I couldn't do that much swimming now without some hard core training i might add but i digress. I distinctly remember failing a badge, I think it was grey, and the instructor trying to console me by saying "its just a factor of buoyancy kid, you need another year to gain more buoyancy (wait for puberty then you'll float)".
She was right, by the next year i did it no problem.

I had my first scuba lesson last night, we only played in the 2 meter pool but thats totally cool, as the instructor pointed out, if you panic and forget to breath using the regulator at least you can bounce up to the surface.

1)so the flippers contrary to the fears of the shop keeper worked out fine.
2)the mask which seemed to fit well in the store and when i wore it in the pool to do laps has a small quirk. when my head gets completely wet (and my hair) there is water slowly filling the nose area. they said to bring it back before the lesson tonight and we'd try a different one.
3)my scuba outfit (tank, regulator and buoyancy compensator(BC)/think flotation device) which i'll use the whole course was knocking my head last night. in one of those "you should have mentioned it" moments the co-instructor will fix it for me by shifting it farther down the BC jacket.
4)Buoyancy ....
and you wondered where this was going.

i'm now too buoyant.

in our pool time we were learning the basics, how to put your regulator back in if it fall out, finding you regulator, inflating and deflating the BC. nothing major, nothing that could hurt us. things were fine until we were told to sink to the bottom of the 2 meter pool so we could swim around the floor. Awesome! i thought. So the instructor heads down demoing the release of air, then the co-instructor, then my 3 swim mates head down. Ready to take the plunge i hit the release valve on my BC, the air goes shooting out, i go down, down, down and then sort of bounce back up. what the heck? i try letting more air out of the BC but its completely empty. i start doing a rather jerky air flailing, feet kicking thing trying to make myself sink. finally in disgust i just turn my head down and start kicking to the bottom. finally make it to the bottom, the instructor give a thumbs up to start swimming and while waiting for my turn i slowly float back up to the surface. NUTS!!! now we were told beginners tend to be more buoyant because we are inhaling more air than we need due to nervousness but come on!
the co-instructor met me on my second dive to the bottom and he grabbed my BC and started mauling my left side, a few seconds later the other instructor had me by my right side. cool i thought they're going to fix the stupid BC so i can sink. they ended up dumping weights into each side of it so i would stay on the bottom. i'm going to need an pretty hardcore weight belt i think. i wasn't even wearing the wetsuit yet and i'm floating this easily, the wetsuit just adds buoyancy.
and how much wetsuit am i going to be wearing in the ocean btw? 14mm, 1.4cm of neoprene, i'm going to bob around like a buoy.

an open letter to my folks

2009-04-12T09:47:00.002+12:00

Dear Mom and Dad

Thanks for making me a switched on adult. Ready to try many things even if I'm not sure they'll work. Ready to try and problem solve a situation when it happens. And always prepared with a smile and good grace.

Whats all this about you ask? Well I think my folks raised me well. I don't always keep a cool head in situations that directly involve me but I'm really good in situations that I can step back from. Let me give you an example.

Sunday morning in Hamilton, I awoke, showered, ate a little breakfast and rounded out my gear for another day at the Nationals (a tournament played over 3 days for Blaise's miniature armies he paints and plays). I walked out of the cabin to find Blaise, A. and J. surrounding A.'s car. I next noticed the long metal coat hanger pulled into a long straight piece...yes some of you know where this is going...Blaise was working industriously away at getting it between the window and door.

"You didn't," i said to A.
"Yep," he replied, "last night, i guess i was tired."

A.'s keys were locked into his car on Easter Sunday morning in Hamilton and we needed to be at the competition in about 30 minutes.
"We have AA," said R., A.'s wife.

The men were pretty convinced their method was going to work, A. owns a rather old car. Plus the guys in the cabin beside theirs had come out with a suggestion for straps and some sort of door thing.

I wandered over quietly. I really didn't want to get involved in this manual event but curiosity got the better of me. I walked to the back window and looked in. Yep i saw the keys in the ignition and all the buttons on the doors in the locked position.
I thought about it, its a pretty old car, was the trunk tied into the same system?
I quietly moved to the back and pushed the lever in and pulled the trunk. It didn't move but for some reason i thought to try again. I pulled even harder and the trunk opened up about an inch; the reason it didn't open the first time is the spring system is shot and you have to really haul on it to get it open.

I entered the trunk, crawled over the back seat and was leaning in to grab the keys when A. or J. says "Why is Carly in the car?"

Cue the laughter, it went on for a bit. I retrieved the keys, popped the door locks and went out to present them with a smile to A.
"I swear I tried the boot," he said.
"Oh it was really heavy, it felt locked the first time I pulled on it," I replied trying to make light of the situation.

As I walked back to our cabin I felt really good about it and I suddenly had an image of my folks smiling at me. So thanks mom and dad, you raised a smart cookie and she loves you too.

Last day of Term 1

2009-04-09T09:23:00.003+12:00

Where did 10 weeks go. Seriously what the heck happens to time when you age. I remember as a kid a week seemed to last forever, heck bedtime seemed long. Now as an adult time flies by me at top speed.

Term 1 has been in no uncertain terms awesome. We had parent/teacher/student goal setting/interviews on Monday and Wednesday and the feedback i have received has been awesome. Parents say kids who last year were down are coming home talking about stuff going on at school. Better yet, both the girls and boys are going home and talking about the stuff they do with Carly in Language (and they don't hate it!).

I was worried about giving out writing assignments with due dates (i only handed out 3 in my defence)because that is not what Montessori was about but both the kids and the parents are loving it because a lot feel worried that their kids won't be ready for state high school so deadlines for them are helping their kids get ready.

Parents say the classroom culture/environment is way healthier this year. My teaching partner R. says he is loving the way we are getting to all the kids in both language and in math. As one teacher last year doing both he felt it was a lot and some stuff was getting missed.

We even had a talk about next year and he was surprised/eager to find out that i would be interested in teaching next year. we are at 33 kids (32 now, D. in Year 8 left for USA on Friday) but next year we'll be at about 38-39 kids. He said we should try and get stuff sorted before he leaves in June for his training. Fingers crossed and all that sort of stuff.

my only downside this term was trying to match up my Montessori literacy with the state curriculum for my Literacy Check in week 9. R. keeps telling me not to worry, i know i got some stuff spot on, but i know i'm going to get a slap on the wrist for some other stuff. The reading records i should have done in term 1 i have no excuse for, i'll do those in term 2 but some of the other stuff like spelling assessment just isn't done in Montessori. R. says "don't worry" but i just tell myself to plan for it next term, try and show some improvements from the comments i'll get and move on.

If there is a tearful post about the curriculum hates me later this month, that means i got a lot of comments on stuff i need to change...here's hoping it won't be that bad.

Busy as Can Be.

2009-04-08T17:16:00.002+12:00

It's been a very hectic last couple of weeks at Casa Canadiana. So many cool things happened that it's time to dig out my favorite typographical convention, the Bullet!

Work: I wrapped up working remotely for IBM Canada and started with IBM New Zealand. I miss my boss already (she was a fantastic manager and friend) but we still chat thanks to the global Instant Messaging network. If only there was more than an hour of overlap between our business hours!
Wes: Wes got a Work Visa!!! Thank goodness. He had been scheduled to leave the country at the end of this month, so him getting a visa for a year is a real relief.
Home: Well, right off the top, our friends J and B came to visit from Christchurch. They stayed with us for the weekend and a bit, we played board games, ate well and generally overdid it on many entertaining aspects of life. Their visit was the perfect time to put together a last minute...
House Warming Party! On less then a week's notice, I whipped up a BBQ to celebrate the creation of Casa Canadiana, we had probably 16 people or so show up through out Sunday. It's quite amazing when you realize that we didn't know most of these people 6 months ago. It's even cooler when you realize that they've become quite good friends over such a short period of time. I'm not sure if it's Kiwis, if we fell into the right groups of people or if it's just our charming disposition, but we have a more active social circle now than we did in Canada!
Now we're in the middle of preparations to spend Easter in Hamilton at the National Wargaming Convention. Yes, we'll be spending Easter playing with our "Tactical War Dollies" as one of our kiwi friends puts it. We should have some time to explore the region and hang out. Really, it'll be a good excuse to get silly with some friends in a town we don't know.

So there we go. Not much new to report otherwise, my welding classes have finished for now, though I'll likely be signing up for another session simply to get more time with the tools. it's probably not much of a surprise that I can't actually rent a welding rig for cheaper than the classes are costing me. My project (the topic of a later blog post) is coming along nicely and I'm pleased to report that no major injuries have occurred.

On another note, given that I now work 8-5 most days (add commute time etc) communicating with North America will most likely be done on weekends. Given how busy we've been lately, we've been rather lax in contacting friends (we're sorry!) but should rectify that soon.

The Fire starter

2009-04-08T09:39:00.004+12:00

HOLY SMOKES!!!

my mom sent me this little tiny fire starter. It essentially a piece of metal striker and an artificial flint. Works when wets, sparks 3000C, starts fires easily, etc.

Well fire making with spindles and hearthboards had gone OK with smoke and punk (ash ember) but no fire. Likewise real flint and a metal striker had produced really hot sparks but no fire. I felt like we needed closure on the fire making so when that fire striker showed up i knew it was a sign.

Now i know my mom meant for me to use it in camping (and trust me i will) but i felt like it might work for the kids for the closure. So i started with an assorted age group of 4 kids and 40 minutes later i was forced to dump my 2 buckets of water (see I'm a prepared safety-oriented teacher) onto their fire. SUCCESS!! the year 8 boys also succeeded and so did the next group. in fact this thing is so awesome I'm thinking I'll need another one for two reasons: 1) it works so freaking well, 2) it may be good for 3000 strikes but with large groups of kids using it for fire-making its starting to wear down.

The year 8 boys are already trying to think of ways to convince the principal to let them have a bonfire down in the courtyard next term. Hmmmm, i see persuasive letter writing, planning (ie. contacting fire department to get a fire permit), cooking (they want to cook on it), etc. hmmm i smell project.

Dear mom, when you find another one of those, please purchase and hold it for me until there is another mailing to NZ. Love Carly.

Montessori Retreat

2009-04-05T09:12:00.002+12:00

So poorly planned on my part i admit but i had a paid for Montessori retreat in Upper Hutt the same weekend J and B came from Christchurch. Blaise, bless him, was a real trooper, taking up the bulk of their entertaining while i was at the retreat.

Did i mention he is awesome? he is.

The retreat was different then i expected. i've attended government retreats when i worked back in Canada for Multiculturalism. There is a lot of food, networking and some useful training or really good conversation. Knowing that i guess i should have been prepared for this weekend but i guess i was just expecting workshops.

the cabins were rustic but at least i got the top bunk ^^
The food was plentiful and quite good in my opinion. I _LOVED_ the networking. i learned so much about Montessori teaching just through casual conversation between the other attendees and myself between regular scheduled stuff and meals.
The moderator is one of the most turned on, knowledgeable woman on Montessori according to all the attendees. When she runs a workshop at a conference you want to be in it. She has the manuals memorized, can come up with a solution to almost any class problem, etc. I'm sad to say though i didn't come away with much from the scheduled stuff. I am now hooked up to a google group for Montessori teachers in NZ and i found out about an awesome book for presentations and projects.

I don't know, i guess i was expecting something more like a workshop. One of the teachers in my school (but in the class next door) mentioned i should definitely go to the conference in April 2010 (which is workshop oriented) but i pointed out i don't know whats going to happen beyond December 2009 with my position. Well that is a long-term thing.

I was glad to get home i enjoyed the house warming bbq Blaise had arranged. didn't i tell you he was awesome!

An Odd But Fun Saturday.

2009-03-29T10:36:00.003+13:00

It's been quiet around here, and for that I apologize. I wish I could say it's because I was out and about galavanting around New Zealand being awesome, but sadly it's just the opposite. It's been quiet, boring etc. Work's winding down, a certain malaise brought about by that has made doing anything not so fun.

SO! In order to get out of my funk, I did two things. First off, on Friday, I had the best Kite Surfing session of my life. Everything went perfectly. No gear foul ups, good wind, good friends and a lot of lessons learned. I'm now getting fairly proficient. More about that later.

After that, being as I was still sore from the Friday, Carly and I postponed our plans for camping and instead decided to simply head up the Hutt Valley to the park she'd taken her class camping in February. That was the plan at least, the reality was slightly different.

We had a few errands to run, mostly at the Home Depot equivalent: Bunnings. Problem is that I always get lost when driving in the Hutt. It's a dark spot in my internal GPS. So we end up driving through Upper Hutt, Lower Hutt, parts of Petone etc. all looking for this Bunnings that I've been to probably 5 times in the recent past. All of a sudden, Carly points up the mountain and says: "PICKAPART!" (it took a while for my brain to parse what she was saying).

Our car had been vandelized while we lived in town, someone had broken the passenger side mirror. Being that it's a cheap as chips car, going to a dismantlers to get a new mirror was proving difficult and I certainly wasn't going to pay for a new one. One of the guys in my welding class, a fellow subaru owner, pointed me towards a do it yourself wrecking yard called Pick-a-Part, but I'd never managed to find out where it was. Turns out it was right in front of us.

So Carly and I paid our dollar entrance fee and stepped behind the door to find a HUGE wrecking yard of cars, all lifted off the ground, in various states of damage and completeness. We strolled through the Subby section, found a Legacy Wagon that was the right year and I went to work dismantling the doors while Carly dismantled all the windshield wiper assemblies (ours were looking a bit rusted). Grabbing various bits and pieces along the way, we got all the parts that were broken on our current car. We both felt rather handy and I felt more than a little manly :)

Got to the cash and It turns out the total cost for the mirror, visor, 3 windshield wipers and bits of trim was 41$. I definitely saved at least 200$ for spending 30 minutes there. What a success!

After that, we headed to Kaotoke Regional Park. It was a stunning spot, definitely popular as a walking / pick-nick park, with some nice views, a river system that feeds into the Hutt River and a ton of native trees. It's definitely a very leisurely stroll, but it was a nice way to spend some time together alone. Carly decided to go swimming in the (much to cold) river, given that she had a Rasher (basically a neoprene shirt made like a wetsuit). I had no such luxuries and contented myself with a quick foot soak while watching her play in the water.

Heading back, we stopped for ice cream, I made Lamb Kafta (lebanese ground lamb shish kababs) on the BBQ and we relaxed by watching some TV together.

Simple relaxing pleasures :)

Moonlight Over the Bay

2009-03-17T09:34:00.005+13:00

Around 10:30 last night, Carly yelled up to Wes and I (who were playing some Xbox) to take a look out of the window. The moon was very low for some reason and it being a beautifully clear night, was reflecting over the water in a fairly stunning way.

Digging out a tripod and putting all of my camera knowledge to the test (boy am I glad I took that photography course!) i managed to get a a few nice night photos. Click on them for the full resolution pictures:

Dive dive!!!

2009-03-12T18:56:00.002+13:00

so blaise (what a hubbie) thinks i don't spend nearly enough on myself. he's been on me to do something, anything that is a me thing. so today i did it, i walked into the Island Bay dive shop and signed up for my international scuba diving certification.

my course will start april 15, i have 5 nights of theory then 2 full days on saturday and sunday of ocean dives. plus this shop is offering me 6 free dives with gear on saturdays with their club to improve my skills even more.

then Blaise decided that i would receive my birthday prezzie early and he bought me flippers, booties, mask and snorkel today. i'll get a picture of it later, so i'm going to hit the local pool tomorrow on my day off to practice with my flippers, i need to get a doctor certification next week and i'll take my snorkel and mask to Island bay when its came and paddle about.

FISHIES!!!

i'm so excited.

ps. dad i got another thing to do with you when you show up. are your dive tags still good?

Carly's 6 month post

2009-03-12T10:00:00.000+13:00

Well i do miss how often i could call my relatives i have to say this new home has certainly strengthened my choice to come to NZ. The space and freedom of this new house is making me feel more relaxed and as Wes said "now this view, this view is what i expect of NZ" and he is so right.

school is awesome, i love my kids, i love my teacher partner, the vibe in the class is great. he's leaving end of april for his course in the USA so soon i'll be full time for a few months. i already do my 2.5 days and i've been relieving every week as well at least once a week. i've been very lucky to get all of teacher partners relief days. so i get to work with my kids, continue my regular work and get paid than my regular pay to do so...sweet!

We have a great bunch of friends here. Who i want to thank btw for helping us move, that fridge wouldn't have got up the stairs without their efforts, so thanks Alan and Charlie! And thanks to the lovely Rachel who brought a mexican casserole and fresh garlic bread for us to eat that night.

life is good, so kisses to family and friends back home and come visit us when you can.

The Obligatory 6 Month Post.

2009-03-12T08:22:00.005+13:00

As of today (North American Time) we've been here exactly 6 months. To be honest, the last few weeks I hadn't even thought about it. It wasn't until we were done our move etc. that Carly and I remembered. I guess that's a good thing. I really haven't thought much about Canada, at least not in the "Man I wish I was back there" sense. By and large, things here have been going very well for us (probably better then really could be expected) and for that I'm grateful.

We've got some good friends, a nice place, we are both working, we lack for nothing. It's not been without its fair share of problems, but nothing we couldn't deal with. The real question is, was it worth it? So far I think I'll say yes.

So rather than recap the ups and downs, I leave you with this:

Settling In.

2009-03-07T17:38:00.003+13:00

... And we're back. I've got to hand it to our ISP, Snap they have been 8 shades of awesome overall for us. We have our local phone and the intarwebs with them and we've had very good service. Things went off without a hitch for the switchover. I wish I could say the same about the move...

Well in all truthfulness, it went well. The events leading up to it were a little frustrating however. Carly's school has a very tight parking lot. on the edges of said parking lot are posts that are meant to remind people no to park their cars so the noses of said cars are over the sidewalk. Doing so makes it difficult to get kids and supplies in. Sadly, those posts are not particularly well anchored and have a tendency to fall over, leaving their anchoring point (a tube anchored into the concrete that sticks up about a foot from the surface) at the perfect height to slide undetected under a bumper and get hooked. The result can be seen here:

Suffice it to say I was not a very happy camper.

The move itself was largely uneventful. As is the case with a lot of rentals here, several appliances were missing. We jumped on Trademe to find a fridge and washer (we're still looking for a dryer). Once the items were won, we arranged to borrow a car with a towhook from our good friend Alan. Herein lies one of the nicest surprises so far for moving in New Zealand. Getting a trailer is a) easy b) cheap and c) very low on hassles. Every gas station has a few that you can show up and grab. Nice ones too, with a wire cage around them for tall items, in relatively good repair etc.

Wes and I headed off bright and early to get the washer. I had googled the address and thought I knew where I was going. Turns out I didn't. Long story short, 2 1/2 hours later and we finally managed to pick up the washer. The fridge was easy to find, difficult to retrieve. We managed however. The fridge itself is HUGE. It's a design I've never seen before, a 3 door model. The freezer is at the top, the fridge in the middle and there's a dedicated crisper drawer at the bottom for veges etc. About 15 years old, it's not going to be winning us any energy conservation awards but it was cheap and it works.

Now, our new place is a split level townhouse. The kitchen is unfortunately at the top of said house. The fridge was large. You can see the problem. The solution was fairly straightforward. Raw Strength. We got a few friends to help us and we managed to get it to the top. We promptly celebrated by cracking a few beers, waiting for dinner to be cooked (Rachel had brought us a wonderful mexican casserole) and slapping ourselves on the back.

We're still unpacking now, but in the end, it was totally all worth it. Island Bay is shaping up to be a very cute neighborhood, the townhouse so far is working out and this is what I get to wake up to every morning. (click on the photo for a full sized view)

Incommunicado.

2009-03-04T13:37:00.001+13:00

Just a note, but over the next couple of days, we'll be moving to our new place in Island Bay. Internet will be spotty as will be land lines. Our mobiles will be the best way to get a hold of us. I'll send out the details via email to all family members just in case. Hopefully the internet hookup will go off without a hitch and we'll be back on line by the weekend. The very, very busy weekend.

Welding

2009-03-03T21:13:00.003+13:00

One of the things I've completely forgotten to mention up until now is that I'm currently in a Welding class. Specifically, I've been working on learning MIG, TIG and Arc Welding. The course is at the adult education wing of the Wellington High School which offers quite a few courses I'm interested in for approx. 150$ per course (8 weeks, 2 hours a week, that's less then 10$ an hour for a workshop with unlimited welding materials)

Why you might ask? Well, the basic reason was that I wanted to try something completely different from what I typically do; something that would take my mind off of the day to day and end up with a useful skill to have around for the crazy projects I typically end up doing.

I also wanted to see if it's something I could get more training on if I decided to give up my current career. Having a backup that's more or less always in demand isn't a bad idea. In the end though, the number of projects that I dream of that could use basic welding was the catalyst for the course.

Right off the bat, I'm going to be building a steel framed aluminum roof box for our car. something like a Thule box but done DIY. The instructor of my course actually works for a company that does steel tubed cargo protectors that go between the driver and the cargo in commercial vans. He's able to get tubing cheap and get it cut and bent for me. All that would be left to do for me is weld it together.

Further along, furniture might be a possibility. Making legs and frames for tables and bookshelves out of box steel would match much of our furniture.

Finally, I'd eventually like to get into restoring older japanese motorcycles. Honda CBs from the 60s and 70s preferrably. Part of that is customizing them to get the "cafe racer" look for them, as seen in this excellent example from www.cb750cafe.com:

That's the dream at least. We'll see how it goes in the end. So far the class has been going well. I've only burned myself significantly once, I'm starting to get the hang of MIG welding and I can join two steel tubes fairly reliably. All in all, it's another skill to add to my collection of excentric intrests :)

Riding the Downturn.

2009-03-03T07:55:00.002+13:00

A few people now have asked me what the impact of the financial crisis has been here in New Zealand. First off, I am most definitely not an economist (didn't even play one on tv), nor do I have my finger on the pulse of the New Zealand markets. I do, however, have a friend whose in the financial trade as well as a vested interest in the country around me. So briefly, here's what I'm seeing these days:

Right off the bat, the NZ Dollar has tanked. it was hovering around 0.77$Cdn when we moved here, now it's aroun 0.63$Cdn. Though this is actually quite beneficial for someone with money outside of the country who's planning on staying, overall it's made life much more expensive. Gas is up 0.40$NZ/Litre, most consumer goods have gone up about 20% and it sounds like they are going to keep climbing as transport costs increase. Our grocery bill, surprisingly, hasn't gone up much at all. Carly and I try and only buy local produce, meat and other products, so we're not seeing as much of an impact.

Other then that there's definitely been some losses of jobs. There's a lot of talk about some smaller redundancies, though there haven't been a lot of big announcements. I heard through the industry contacts I have that there were some layoffs in my field, which is one of the reasons I decided to jump on the opportunity I was offered.

There's been some coverage of the New Zealand real-estate market in Canada. My dad mentioned some of the coverage was spinning it as a collapse, or at least a dramatic decrease. From what I've seen and talked to my friend about, the context of real-estate in NZ makes interpretation a little more difficult. Yes, the interest rates are the lowest they've ever been (hovering around 5-6%). Sales are down and average price is down slightly. This doesn't quite paint an accurate picture however.
From my understanding, Auckland is having a worse time of the crisis then the rest of the country. Auckland also represents 50% of the population. When things are bad there, the national numbers take a dive. Prices for housing in the major urban areas were in many peoples eyes overinflated and Auckland was the worse. So it's correcting and by doing so it's dragging all the averages down.
There's another big factor to take into account that isn't as clear. NZ tax law is vastly simplified compared to the US or Canada. As such, there are very few ways of reducing the amount of taxes you pay. The most popular is running a business of some kind as secondary income. This allows you to write off a part of the expenses. So many people choose to own an income property as their business. It's a bit like a forced savings account, it makes a little (maybe 5%) return on average, you have to pay down the mortgage every month, but you get to write some of it off.
There's been a definite hit in the income property market. There's no doubt about that. We live in a building where most of the apartments are bought to be let and the ones that are for sale right now aren't moving no matter what they try. However I'm not convinced that the residential (primary market) is doing that badly. Prices for houses we'd consider buying are staying pretty stable and they seem to be moving, at least in Wellington.

The biggest thing I've noticed however are the number of small businesses that have folded. "97 percent of New Zealand businesses employ under 20 staff." according to this article. Many of them are hurting. Doing a walk through our neighborhoods (Mt Cook and Newtown) you see a lot of For Lease signs. Small companies are letting go of staff, having very agressive sales and being bought up by other competitors. The Readings mall is a ghost town, I counted at least 6 For Lease signs. Some businesses are still operating despite the fact their building is up For Lease. I don't quite know what that means, but I'm guessing it can't be good.

Overall, the downturn has definitely hit New Zealand. We're seeing the government take the same line as many other countries, stimulus packages flying left and right. Carly and I are lucky that we're both employed right now, Carly for a year, I'm starting a new job so should be covered for at least a little while. Hopefully it doesn't last too long, but if it does, it may make buying a house a lot easier :) Silver linings and all...

Quick Update on Work.

2009-02-27T09:22:00.002+13:00

I signed the papers a few days ago, but I haven't made it official here yet. I've landed a full time job at IBM New Zealand as a Security Consultant. I start April 6th as a full time salaried employee with everything that implies.

I try to keep as much work content as possible off the internet. There are better and less google-able places to discuss work (my favorite is a pub, and second favorite is Skype calls) but I'm happy with this development. It's not quite what I was expecting when I got here, but it's a great way to move towards the next step of our immigration. I'm specifically looking forward to meeting people in my field, getting out of the house and generally re-integrating into the working world (I'll miss the afternoons off, but I definitely won't miss working on Saturdays).

The job will definitely be a challenge, but one I think I'm up for.

Coincidentally, the office is right close to a very nice beach :)

Our New Place.

2009-02-21T12:36:00.003+13:00

Carly blogged previously about Island Bay, the little southern suburb she and I had grown rather fond of. We've been looking for a new place to live and I'm happy to say we got a place in Island Bay. I signed our lease yesterday. I figure it's probably safe to post a few pictures from the real-estate listing. hopefully once we move it there will be better photos.

There's another big piece of news to go with it. As it's a 3 bedroom place, we'll have a roommate for the next year: Wes. It's been decided it's in everyone's best interest to try this arrangement. Wes will get basically the bottom floor, Carly and I will get the main bedroom with ensuite and we'll share the lounge (what they call living room here) and probably the office.

Chasing Wind

2009-02-11T09:42:00.004+13:00

One of the problems with wind based sports (Wind surfing, kite surfing, sailing, paragliding, hang gliding, base jumping, pinwheel spinning) is that you're pretty much completely dependent and at the mercy of the mother nature.

This has been the source of some frustration over the course of the last week.

Last Saturday, I happily loaded all of my gear into T's car (T and I are at roughly the same level, along with another newb named M) drove the 75km (roughly an hour) to Waikanae, parked and looked.

The ocean was beautifully calm, not a spec of wind blowing to bother us. We were not happy. We waited for an hour, drove on the beach and, finally, headed back home.

Fast forward to Monday this week (two days ago). Again, I'm watching with eager anticipation the various meteorological websites, the webcams at the various clubs near the beach I go to... I've got my gear packed and ready to go..

I get a phone call about 3:00 from M asking if we should brave the drive during rush hour to get out to the beach. I hum and haw, try to rope T into it, finally decide that it's time to drive out.

Driving through "rush hour" traffic to get to the burbs was surprisingly not as bad as I had expected, a good omen!I pull up to the parking lot to see a car filled with kite gear! hazzah! .. wait. Why isn't that gear on the water.

The two guys standing next to my inform me of my plight. Dead calm. AGAIN! In fact, so calm that the ocean is actually glassy in places. Damnit. At least the two other guys there are nice, so we all decide to get out our trainer kites and practice our kite control. They've never played with a 3m land kite like I have, so we rig up and I let them have some flight time. They get a real kick out of being pulled around the beach with the little kite. The wind is probably 4-5 knots at this point (minimum to fly my big kite is about 12)

Overly optimistic because of the successful 3m kite, i decide to get changed and rig up. As I'm inflating my kite, M shows up, and, despite all common sense, starts inflating her kite as well.

Just as we've finished putting the lines on, the sky opens up and we're rained on. and with the rain comes the dead calm of a nice shower. A few pathetic attempts at getting first my kite then hers up and it's clear there's no way we're getting any big kite time tonight. Defeated, saddened, we pack up the now very wet and sandy kites, go for a dip in the surprisingly warm water and call it a night.

I'll get on the water soon! I'll have photos and videos! really! believe me!

rental woes

2009-02-10T17:18:00.002+13:00

So we received a call today; the property management company called and said "your lease is up March 5, what are your plans". Well our plans aren't terribly important because it seems as the only option they're willing to offer is a one-year lease.

many of our family and friends know we are getting tired of this place. its small, ridiculously loud when students move back (they're back btw, holidays are over), and well we want out of the city core.

it just seemed to creep up on us...have we really been here this long. it will be 5 months on February 11...holy crap!
so today Blaise and i called up our friends A. & R., R. works at a property management. we did a quick drive by one up on a hill that while awkward to move into, may be very nice. we have a viewing tomorrow.
we also hit up good old trademe.co.nz to checked out some other spots, found another possibility in a place called Kingston. Incidentally the names of streets in Kingston are as follows, Quebec, Halifax, Baffin, Montreal, Huron...ok that's just kind of strange. anyways we'll keep you all posted.

the first week of school

2009-02-09T17:12:00.002+13:00

Just a quick note for those back home.

so the first three days of school went well. i've taught some lessons, met the kids, i have most of the names down though a couple are giving me issues.

this week i'll start my language lessons, i have a meet and greet the parents on thursday which i'm panicking about but R. says is no big deal. easy for him to say, he's been there years :P

there was a school picnic tonight, called off a wee bit early when it started to rain but i got to meet one or two parents, R.'s wife and general hang with the teachers in a social setting.

oh and as an added bonus i'm getting relief work. so last week berhampore (the school i work at) offered 4 days in february all at once, sadly i could only take 2 as i'm at camp for two of the days with my class kids. so this week i'm relieving in my own class for R. He had a good laugh at that one, easiest relief work ever. then today at lunch i got a call from Newtown (they are the other school who gave me tonnes of work last term) and i'm heading there this friday to do the latest batch of new entrants (the 5 year olds). about 4 hours after i said yes, berhampore called me again and asked me if wanted R.'s class again on friday...NUTS! well i can't complain about being booked for work full time.

Ki ora the people back home.

A Quick Update: The Kite.

2009-02-05T11:15:00.003+13:00

I've talked a lot about the kite of late, but realized I hadn't shown the actual kite. When I say a 14sqMeter kite, that's the total surface area of the wing. Given that it's just under 2meters wide, I'd guess the kite is about 8 meters long (as it tapers at both ends, that would make sense) That means it's bigger then most cars. In fact, in the photo below, you can see a small part of the car it manages to fully obscure.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

This is about the biggest kite you can fly in Wellington. Typically you go bigger for lighter winds and smaller kites are better for stronger winds. As I'm just a beginner, it makes sense to have a fairly large kite. My weight (just over 90kg right now) makes it possible to keep a slightly larger kite under control in stronger winds.

Fear of Commitment?

2009-02-02T10:14:00.002+13:00

I was sitting at Lyall Bay this morning thinking about the last 4 months while watching surfers do their thing on the 6-8 foot swells that are fairly typical when the Southerly winds kick into high gear and it got me thinking.

Commitment has been something I've avoided like the black plague throughout our immigration. I didn't want to ship all our stuff over so that we could have a simple backout plan if things went pear shaped. I don't have a cell phone because I don't want to be tied into a contract should we decide to leave. I was against buying new furniture at first for much the same reasons.... the list goes on and on.

Yet, 4 months and 3 weeks in, I've been changing my tune significantly. I'm sure Carly landing a 1 year contract has something to do with it, but it's more than that. I've got a good group of friends, very active hobbies and I feel at home in the city.

April 1st is an important date for us. My contract with my current employer ends leaving me unemployed but with some money in pocket. Our lease is up right before then. Been friends with a financial planner / mortgage broker, I've gotten a good understanding of what the local market is doing right now and for the first time I'm seriously considering the biggest of long term commitments to a country.

Part of it has to do with the cost of renting here and the size of our apartment. Part of it was the enjoyment I got out of home ownership (the ability to tinker, to improve etc) and having my own space. But deeper than that, I feel like there's definitely a future here for us.

Now granted, like I was told over the weekend when talking to a fellow immigrant, I'm still well into the "Honeymoon" phase of my immigration. Depending on how the job hunt goes, things may change...

Kitesurfing?

2009-01-30T12:13:00.004+13:00

View Larger Map

This is the beach I've been spending a lot of time on and will be spending a whole lot more time to come. You see, this beach has a few very important properties.

It's within an hour's drive to Wellington
It's got a long, shallow beach front and tides that extend the beach even further
It's on the West coast but is exposed from North all the way through West to South
It has steady, fairly strong winds.

All this combines to make it the best "beginners" beach in the region for all sorts of wind sport activities. In my particular case: Kite Surfing. I spoke of this wonderful activity recently... It's a relatively new sport which came about by the development of powerkites. Essentially, you get a big honkin' kite, a wake board and a harness, you attach them all to your body, find a good wind and go. It's more similar to wakeboarding / waterskiing then to any other form of wind based activity.

My particular experience so far has been pretty standard. I bought a small (3sq meter) kite to learn kite flying skills. I then signed up for two lessons. The first lesson was to go over the anatomy of a kite, its safety systems and to get comfortable with flying a kite attached to me. This involved a lot of getting dragged (intentionally) through the water by said kite, learning all about the dynamics of power. This was no problem for me, big kites and small work on the same principles.
The second lesson, we added a board to the equation. Now, I've tried to water ski before, not successfully, so I was a little nervous about this. We picked a day that was just at the very lower limit of wind speed, but I still managed to get up on the water multiple time, with a 12 second ride being the day's best. The main problem I was having wasn't getting up on the water, it was keeping from sinking once it slowed down :) My instructor assured me that with proper equipment (a properly sized kite, board and reasonable wind) I shouldn't have any problems given my comfort and skill.

Conveniently enough, he also had a properly sized kite he was looking to sell for a good price. Guess what came next?

So now I've got a 14sq meter kite (a 2008 Airush Vapor II) a board coming in the mail (Jimmy Lewis Model 3 145x42) a proper harness and of course my wetsuit I got for Christmas.

We (Wes, Carly and I) headed out to Waikanae yesterday for a short body dragging session so that I could get used to the larger kite.

Inflating the kite, attaching the lines and launching all went fairly well, with the help of a local instructor showing Carly what to do. The kite in the air was very docile. These kites have a TON of adjustable settings to work with the available wind, allowing you to power up or depower for appropriate wind conditions (and in my case skill levels!)

Once I was in the water, I just flew the kite, letting it pull me down the beach for a good couple of hundred meters.

Going the other direction was significantly harder because of the direction of the wind, and, though I managed a few times, overall it was quicker and easier to just walk the kite back.

We practiced landing, water relaunching (for when you screw up :P ) and generalized flying in all sorts of conditions. Because you're never in deep water (at most chest high) you're never in any real danger of losing control. At worse, your kite crashes and you do some damage. Now, that's not to say it's a completely safe sport, given its reputation as an "Extreme Sport" but learning the basics with an instructor gave me a definite head start.

So what was the net result? A much higher comfort level with my new kite, a sunburn on my head, a bruised up chest from where the harness contact points were and an incredible desire to head back there today, tomorrow and Sunday.

I think this could be the start of a wonderful relationship :)

So Much Going On It's Hard to Remember to Blog!

2009-01-27T08:15:00.002+13:00

There's been some not-so-subtle hinting that maybe we've been neglecting our blogging duties of late (the last 10 days or so). Now, looking at it from our dear readers' points of view, it must be quite frustrating. Here we are, announcing a whole bunch of changes and exciting events and BAM! that's the last you hear from us. Apologies all around.

So what has been happening?

First off, Wes. He's here, he's living on our couch, all things point to the fact he thinks this country is gorgeous and very cool. Jet lag is a bit of a problem, though mostly taken care of at this point. The two of us have been going crazy getting our models put together, painted etc. We're really feeding off each other for creativity.

Carly's new job has started. She's posted up a few entries on that topic already so I don't have to cover it here.

I've gotten really serious about Kitesurfing. I've had two lessons, bought some gear (kite, wetsuit, board so far) and have been obsessed with checking the weather to get out to the beach. Watch for another post on the topic soon!

My job hunt has started in ernest. So far I've contacted 4 recruiting firms, but the market is slow. A few jobs have been interesting, but so far no leads. At this point, I'll be staying with my current employer until the end of my contract regardless (there are financial reasons for doing so) but I'd really like to land something reasonable in town sooner rather then later. I think going to an office regularly and having that social interaction would really speed along the integration process. It would also get me out of the apartment which has grown uncomfortably cramped.

A few very cool things happened. First, I got to chatting with one of the authors of a blog I've been reading for a year+. This was one of the few blogs about moving to New Zealand that rang true to the realities that Carly and I were going to be facing. Most of the other blogs I'd read were by families with kids or older couples. Anyway, it turns out there's a dresser that's hanging out in their garage that would fit perfectly in our bedroom. Hazzah.

I got asked not twice but thrice for directions by various people around town. I'd read that one of the first major milestones to becoming a "local" was when people think you can help them navigate the area and you're actually successful in leading them to where they want to go. Granted, these three were looking for fairly simple things (courtney place, Uncle Chang's restaurant and Cuba mall) but still, I knew where they were :)

Finally, climbing has started up again. Wes has always been a big motivator in this sport and since we've both been slacking for the last couple of months, we're hitting the gym more often now.

There. All caught up. At some point I'll actually remember to bring my camera around with me...

What a gorgeous day! lets go to the dump!

2009-01-26T09:10:00.002+13:00

Today was simply gorgeous weather. i mean so nice that R. (the teacher i work with) headed out early to pick up his son and take him kayaking. There was no wind so the oceans were glassy flat, not a cloud in the sky, 25C which made the water warm...couldn't ask for a nicer day.

note: folks back home pls don't send me hate mail :P

so what would make more sense to do on this gorgeous day but go to the dump.
i know this is making many of you shake your heads but it all started when R. and I decided to bring all that classroom garbage to the dump (or tip as they call it). so we packed into his car and head down to Happy Valley Road; seriously that is the name of the road.

Now we had found a big old glass display case which hadn't been used, no one wanted it so R. suggested we take it to the Tip shop. in Wellington there are 2 dumps, one for the public and one for the businesses to use. the public one is amazingly well thought out. They have a tip shop where you open your car and drop off anything they figure will sell, in our case that display case. there are huge blue bins of various recycling and a methane electricity station. it burns the methane gas produced by decomposing garbage and fires it back to the grids. then whatever the tip shop doesn't want you drive over a weigh bridge which weighs your car, drop it into a giant concrete bunker which is then sorted again by guys working down there into plant matter, glass etc. the 'garbage' is then pushed down a hole in the back of this bunker which is moved by conveyor belt (using the energy created by methane) to the proper landfill. then you drive your car over another weigh bridge, they check the difference in weight and charge you accordingly.

now R. was explaining all this to me as we drove and i have to admit it sounded like a good system. but nothing prepared me for the shock of the tip shop. It was massive, and the stuff they have. nothing less than 20 tvs, 15 stereo setups, multiple bed frames, chairs, desks, table, housewares stuff, 2 bins of sporting gear, electronics, outside is sinks, toilets, doors, bikes and garden stuff. There was 5 giant olive trees in beautiful wood planters next to 2 giant amphoras (a greek restaurant must have shut down). The top floor had books and clothes and bedding.
and the prices...$20 for a double bed frame with slats, and its a nice looking one too.

and i found cushions...at a $1 a pop, and they're huge ones, and oddly enough they're clean and smell fresh. so i'm going to head back tomorrow to pick up 10 cushions and i'm dragging Blaise and Wes along. we need to find Wes a bedframe and some house stuff.

Tip shop! start there if trying to fill a home from scratch.

Setting up a classroom

2009-01-23T08:59:00.002+13:00

So any teacher reading this will understand this title.

R. and I have re-arranged furniture, put a pile of stuff aside for a run to the Tip (dump). I've worked my way through the writing materials, resorted them from the early chaos of last year and thought about a few things i'm going to need to get that area up to snuff.

I'll need to tackle the bookshelf next week and i need to find cushions...yes cushions, big ones for the floor. The reading area is seldom used but the corner didn't have much there to get interest so i've been updating, reno-ing, and trying to figure out how to draw them over there.

a nice thing about Montessori, they have a budget, so i'm told i can buy stuff...huzzah!!!

R. and I are trying to figure out our first 11 days of school, we need to do what is called the Great Key Lessons which talk about universe formation and humans. 11 days only you say? yes because the whole class is going on a camping trip Feb 18-19th. this job keeps getting better.

still need a key and alarm code...keep you all posted.

Carly's Kiwi Job

2009-01-19T08:50:00.002+13:00

Well good news everyone! i got a job as a teacher here in New Zealand.
I was offered the 0.5 (1/2) time position at the Montessori school that i posted about early in the blog. This job for 6 weeks during June/July will become 1.0 (full time) while the teacher, R., goes off for training in the US. Also the principal of the school offered me first pick of any and all release/training/relief days for the rest of the school's teachers.

so R. and I worked out that i'll work in his classroom all day Monday and Thursday and from 9:00-noon-ish on Tuesday. Its kind of neat as well because my family and friends know how obsessively i love books. Well R. offered me the entire Language Arts (reading,writing,oral) program to do what i wish but he wanted to use Balanced Literacy. Funny enough i was trained in ... balanced literacy. R. will take all Maths but we'll keep each other in the loop so that i don't lose all my math skills. The other subjects we can do what each of us wants because in the Montessori class you don't do whole class instruction but do small group seminars on a particular topic. "today we're going to look at chemical reaction of baking soda in a variety of liquids" or "i'm going to give a french lesson at 10:30". all in all i'm very excited.

The Long Flight Here.

2009-01-17T08:45:00.002+13:00

So Wes (my best friend and evil henchman. The man responsible for Carly and I meeting) is officially in the air, flying across the pacific as we speak to come join us in this wonderful land. Maybe I should change the name of the blog to Three Canadians Escape to Kiwiland?

Wes, like Carly, is a teacher though high school (Secondary for the Kiwi readers). Like Carly, he was having difficulty finding a full time gig in Ottawa. Wes also has the same sense of adventure we do, so when we decided to move, his plans weren't far behind.

What's interesting is he's taking a completely different route to get here. Rather than bet the farm and get his Permanent Residency, he's coming over on a 3-month work visa. The assumption being that he'll find someone to sponsor him for an extension within the first 3 months. He, however, is already fully qualified to teach here and is arriving at the beginning of the school year, so he can hit the ground running as it were.

I'm ridiculously excited, but also a little nervous about his arrival. For one, this is a VERY small apartment we live in. Carly and I have been bumping into the limited space constraints fairly regularly of late so having another person living here will be a challenge. We've (all 3 of us) already agreed that he's staying for a maximum of 3 weeks; I've been picking up furniture and the like for him when he moves to his own place.

Carly and I have developed a good network of friends here. I've got to be careful not to ignore them now that I have Wes here. It's easy to fall into old patterns... not that our patterns were bad, but I'm quite happy with how life is going here these days.

I think it'll be really cool to be the people showing him around. I think we've got a fair handle on Wellington now. We're certainly not experts, but we know some good restaurants, a few "local" spots that tourists don't typically go to and a few cool spots to hang out.

Wow. exactly 24 hours to go.

Foreign languages on food products

2009-01-12T17:22:00.002+13:00

After completing the standard grocery run at Pak'n'Save Blaise and I finally decided to visit the Asian Super Market just across the street.

We had always put it off but today being Blaise's Sunday and not having plans we wandered over to see if we could find frozen edamame and bulldog Tonkatsu sauce. There are small asian markets everywhere but we keep finding rice at one, korean at another, japanese at another, etc.

Let me say we have wasted a lot of shopping time; if we had just gone in here we would never had so many shopping issues. This place was packed with everything we needed and more. We kept pointing out stuff and grinning like mad.

Grabbing a basket we proceeded to charge up and down the aisles; "honey i'm getting some rice seasoning for the onigiri" i cried, he shouts back "hey i remember my dad buying this".
"Hey look cheap sushi rice!!!"
"Wasabi powder like back home"
they even had little rice ball shapers which made me happy, i bought a set btw.

but after doing the aisles we still hadn't found our Tonkatsu sauce. Its brown, made with pear (so they claim) and is excellent on breaded pork cutlets over white rice with some eggplant pickles. We walked up to a young asian stock person and Blaise asked for it, he looked confused and then walked over to his boss. The boss, who is the owner, showed us first one sauce and then after a quick explanation by Blaise and a mention of the brand bulldog showed us the sauce on the aisle near the sushi tools.

the young stocker meanwhile was following us to see where it was. Blaise and the owner walked off and i spotted the rice ball shapers at the bottom shelf so i was on the floor rooting through the options. I glanced up to see him holding the sauce bottle with a look of intense concentration on his face. Finally he shouts to the owner "there is no english on this thing at all!" and then he walked away quietly saying "Tonkatsu, Tonkatsu", perhaps a mnemonic device so he would know where to find it next time.

$54 later and very happy with our find and with warm thank yous and "come again" from the owner we went home. Glad i'm not the only one who can't read the labels.

Bug to scream ratio

2009-01-10T16:49:00.005+13:00

In most relationships you have one partner who is the killer of the bugs. In our relationship that roll has been delegated to me. Please don't assume Blaise is a screamer, he just doesn't want to go near it in case it jumps at him. So when a big bug is found I get called, and the bug meets the hereafter (or depending on my mood released unharmed into the wild).

In all these years i haven't yet done the "scream"...until today.

I was taking down my laundry from my drying rack off the balcony. The same balcony where my tomato plants are incidentally (which are huge and covered in little green tomatoes) but this has not resulted in an increase in bug levels. I had just finished folding a t-shirt was turning to put it on the back of the couch when i looked down...and proceeded to do a high-pitched scream/gasp. Blaise jumped on the couch "what, what", he shouted.

"huge bug, freaking huge, it got a big ass stinger on its butt (i'm looking at it seriously now), holy smokes i think its a Weta get the freaking camera!!!"

For those of you who aren't sure what i'm talking about a Weta is an extremely large grasshopper. This thing isn't just taking protein supplements its taking form of super grasshopper steroids and shouting stuff like "feel the burn" while bench pressing a possum.

Blaise ran for the camera while i continued to laugh semi-hysterically. "its not moving at least" i said as Blaise frantically snapped photos, "do you think it stings?"
Note: the stinger is actually a sign that it was a lady weta, the female weta's egg laying probe looks like a stinger.

I could tolerate no more "get it off! get a tupperware", there was no way i mushing something that big. Plus it was starting to look pretty cute, yeah it was big and insect-y but it wasn't vicious or moving.

So we grabbed a tupperware with lid and gently placed it over the weta and slipped the lid under it.
Did i mention it was cute...scratch that. Turns out it didn't like its new situation, it threw its back legs up, which had spiky bits, and began to hiss and snap. Intrigued by this new show we decided to keep it a big longer for some new photos.

The weta obligingly kept her legs up and hissing for the next photo session and then i finally took the girl outside to the grassy embankment near the apartment.

Our friends R & A confirmed our photos were indeed of a Wellington tree weta. Turns out we got a very lucky set of photos, the things are: 1)rare now in Welly, 2)usually near old houses and wet forests (how she got up to my apartment is beyond me, 3) nocturnal so finding one in the day is really awesome.

So to get back to the ratio; how big does a bug have to be to make me scream? that big.

Pauanui.

2009-01-07T17:31:00.002+13:00

For more photos check out the Gallery!

Pauanui is quite an odd place. Situated on the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula its one of a handful of towns that are a popular summer destination for Aucklanders (primarily) and Kiwis in general. Its not the biggest town that we saw, but its definitely the wealthiest. I'm not sure if there's any others that would match the overall opulence. The houses for the most part are large, modern and well maintained. There's a neighborhood called the Canals where each house has its own dock through an engineered waterway. Most of the houses on this section are architect designed summer homes suitable for magazines.

There's a small airfield that's often used by private pilots to fly in their Cessnas and other small airplanes, though it's also a popular hang out for several WWII fighters that have been converted to acrobatic duties. Impromptu shows of their flying prowess were common most nights, though we sometimes wondered about their sobriety.

In among all the impressive houses are quite a few sections of land that had caravan villages spring up on them. The assumption being that they were people who had bought land to build houses but hadn't got to it yet. There were also some very modest smaller houses that had been built back when the place wasn't the hotspot it now is.

It's obvious what the attraction is though. The beaches are stunning, the water warm (by Canadian standards at least) the waves are strong (The Coromandel is known as a good surfing spot) and the fish bites often. It's got everything a beach town should have, minus a lot fo the tourist industry. That's mostly spread to the other towns we saw (Thames and especially Whangamata seemed to be real partytowns). Pauanui seemed like the type of place you'd buy in if you had a family or were looking for something quiet. The demographic was mostly older couples / families and their children.

Even on a rainy day the place is beautiful. These two photos were taken while driving back from Thames towards Pauanui, about 10 minutes outside of town. Being tucked between the ocean on one side and mountains (likely volcanoes) on the other, it gets the full variety of scenery.

Culinary Discoveries.

2009-01-04T10:20:00.000+13:00

Canada, despite being part of the commonwealth, didn't get nearly the British influence that New Zealand seems to have. Whether it be because of the American influence overriding the UK one; or maybe it's the distance and relative speed at which it became autonomous, but Canada's definitely missed out on a few delicious perks from the British lifestyle:

Savory Pies: Beef and mushroom, Beef and cheese, Mince, Curried Chicken... If you can make a stew out of it, you can bet someone's put it in some pastry. And damned if I won't eventually try each and every flavor. On top of being ridiculously easy to find and relatively inexpensive, they are tasty, filling and probably a billion calories per pie. What's not to love?

Fish and Chips: I think I can honestly say I've never experienced fish and chips anything like what I've had here. Granted, my few ventures into the world of deep fried fish in Canada weren't anything to write home about (in this case quite literally) but here... WOW! We had our first fush 'n' chups in Island Bay. It was piping hot, super fresh whitefish in a light, flaky batter, with more chips then we could possibly have eaten had we had 3 meals to do it in. Spray on the vinegar, Tomato Sauce (Ketsup being a completely unknown term here) and a little vinegar and bam. Greasy, deep fried goodness.

Not really of British origin, this one's pretty much uniquely New Zealand:

L&P: Good god this is good soda. "World Famous in New Zealand" is their slogan and they pretty much ham up the Kiwiana content to the max. Sweet As... (an expression quite common here) is the name of their Diet drink. L&P Stands for Lemon and Paeora which is kind of like calling a beer Barley and Moosejaw from where it might have been made. It's a weird carbonated lemonade like taste. hard to describe, but very very tasty.

Getting to Pauanui.

2009-01-02T09:51:00.003+13:00

Note: for those of you reading this from Email, I strongly recommend opening this up in your browser because there's tons of interesting links in it :)

As many of you know, we're currently spending our New Years on the Coromandel Peninsula. Specifically, we're in Pauanui (see map) staying with Rachel Alan and their friends S and F.

View Larger Map

We arrived late on the 28th after getting ... misdirected. We knew where we were, we just weren't quite where we wanted to be. New Zealand lacks signage in some places though in this particular place I'm pretty sure it was a case of being distracted by the incredible scenery. We ended up going around the west side of Lake Taupo and found a small lookout that gave the incredible views you can see on the gallery. If you look at the map, you'll see the slight detour we ended up taking: you can see on the west side of the island the rather square path we took around the Lake. That was a mistake :)

As always, there's a gallery of our photos. Here's most of my favorites. Click through to the gallery for bigger versions of the pictures!

Here's Bee all packed up and ready to go.

Mount Ruapehu seen from where the grass is still green. the middle of the North Island is actually as close to a desert as New Zealand comes, it's incredibly desolate. There's about a 75km stretch with absolutely no civilization, no real water, barely any plants and Mount Ruapehu watching over it.

Mount Ruapehu seen from the previously mentioned Desert Road.

Lake Taupo is one of New Zealand's favorite fresh water vacation destinations. It's a huge (by NZ standards) lake which is actually in a giant volcano crater. It's known to be rather cold because of it's depth but otherwise stunning.

Random photo we took from the Lookout that eventually got us lost. It was worth the view.

A Quick Note: We're in Coromandel Peninsula...

2008-12-31T11:06:00.002+13:00

Not a whole lot of bandwidth here so I haven't had a whole lot of time to blog. We have been taking photos a plenty however. Short form: It's beautiful here, it reminds me a lot of Cape Cod (both in affluence and in overall beauty) and so far we've been having a good time on the beach.

I'll send some photos up either when we get back or if I find some fast connections.

The Obligatory Christmas Post.

2008-12-26T11:17:00.003+13:00

No other holiday is quite so linked to being with friends and family as Christmas. Obviously, its considered to be one of the first big challenges of recent immigrants, being away from family and friends during this holiday.

Carly and I have very different feelings when it comes to Christmas. For my part, I definitely felt a little blue at not having dinner with my 'rents, seeing my friends, vegg'ing out, playing games and generally being social with those I love. Being that my family is all over the world, You'd think it would be easier, but the fact is we typically made sure we all saw each other during the extended holiday season if not on Christmas proper.

Technology definitely makes up for some of it. Skype has been a godsend throughout our immigration and being able to talk to anyone we want without having to worry about blocked international lines, long distance fees etc. is definitely making it easier. Seeing people over the video is an even better treat.

That all being said, we've been having an excellent Christmas thanks in no small part to our new friends in New Zealand. This weekend, we got to visit with our friends J and B in Christchurch. We met them through a board gaming website of all places. J's been incredibly helpful for finding all sorts of Kiwi information that many of the locals took for granted before arriving and I think we all hit it off quite well when we went to Picton together earlier in the year. They took us out to great restaurants, threw a BBQ with their friends while we were there (and much boardgaming was done!) and generally were fantastic hosts.

R and A, another couple we've befriended, came over on Christmas day so that I could make them a nice big breakfast. Carly made scones from the cook book she bought me for christmas (Edmund's Cookery Book) I made eggs bacon and coffee / tea.

We followed that up by bringing a Tourtiere (my mom's recipe of course!) to the BBQ they were having at their place over lunch / dinner to share some of the Canadian festivities that would normally take place. It was very well received.

And now, on boxing day, having made all our family phone calls, we're off to explore the Boxing Day sales (Kiwis definitely take their sales a lot more seriously then Canadians do :P ) and go to the beach.

Here are some photos of the traditional New Zealand Christmas Tree, the Pōhutukawa Tree

What a Weekend!

2008-12-11T11:27:00.007+13:00

Where to start!

This weekend was pretty phenomenal. We got out and did stuff :)

Saturday we went to the Knack. It's a small craft fair that was held at the Berhampore Elementary School (where Carly's been teaching the Montessori class). It was a very friendly affair. Most of the displays were from parents or local crafters, everyone seemed to know each other and there were quite a few very cool booths. In particular, Carly's coffee slinging students were there as well as few local seamstresses who make great clothing out of recycled materials.
Once we were done there, we decided to go on a bit of a driving adventure to find a new place to fly the kite. We started by driving down to Island Bay, exploring that neighborhood (quickly turning into a favorite with us) then we ended up in a nature preserve, where we got a chance to test out the All Wheel drive for the first time by driving through an old quarry access pass. Too rocky and narrow to fly a kite but a very nice drive overall.

Having reached the end of that drive, we decided to drive in the opposite direction out to the Kapiti Coast (western coast of North Island). We came across Queen Elizabeth National Park, with it's very inviting beach and got a nice flight in there. Sand and water aren't particularly friendly to my kite though... Heading home, we felt we'd made the right choice in buying a car.

We started Sunday by hoping a bus down to Thorndon (Ha! you thought we'd drive didn't you!) for the annual Fair. Not entirely sure of the details, but it sounds like it was started as a fundraiser for their elementary school (a decile 10 school... odd that they'd need to raise funds) but grew into a whole neighborhood engulfing street sale of sorts. There was probably 150 booths? They were expecting 25000 people and I'd believe it from the crowds we saw there. We went with our lovely Kiwi friends R&A and new friends C&R. Not much I'd actually buy (most was expensive kitschy stuff).
Thorndon is a gorgeous neighborhood (and priced accordingly) It backs the Parliament buildings, is delimited on one side by the mountains and on another the Botanical Gardens. Very quaint, turn of the century to about 1950s buildings.

Having done the stalls there, we headed up to the Botanical Gardens to see the roses. When last we'd gone, they were just at the bud stage. Not very exciting. This time it was incredible.

Came home thoroughly tired (we'd been out walking for 6+ hours by that point) and a little sunburnt. This is precisely why we moved out here :)

Here are a couple of links to the galleries if you want to see more photos.

Alternate schooling methods

2008-12-06T11:15:00.005+13:00

So as you are aware i'm relief teaching here in Welly. and there is a lot of variation. there is basically a scale system called a Decile rating of 1 to 10. a 10 school is the best, the cream of the crop, they have a devoted art week, multiple computers in each room, a laptop cart and usually mostly white anglo-saxon pupils. The opposite end of the scale is the 1 and 2 where the students are usually more ethnic, lower socio-economic status, more behavioural and less supplied in terms of school equipment (in Ottawa we call those Beacon schools). So i've worked the range of decile 4 through 10; yes there is a difference.

At one of those 4s though there is a Montessori school. the staff jokes that the Montessori is how they stay open because of the funding it gets. so i've relieved a few times in there...its different. i'm not going to bore you with details but the basics boil down to this:

1) students choose what to learn, then do it
2) teachers teach them how to use the development math tool for say counting, just enough of an explanation to peak interest then stand back and let them use it for days and observe.
3) it encourages and has a practical hands on living aspect, there is a mini-kitchen so they can learn to cook, clean, etc.
4) oh and they encourage them to go outside a lot to exercise and plan small group trips off of school property without adults.

suffice it to say that i'm impressed, Blaise is impressed and though children are not yet on our list of "to do" things yet we both see Montessori as an option.

ok back to the point i was trying to make. a few years back some of the kids asked for (in a business proposal btw) an expresso/barrista machine like every coffee shop has. they got it too, its considered practical and hands on. these kids then proceeded to start a coffee delivery business to all the teachers in the school. so mrs. A wants a flat white at 10:20, mrs. B wants an expresso at 11:30, the kids in room 4 order four hot chocolates at lunch, etc. Because the Montessori kids are allowed to move freely in and out of their class as part of their education, they can do this delivery service. its $2 for anything and let me tell you they make a good Mochachino. then they keep banking/accounting records of all their sales and they use the proceeds to fund camp trips or charitable donations (the class agreed to use the funds to buy a goat last year for a village in Africa). There is currently a science project going on growing cultures because one of the boys who does this had concerns about the cleanliness of his coffee machine so the teacher brought in culture mediums in petri dishes and he's started a 2 week project testing his machine and other areas of the class for cleanliness by doing mold cultures. Oh i suppose i should add these particular coffee kids are boys between the ages of 10 and 11; and one of the guys has been doing this since he was nine. did i not say Montessori was neat!

So i've been raving to Blaise about this and today the school had a craft/fund raising sale call Knack. The Montessori kids who do the coffee were invited to set up shop on the stage. They were there last year and they did so well they were invited back this year and got a sponsor who gave them all the coffee for free this time.
So we went in and purchased two drinks, my Mochachino and for Blaise his standard flat white. Blaise had to admit that it was a very nice flat white. The guys let us take a picture for posterity.

Meet the barristas of the Montessori program.

Stung by Bee

2008-12-05T11:00:00.004+13:00

now now don't panic, its not what you think. Meet BEE506 the latest addition to the St-Laurent New Zealand adventure.

I'm sure Blaise could do a way better job of describing it but its a car, a dark blue Subaru Legacy. We bought it off a guy who was doing what we did, packing up his life in NZ and going to Australia for a few years.

What prompted this after all our eco-friendly "we'll walk or bus everywhere". its still there, we still walk and bus but there are an increasing large list of things we want to do that really require more freedom than the transit system is allowing.

1)job interviews - i was not applying to schools more than 1 1/2 by transit, by car those same places are about 20 minutes away.
2)kite surfing - the hubby wants to go fly the kites (legally) on beaches, but we also have to find ones that have wind on the right direction, don't have planes going over them and actual ones where its safe for him to be in the water. for those, they exceed that 1 1/2 transit time by bus.
3)camping - with the cargo container due this week (fingers crossed) our camp gear is here. there is a lovely place just on the opposite side of the bay, great for a first camping adventure....no bus/train service at all.
4)groceries - canvas bags or not, the weight (and wait), a car is simpler.
5)adventures - we got invited up to a batch just outside of auckland over christmas by Rachel and Alan. we love them, but they have a teeny little hatchback. our car can hold us and luggage ^^bb
6)renting - while we are not looking till February for a new place we have met enough people and seen enough homes to know that we pay way to much for being in this location. we can get amazing places in any of the outside areas but they lack a feature which we needed when we first moved here....buses.
7)trade me/used furniture - yes we can rent a car and trailer, this however means we can also pop into a Vinnie's (St Vincents) see the table and go, "hey we can buy it and bring it home today"

Meet "Bee"atrice (yes i named the car)

Some Photo Updates

2008-12-05T08:55:00.004+13:00

Finally got a little time to sort through the photos I've been racking up on my camera. I've posted a bunch of new ones on my gallery. Here are a few of my favorites (with captions)

Te Papa, the New Zealand national museum.

The harbour walkway.

Tired tourists on a sunny afternoon.

The boatclub and the harbourfront

Also, a while back there was a Brazilian tall ship in Wellington harbor, so we went to check it out:

Click through the links to see all the photos.

Humming and Hawing...

2008-12-02T08:10:00.003+13:00

Carly and I have been trying as much as possible to not make any choices that are specifically detrimental to the environment. Not so much trying to be carbon-counting/placard-bearing/pocket-mulching environmentalists, really we've just been trying to choose the environment's side when faced with a choice. This has involved drying most of our clothing outside (which I've grown quite used to, though I thought I wouldn't) recycling, using re-usable containers and most importantly walking or busing everywhere.

However, that last one has been significantly limiting our flexibility here in Wellington. For day to day needs, the bus and train system here is excellent. You can hop a single bus almost anywhere, then walk 5-10 minutes and be at your destination. Parking's also a problem downtown, so you wouldn't want to drive anyway.
Many of our favorite and planned activities (camping, kite surfing, exploring New Zealand in general) require some sort of motorized transport. We're short changing ourselves rather badly if we can't get out of Wellington.

So, I've started looking for a car. The main things it needs:

carrying capacity: A station wagon, a minivan or maybe a large hatchback
Good on gas: Smaller engine or diesel would be ideal
Ability to tow (renting trailers to get stuff you buy is very common here)
Cheap.

That's pretty much it. I don't care about anything else really, which is a huge change from my previous cars. I'm going to be buying my first used car, which is a little scary, but with a good inspection and some "emergency repair" money I think we'll be able to manage.

I'm hoping to find a car with good mechanics that isn't too pretty on the outside (body damage is quite common here because of the tight streets and generally bad drivers :P )

We'll see how it goes.

Lets Go Fly A Kite...

2008-11-28T08:27:00.003+13:00

I love wind sports. I've been sailing for years, Paul and I raced last summer in Laura's Tanzer 22. Buying a boat here however is currently not in the plans. I've also been looking for something a little more... adrenaline based. Two options have popped up. Windsurfing and Kite Surfing. Of the two, I've always been more interested in Kite Surfing... Seems like a much more dynamic way of riding the waves. Also, the gear's a lot easier to carry around.

I've been getting advice from my friend Nick in Canada who's been doing it for years and I decided recently to buy my own first kite. Following his advice, I bought a 4 line, 3 square meter land kite from Peter Lynn. The kite I bought was actually an end of line, called the Pepper II. It's been replaced by

Anyway, I managed to get a nice day (about 10-15 knots) and Carly had the day off, so we headed out to Berhampore Park to get a first flight in. Here's the results:

End result? I've got a sore back, shoulders, blisters on my feet and a giant grin on my face :)

The plan is to get good enough at flying this that I'd feel comfortable on the water. Kite surfing requires a kite 3 to 4 times the size of what I'm using, with proportionally more power as well. That's a lot of lift!

Ssssh. Don't Tell Carly....

2008-11-26T11:07:00.005+13:00

I bought her a table yesterday while I was wandering through downtown Wellington. I wandered into a second hand store that we'd bought some chairs from previously, and lo and behold his newer acquisition was staring me in the face waiting to be purchased. A little negotiation and 120$ later, the table was on it's way to being delivered. It only came with 3 chairs, but they are fairly common style so it shouldn't be too hard to find an approximate match. I'll be refinishing the center top to match the extensions and hopefully Carly can recover the chairs (they are currently done up in vinyl).

My faith in buying used in New Zealand is slowly being rebuilt.

Home Sickness

2008-11-18T10:15:00.002+13:00

Over the last two weeks I've been hit with a little bit of home sickness. My weekly routine seemed a little empty, something was lacking. Part of the issue I think was a general level of dissatisfaction with work; the crises and the difficulty communicating had been building and I felt fairly useless most days. Overall though, now that the challenge of figuring out the basics of living here were more or less cleared up, I felt bored and restless. Without many of my usual distractions (most of our hobby stuff / sports stuff is still in our container somewhere on the pacific) I was playing video games, re-watching old TV episodes, reading (not a bad thing) but generally moping around the house. There's only so much exploring and walking you can do in one day...

So yesterday Carly and I got off our duffs (well, I got off mine, she's been very active with work) and we went climbing. We hadn't been in about 2 weeks, in part because I had to fix my shoes. We had a great climb, pushing ourselves more then usual, then decided to try the only Lebanese restaurant in town.

About half way through the excellent meal, I realized that we had subconsciously mimicked one of our favorite traditions in Ottawa. Climbing followed by Shawarma. What I didn't expect was how good it felt, not only to have such great food, but also to integrate an old tradition into the new life. It felt comfortable but foreign at the same time and it really cheered me up!

So there you have it, my first revelation about living in a foreign land. It's not about tossing the old habits out, its about figuring out how to fit them into the new life.

Rememberance Day

2008-11-12T07:44:00.003+13:00

New Zealand doesn't mark Remembrance day on November 11th like Canada does, theirs is April 18th. However, what I find interesting is that it's called (informally at least) Poppy Day, in memory of John McCrae's poem that's given Canada its remembrance day symbol.

Carly and I are both thinking of our family in the military. Those who are still with us (John, Jesse and Jeremy) and those who are not.

Thank you.

The Two Month Report.

2008-11-11T14:57:00.002+13:00

Well, we've been here 2 months and I believe it's safe to say we are settled in as well as can be expected. We have all the basics out of the way: we have all the essential "stuff" we need to live our daily lives, we have settled into our daily routine, we know the city well enough not to get frustrated going about our lives and we've met a few very friendly people so far.

The good

The people. Overwhelmingly, everyone we've met has bent over backwards to help us out, feel welcome and comfortable. A couple of great examples so far have been all the people I've met through the Warlords Wargaming Club, the people we've met at Ferg's Climbing gym and some of the friends we've made along the way.
Living on the ocean. I didn't think it would make that big a difference, but being a 10 minute bus ride from the beach really is something special.
The lifestyle. People really do seem more laid back. Not to the point of getting frustrating to deal with, but overall there's less tension in the air, less fighting and more helping hands. This extends surprisingly into government services and the like. Getting our drivers licenses and other administrative tasks was easy and the people friendly and helpful.
The City. Wellington is quite unique. Not much urban sprawl, you can easily get around without a car, lots of fun nooks to discover.

The bad

Convenience or the lack thereof. You start to see just how much of a convenience culture North America has developped. If you want something Right Now! and it happens to be 8pm, you can find it. Here, not so much. Stores close early, bus service is sparce on weekends and you have to make plans to shop / pick up stuff / get stuff delivered. I hope employers are as understanding here as in Canada.
Cost of setting up. Obviously, this was going to be a big one. Everyone espoused the virtues of buying second hand, so we naturally expected it to be trivial. Not so. My friend Allison pointed out that shopping thrift stores is about the hunt and she was completely right. Now that we've got the essentials (some new, some used) we're enjoying searching for good second hand deals a lot more.
The work situation. I'll be honest, working remotely, 18 hours off from my co-workers is not easy. At least now, I get up at a reasonable hour and work goes smoothly, but the smallest technical glitches mean tons of lost time.

The ugly

None so far.

So there you have it, in a nutshell, what the overall feel is after 2 months. I've blogged about most of these already, so not too many detials required, but overall I think it's been an overwhelmingly positive experience.