Would you like kiwi with that?

Are we tourists?

2009-02-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to a barbecue at a co-worker's house and we played a fun little game as the guests rolled in: spot the Kiwi.

Our department has hired more internationally trained and born staff lately, and we found that it was pretty hard to find any New Zealand born English teachers. Of the 20 plus people who showed up, counting spouses, we found 5 that teach at least one English class. Two of those only teach one English class. There was some debate about the head of our department, who was born in the UK but moved here at a relatively young age. We're calling him British because he had a British passport first. Either way, the Kiwi Teacher is becoming an endangered species at our school.

So the BBQ fired up and some beers opened, and the conversation turned to what people were doing for weekend trips during our precious last months of golden weather. People are taking surfing lessons, going to concerts in the park, snorkelling at the marine reserve, tripping up to the bach up the coast, and heading to the spate of weekend festivals that shoehorn themselves into the last days of summer before the rainy season starts. We sounded like a bunch of tourists, and when combined with our earlier foray into census taking we seemed like a bunch of tourists.

So we had to ask the question out loud: when do we stop being tourists and become locals? Most of the people from the UK still felt like tourists. Their opinion on the matter is that New Zealand is so different from the UK that everything feels new and novel. A lot of them feel like they're getting a second shot at childhood or their early 20s. They're making the most of it and feel energised by access to the sheer amount of things to do outside of the pub atmosphere.

One guy made the observation that you become a local when you start taking your vacations in Australia. We all had a laugh at that one. It's a common joke that New Zealanders consider Australia a foreign land: it's the place where people go to make their fortunes, get civilized, become part of a bigger player in the global community and generally up your game. New Zealand is still very much out of the way, more so than Oz, and it's funny to us immigrants because both are down here together. Alone.

This person hit on an interesting point that made me think, a little too seriously to pursue conversationally without dragging down the tone of the party. I haven't gone to Australia for any of my vacations, but I also haven't been taking many local trips that could be called 'vacation', either. Those of us who didn't see ourselves as tourists anymore were probably more likely to take our national back yard for granted. We don't spend our weekends doing things out of the ordinary, for the most part, and stick with the usual: meet with friends, go to the market, watch a movie, etc. I did this in Montana and am falling into the trap here. We still haven't done some of those crazy things we talked about doing when we moved here. We haven't gone bungy jumping, sky diving, sea kyaking, snorkling, black water rafting, blow carting or hiking on volcanoes. We have gone swimming (of course), yachting, fishing, hiking, and sledding on volcanoes. We've seen fire dancers, listened to local bands, watched protests, gone to parades featuring santa with a water gun, dressed Peter in colonial garb and put him on Maori TV (more on that later), learned to haka, and enjoyed Chinese New Year.

We don't own any greenstone necklaces.

We know and like many Kiwis; most of our close friends are fellow immigrants.

So while I feel very much a resident and less a tourist, I still feel very much like there are things that I still want to get out of my time here. But, like any local, I am very comfortable in my locale. I find myself saying, "I don't have enough/convenient vacation time", or "we don't feel like we have the money to spend on that." We're hoping that will change once we figure out if we'll be moving back to North America. If faced with a deadline we might make better use of those things that we can't do anywhere else.

So How's The Weather?

2009-02-10T09:27:00.001-08:00

It's just past 8 pm and it's 77 degrees with 70% humidity. The air is thick these days and clings to the skin, as if we are swimming through a hot tub filled with chicken broth. We are a salty bunch down here and nobody in Auckland feels clean right now, especially Peter and I at 8 pm. Clothes stick to our skin all day, our paper droops, food doesn't sound good but anything with fluid in it goes down by the bucketful. The rain has been coming in misting clouds this week, with actual rain drops on occasion, and for the most part we have been absorbed into that long white cloud of Aotearoa. Everything is wet. Most people are irritable.

Monday night reached 100% humidity and we're told that things will stay like this possibly through next week. It's a good thing that Peter made a screen for one of the windows in our bedroom so that we can keep it open at night. As we've mentioned in previous posts, people don't use window screens in New Zealand for some reason we've never been able to pin down. All we know is that we get overrun by mosquitos, flies and spiders when we leave windows open at night. Now that we have one screen we can have a bit of cooler air to help us make it through this humid spell.

Recipe share

2009-02-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

Our last post was a reference to how we sometimes resolve conflict in our house, i.e. let the Magic 8 Ball decide and let's stop arguing. Our dilemma the other day was what to snack upon after dinner: something healthy like frozen berries and yogurt, or something less healthy like cookies. We were both torn and couldn't decide, hence the Magic 8 Ball. If you think that the Magic 8 Ball would help you reduce stress in your home, too, visit this site.

Char posted that she'd like us to share the results of our evening's experiment. Unfortunately, Char, you'd likely get a box full of mouldy / hockey-puck-ish brown things if we went down that road. If you'd like to make your own for a fresher experience, here's a link to the recipe I used that fateful night. They're a fave at our house. You can easily substitute butter for shortening, if you're into that sort of thing, and they turn out just about the same but with a more buttery flavour (of course). We find that they are better cool than warm. But when eaten warm they are oh-so-gooey.

No comment...

2009-01-27T22:37:00.001-08:00

The (Sub)Urban Garden

2009-01-25T22:45:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that everyone who reads this blog has rented living space at some point. Renting is pretty nice from a number of perspectives. For example, we don't have to worry about falling property prices at the moment, or think about anything other than cleaning the floors when we move out of this place. Maintenance is out of our hands, for the most part, and as long as we treat the place with respect we're pretty much guaranteed our bond back.

For those of us who like to play in the dirt, renting kind of sucks. The landscaping isn't ours and therefor we don't have the right to dig it up. We're also likely to move out of this place within a few years of moving into it, so investing in things like raised gardening beds and fruit trees is pretty impractical. We have all of the benefits of using and hanging out in a yard/garden but don't get to do much to make it our own.

As we've mentioned in previous posts, we're tweeking our diet and lifestyle a bit to minimise trips in the car and processed foods. I remember growing up with a garden in the back yard, as does Peter, and we're both finding that we really miss the flavour and experience of home-grown food. There's nothing like walking into the yard, picking a bowl full of tomatoes or spinach or berries or what have you, and then returning to your kitchen to make a meal out of the sweetest food known to man. If we had our way we would landscape our current yard with an "edibles only" policy, ripping out the simply pretty trees to be replaced with pretty trees that produce fruit. Edging would be replaced with layered herbs and leafy vegetables of various colours, and the only flowers we would include would be for insect control. We would be in balance with our plants and I would have a full pantry and plenty of dilly beans in the fridge.

Alas, life isn't that easy when you rent in the city. Or at least a sprawling suburban city.

We have friends who have built large raised beds in their yard and have done a fabulous job of transforming a weed-ridden plot next to the train line into an attractive and fertile food garden. Like our friends, we realise that in densely populated areas you can't really trust the soil quality and have to plant above ground level. We're a little more limited with the space and sun patterns, as well, on our property. Last summer I played around with a few herb pots to get a feel for how plants react to sun without a protective ozone layer (we don't have ozone here). This year I know where the productive spots on our property are and have placed a variety of planters around the property to grow what we can. Want to see what we've managed to produce?

Our front stoop is sunny in the afternoon and is basically concrete and brick and glass. We spruced it up with an avocado tree sprouted in the kitchen last winter from a pit, a jalapeno plant, and a small herb box (in ascending order up the steps). We'll be giving the avocado tree to the neighbours when it grows up, the jalapenos are coming along nicely and will be consumed quickly, and we've picked the hell out of our herbs already. Hence their stick-ish look. More are sprouting inside the house as we speak. This round includes cilantro and dill.

They don't sell jalapenos in grocery stores here, at least not regularly. We've seen them exactly twice since we've been down here. I managed to find a little six pack of plants at the garden centre this spring so I brought them home. I gave one to a friend and another died before I could get it in the ground, but the remaining four are going gangbusters. Luckily they're producing in shifts, so we'll be able to enjoying them a little longer. The plant on the left produced first, and these are two of the nearly 30 that are bogging the thing down. They seem to be thriving on the strong sun down here but need a lot of water - one litre every other day.

Round two of our basil. These need to be grown indoors until they get to be about 3 inches high, otherwise their leaves turn translucent in the sun and they fry. These three are taking over the pot that used to grow bok choy. The bok choy caught a nasty case of aphids and had to be put down. I'm not too heart broken; we eat more basil.

Curly and flat leaf parsley next to our spring onions. We're grazing regularly off of both, and I've let one plant go to seed so that I can get some more going inside for the next batch.

And this is the back yard. It only gets good sun for about 6 hours in the morning at the height of summer, so we have tomatoes going in the bigger pots and baby spinach in the tray near the shed. It's not much of a yard but it's cozy. We keep our bikes in the shed. Notice the groovy new bbq! No longer must we huddle over our meat, like nomads, as it cooks on a small Coleman camp stove. Now we get to stand upright to cook, like fully developed primates who have developed tools like tongs and bbq sauce.

The tomatoes are doing surprisingly well with what little sun they get. The only problem now are the birds. They've taken to eating anything that gets at all red, and so they've had more of my fruit than I have.

I've tried bating the neighbourhood cats into the yard with small treats and way more affection but it's not scaring the birds away. Today I had to go down to the hardware store to concoct something to protect my little red globes of summer. Four metres fine wire mesh, a pair of snips and about an hour gave me this solution:

The side is made of a loop big enough that the birds can't reach through to the tomatoes. I then laid another length of mesh on top. By cutting the overhanging mesh into flaps, folding each flap over onto the vertical wall, then bending the edges of the flaps into the vertical mesh, the side wall keeps its shape. All I have to do is lift it as a whole unit to do my picking and watering, and then replace it over the planter when I'm done. I'm feeling pretty handy at the moment. Tomorrow I'll do the other tomato plant, though that one is looking pretty root bound and unproductive. It still has about 6 full sized tomatoes on it so I'm going to see what I can do. It may not be worth the $15 worth of wire mesh at $8 per meter.

Oh, and this is Stalker. She sits on our window ledge and stares at us frequently. We don't know her real name but since she started this little practice on our first day in the apartment we've taken to calling her what she is. Here, she's staring at me while I practice my guitar. She's slightly neurotic (running away suddenly at odd times, obsessively licking her stomach until the hair comes off and she's oozing from open wounds, etc), so we don't let her in the house. We scratch her ears, though, which I'm guessing keeps her coming back. What would a garden be without a cat, however transient and disease ridden?

Take Your Foreign-Dwelling Loved Ones to Work Day

2009-01-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

This week I've been back to work for three half days to get things in order. Between the office printer not working (still - that's how we left it before Xmas) and the usual "how was your summer" banter with the tricklers-in, I didn't get too much done. In the last post I promised to bring along a camera to show you guys my bicycle commute.

Well, taking pictures while cycling is hard to do (no, I didn't try). And Peter's got a nice commute in the opposite direction from our house. So why take a bunch of digital photos of only some of the area when you can Google Street View?

They got photos of the area up and running a little while ago of a typical Auckland morning, with the sun shining off of recently rained-upon houses and streets. Just head on over to maps.google.com and click on "Get Driving Directions" on the left. If you start at Queens Parade, Devonport, Auckland you'll get a good view of the waterfront. For the destination address, type in Anzac St, Takapuna, Auckland. This route shows a good example of the different things a cyclist deals with around the city. We're lucky in that we have more dedicated cycle lanes than many other areas, but it's not pervasive. This is only a small part of our collective commute, but those of you with our personal details can probably probe a little more if you have the time to kill. Welcome to the neighbourhood!

A bike ride in Auckland...

2009-01-12T23:37:00.001-08:00

Is like an intense game of frogger: it's ultimately fun but you really have to look out for cars. This week alone (two days into it) I've had two close calls. That being said last week was uneventful. I think this means my riding has been raised to a new level, to continue with the video game analogy, but I could be wrong. There may just be more congestion due to all of those drivers back into the swing of things after the holiday break. Who knows. The only thing I do know is that it feels good to be able to stop at a red light right next to a car that passed me about a kilometre back, and to think that I didn't have to burn any gas while the other guy did.

We're experiencing a resurgence in bike ridership in our home lately. With the longer hours of daylight and drier weather Peter's been biking in to work nearly daily and I've recently bought a bike to toodle around the neighbourhood on. I have to say that it feels darn good to be back on the bike, now that the obligatory and awkward "getting to know you" phase is over. Two years of relatively low physical activity and a shiny new case of asthma have left me a bit out of shape, you could say. The rolling hills of Auckland didn't make the process easy but after a few weeks of short near-daily rides I'm doing better. I can now make it 14 kms without stopping (I actually feel pretty good afterward) and I only need the inhaler sometimes after I ride now. All in all Peter and I are feeling healthier these days thanks to this long-forgotten mode of transportation.

Our readers may recall previous posts in which Peter explained the perils of cycling in Auckland. The roads are narrow; shoulders and bike lanes (where they exist) tend to be filled with gravel, broken bottles and the odd dead hedgehog; storm drains are not always designed well and grates can sometimes run parallel to the curb. And always the aggressive traffic. None of these things make cycling as a commuter mode of transportation an easy choice, and those around here who choose to take the plunge trend toward the hardcore.* I'm trying my best to fit into this category, as I'm lucky enough to live along a commuter corridor that has bike paths for most of its length. My employer also has showers and lockers in the women's bathroom, which means that I can have a quick rinse once I get to work. Not everyone has access to this sort of thing here, so I should probably take advantage of it.

At its heart, this change is simply the latest step in our efforts to become a bit more earth friendly. We never drove the car all that much to begin with, but I'd say that 95% of its use was for my daily commute. At first I didn't feel bad because I could justify it: my weekly petrol bill was half the cost of bus fare for the equivalent distance, and driving cut my commute time in half. What's not to love? We'll, I hate sitting in traffic at the end of the day, getting wheezy 10 minutes into a friendly ultimate frisbee game at work, that extra roll on my stomach that now pops out when I sit down, and generally being a part of the twice-daily single occupant vehicle exodus.

So we're trimming back. My goal is to be able to bike to work come the end of the month without being too red faced and sweaty. Peter's biking to work daily, and we're cutting back on our meat consumption. It's all a part of our attempt to keep healthy and cut down on our carbon footprint.

I'll be taking the camera along some of my rides later this week so you can see what we're up to in our daily routine.

*A special note for Moms Jan and Char: don't worry. We wear helmets, ride only when it's safe and get off the bike or ride on the foot path when it's not. You've taught us well.

What child is this?

2008-12-13T22:03:00.000-08:00

'Tis summer here in Auckland. People are walking to the beach in their togs (swimsuits) and towels, the city is quieter because the locals have packed off on vacation, and the ice cream truck is touring our neighbourhood more frequently. It's a franchise of the Mr Whippy chain, which serves soft serve ice cream out of a window in the side of an orange, pink and white van. Most towns in America no longer have an ice cream truck, let alone a rolling soft-serve stand on wheels. My only recollection of any ice cream truck from my youth is from re-runs of old '50's TV shows. In my day we had to hoof it down to the A&W for our cones of summer.

This particular van is a bit different from those of the Beaver's day in that it plays religious tunes. Well, one Christian tune in particular. "What child is this?", aka "Greensleeves", beeps mechanically through Pohutukawa and ferns from a Midi track, rolls across laws and in through our windows. I have no idea if any kids, or adults for that matter, go to the curb to give it business. The thing drives down the street daily now, and the music occasionally stops, which leads me to think that it's worth somebody's time to troll our neighbourhood.

We laughed at the choice of music when we first moved into our apartment. "What kind of song is that?" we asked each other, and as non-religious people refused to rush to the curb on sheer principle. It does make us chuckle, though. What child is this / who comes to call / when Whippy comes along tinkling? I guess it is December and the Holiday season, but to play the thing year round? Really?

This is a typical Mr Whippy van (the photo was taken from the internet; we have no idea who the guy is). They're a New Zealand icon and can be seen at pretty much every tourist beach. The ice cream's not bad, either, and come with sprinkles, wafers, strawberry sauce, dipped and all of the standard trimmings.

Gliding at Whenuapai

2008-11-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

We recently met some awesome, fellow former residents of Cascadia. Roberta is an urban planner, and Adam is an IT security guy with a number of cool hobbies including gliding. Last weekend, he offered to take me up in a glider and I jumped on the opportunity. Here are some pictures, unsorted, from the day.

Also, I'll try to figure out how to attach a Google Earth data file of the flight, as Adam is super tech-savvy and captured full GPS data.

The eye twitch

2008-11-21T00:17:00.000-08:00

I am now on day 7 of a persistent eye twitch. It's probably caused by stress, though the optometrist says that there isn't much data on what actually causes the buggers. I'm thinking that lots of long days and nights at the office staring down student handwriting has something to do with it. My nose now sports new glasses (time for an upgrade, anyway) and I'm trying to read less, though I'm not having much success on that front.

How long have eye twitches lasted for y'all out there? Any record holders, or am I setting a new record?

The changing of the guard

2008-10-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

This post is political in nature and is not intended to offend. It is intended, however, to add to the reasons for everyone to vote in this General Election, whether you agree with the content or not. I speak only for myself here, despite the fact that this is a family blog, and would enjoy hearing what our family and friends have to say on the topic.

With the elections within spitting distance I can't help but think about the reasons for why I'm voting from so far away. Part of this is due to my bone-deep frustration with what the Bush administration has done to America's rights to privacy, intellectual legacy and respect in the global community. After all, it is still and always will be home for me. The biggest reason for expatriates to vote, I have found, is to protect what's left of America's reputation and place within the world.

I very much still feel American. I bargain hunt, appreciate my TV shows on a familial level and hold freedom of speech deep at heart. (I and a Canadian co-worker just successfully dismantled the office Swear Box, an evil contraption meant to punish those who swore in the office by taking their money in amounts linked to the severity of the swear word. People should be able to shout at the permanently busted copy machine, damnit, without the propriety police judging them.) Most of all, I'm beginning to understand a fundamental truth that seems to have become lost on many an American official and citizen: America is and always will be one member within the wider global community. Her actions are felt across broad expanses of water and her inaction has the same ability to offend as a person on the street has for not helping an accident victim. America is a part of the world, and because I feel like a part of the world all the way down here in little 'ol New Zealand, I feel an obligation to make my voice and experience count in every way I can. Mahatma Gandhi had it right when he said to "be the change you want to see in the world." This is all very fine and well for individuals but it goes for nations as well.

When we first moved down here the first question my students always asked was, "Did you vote for President Bush?" The middle-school kids were mostly curious; high schoolers tended to frost their words with a bit more indignation. Most adult Kiwis avoided this pointed and personal question, rather opting for variations on what Americans thought about what Bush Co. Ltd. were doing to Iraq. We had plenty of interesting conversations but nonetheless felt a bit tired and battered by the end of our first 6 months here. This social/political grilling wasn't what we signed up for when we moved here, nor was it what we were prepared to endure for the duration of our time here. Our only recourse was to sigh and develop a handful of strategies for changing the conversation. Only once did I play the political refugee card; it felt hollow and cheap, so I didn't touch it again.

Perhaps we've blended in or we now have a consistent social circle, but these questions seem to have changed in the last year or so. It feels like the rest of the world has realised that Bush Co. Ltd. will close up shop and another President will move into his place. There seems to be less quiet bitterness about things and a curiosity and optimism that things will change. We are frequently asked what we think of the candidates. When asked who we are voting for, and we say "Obama/Biden", people nod and relax a little...and then they ask if Palin is for real. We nod, and then they shake their heads. And I don't feel the guilt that I felt at this time nearly three years ago. Kiwi's don't despise these candidates the way that they despise Bush, although they are more leery of the McCain/Palin ticket than of the other candidates. This hatred that the current administration seems to have drawn out of people gets spit out on us expats indirectly and it's rather tiring.

It never ceases to disappoint me that Kiwis are more curious about us than America is of the rest of the world. With any luck, the next President will encourage people to cross American borders by making border security more humane; maybe my co-workers won't complain so much about having to take a longer route back to the UK through Singapore because they refuse to be insulted by the TSA again. Maybe the Kyoto Protocol will gain traction with lawmakers as a positive thing, and diplomacy and inter-national conversation will take top priority.

This is why I am submitting an Overseas ballot. Not because I hope to live in the US in the future, or because my family still lives there and I want a better place for them to live. I vote because American policies are having a direct effect on our community down here in NZ. Just the other day there was a story in the New Zealand Herald about Kiwi troops that are being targeted by militants in a relatively quiet area in Afghanistan. There aren't any complaints about Kiwi soldiers doing their part to help communities overseas; there are conversations, though, about when they will be able to come home and get on with things, as they say. Kiwis don't like treading water.

This weekend we are sending our ballots to the Missoula County Elections Office, as that was the last place we voted, and we wear our bumper stickers with pride. And we're planning on staying up November 5th in the hopes of seeing competent leadership return to the White House.

How to sled on a volcano

2008-10-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I was talking to my friend Sarah and we decided that we missed snow. She's originally from New York and is having the same problem that Peter and I have: winter just doesn't feel like winter down here. Since winter was coming to a close we decided to go find snow, since it will never snow in Auckland. Ever. This is how you go about sledding on the north island of New Zealand, much of which is technically in the subtropics and mostly sits close to sea level.

Step 1: Find some snow.

The central plateau in the centre of the North Island and has a couple of free-standing active volcanoes that accumulate snow during the winter. They're beautiful, steep, free of fences and trees (a must-have if you're used to sledding in Montana) and the snow is deep enough to cover the rocks. This last requirement is one of my biggies, as I now have a deformed tailbone thanks to a poorly chosen sledding run when I was a kid. Mt Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park has all of these required elements. Yes, this is where they shot the Mordor scenes for Lord of the Rings. The volcano on the left is Mt Doom, also known as Mt Ngauruhoe to us locals. Just had to get that out of the way. And no, we didn't see any orcs, just tourists.

Step 2: Be prepared to drive.

Unfortunately, the closest sledding mountain sits about a 4-hour drive south of Auckland. We wanted maximum quality time on the slopes, so we packed up our gear in the van and took off Friday after work. This wasn't a bad idea, as the weather report predicted the first rain-free weekend for 8 weeks. This was a bad idea, though, because everyone and their dogs were heading out of town for the rain-free weekend, too. Auckland traffic is notoriously slow and prone to clogs, so be sure to have an iPod and an iTrip. If you can manage it, get stuck behind a camper van with a 12 year old boy in the back who is prone to exhibitionism. This helps to pass the time.

Step 3: Find someplace to stay with a fireplace in the lobby.

After a few phone calls before we took off we found what probably were the last two rooms in the neighbouring township of National Park. There was plenty of parking by the time we rolled in at 11:30 pm. One room was tiny with a train-sized bathroom but came with the standard-issue water kettle, cups and tea/instant coffee set; the toilet paper holder fell off the wall upon first use but was of otherwise of impeccable design.

The second room was a dorm room with a train-sized bathroom and came with the standard-issue drunken youngsters who try to climb into bed with you at 1:30 in the morning. They were drunk enough to be harmless, so Sarah had an easy enough time kicking one of them into submission and, subsequently, his own bed. Have I mentioned that Sarah and Mark are freakishly nice friends for giving us the private room?

Needless to say, the fireplace in the lobby, nestled comfortably between the bar and a coffee cart, made the stay for us.

Step 4: Find some snow pants, gloves, sleds and sun cream.

Most of the businesses in National Park cater to people like us: they know enough about frolicking in the snow to be inclined to get the proper gear, but don't use the stuff enough to actually own it. A super-waxed toboggan, snow pants and gloves will cost you a grand total of $40, which is the price of dinner for two out if you don't get something to drink. Not a bad deal. The people who worked at the particular shop we visited were friendly ski bums who came from all over, including Canada and the US. Don't worry about having to rent stuff when you want to play in the snow here. You'll be well looked after and will be given the best and most waxed sleds they have. Do slather on the sun cream frequently. If you think goggle face is bad in the US, try sledding under that hole in the ozone. And wear your sun glasses.

Step 5: Make sure you fit in by looking cool and cruising the lift areas. Carry your sled with pride.

After a shuttle ride up to the lifts because the only parking was down below the snow line, we were ready to go. The reception area close to the shuttle drop-off swept past the building where you could buy lift tickets and rent gear if you didn't already have it. This is also where you stock up on ego, so we got a little before getting to the snow. One must strut if one expects to be taken seriously.

Step 6: Stake out your own place on the mountain.

Whether you have to climb up the mountain under the lift because you're too tough to buy a pass, or you get forced off of the groomed sledding hill by paramedics dragging the corpses of tourists away, find some open space. This will allow you to establish your dominance on the mountain and practice your more daring tricks. Sarah and I are working our way up to the Women's Doubles Tobogganing event for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Mark is the king of the spinning descent and Peter proved to have ultimate control. We clearly still had what it took even after all of this time.

Step 7: Avoid the guy on the ski-bike; his cronies look like paramedic bait.

Step 8: Stop for martinis at a chateau reminiscent of The Shining.

Just don't visit room 237. Go back to your backpackers (hostel) and dry your boots and feet out by the fire.

Hobbies gained, hobbies lost

2008-10-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

Ok. If we have any readers left out on the interwebs you will have recognised that our blog is now being updated quarterly. I think I'm ok with that; Peter has given up all hope of ever getting back on the horse. So it goes. Looking through the last few posts an update is in order.

Tiki tour through the south island. I am remiss in posting any photos of this very trip. While we've been looking through them regularly and enjoying them with friends here in town, I haven't shared them or their accompanying stories with the family. They'll be going up this week. I promise. Again.

The Great Career Shift of 2008. Peter's still plugging away. He's signed up to take the GRE here in Auckland later this month, has selected his references, notified his employer and chosen his preferred programs. Applications are downloaded and will be mailed out within the next month or so. I am now a GRE vocabulary tutor when I come home, which is much more interesting than the vocabulary work I get to do at work.

The sinking island of lost hobbies: Part 1. After joining up with a samba group I had to admit to owning a few unpleasant personality traits. Firstly, I'm still a bit of a music snob. Playing music with people who can't read music lends itself really well to jamming (assuming that they are amenable to jamming), but it also makes practices very tedious. The only real way to learn a piece is by the call and response method, which slows the process to a crawl. I like to have my music in little black dot form and need to know that the people I play with practice their stuff at home as much as I do. We also never had enough members to cover all of the parts. This left gaping holes in the instrumentation that grated on my ear. If the other members were willing to branch out and play some other stuff that used the voices we did have, that would be one thing, but our band leader had his heart set on samba. And so our partial-band played on.

Secondly, I'm too cheap and undedicated to buy my own surdo primera. Our practice space was in a 3 metre by 2 metre unit in a storage facility in the city. Consequently, we had a handy place to stash all of our drum equipment. My area of expertise became the surdo primera, the lowest base drum that has a standard nylon head covered with a layer of leather and is played with one mallet and various hand-dampening techniques. It requires a good steady rhythm and is quite fun, if a little tedious and non-pyrotechnic in character. The sucker is huge and expensive and I wasn't prepared to buy my own. Consequently, I couldn't practice at home and couldn't make it into the practice space to practice during the week. Hence I wasn't progressing quickly and got bored with the whole thing.

Ultimately I had to admit that I'm a sucker for melody that can be played by individual instruments. The group was fun and the people interesting but I have to have more tones to play with other than dampened, undampened and rim. I was happiest playing the auxiliary percussion parts but couldn't do this much as we never had enough members to cover the foundational voices.

So I am now an ex-samba band member. Instead, I practice my guitar regularly now and have moved into scale and classical style work. I suck at this point but my stamina is improving and know the notes of the first 4 frets. It's wonderfully satisfying.

The sinking island of lost hobbies: Part 2. Peter's bike now sports a shiny new back wheel, cleaned and streamlined gears and a new chain. It does not have a front wheel because, to our knowledge, New Zealand only imports the size we need once every 6 weeks, and then only orders 2 at a time before selling them to other people before we have a chance to get to the shop...even though we had ordered them in the first place. It's all been an interesting and frustrating look into an import economy. Peter has a co-worker who sells unicycles and unicycle accessories who has ordered a wheel for him. We've been waiting nearly 6 weeks now for his dealer to get it to him. So it goes.

He's made another batch of beer in the meantime. It's looking pretty good and should only be a few weeks before its finished.

The daily grind. Peter's still feeling unchallenged and uninterested at work. Not much has changed, alas, and he's really jonesing to just move on already.

That 5 week flurry of work that I predicted in the last blog entry turned into a 10 week slog that only ended last week. I had no idea just what I was walking into when I signed up to teach in both of the curriculum pathways here at our school. It's been infinitely interesting and worthwhile, without a doubt. I thought it would likely entail a larger grading load around exam time and that's it. What I didn't plan for was the school breaking out the exam schedules into two different sessions, 4 weeks apart, for each of the curriculum pathways. This means ramp-up and exam grading for one group, then a follow-up ramp-up to prepare for their big end of year exit exam that is set much earlier than the others. During this follow-up ramp-up, the other classes are ramping-up for their practice exams. After the first flurry of essays and exams (4 essays for each student), I am now not only working on follow-up essays but another flurry of exams (4 essays per student, again, but for more students). The grading just didn't stop because the kids now have to put all of these things they've learned into practice. A lot. I have never worked so hard in my life.

The current stated of affairs. I am now half-way through our two week long term break. Last week entailed lying on the couch reading Bill Bryson's take on going back to the US, with periodic forays into the city to have lunch with friends and shop for cheap books (always a challenge here, the land of the $35 paperback). Today I'm heading out to pick up a planter box that I bought for a steal on Trademe, NZ's version of eBay. The goal is to have the herb garden planted and some jalapenos in dirt by the end of the week. I'm still trying to source some cheap pots to put tomatoes in and get some dirt back under my fingernails.

To combat stress in our last term of the year I've joined a gym. It worked well for the last three weeks of last term. I wasn't sleeping well there for a while and started to get very surly around the office. I'll keep it up until I don't need it anymore, i.e. come summer break. By then I should have a better idea of what to expect next year and will be able to better deal with things. I had to bail on the Aikido club at school. This didn't have as much to do with time as comfort levels. The guy running the class integrated a lot of jujitsu into the course, which I'm not comfortable enough with to be practising with young people. That and there's quite a bit of ground grappling in this combined style, which I'm not comfortable with because it's a boy's school. It was interesting while it lasted, though. Man am I ever looking forward to having a dojo close to home at some point in the future.

We have done a few fun things here and there over the last few months, like sledding on a volcano and having dinner with French hippies and learning how to make Japanese food. As I said earlier, more to come. I promise. Again.

Where have Peter and Roni gone?

2008-05-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

Peter's decided that when he meets new people from now on, and they ask where he's from, he's going to tell them, "The Internet". This isn't because he spends all of his time on the web, or because we are tired of the accurate-but-long response of, "Well, I'm originally from the US but now I live in Auckland," which usually begins a tired and predictable Q&A session ending in a small but nonetheless awkward silence as all parties recognise the absurd formality of what just happened. "The internet" is an answer that bypasses this sort of bothersome exchange, true, but it's also a handy way of pointing out that geographic location is an increasingly small indicator of a person's heritage these days. We're all mobile, whether we globe trot or not, thanks to a shrinking world economy and culture. The internet is how we manage to connect to the human communities that help to identify who we are.

That being said, if you've checked this blog within the last few months we seemed to have disappeared into the ether. So if we're from the internet, is that where we've gone to?

Not exactly. We're still hiding here in Auckland. I've been buried under a pile of work as deep as my knee (I measured the other day with a co-worker during our shared non-contact period) and Peter's buried himself in the more existential task of how to time, manage, and prepare for the big career shift. Three weeks ago my wonderful parents came down from Montana for a much-needed family get together. I had two weeks with my parents, all to myself, and I didn't want to waste a minute of it on blogging, emailing, uploading pictures or any of that admittedly considerate stuff. We had a fantastic time and I hated to see them go last weekend. I'll sort and upload pictures soon so you can see all of the mischief we managed to get up to.

We're now back to a partially regular routine. I've already had two late nights at work; exams are looming and essays are changing hands faster than is comfortable (for all of us). This will likely be my life for the next 5 weeks so bear with me if there's another dry spot in the blog. To break up the monotony I'll be helping out with an Aikido club that another teacher is setting up at school. It will only be one night per week but it should get me out from behind the desk and moving around a bit.

Saturdays are now "Lost Hobby" days around here. I've picked up music again and joined a samba group with a friend of mine. It's nice to pick up a drum again and I'm having a great time getting to know the other band members. We're a diverse bunch, with one Kiwi, on Pole, a Scottish woman who has adopted Canada as her homeland and two Americans. The best part is that my sense of rhythm is still intact after all of these years. Peter is fixing up a bike so that he has something to toddle down to the ferry on. Bike parking is limited, and typically outside where bikes are pelted by sand and salt spray all day. He doesn't want to leave anything worth money down there, for good reason, so he's found a junk bike under our friend Mark's patio and they're fixing it up together. When all is said and done they have rebuilt a sunny yellow hipster bike. And then they can get on to the next batch of homebrew.

This friend Mark is also the cause of much merriment around our social group lately. He's just been published in Geology, the world's leading scientific journal in that field. Mark's masters thesis on how those peculiar cenospheres, normally a sign of industrial civilisations, made it into the fossil record at the time of the dinosaurs' demise, gained some recognition and now he's all over the news. The analogy we've come up with is that this is much like being voted an MLB MVP while still in the minors. It's been a joy to see him, a very modest Kiwi, get some recognition for genuinely good science. I've never seen a widely accepted scientific theory called into question before and it's exceptionally cool to get to see this process from up close.

And that's life in Auckland. We're plugging along, looking forward, and enjoying today. Photos to come of our first trip down to the South Island, along with mom and dad's adventures on the bottom of the planet.

Panorama-rama!

2008-02-20T18:13:00.000-08:00

One of the cool things about living in Auckland is the proximity to islands and volcanos. A while back we were tooling around on Rongitoto and I took some pictures with the intention of stitching them together into a panorama. A friend's project at work netted me some interest and a whole lot more knowledge of photo-stitching. After vanquishing apathy and ignorance, I produced this.

You can't escape cannibalism

2008-02-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

48%

I've put off taking this quiz as long as possible, partly because I was a wary of scoring higher than my husband and partly because I was wary of scoring lower than my husband. Now it's settled.

Eclipse!

2008-02-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

We didn't do a very good job of photographing the partial eclipse tonight, but we did have fun watching. For the record, the pinhole camera is nearly worthless. We finally did figure out how to use our binoculars to project a reasonably good view of the sun with a bite out of it. If I were watching again, I'd have some sort of tripod mounted telescope with a camera set to take time lapse photos. That would have been cool! :-)

Summer Perks

2008-01-19T21:55:00.000-08:00

This post is lifted from my teaching blog, nzontheheartofgold.blogspot.com. It's a perntinent addition to this space, though, as it's a good summary of what I've been up to as of late.

"I wish I got summer vacation off." I hear this all of the time from non-teaching fellow citizens. On rare occasions it's prefaced with some comment about how easy the job must be if you don't do it for a few months each year. I try not to feel too slighted when I hear that some people out there are equating the energy levels required to do the job with how much vacation time you get. The statement implies that the more time away from a job you have, the less you have to do in any 12 month period. If I weren't in the teaching field I'd probably think the same thing. When I then tell these people that I work 50-55 hour weeks on a regular basis they simply say, "oh," and drop the conversation thread. Quietly, though, I still imagine that these people wish they had my job simply based on the "off" time.

I've found that these comments are rare here in New Zealand. This is either due to the national reverence Kiwis have for vacation time or that people here value teachers enough to think that we deserve all of that time off for jobs well done. While I'd like to attribute the absence of derisive vacation comments to the latter, I am pretty sure that the real reason is more than likely the former. Most of the strangers I talk to, upon learning that I'm a teacher, immediately ask how I'm enjoying the holiday. No comments about teachers being lazy or questions about whether we get paid during our off months. I don't hear, "I wish I were a teacher" comments mumbled at the pavement. I do get lots of questions about where I'm going and what I'm getting to do now that I have some time off.

This is a pretty interesting thing for me. After hearing all of the griping about teachers working short days and working as "glorified babysitters" back in the States, I was expecting to hear more griping about vacation time here. Being in New Zealand, though, I think I have the support of a country that mandates a minimum of 4 weeks of holiday time per employee in the labour laws. New Zealanders truly value holiday time for spending with family and recharging the batteries, especially at the beach. Literally sitting on the beach for hours on end. They don't necessarily have to do much beyond take the occasional dip into the water, throw a ball around, and bring snacks to enjoy during a full day out. Most of the country takes a few weeks off between Xmas and New Years, which means that a not insignificant portion of the businesses here are closed for that period of time. Relaxation is a keen passtime for many Kiwis and I think that teachers' holiday time is more respected for this reason.

It's nearing the end of my holiday now. I've had about 5 weeks off from school at this point. Next week I go back to the school and start hacking out syllabi and introductory activities and the other formalities that go along with the beginning of the year. So what have I been doing with myself these long, lonely five weeks?

I've been reading. A lot. Mostly I've been exploring authors that I might be able to use in my classes. Jotting down ideas for activities, notes, grammar integration blah blah blah takes up at least an hour of each day. I've also had time to chew on some weightier "personal reading list" books that I don't have the mental energy to attempt during the school year. I just finished American Pastoral by Phillip Roth. It took me a mammoth three weeks to finish simply because I wasn't used reading non-plot driven novels. It was fantastic, though, and a recommended read for those pondering the American condition. Chuck Palanhiuk has been a wonderful summer friend, as has Chinua Achebe and Fiona Kidman. Now that the academic year is closing in I'll be diving into Harper Lee (it's been so long I can barely remember the plot) and our IGCSE anthology for this year. I'll get to revisit Maya Angelou, which will be damn fun, and all in the name of sharing books and poems with teenagers. After having time to just enjoy books I'm remembering just what it is that I love about my job.

And of course I've been visiting the beach during the day. I don't swim or get much done but I think that means that I'm still learning how to be a kiwi. There's a ways to go, though.

Most unhealthy breakfast ever

2008-01-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

No, it's not the Good Morning Burger (search for it on that link), or the Luther Burger, but it's pretty heart-stopping and ludicrously tasty.

I got the idea for this recipe after visiting Zigana, who incidentally make one of the most consistently awesome coffees in Auckland. (The Santini Coffee shop at the Devonport wharf is the other killer coffee shop that I've found.) Anyway, Zigana has a "Creamy mushroom and chorizo" breakfast that I felt obliged to reproduce at home. Here it is, but just remember that this, along with cookies, is a sometimes food.

Ingredients:
- 1.5 Tbsp butter
- ~1 pound mushrooms of your choosing, sliced into chunks or pizza-style slices
- 3 spicy chorizo sausages, sliced into little oblong disks (Use hard Spanish chorizo, not Mexican chorizo! For a size estimate, the chorizos we get are roughly hotdog sized)
- 3/4 tsp of smoked paprika (Go to a spice shop to find this. The McCormick paprika is a totally different thing. If you haven't tried real paprika, you are going to feel cheated that you haven't before.)
- 1/2 cup heavy cream

Start by melting the butter in a skillet over medium heat and then fry your chorizo until it starts getting a little brown and crispy on the sides.

Next, add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms give off their fluid. You should be able to deglaze the pan once this happens. Let the mushrooms cook for another minute or so.

Add the cream and the paprika and stir constantly until the cream reduces to a nice thickened consistency.

You can serve this with some kumara or sweet potato hash browns and it's damn yummy.

Shameless blog promotion

2008-01-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

Hi, all. Though I go for long stretches of blog-death, I'm trying to be more active on my personal blog. Content may not be suitable for young children. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Stop by sometime if you're in the bloggerhood.

Goat Island, Round 1

2008-01-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

As most of our readers may know it's basically summer vacation at our house. Peter still has to work but I'm off until later this month. Peter hasn't seemed to mind, though, as he had two three-day weeks back to back, what with the public holidays kicking him out of the office and all. He got Xmas Day and Boxing Day off and then New Years Day and January 2nd the following week. So what are we doing with all of this time off? We've taken a few day trips here and there but mostly have been enjoying lazy summer activities.

I don't see why people take time off between Xmas and New Years around here. Most places are closed except for tourist locations, and even then things are insanely crowded because they are the only places open. Take Goat Island Marine Reserve as a prime example. We've heard about this marine reserve a while back and decided to take one of Peter's freebie vacation days to explore. It was a beautiful day and we figured there wouldn't be a better time to do it.

The one hour long drive turned into a two hour drive as we hit a traffic jam on the highway just outside of Auckland. I guess everyone else decided to get out of the city for the day, too. It wasn't bad, though, as Peter had never been up that way and you have to go past some pretty scenic outlooks to get to the marine reserve. First gear makes for easy viewing out the window. Our plan was to get out there, take a glass bottom boat tour and then explore the shore a bit before heading home. If you follow the link to the boat tour you'll see a good shot of the beach when it's empty. By the time we got there it was shoulder to shoulder, shuffle your feet so you don't step on kids, couldn't find a spot in the shade to save your life crowded. We managed to make our way over to the section of the beach where the boat would land and found a card table with one person sitting behind it manning the little metal cash box. At this point we're pretty much used to paying with cash card everywhere, even for little things, as that's what everyone does in New Zealand. Everywhere. The boat tour turned out ot be a smaller operation than we predicted, and since we didn't have cash we couldn't take the tour. We did manage to see some fish from a perch on the rocks and a ton of snorkelers. There were more fish visible in person than on our video, but at least you can get to see a few samples of the kinds of fish in the reserve.

We looked out over the crowds and realized that it wasn't going to happen for us that day. Too crowded, blisteringly hot and nowhere to go because of the throngs of people. We snapped a few photos to lure potential visitors down soon (ahem, you know who you are) and then hopped back in the car. The day wasn't a loss, though, as the drive back was nice and we stopped for a beer at the Sawmill Cafe. They brew their own stuff and had some decidedly funky music playing. Interesting note: While this popular marine reserve didn't make it onto our NavMan's pre-programmed Points of Interest list, the Sawmill Cafe did. Figures.

This is the view of Goat island from the beach. Yes, there used to be goats on it but they aren't there anymore. As you can see, it's a small place with lots to do. We were also able to see Little Barrier Island from the beach which was pretty nice.

I definitely want to go back again. Maybe during the off season and with cash and a snorkel.

Just another memetic Monday

2007-12-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, it's not Monday. It's Sunday right now...I just found it very hard to find a synonym for memetic that started with an 's'.

I caught this meme from Steingruebl World Enterprises and thought I'd pass it along. For those of you new to the idea of memes on blogs, this is a little cousin of the traditional game of tag. If you read this meme you've effectively been tagged. You can now, if you choose to join in on the fun, continue the game on your own blog or in the comments page of this post.

Gift Quiz

1. "What was the best gift you have ever received?

The last Christmas I spent in the US before moving to New Zealand, my sister Monica put together a photo album for me. Each page has a little button that allows a short recording to be made. She had each person in our family put a picture in the album and record a message on that page of the album. It's the only place that I've heard some of my family members' voices for a year now, and it's gotten me through I don't how many homesick moments. Thanks, Monica. I don't think you know just how perfect a gift that will always be.

2. "What was the worst?"

Underpants. Without a tag. From a friend. In the third grade. Even as a kid I realised that, the cool My Little Ponies pattern aside, they were a pretty weird present to give a friend. I never wore them and never told my friend that I never wore them.

3. "What's the best gift you've given to someone else?"

I'd probably say that it's a three way tie between gifts I've given to my husband and two of my nephews. For our first wedding anniversary my husband and I took an anniversary/belated honeymoon trip to Europe. That was probably the best three week gift unveiling that I've ever experienced.

For Christmas a few years ago I gave my two of my nephews some special pictures I had taken the previous summer. That summer I had grabbed my camera and a nephew, in that order, then proceeded to execute a series of perfect "take your own picture" manoeuvres with each nephew. I framed these photos, tied ribbons around them, and gave them to my nephews before leaving the country. The following summer my sister's house was endangered by a forest fire. My sister, her husband and each of the boys were told to evacuate one evening on very short notice. The only personal items these nephews of mine chose to take with them other than their overnight bags were these framed pictures. Evidently they meant a lot to the boys and that means a lot to me.

4. "The worst?"

When I was very young I tried to make a gift for my father. When you're a poor 7 year old what else can you do? I chose colorful pipe cleaners as my medium of choice and decided to sculpt a wire-frame style fly fisherman (modeled after my ace-fisherman father). He would be sitting in a float tube, and holding a fly rod that bowed under the weight of a promisingly large fish. When I finished, my grandma assured me that it was perfect and I put it in a box, wrapped it kid style with plenty of tape, and set it under the tree. On Christmas morning dad opened my gift and looked at it in silence for a moment before stating, "how pretty...what is it, sweetie?" I think he felt pretty bad about having to ask, and I know that I felt pretty bad about giving him something that he couldn't recognise. The fuzzy fisherman didn't stick around on his dresser for very long after that morning. I think it was best for everyone involved to dispose of the horrid thing and put the mutual embarrassment behind us.

5. What did you get this holiday season?

I got some boxes of chocolates from a few of my students (before the school year let out-what gentlemen) a lovely artisan stoneware plate from my mother, groovy home made pot holders and pillow cases from my grandmother, and an absolutely fabulous day in with my husband. Peter and I watched a movie, played a game, took a walk in the rain, then cracked open a bottle of champagne with dinner. No fuss, no travel, no gifts...just each other. Absolutely perfect.

6. Where did it sit on the best to worst scale (best being 1, worst 10)?

Overall I'd rate the gift situation as a 2. The only way it could have been better was if the weather had cleared and allowed us to BBQ on the beach New Zealand style. As it was, the Xmas lasagne was pretty satisfying. And it always kicks ass to receive thoughtful gifts from loving family members.

News of the weird

2007-12-23T20:47:00.000-08:00

As if the xmas season couldn't get weirder, it turns out we have some Chuck Palahniuk fans here in NZ:

Drunk Santas storm cinema, leave children confused

Behaving childishly, and loving every minute of it

2007-12-08T17:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Peter and I did something neither of us have done since we were very young: we flew a kite. Peter was inspired by a few friends of ours who took him kite flying a few weeks ago. He found it more fun than expected, so we decided to venture down to the kite shop to get one of our own. We gawked at the kite-making bench that took up more space than the display floor, and the decorative dragon models that would undoubtedly snap in a light breeze. The guy who ran the shop had accessories for paragliding, para-boarding (skateboarding behind a big kite), kite fishing and all kinds of other fun things. Since there's always a breeze somewhere in Auckland kites are evidently a popular passtime.

We decided to get a small parafoil, which is a kite without a frame that catches the wind and inflates, creating lift. With a groovy purple, green and black tail it would look good from the ground and be an easy learner's model. It was reasonably priced, and because it doesn't have a frame that we could possibly crush in a bad landing we felt good about the purchase.

Here are the pics from our day out. We went to North Head Reserve, a hill in our neighborhood that always seems to have a bit of a breeze, and had a perfectly fun afternoon.

There were a number of other people out that day, including some paragliders. They drew a pretty good crowd as they hopped easily down the hill to catch the updrafts off the water. They attracted more of a crowd than we did, but a few kids wandered over to see what we were up to. Most of the time the gliders hovered over the hill, never far from the ground.

Below us at the beach a number of kite surfers bobbed in the water with kites ready, waiting for the breeze to pick up at water level. It looks like kites are a pretty popular toy for grown-ups. Peter's eager to try kite fishing next, so watch this space for pictures of a new rig and possibly something dredged up from the sea.

Randomness

2007-11-23T17:42:00.001-08:00

When I bought my current cell phone, I had all sorts of ideas about what I could do with it. You see, it's one of those fancy 'smart' phones. It turns out that a smart phone does marginally more than a 'dumb' phone, except you regret buying it more because you never use the extra features.

Well, one thing that my phone *does* have is a reasonably convenient camera. Occasionally when out walking around, I'll take pictures with it, intending to do something with them. In reality, they sit on my phone for ages until I delete them.

Not this time! I here submit an assortment of blurry, indiscernible, or otherwise baffling pictures downloaded from my phone. All pictures were taken by me, as far as I know. Perhaps you can help me figure out what's going on?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Heads Up, Y'all

2007-11-23T17:28:00.000-08:00

In an unashamedly pathetic move that will undoubtedly earn me some seriously bad mojo in the blogoshpere, I would like to use my family blog to bring your attention to my personal blog, nzontheheartofgold.blogspot.com.

I've put up some plans for a project that I need international help with. If you have about $3 US burning a hole in your pocket and want to know how to make people smile in New Zealand, check out my most recent post there.

I'll say no more. You curious readers can now go off to satisfy your curiosity quickly.

One Laptop Per Child

2007-11-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

By now, most people have heard of the OLPC, a.k.a. the XO Laptop, a.k.a. the $100 laptop. If you haven't, feel free to toddle on over to Laptop.org or, for a shorter synopsis, Wikipedia.

The goals are noble: giving poor kids in developing nations access to the some of the things that we now take for granted in more developed nations. Think of the OLPC as a relatively cheap care-package containing a full compliment of educational materials designed for individual and classroom use, a library of literature, a communications platform allowing them to communicate with peers via the internet, and other fun stuff like music composition software and games. The thing is nearly indestructible, can be manufactured reasonably simply (creating jobs within the country), and is largely user-serviceable inside and out.

The technology behind the thing is pretty cool too. It represents a re-thinking of what a computer is. Rather than measuring its performance based on clock speed or gigabytes of storage, its metrics for success are the number of things that you can do with it. Can you read its screen outside in the sun and the rain? Can you share any activity or project you are working on and collaborate with your peers? Can it find its way to the Internet on its own in sub-optimal conditions? Can it be dropped down a flight of stairs? Can it be taken apart by a child? Can its software be inspected and modified by a child?

The OLPC project is a non-profit project and they've accomplished amazing things so far. A lot of brainy people at MIT and elsewhere have clearly put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and creativity into the design. Now they are at the stage where they are trying to get over the initial production hurdles. Governments of developing nations don't want to be the first to put down money for a run of the things until they can see whether they'll be successful.

To kickstart the production, the OLPC project has launched a "give one, get one" program to finance the the first round of production. For the next few days, US and Canadian residents can buy one laptop for a poor kid in a developing nation, and one laptop for their own kid (or themselves) for $400--$200 of which is tax-deductible.

If you've got the $400 to spend, I recommend you do it. Thanks to my sister, Heather, I've placed my order. I don't know if the project will ultimately be successful, but I'd like to think that it's shown enough promise so far to warrant ponying up some money to see the project continue. I think I'll also be trying to spend some time developing content for it.

If you're on the fence about the project, check out David Pogue's review of the OLPC in the NY Times. Actually, I probably should have just linked to his review. He explains it much better and more succinctly than I can. That's why he's the tech columnist for the NY Times and I'm not. Also check out his video of the OLPC in action.

Sorry if this all has sounded like a commercial. I've been meaning to write about it for a long time, but haven't gotten around to it. Even if you can't afford the $400 right now to purchase a unit, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with it. I hope this is the future.

Taking the piss out of New Zealand

2007-10-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

For those non-Aussies and non-Kiwis out there this post is not an update about how I'm keeping up with my toilet habits. No, this is a celebration of the word 'piss' in the New Zealand lexicon and character.

In America this particular word has nothing but a bad rap. As a noun it refers to body waste, as a verb to similarly waste something that should be put to better use, and, when used as a slang term, it describes a state of anger. Piss is one of the 7 Dirty Words George Carlin rallies for as unfairly banned from use on network television. There is no positive context for the word piss outside of certain medical conditions.

Here on the other side of the planet this four-letter beaut is used in a more light hearted and jovial way. When you 'take the piss out of' someone here you are mocking them to bring them down a peg. Sure, this could be done in a malicious way, but for the most part it's a light-hearted national pass time. No one is exempt from mockery here. National figures, revered figures, honoured individuals, friends, neighbours, enemies and idiots are all subject to having "the piss taken out of them." Mockery is the great leveller.

I've been considering this phenomenon lately because New Zealand has been in a tizzy since the All Blacks lost their recent match with France and are now out of the Rugby World Cup. Initially there were quite a few angry/long faces around the streets and work places. People who were typically pretty jovial around work were actually bitter and non-communicative this last Monday. The Headmaster at our school made a speech at assembly that had the feel of an obituary. He called for the students not to feel let down or resentful toward the team or the referees that are now blamed for making bad calls. Instead, he encouraged the students to send emails of support to the team to let them know that they are still "our boys".

It's no secret that Kiwis take their rugby seriously. The All Blacks hold an elevated status of nearly divine proportions. Saying anything against the All Blacks typically earns you either some well-deserved flack for being an ignoramus, or suspicion that you're in cahoots with Australia. Either way you get mocked mercilessly and then assaulted with statistical and anecdotal information aimed at bringing you into the fold. Kiwis have rallied admirably around their team and their devotion is unrelenting. Definitely a good quality, right?

But this week I've heard, for the first time, Kiwis taking the piss out of the All Blacks. Now I may be wrong, but up until now I've always thought that the AB's were exempt from any mockery by Kiwis. Now I'm convinced that taking the piss out of people is indeed a national pass time with no exemptions. Here are a few jokes I've heard around the school this week:

Q: What's the difference between a tea bag and the All Blacks?
A: A tea bag typically stays in the cup.

Q: How is an arsonist smarter than the All Blacks?
A: An arsonist doesn't waste five matches.

Our International House of Pancakes

2007-10-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

We've been doing some inter-continental pancake recipe sharing lately. The Head Chef(s) at Steirgruebl World Enterprises posted a fantastic Buttermilk Pancake recipe that they've taken to making on weekends. It's fluffy, crisp, delicious and everything that the chefs claimed these pancakes would be. The truth in advertising is just as satisfying as these breakfast gems. Find the recipe here.

We really loved it but found that we rarely had buttermilk around the house, and frequently forgot to pick some up from the store the day before we wanted to make pancakes. So we started fiddling with what we typically had in the house and developed a modified recipe that is now a well-loved standard in the house. If we want to add berries to the mix, we still us the SWE recipe as they are fluffier and make space for fruit better. After a few rounds of the "oh, we don't have enough (enter ingredient here)" game we came up with something much akin to SWE's recipe but a little different.

The big difference is that we use a bit more wheat flour and substitute a yoghurt-milk mixture for the buttermilk. We liked the sweet flavour that the vanilla extract added, and so kept it, while cutting out the white sugar. My sweet tooth seems to by dying a slow death as I get older.

2/3 Cup White Flour
1/3 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/2 Tsp Baking Power
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt

1/3 cup plain un-sweetened yoghurt
2/3 cup milk
2 Tablespoons melted butter
1 egg
1 Tsp Vanilla

Mix wet ingredients together, then add salt, baking soda, baking powder and sugar. Mix until integrated, then add flours a bit at a time. The batter should be slightly lumpy, but pour smoothly.

Heat skillet over medium heat. Pour 2x 1/4 cup measures of batter into the skillet, cooking two cakes at a time. Remove from heat to a warm plate (in a warm oven works well). We like to layer banana slices and bacon inbetween the pancakes and drizzle maple syrup on top. The salty/fruity/maple-ey combo is pretty good.

If you make these and find a different way to make them, please share your changes. I'm always on the lookout for a good pancake.

Shangri La

2007-09-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

I have many strong feelings about living in New Zealand--most of them positive. Unfortunately, most of our friends and family manage to catch me when I'm feeling surly about things here. It stands to reason that, when I'm feeling good, I'm off enjoying myself and not talking to you all. Conversely, when I'm feeling least charitable toward my adopted home, I tend to look for friends and family to commiserate at. The result is that I often project an unnecessarily negative view of life on the upside down part of the globe.

By this point in my life, I've come to realize that the weather has a huge bearing on how I'm feeling at any given time. Because I've vowed to relearn some of the math that I've forgotten from high school, and in honor of my cousin Geetha who is studying to become a math teacher, I'll graph this relationship for you. You can see it's a linear relationship described by x = y. If you can imagine x being some measure of happiness, and y being the overall "niceness" of the weather, this graph works. Unfortunately, the relationship between hours of sunlight, precipitation, and my mood is a bit more complicated. I gather that relationship probably requires differential calculus and would be a much prettier graph.

My supervisor at work has mentioned the possibility of me supervising a Masters or Ph.D. project. "Umm, you do realize I have an undergraduate education in Liberal Arts, right? I mean, I'm not exactly a kung-fu math wiz," I say. That doesn't phase him, "That's okay, you can go a long ways on just differential equations you know." Right. Baby steps.

Anyway, this is mostly a super geeked out way of saying that the weather is getting better here in Auckland, and I'm rediscovering the perks of living in paradise. For example, the other day I was riding the bus home from the ferry terminal and had a fun coincidental experience. The Richies Bus Company allows drivers to listen to reasonably cool music (which probably explains why they are generally much friendlier than the Stagecoach bus drivers). Over the radio I hear the familiar intro to U2's song One Tree Hill. When I hear Bono get to the line where he mentions One Tree Hill, the bus rounds a corner and I can clearly see across to the actual One Tree Hill for which U2's song is named.

Just to keep you interested, here is an actual picture from my daily ferry commute. Sorry about the poor quality of my phone's camera.

Finally, as some of you already know I've started unicycling. My coworker Peter kindly brought in a couple of unicycles for us to play with, and I got hooked. Peter is a pretty hardcore unicyclist. He commutes regularly from near One Tree Hill to the central city on a 36"-wheeled unicycle. Furthermore, when I purchased my unicycle from his company he hand delivered it to the office--via unicycle! With the box for my unicycle cradled under his arm he rode from roughly Mount Eden into the central city through dangerous Auckland traffic. He said he got some strange looks from a bike courier headed the other way. I'm sure he did. Peter, of unicycle.co.nz, you've earned your bit of fame on our blog. Sorry I caught you with your eyes closed. (Yes, this is how he showed up at the office)

Here's me in my unicycling infancy. Peter is much better at this than I am and doesn't flail around nearly as much.

Make a guess, win a prize!

2007-08-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

Peter and I heard a song in a restaurant this weekend that was just too fun not to share. The lyrics are posted below sans title, artist, or sound file. If you guess the English title of the song you will be the lucky winner of a Mystery Prize from rainy/sunny New Zealand!

Our contest rules are simple:

1. The first person to post the correct answer in the Comments section of this post wins.
2. Name must be present on the winning Comment to be valid.
3. One entry per person.
4. Void where prohibited.
5. Winners will be contacted personally by the Prize Giving Committee. Prizes may take 2-4 weeks for delivery and include shipping and handling.

And yes, this is a dare to those of you living in the Southwest. Can you figure out the title to this song without pasting the lyrics into a Google search?

No rompas más mi pobre corazón
Estas pegando justo entiéndelo
Si quiebras poco más mi pobre corazón
Lo harás mil pedazos quiérelo.
No soy lo mejor ni tu única opción
No tengo más partido que mi amor
Dime algo baby bien
Ya no me hagas perder
Serás siempre mi nena como el sol
Te gusta vivir bien te juro que tal vez
Yo pueda darte algo de valor
Obtengas con amor y con mucho calor
Lo que nunca llegaste a tener

No rompas más mi pobre corazón
Estas pegando justo entiéndelo
Si quiebras un poco más mi pobre corazón
Lo harás mil pedazos quiérelo. uuuuuu

Ve y dile a tu mamá que no abra la ventana
Cuando te visito por las noches
Que tu tienes que ver si te puedo convencer
Para que tu me quieras como soy
Me he andado por las ramas
Por vigas y por nada
No tengo mas motivo que tu amor
Dime algo baby bien
Ya no me hagas perder
Serás siempre mi nena como el sol.

No rompas más mi pobre corazón
Estas pegando justo entiéndelo
Si quiebras poco más mi pobre corazón
Lo harás mil pedazos quiérelo.uuuuu

No rompas más mi pobre corazón
Estas pegando justo entiéndelo
Si quiebras poco más mi pobre corazón
Lo harás mil pedazos quiérelo. uuuu


Good luck!

American Pie

2007-07-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

New Zealanders love pie-not the kind of pie that most North American continent dwellers love, though. Kiwi's have savoury pies, which are small pot-pie sized pastry shells filled with meat and gravy. Sometimes they are topped with mashed potato instead of a top pie shell in an effort to cut the calories, but it doesn't help all that much: they're still basically gravy and starch. They come in vegetarian varieties and gourmet varieties, like curried sweet potato or pumpkin and lentil, but these aren't as popular as the good 'ol beef flavor.

Pies are a well established high-calorie delight for much of the country, kind of like hot dogs are America's favourite nitrate flavoured fat log. They're everywhere: convenience stores, grocery store freezer isles, festival events, schools, and special bakeries dedicated just to pies and sausage rolls (a sausage wrapped in pastry crust). There's recently been moves to ban their sale in school cafeterias because they're so unhealthy. Judging from the vocal backlash to this law, though, I doubt it will get very far. Kiwi's have a pretty strong love for their pies. I know the boys I teach are practically up in arms about it.

I've eaten a few pies at this point, and I have to say that I'm not sure that I'll ever get over my preference for pie as a dessert item. They don't do fruit or sweet pies as frequetly here and certainly not the same kinds of pies that you come across in the States.

In an attempt to make pumpkin pie, we found that they don't have the ubiquitous canned pumpkin in grocery stores. What takes up the space at the back of these peoples' pantries? What do they give away during food drives? When we asked around no one had even heard of pumpkin pie. In fact, the typical response was, "ew, pumpkin in a can?" Many Americans have found this lack of canned pumpkin decidedly un-cool, especially around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and 4th of July times. Some have even resorted to buying cans of the stuff when they visit home and bringing them back in their luggage. We have to have the stuff, and most Kiwis don't understand that until they've had a taste of pumpkin pie.

Since the precooked stuff is nowhere to be seen we had to cook some of the fresh pumpkins sold in grocery stores. The best recipe for pumpkin pie we could find was on the Cooking for Engineers site. We then looked up instructions for how to cook fresh pumpkin, grabbed grandma's recipe for pie shell and set to it. It turned out perfectly. The easiest way I've found to cook raw pumpkin is to just gut and cut it, put the pieces on a plate in the microwave, and cook for 7.5-8 minutes per pound. Large hand sized chunks seem to be the optimal size for even cooking, one pound at a time. Don't worry about cutting off the skin. It's much easier to cut it off once it's cooked and the flesh is soft. One pound of raw pumpkin will yield just about 15 oz worth, which is the average size of a can 'o pumpkin.

We've since turned a number of Peter's Kiwi co-workers over to the Pumpkin Pie loving way of life. A Canadian co-worker of mine has mentioned that she really misses the stuff, so her and her British boyfriend are next on our hit list. Some of my other co-workers overheard us talking about it and now they've asked me to bring some in to the office. If I ever get sick of teaching I could probably make a good living at this.

To balance out the scales of cultural swapping we've taken to making our own Kiwi pies at home. We stuff them with Mexican mole or carne asada filling to make them healthier and much tastier, though. Gotta get our Mexican fix.

American Independence Day in New Zealand

2007-07-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July!

Yes, I say this after reading shocking news about "un-American" actions by our political officials. Yes, I say this as an American who's living in an country who's official head of state is The Queen of England. And I definitely say that as a person who is wholly jealous of those consuming BBQ grub and watermelon, not to mention blowing things up, on a hot afternoon.

There's something about a 4th of July parade that is quintessentially summer. Even if we had had access to a parade down here, it wouldn't be the same. On the 4th we got a freakishly heavy amount of rain, including some sleet, and our front yard is now basically a bog. At the moment we're running the heater, as it's a very humid and cold 55 degrees. Think a cold summer morning up at the cabin after a thunder storm in the early spring.

But the night of the 4th, as we were lamenting the fact that our family members were likely to start blowing things up within a few hours, we heard the thud of large explosives going off. We thought it was the nearby Naval base at first, as they're prone to holding ceremonial cannon firing practice at odd hours. (We have no fear of the sounds of artillery fire coming from the Navy base: their total fleet could probably be counted on my fingers and toes.) Instead it was a rather large and beautiful fireworks display being set off over Rangitoto Channel. We gave our dinner on the stove a stir, grabbed our glasses of wine and stepped outside to see what the fuss was all about.

We live about 5 minutes walk from a beach that looks out to Rangitoto Island not far off shore. Someone was setting off a display from a barge inbetween the beach and Rangitoto and we could see the fireworks from our front yard. Our neighbour in the apartment next to ours came outside to watch it with us and wished us a "Happy 4th of July!" I was wishing we could have watched the show from the beach. Instead we waded out onto our soggy grass with our glasses of wine and watched the highest-shot rockets bloom over the corrugated metal roof of the neighbour's house. Everything else was a masked glow below the tops of the roofs. The show was brief, maybe 5 minutes. When all was done we went inside to a quiet dinner of central asian plov, as it's the best meal to have on cold winter's night, and another glass of wine.

All in all it was a very surreal night. Here's a file photo of the channel and Rangitoto Island. I climed a hill on this shore and saw a few flat barges bobbing out in the water. I'm guessing they were responsible for the good show the previous night.

I could use this opportunity to rant about the state of Democracy in America these days, but I won't. I'll instead relate a short conversation I had with some Kiwi's a few weeks ago. Some old co-workers of mine from Wellington came to Auckland and I met them for drinks in the city. The conversation made it's way to differences between the subjects that kids study in different countries, specifically the US and New Zealand. I mentioned that I was surprised to see high school "social studies" as two seperate departments, history and geography, and that it is only required that students take two classes in either department at the school I work at. That's two classes over 5 years of high school.

One of my co-workers mentioned that she had spent a few weeks observing in a US school and was very impressed that the kids had to take at least three years of history, two of which are usually US or State history and that Civics was required. Here, it's ok if kids take two years of history about other countries. She mentioned that the US students she talked to had a very good sense of where they came from, were much more savvy about current events, and knew quite a bit about national trends and attitudes toward larger ideas or philosophies.

My Kiwi co-worker, on the other hand, said that she was never required to take a single New Zealand history class when she went through high school. The first time she leared about the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document for the country, was at University when she took a class about the professional obligations of public service sector employees. American kids, on the other hand, get a full dose of the Constitution from an early age.

It made me feel proud to know that we, as a nation, are proud of our past. Sure it wasn't all rosy, but we're able to see the good for the bad and know that we have a hand in improving whatever bad situation we happen to find ourselves in (hint, hint). Americans have a tendency to gripe and complain but our civic involvement is fairly high compared to that of New Zealand. New Zealanders vote in high numbers, but volunteerism is low and most will readily talk about how cool other countries are ("You come from America? What are you doing here?").

Americans have a good sense of ownership (or entitlement, depending on how you look at it) of their country. Most would say that they are proud to be from America and most Kiwis are quick to point out that this makes American's very friendly toward them when they visit the States. This same co-worker pointed out that the Americans she met were very wiling and able to share the history or unique characteristics of their city or region. As a tourist she appreciated the info and a friendly face.

That's something I miss here. The information I most often get from Kiwis is directions to the best restaurant in town, and then directions to closest city that is bigger than the one I'm currently in.

Tiritiri Matangi: Once long ago...

2007-06-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time (two and a half months ago), I didn't have a care in the world. I sat firmly in the two week long school break between the First and Second Terms of the year. I had plenty of time to enjoy the last of the warm autumn weather. This is a story of what I did with one such day.

Since coming to New Zealand I've discovered how my comfort levels and my knowledge of what's going on in my natural environment are inextricably linked. Maybe I've been spoiled gowing up in Montana, but I miss seeing deer and elk and squirrels and bears right on the edge of town. Even snakes and muskrats have a place in my nostalia centres at this point. Since New Zealand doesn't have any native mammals other than bats and sea lions, and there are no reptiles here, that means I had to acquaint myself with bird and insect life. The bugs are creepy and slimy and cool, and the only one I really needed to know about was the Whitetail spider. It's not deadly but can give you a nasty bite that is rumoured to turn your flesh rotten if not attended to properly. You can learn more about them here. We've found a few in our house here in Auckland so far, but we seem to have gotten rid of them by this point. That means that birds are much more interesting.

A girlfriend of mine, another recent transplant here from Missoula, lives in the Bay of Plenty. She volunteers at a bird sanctuary that skirts her property in the country side and we've started talking a bit about the various kinds of birds that we see and hear on a daily basis. By the end of summer we decided that we would like to spend a day on Tiritiri Matangi, an island bird sanctuary off shore just a bit north of Auckland. She came up the night before and we were out early the next morning to catch the ferry to the island. It turned out to be the perfect day.

To start with, our ferry was greeted at the sancuary by a small pod of bottle nosed dolphins. This was the first time I had seen dolphins in the wild. I thought about trying to get a picture of them playing in the ferry's wake. I couln't stop laughing at the 50 some-odd people who kept herding from one gunwale to the next as the dolphins swam back and forth under the boat, though, so no pictures. We had a nice side-to-side motion going from all of the hustling back and forth. Kids and adults alike were having a great time; even the struggling boatie (that's Kiwi for a person who drives a boat) was smiling as he somehow managed to pull the boat up to the dock without slamming into anything.

When we stumbled off the ferry we were greeted by Greg the Takahe. He's an old timer on the island who's gotten pretty used to the people who come to gawk at him and his fellow island dwellers. He stood quietly next to one of the Department of Conservation workers while she told us about the island and how we shouldn't bring mice there. His much younger mate, Cheesecake, hid demurely in the shrubs, waiting for him to finish. Evidently Greg's a bit of a cradle robber; Cheesecake was only about 2.5 years old, while he was a ripe old 15. All I can say is, way to go, Greg.

A little history is required here. I'll make it brief. The island was once owned by a family named Hobbs. They quickly cut down the vast majority of the trees to make way for pasture land, as was the agricultural practice of the day. In the early 1980's the island was bought by the Department of Conservation, which promptly recruited an army of volunteers to re-plant hundreds of new trees in an effort to establish a bird sanctuary. Islands are particularly suited for this purpose, as many native bird species here are endangered because of threats posed to habitat, food sources and nests by introduced pests like possums, rats, voles, skinks and domestic cats. Greg is a pretty good example of why these pests are so dangerous: he can't fly and doesn't have any evolutionary defenses mechanisms build up against mammals. It's a good thing in one sense, though. He made for a pretty convenient photo op...and tour guide.

As a new comer to the island I was impressed by how well the vegetation had grown since the '80s. For the most part trees were standing at and above the 12 ft level and the bird population has surpassed expectations because of the good cover. There were a few glimpses of what the island would have looked like had the deforestation not taken place. This Pohutukawa tree hovering over Hobbs Beach must be over 100 years old, or so our volunteer tour guide told us.

Tiritiri Matangi is a small island, so Sara and I were able to see basically all of it in one visit. This was our view from our picinic site. Just off to the left we could see the occasional kite surfer, but for the most part we gawked at the nearly two dozen bell birds hanging out in the tree above us. The racket was wonderful as we ate our sandwiches. Bell birds are little greenish-yellow guys about the size of if a large finch. Their call is warbly with a higher-pitched lilt to it. Sara wanted to see these most of all, so our trip was doing pretty well by the time we sat down for lunch. Bell birds are pretty hard to come by on the main islands and we considered that another good omen for our trip.

Because nothing's more boring than reading about birdwatching, here are a litany of photos that I took, along with a few notes about the birds that they show. I only took pictures of the coolest birds that you can't find flying around most places other than New Zealand. Alas, most of them didn't turn out. These are the creme of my pitiful crop. Enjoy!

Red crowned parakeets feeding and bathing near the track. They're the little dark-green spots at the centre of the photo.

A Pukeko. We have some of these hanging out in our neighbourhood, too. They are an Auckland/Northland icon. They look a bit like a malnourished goose and can only fly enough to get to the top of a short tree, where they like to scream at you for making them use their weak wings.

The view looking out on Fisherman's Bay.

A rare Brown Teal duck. There aren't many of these left on the planet, so I'm pretty happy to have had them practically shove my feet aside to get at whatever it was that I was standing on. Sorry for the blurry photo. Evidently they were pretty hungry when we stumbled onto them by their pond.

Note: Only one bird was harmed during the making of this blog post. As I was typing this a Blackbird with striking orange rims around its eyes and an orange beak decided to go Kamikaze on the glass surrounding my front porch. Upon hearing the thud I opened the door to find the poor little thing talons-up on the front stoop. Rest assured it will receive a poper burial under the Morning Glory tree in the yard. Please add "window glass" to the official list of threats to New Zealand bird species.

Seattle Espresso

2007-05-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

Just outside the Auckland ferry terminal sits the "Seattle Espresso" coffee shop. Being U.S. expats, we tend to notices all things American here in New Zealand. Needless to say, walking past Seattle Espresso every day is a bit of a head trip. On my way to an interview a few weeks back I was dragging, so I decided to stop in for a bit of Seattle Espresso and purchase some performance enhancing drugs there.

"What's the deal with the Seattle branding?" I asked the woman behind the counter. I expected them to say that the owner was from Seattle. Or maybe they had a sister in Seattle and they fell in love with the espresso there. Possibly they'd come clean and admit that it was just a marketing gimmick. Nope. "We import our beans from Seattle," she replied.

You've got to be kidding me, right? I suddenly felt very sheepish standing there with my cup of espresso. I'm no geographer, but I'm pretty sure that coffee is grown nowhere near Seattle. Yup, Central and South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia, and Madagascar seem to be where most of the brown stuff comes from. I realized, chances were better than not, that my coffee:

1. Was grown somewhere south of the equator.
2. Was shipped via container vessel north to Seattle.
3. Was offloaded from a container vessel, divided up by a middle man, and distributed to some coffee roaster in Seattle.
4. Was roasted.
5. Was packaged into some sort of flavor-retaining packaging.
6. Was then probably air-freighted back across the equator to Auckland and delivered via courier to Seattle Espresso.
7. Was ground up and put under high pressure steam to extract only best oils and flavors from the well-traveled bean, was mixed with some frothy milk and put into an insulated paper cup and served to a guy who used to live (relatively speaking) very close to Seattle.

Sustainable? Only in Dick Cheney's wildest fantasies.

I'm not ready to give up my newly found addiction, but I think I'll be making a conscious effort to buy coffee that was at least shipped raw to New Zealand and roasted here.

NZ medical fun: Part II

2007-04-16T13:53:00.001-07:00

I went in for my follow-up visit yesterday to the doc. (Follow-ups are half-price within 48 hours you know.) Anyway, the doc pretty much figured that after four days, I probably wasn't too likely to have appendicitis. Likely culprit? Salmonella or giardia.

The docs ordered some tests done and I should know for certain within the next couple of days. I think it's mostly a moot point though as I'm feeling about 95% today.

Anyway, this wasn't intended to be so much of a "How's Peter Doing?" sort of post. I more wanted to give a little glimpse into what seeing the doctor in NZ is like.

In general, it's a lot like going to a clinic in the US, but with a bit less waiting than I've ever seen in the US. Your experience may vary. Both doctors that I talked to seemed knowledgeable and willing to speak to me frankly and in technical terms. They have a network of medical diagnostic labs here, so any time you need to have blood work or any other testing done, you simply go to the closest branch. That's extremely handy. And, being NZ residents walking in off the street, two doctors visits cost a total of $105. Not super cheap, but definitely better than paying a premium for health insurance plus a deductible. There are some "frequent user" programs that can drop those prices even more.

It looks like I won't get to experience a kiwi appendectomy after all, but from what I've seen of the system, it works. Gee, who'd have thought? Socialized medicine works? Shocker!

First experience with NZ medical establishment

2007-04-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

So, almost three days ago, I started having a low grade fever and chills. Pretty standard. Chilly weather has started, and I pretty much figured that I was about due for a case of the sniffles.

Well, about two days ago, I started getting some mild pain in my lower abdomen. Nothing to write home about, nothing bad. Well yesterday that mild dull aching pain migrated and seems to have localized itself in my lower right abdomen. Ugh.

I called the local hospital and asked if I should come in. They referred me to a medical advice hot-line staffed by registered nurses. She asked me a bunch of questions about the pain, the nature of the pain, any fever, etc. She then cautiously said that I should probably take a trip in to the doctor and recommended a 24/7 clinic here on the North Shore. I asked her if I should go in now, or wait till morning. She told me it was my choice, but that she'd suggest going in now.

I met a doctor who poked and prodded my abdomen. I had the classic textbook symptoms of appendicitis--pain that starts below the navel and eventually settles around the appendix. However, I didn't have severe pain and I didn't have "guarding" or uncontrolled tensing of the abdominal muscles when poked in the appendix. Pretty suspicious stuff, but nothing to get too worked up over. He recommended drinking plenty of water and sleeping on it. Presumably it would be better or worse in the morning.

It's morning now and I don't really feel better or worse. After I have a chance to wake up a bit, I think I'll probably call back in to the clinic and ask, "now what?"

In Other Easter News...

2007-04-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

You'll be pleased to note that 16,121 bunnies were killed in Central Otago during the annual Easter Bunny Hunt this year. As a major pest in New Zealand, Kiwis are pretty pleased with the haul.

Another story in today's paper reports that the Easter kiwi (that's the bird, not the fruit or the person) has been voted the preferred Easter mascot for New Zealand by the people at the Makenzie Easter Show in Canterbury.

Maybe we'll see chocolate kiwis popping up in the seasonal isles of the supermarket next year.

Montana Jazz Festival - Tauranga review

2007-04-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

Easter weekend we hopped in the car and headed down to the Montana Jazz Festival in Tauranga (yes, New Zealand). Being jazz aficionados from Montana, it's a little strange seeing Montana logos, jazz, palm trees, and beaches all in one place. We're familiar with this excellent Montana Jazz Festival. Additionally, we spent some quality time with our good friends Tim and Sara who also moved from Missoula to New Zealand and are now living in sunny Tauranga.

Tauranga was clearly the place to be over the Easter holiday. New Zealand has a silly law that causes most businesses to close Easter weekend. I say it's a silly law, because most kiwis don't even go to church. Enacted 17 years ago, it's not like the Easter weekend trading law is some sort of grand old tradition. I'll go on record as calling it a lame, anachronistic "blue law" that has no place in a secular country.

Tauranga doesn't suffer from the trade act because it has a jazz festival. I think it's because we jazz types are in cahoots with Satan, and he knows which strings to pull to get an exemption. I'm not sure what it means, but in Tauranga, you could even get some "coffee up your jazz."

As we arrived downtown, it was clear this was a big festival. A number of roads were blocked off and the sound of one band bled into the next. As we walked down one street, we saw the NZ Air Force band playing an excellent rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." Hey, that's pretty funky. The female vocalist singing most definitely had pipes. They finished to boisterous applause despite playing a small side-street venue. Then they launched into another Stevie Wonder chart. They must have been doing a Stevie Wonder tribute gig. Hey, they're an Air force band, they can get away some kitsch--it is a festival after all.

But as we walked from venue to venue, I noticed that everyone we heard was playing covers. They weren't just covers, but covers of pop music done "jazzy." The jazz we heard were mostly standards. There's nothing wrong with playing some of the standards, but it felt a little tired to hear the most standard of standards against a backdrop of jazzy pop oldies.

Out of the approximately 15 songs I heard, some 12 were clearly identifiable covers or "ultra" standards. I hate to sound like a whiner, but a steady diet of (I'm not making this up) the theme from "Love boat" or a swing rendition of "All Along The Watchtower" started grating on me.

By the time we decided to head back to Auckland, I'd pretty given up on hearing jazz. It was fun; it had a nice carnival atmosphere (complete with bouncy castles, jugglers, and escape artists), but it wasn't really a jazz festival in any way that I was familiar with. It lacked authenticity. I began to realize that the festival was a ruse for bars to sell a whole lot of food and booze on Easter weekend.

Fortunately, on the way back to car we found salvation. There was a little trio setting up down one of the side streets. They had their white hippy van parked next to them, their dog lazily lying in the shade.

And I'll be damned if they weren't playing honest to goodness real jazz. They had some rough transitions in spots, but they were playing together and off of each other. And for the 40 minutes that we listened, they didn't trot out any pop covers.

Tim asked what their band was called. "Do you have any suggestions?" they laughed. This was in sharp contrast to pretentiously named groups like the Grant Winterburn Experience. Thank you, anonymous band. You saved Easter.

...

As a postscript, anyone near Missoula in April should go hear the Buddy DeFranco Jazz Festival at UM. Bob Mintzer is going to be there, and he's brilliant.

Move along, nothing to see here

2007-03-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

A plaque in Devonport:

How I'm spending my summer non-vacation

2007-03-07T00:18:00.000-08:00

Did you know that everything is the opposite of the US in New Zealand? Students go to school in the summer, boys play jump rope in high school, and teachers can actually pay the bills on a first year teacher's salary.

Of course I'm speaking with a bit of hyperbole, but not much. Indeed, it's summer right now and school started for me 5 weeks ago. While I was baking away in my office last week I wandered over to the window to get a bit of a breeze. My shared window looks out over one of the sports fields, and what do I spy on the far edge of the PE activities but a group of students playing jump rope. Blink, blink. At a boys' high school. Blink, blink. Later that day I was talking with the boys on the tennis team I manage, and I mentioned that boys don't jump rope in the States. Nor do they usually play volleyball competitively in high school. They were aghast; volleyball is one of the more popular sports for boys here. "Skipping rope is just...well...fun," they added. We all had a good chuckle about those backward Americans that were stuck down in the Northern Hemisphere.

Of course there are those things that span cultures as well. Boys still scratch themselves flagrantly in public places, their feet smell just as bad (if not worse) down here, and I'm realising that teaching is basically the same no matter where you do it. Given a little support and respect, every day can be productive and enjoyable. And, of course, we all have our off days.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) my life is revolving pleasantly around my work these days. Sorry about the lack of blog posts, but I just haven't really done much in the last month or so. I get to work while the sun rises over Rangitoto Island, which I can barely see from my office window, and I typically don't finish my day until about 6 pm. Monday nights I go back to school for an evening Maori language course that is run through our Community Education department. Teachers study for free and partners get in half price, so Peter's taking a Russian conversation class on Tuesdays.

Saturday mornings I cheer on the tennis team that I "manage." I've not been asked to coach, but instead to organise a group of boys to play socially. We practice once a week if they are done with their homework and I go to their matches every Saturday to keep score. So my Saturday mornings are spent outside in the sun with a group of friendly young men who enjoy playing a sport simply for the fun of it. Things could be worse; I could be asked to coach pee wee soccer in the suburbs of America.

I've had some requests to share my experience teaching in New Zealand schools. My goal is to set up a separate blog for that purpose. Watch this space, as they say, for the upcoming URL. I'm probably going to get that going come the end of the first quarter of school. That's coming up in-yikes!-4 weeks. Man! Time flies when you're having fun.

Pictures of my school will be forthcoming as well once I figure out if it's legal for me to go snapping photos of my workplace to post on the net.

Did you know? (Plus a summer update)

2007-02-22T12:51:00.000-08:00

California redwood trees have been imported to Aotearoa. I took this picture at the One Tree Hill Domain in central Auckland:

Rest assured, California readers, that you will not get homesick here.

On another note, summer is treating us well. I sort of feel like we've just arrived here in New Zealand. Despite many of the disparaging things we've heard from many kiwis about Auckland, I have to confess that I'm really liking it here. In retrospect, moving down in time for a second winter was ill-advised and probably soured us on Wellington. Fortunately, summer erases all problems.

Yeah, traffic's bad, but it could be a lot worse. Yeah, public transit could be better, but I can mostly get where I want to get on it. Yeah, finding real chiles and tomatillos is nearly impossible. But all of this has the spectacular backdrop of beaches, ferns, grass-covered volcanic cones, shimmering water, and impossibly blue skies.

The only thing I can really complain about these days is that I'm getting a touch bored staying home while Roni goes to work. (What a problem to have!)

So, I've officially started looking for a new job. Words cannot express how much more relaxed I am about finding a job this time. Roni's job pretty much pays our bills, so I feel like I've got some more leeway to do fun stuff. I'm going to look into doing some contract work. It's less stable than a "real" job, but it's potentially more lucrative and would give me opportunities to take time off if and when I have a project that I want to chase after.

Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop blogging, brushing up on my programming skills, and studying for the Russian conversation class I'm taking on Tuesday evenings.

Yup, life is good. I could get used to this.

Devonport auto show

2007-01-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

The other day, while driving home, I was struck by a strange conglomeration of surprise and surprise at my lack of surprise. Here's a photo:

My surprise: Hey, there's a Corvette. You don't see many of those here.
My lack of surprise: Huh, (look carefully now) it's got a California licence plate.
My surprise at my lack of surprise: It's got a California license plate???

Okay, I'll admit it, we drove right by the turnoff to our house so that we could tail them. We had to get a picture. Unfortunately, my cellphone was the best we had. I was driving, and Roni didn't know how to use the camera on my phone. Sorry, this was the best picture we could get.

Anyway, upon closer inspection we realized that, not only was this a California registered Corvette, the steering wheel and driver were on the traditional American side of the vehicle. Very odd.

We thought about following them and asking them about their car and why they had it in Devonport, but we decided that would make us look too stalkerish. In retrospect, anyone who loves their car enough to ship it to New Zealand probably wouldn't have minded bragging on it to a couple of American emigrés.

Trivia:
Corvette rhymes with courgette, which is what they call zucchini here. Messed up, huh?

Living in the 'net boondocks

2007-01-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

The stages of culture shock are reasonably well known:

1. The honeymoon stage ("gee ,everyone / everything is so different and nice")
2. The irritation / anger stage ("why the heck do they do that?")
3. The rejection stage ("oh, it's kiwi, it must be bad")
4. The integration stage ("eh, when in Rome. . .")
5. The reentry stage ("Were things really like this before I left?")

I preface this entry with the qualifier to point out that things could really be worse. We live within a 5 minute walk of the beach. I get a great view of the Hauraki Gulf and Auckland's majestic harbor bridge when I walk down the driveway to the mailbox.

Ultimately, however, this story is fixed somewhere between points 2 and 3 on the culture shock list. Those who are faint of heart and those who are enamored with New Zealand's telecommunications infrastructure are advised that this author intends to express some particularly vitriolic sentiments about New Zealand telecommunications.

First, a little history: When we arrived in New Zealand, one of the first things we did was to look for a café with wireless internet access. Auckland, City of Sails, home to approximately 1.2 million people, is a modern, cosmopolitan city. By contrast, Missoula is a city of under 60 thousand, surrounded by a vast expanse of rural. In Missoula, the coffee shops have offered free wireless internet, or 'wifi,' for several years. In fact, Missoula's wifi hotspots came to several local bars and even to the Mount Olympus of microbreweries, The Kettlehouse. (As an aside, people sometimes ask us if we miss anything from the States that they could send. Yes. We miss Double Haul IPA from the Kettlehouse. It comes in shippable cans.)

The state of wifi in Auckland, however, was a bit different as we soon found out. We stopped into a handful of non-Starbucks coffee shops along Queen Street, the cosmopolitan center of Auckland, and asked, "Do you have wifi here?" Most responded, "Huh"? A few responded, "Uh, no."

Hmm. . . This doesn't look promising. Well, we needed to tell the family that we made it alive, so we swallowed our pride and went to a Starbucks. "$10 / hour for wifi?! " Well, that clearly wasn't going to be sustainable. So, we economized on internet usage and found other internet cafés that were (*cough*) less posh than your average Starbucks (and not even in the same ballpark as our local coffee shops in Missoula).

We went through a dark period in Wellington when we ended up buying dial-up access just so that we could search for jobs online. But, I found work and we moved into a slightly more permanent apartment. We could get broadband! In our own house!

We were so excited, we hardly even cared that our broadband was:

1. incredibly slow
2. required us to pay for a phone line that we didn't need or want
3. limited the amount we could download (In Missoula, like most places in the US, broadband is unlimited)
4. cost twice as much as the service we left in Missoula (above and beyond the $30/month phone service that we didn't really need).

This was all okay until a variety of factors led to us moving north from Wellington to the warmer and much less windy climate of Auckland. Upon planning our cross country move to Auckland, one of the first things we did was to schedule a service move with Telecom for our phone and Internet. We were very explicit about timing. I was planning to take some time off to do some personal skills development, and the Internet factored heavily into those plans. We didn't want any screw-ups. We called well in advance.

Fast forward to our arrival in Auckland. After a long hard day's drive, I decided it would be nice to kick back, check my e-mail, and catch up the news. So, I plugged in our networking stuff and got ready for some much deserved web surfing.

Nothing.

Okay, let's do some troubleshooting (as you know, I'm rather proud of my Shaolin-like computing abilities.). About 2 minutes of troubleshooting later and I've decided to see if I can even get a dial tone off the phone line. I plug in a phone and listen. "Hey, hon! I can hear the ocean in here." Frack.

The next day, we go to the neighbor's apartment, introduce ourselves, and ask to use her phone to call Telecom. While we're making small talk with our neighbor, we ask her if she ever has problems with her phone. "Oh yeah," she says, "Since we had a big lightning strike last year, everyone in this area has been having odd problems."

Oh, boy.

I reach Telecom, report the fault, and they tell me that it's going to be over a week before they can get a technician out to look at the problem. I, downtrodden, hang up. No, wait! I come from America, land of consumer activism. Didn't a Montanan just win a New Zealander of the year award for her work in consumer advocacy? She even lives up here in the North Shore!

The next day, I called back to Telecom and very politely told them my predicament and asked them if there was any way they could expedite the technician. (Word to the wise: always be friendly with anyone you speak to at any tech support group. Being rude exponentially decreases your chance of a favorable resolution.) "Yeah, we can get a technician out in 3 days." Not the best, but better than the previous estimate. I take it.

Finally, Telecom Technician Day comes. We are elated. After digging around at our jacks for a while, and poking around outside, we have a dial tone and Internet! We are elated. . . .

Later that day: "Does it seem like things are really slow?" I ask. "Yeah, it does," says Roni. "Does it seem like a lot of pages won't load on the first try?" I ask. "Yeah, it does," says Roni.

I get back on the phone with Telecom and explain the predicament. They say they'll get a tech out in about a week. Yay.

Technicians come, technicians go. I estimate I've called Telecom about 15 times in the last month and a half. I think Telecom has sent a half dozen technicians. I have case numbers with Telecom's technical support, Xtra Broadband's (Telecom's broadband partner) "advanced ADSL helpdesk," Telecom's customer support, and one of Telecom's line repair outsource providers--plus a couple other case numbers that I can't remember where they go to.

Last week we had a very friendly line technician come to our apartment. He determined the problem was definitely not in our house, but in the main line servicing the area. "Oh yes, that lightning strike last year really caused a lot of problems in this area," he explained. Unfortunately, he couldn't really do anything. It was another group's responsibility, and (wouldn't you know it?) he can't see the fault anymore anyway. Of course he couldn't see the fault; our DSL connection drops intermittently. He told us to let them know if we continued to have any problems.

I've decided I need to ramp things up a little. I started using a network tool called 'ping' to determine when our connection goes down. (I apologize to the techies for the oversimplified explanation. I also apologize to the non-techies for the overly technical explanation.) Basically, what I've been doing is saying "are you there?" to Telecom every three seconds for 24 hours at a time. If Telecom responds, I know that our connection is still up.

In one 24 hour span, our connection might drop as few as 20 times. 10 hours in to the current test, it has already dropped over 40 times. D'oh!

"Pinging" doesn't just tell me how often our connection drops. It can also tell me how long it takes information to cross our scratchy lines to Telecom. The time it takes for us to talk to Telecom would not make a satellite internet provider proud. (Satellites beam a signal over 22,000 miles and are notorious for high latency pings.) Ouch.

We can't even carry on an instant messenger conversation without frequent interruptions. A common conversation looks like this:

Friend: "Hi, Peter. How's it going?"
Peter: "Great. How are you doing?"
Friend ". . ."
Friend ". . ."
Peter: "Are you there?"
Friend ". . ."
Peter: "Damn."

There are plenty of reasons to move to NZ. If you are an IT professional or must otherwise rely on an internet connection for your livelihood, New Zealand probably isn't right for you.

Anyway, I called back to Telecom today to let them know that, yes, I'm still having the problem. They're going send a tech out sometime next week.

Beef...oh, so THAT'S what's for dinner!

2007-01-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

Continuing on with our "Things to Eat in New Zealand" thread of blog entries, we have a few new gems for all of our devoted readers. Some of you may remember the Great Wallaby Incident of '06 we wrote about a while ago. Well, for all of you living in cattle country, here's another meaty wonder just for you.

Peter immediately started laughing in the grocery store when he saw this and snapped a picture with his cell phone. I just sighed; I had seen this before in other supermarkets. What has the world come to? And just what were these sausages made of if not beef? They had no ingredient label, so my mind just had to wander through all of the worst case scenarios as we walked by the sheep's kidneys toward the kleenex isle. The best thing I can say about these sausages is that they were much cheaper than any of the other items in the meat case. Needless to say we didn't get any.

We also saw this product near the checkout stand. Part of me actually wanted to by a box, just to compare it to the original. I know that they call raisins 'sultanas' here and that it probably tastes exactly like it does in the States, but still. Unfortunately, like most of the imported food here (and a lot of it is imported), it cost way more than I wanted to pay for it. We're in the process of sifting through the markets to find the cheap and healthy locally produced food. It's not proving an easy task, but since when is anything healthy or responsible easy?

I'll end this post with nod to all of you Futurama fans out there. I actually found this product at a dairy (aka convenience store) in Wellington. Not only was is Bachelor's brand food product (conjuring up images of Fry living on specially formulated brown stuff in the year 3000), but it claimed to be the UK's favourite mutilated vegetable matter.

My official review is mixed. It was better than I expected it to be-reminiscent of the condensed Campbell's split pea and bacon soup I loved as a kid-but still a cylindrical mass o' mashed vegetable that tasted just about as good as something like that can. I would only recommend this product to people with a nagging and sick sense of curiosity who also have $2.50 to spare.

Greetings from Auckland

2006-12-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

So...Auckland.

Big. Sprawling. Culturally diverse. Warmer than Wellington. Rolling waves of suburbia. Surrounded by teal water and walkable-in-your-bare-feet beaches. Home of the Sky Tower and the All Blacks. Also goes by the friendly monicker of "The City of Sails." Population: 1,158,891. Number of cars: roughly 660,000. And now officially the home of Peter and Roni.

Fact: Aucklanders spend, on average, more money on transportation than food. That'll give you an idea of the car culture around here. Yes, it's as bad as Kiwis say, but I don't think it's any worse than driving during rush hour in any major US city. Needless to say, things are spread out enough that we bought a car on our first full day here. She's small and a bit older, but she's in good shape.

Our furniture and other belongings arrived in good condition a few days after we got to town, and we are now officially mostly unpacked. We still need a few pieces of furniture to really get the place up and running (bookcases and such) but we really like the new place. Let's take a little tour, shall we? A big welcome from Peter...

As you can see from the pictures it's nice and sunny, with good Rata wood floors and plenty of trees and flowers to lend shade. I'll get more pictures of the wonderful flowers hanging out around back. It has a shaded yard for barbecuing and friendly neighbours all around of the human, cat, dog and unidentified caged bird varieties. We even have a lemon tree in the back yard. We're told that it will produce lemons if we water it enough, so we're on the ball with that already. I can't wait to be able to say, "Hon, we're out of lemonade. Would you mind popping out to the tree for me?" I doubt it will produce that much, but still, a lemon tree!

We're also about a 15 minute walk from one particularly nice swimming beach. That will definitely come in handy once the weather gets even warmer.

Well great, you might say, Auckland seems pretty nice. You have an apartment you like, you have a month off before you have to go to work, you have swell neighbours. Are there any down sides? Well, as I mentioned earlier, the city lay out is generally sprawling and there is a huge number of cars on the road. Traffic is truly horrendous. The roads here seem to be full to overflowing with single occupant vehicles. And though there are marked bike lanes in a lot of areas, the condition of the roads and paths is such that, as Peter found out today, you can easily take a nasty fall if you don't go pretty darn slow. There are obstacles everywhere, gaping holes in the pavement, rain gutters that run parallel to the roadway and are just big enough to suck your front tire 3 inches down into a sewer drain. In order to get a really good hike or bike ride you basically have to drive someplace. This is far from bad, considering that most of the places we can go to are within a 30-45 min drive, but somehow that seems inconvenient after living in a place like Missoula. To all of you Missoulians (well, Montanans) out there, consider yourselves lucky that nature is literally right at your back door.

Speaking of thing outside back doors, we have something outside ours that we're fairly certain no Montanan has. We have a feral hedgehog. And not the small pet store variety, I'm talking BIG hedgehog. We put some particularly stinky trash out on the back stoop our third night here and later we heard the signature rustling of a garbage snatcher. Having grown up in an area where racoons regularly scatter the contents of a garbage can around an area the size of a baseball diamond within 5 minutes, I ran to the back door with broom in hand. When I opened the door a rather large and un-perturbed looking hedgehog was munching away on our refuse. It kept its nose down and gave me a sidelong glance, as though to get a good, long look at that annoying thing making all the noise. We poked it gently with the broom handle to get it out of our trash, and eventually it waddled away. We almost had the camera out to document the new neighbour but we were too late. Supposedly hedgehogs like to eat dairy products and fruit, so we're going to bait it in order to get a picture of him. Dumpster diver or no, he is a cute little bugger.

Peter thinks we should name him Sonic. I vote for The Hauraki Homebreaker, after the name of the gulf that separates North Shore City from central Auckland. What do you think, gentle reader? The floor is now officially open for all suggestions original and plagiarized. After all, what is a mascot (a status I think he deserves) without a name? A lousy one, that what.

It's evening here and we're closing up for the night. Bugs are much bigger and thicker here, so it's time to close up and snuggle under a comfy quilt with a book (thanks again, Mom, it looks and feels oh so wonderful!). We'll leave you with a picture of the Harbour Bridge and the Sky Tower as seen from the end of our street at dusk. Both are Auckland icons. The trees covered with red blossoms are Pohutukawa trees, commonly called New Zealand Christmas Trees because they bloom in December. They smell wonderful and have red, whisker like petals tipped in yellow pollen. The city is now bathed in pinkish flakes of a New Zealand Christmas.

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-30T23:18:00.000-08:00

On a lighter note than the last post...Happy Halloween! I have to admit, I miss the general revelry a bit more than I thought I would. Even though we didn't do anything more last year than carve jack-o'-lanterns and buy candy that no one came for because is was too cold, at least we got to see kids get excited about institutionalised make-believe. I like the fact that in America that kind of imaginative revelry is possible and even encouraged for one night of the year, even if my adult life doesn't always make the time for it.

Halloween isn't celebrated nearly as much here as it is in the States, but I get the feeling that it's starting to catch on. There are a few stores that have advertised costumes and candy, and there are a few stoops in the neighbourhood with carved pumpkins on them (not the big orange kind but the smaller peach-coloured kind you get for cooking). I've even seen a few clubs downtown advertising parties, but they're pretty few and far between. All in all there's a distinct lack of orange here. I did see a black cat today, so I'm actually taking that as a good sign.

There's another holiday later this week that may be overshadowing this new-fangled Halloween stuff. It's called Guy Fawkes Day and it's causing all kinds of fire-cracker fun. Basically, this Fawkes fellow tried to blow up King James I and the rest of the House of Parliament in Britain. The original plan was to light off 32 barrels of gunpowder stashed in the basement of the House of Lords on 5 November 1605. This came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and was a planned act of violence by an angry group of Catholics against a Protestant government that didn't exactly have a good track record of treating Catholics with respect. Needless to say old Guy was caught on 5 November, tortured and summarily executed. Some argue that he was tipped off by a member of his group who feared for the lives of innocent civilians, but no one knows for sure. What we do know is that 5 November, or Guy Fawkes Day, is now either celebrated as the day a traitor was struck down or the anniversary of an attempt to do away with intolerant government. I suppose how you celebrate the day depends on your political persuasion. You can find out more about this interesting holiday at www.gunpowder-plot.org.

So far I get the impression that the holiday, in it's modern form in New Zealand, is an excuse to buy fireworks legally and blow them up at all hours of the day and night. Officials keep warning that if the sparkler bombs and random acts of arson don't stop they'll ban the sale of fireworks to private citizens. We'll have to see what comes of it when the holiday passes, but from the crime stats in the daily news it's not looking good for the Kiwi pyros out there. The holiday used to be celebrated with bonfires (the holiday is also known as Bonfire Day) and the burning of Guy Fawkes in effigy. The effigy-burning isn't as common anymore, but playing with fire is still the way to do it up right here. We're planning on getting our fix of explosives at a professional fireworks show over the harbour this weekend. Should be sweet as!

America: You are making us sad.

2006-10-28T22:43:00.000-07:00

What is a blatantly political posting doing on this otherwise happy go lucky blog about a foolish twenty-something couple selling most of their stuff, packing up, and moving to New Zealand? It turns out that American politics are unavoidable even on the other side of the globe.

After the dozenth person asked Peter last week at work, "Hey, Peter, did you hear that the US just suspended habeas corpus?" you start to think that there might be something wrong.

Actually, we've been of the firm belief that something has been wrong for some time, however, things are clearly getting out of hand. The fact that the Bush administration now has the means and the motive (and one can assume the intent) to disappear U.S. citizens merely by having them declared "enemy combatants" is shocking and should never, ever happen in a country which professes to value liberty.

Let's not go on at length about this one here, but we're merely going to refer you to Keith Olbermann's eerily direct essay, ""Beginning of the end of America".

The second scary realisation came this weekend when we read about new provisions in the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" that erode the previously rigourous controls on the president's ability to use the US military against US citizens living in the US. As this article points out, there is a technical definition for this: martial law.

Now, whether you believe that Bush intends to abuse this power or not, is immaterial. Maybe he won't. But do you trust the next president, or the president after that not to?

Even legal powers can be abused. In this sad, scary blog a college grad student is harassed by the FBI. His crime? He pointed out that certain airline security measures could be circumvented by someone with the computer skills of the average 12 year old or an above average chimp. Never mind that Bruce Schneier pointed it out in 2003, or that Senator Charles Schumer did in 2005. Fiction? We wish we could say it were. From Mr. Soghoian's blog:

I didn't sleep at home last night. It's fair to say I was rather shaken up.

I came back today, to find the glass on the front door smashed.

Inside, is a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers - and various other important things. I have no idea what time they actually performed the search, but the warrant was approved at 2AM. I'm sincerely glad I wasn't in bed when they raided the house. That would have been even more scary.

All this, and the security theatre last time we visited the US, has us wondering about the collective health of our nation of birth. The kiwis that we meet here are pretty uniform in their opinions. Most seem to like America and Americans very much. However, they are equally of the opinion that our government was fraudulently elected and is now running roughshod over it's own citizens and the rest of the world.

If this is all a bad dream, how do we pinch ourselves awake?

Roni & Peter

Blown away by Wellington

2006-10-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

The other day at work, my british coworker stumbled in about 10 am, his usual arrival time. What was unusual was that he was looking even more dazed and confused than he generally does.

"Quite a wind out there."

"Yeah," I said, watching a plastic bag outside get scooped up and launched vertically 10 stories.

Almost at a mutter he continued, "I dropped my wife off today for a tennis match and I walked over to the office from there. I walked around the corner of a group of buildings and I must have caught the wind just right, but it took my glasses off."

"Wow! That is an impressive wind!" I said. "So, did they get scratched when they fell?"

"I don't know. The wind took them and flung them across four lanes of traffic. By the time I got over there, I couldn't find where they had gone."

I'm sure the story continued from there, but I think I had already begun to wonder what I'd look like with a glasses band or maybe one of those chains that little old ladies wear.

Not to sound like a whiner, but I counted the months of predominantly inclement weather we've had here in Wellington so far. May, June, July, August, September, and now October??? What the hell? I thought New Zealand is supposed to be warm and sunny?

To be fair, October has been reasonably warm. We've only had to run our electric heater a couple of times so far this month. I've asked people if it clears up much. "Aw, yeah, well October is really the beginning of the windy season, but heading into December summer is brilliant."

Great.

Meanwhile, up in Tauranga, our friend Tim is enjoying sailing and sunny weather. The lesson here? In the distance between Billings and Missoula, you can go from sunny skies and calm weather to gale force, antarctic wind.

So, where does that leave us? Extremely happy to be looking at heading further north. Roni just got offered a year-long position in the North Shore area of Auckland. My job has been a bit of a dissapointment, so I'm not really too sad at the prospect of having to find a new one.

They say, "Nothing beats Wellington on a good day." Problem is, there are shockingly few of those.

The Interesting Thing About Public Transit

2006-09-11T01:47:00.000-07:00

Since arriving in Wellington, public transit has been my lifeline to work. We live on the opposite side of a 'mountain'- read 'hill' if you're from Montana-from the rest of the city, and the only way through when wearing professional attire is via bus. Most mornings, this takes me to the train station where I board a car for destinations on the northern end of the harbour. While it takes a little longer to get around than by car, I somehow don't feel like such a nameless face when I'm on a platform with many other nameless faces. A teacher at an area school made the point that commuting alone creates a sense of separateness, and even conditions us to pull away from people we don't know. I have to say that this is a fairly accurate and astute observation.

While I haven't made any friends per se on a train or bus, I've definitely met a number of characters that have become familiar faces. There's the ticket taker on a frequently taken train of mine who is there every morning, without fail, with a hearty "good morning, how are you today" and a smile (from under a huge red mustache). A small thing, yes, but a nice way to start the day. Then there are the two 20-something guys who always sit near each other, each reading parts of the same paper, buy each other coffees and get off the train together, but never speak a word to each other while actually ON the train. My favourite, though, is the young angry bus driver who works the afternoon shift in Porirua. He's not in the least self-conscious about flipping off fellow motorists, and he'll mutter the most foul obscenities under his breath when the middle school kids press the call button and then don't get off the bus. I always smile and thank him when I get off, and he always says "cheers" with a smile in return.

Even on the street at crosswalks and bus stops people will strike up small conversations with you about whatever happens to be going on. I've encountered this congeniality since the first day we got here, but this willingness to interact has never hit me as strongly as it did at the train station earlier this week.

I was at a coffee cart early one morning waiting for my cuppa. The woman in front of me had placed a rather large order and was frantically counting out coins to pay for it all. To our left sat a train waiting to pull away, and I noticed a conductor waving her arms in the direction of the coffee cart. I thought nothing of it, seeing as it wasn't my train (or it could have been that early morning I-really-need-some-coffee haze clouding my mind). A minute later another conductor came up to this woman in front of me and asked her if this nearest train was hers. When she said yes he told her that it was leaving right then. Her face froze, and you could tell that she was stuck having to choose between dashing for her train empty handed, or asking the barista to give her her money back. Instead of heading back for the train or telling the woman to hustle it up, the conductor took one look at her conflicted expression and politely asked the barista how long it would be until her drinks were done. The cart employees were just about done, so the conductor waited with this woman and even helped her carry her drinks back to the train. Another conductor was waiting nearby to pleasantly shoo them onto a car. The minute the car doors closed, the train took off.

I had to pause at this, dumbfounded by what I had just seen. The first thought through my mind was "well, that never would have happened in Germany". Then I thought, "wait a minute, where would that have happened other than here"? I had just witnessed a quintessentially kiwi encounter. It's this willingness to interact that makes New Zealand unique, a sort of every-day-diplomacy that keeps everyone moving along congenially. Things are rarely black and white, and from my perspective it seems like Kiwis grow up knowing that if you just talk about an issue a little bit all parties can usually get what they need. No need to fuss, shout or throw down ultimatums. One has no reason to pull away from others here; to do so would actually do more damage.

It's nice to know that kindness can happen at 7:15 am before you have your coffee.

Have you eaten your wallaby today?

2006-08-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

When I came down here, I was expecting to get to eat some different foods. But not wallaby. I figured that 1. those cute little critters only lived in Australia and 2. they weren't a food commodity. And thanks to travel, my assumptions have been proved wrong yet again. There are a few of the little buggers on parts of the south island (transplanted there by humans), and they are obviously making their way into the food chain somehow. I don't know if they're farmed, or if they're hunted (much like possum is hunted because of it's ivasive and destructive nature).

This edible adventure happened a few weeks ago when Peter and I went out for pizza. We saw a special on the board for a wallaby pizza with nuts and orange relish. Thinking it couldn't taste that bad, we went for it. And we were right; wallabies are as tasty as they are cute. They taste like a good beef shank, and the orange relish made it wonderful sweet-savoury dish.

Watch out, wallabies, you're now on our culinary hit list.

Wintry Goings-On

2006-07-20T12:26:00.000-07:00

Little more than a month ago, we were living in what seemed like limbo. No jobs, no permanent address, no mental energy to really take time to enjoy sightseeing (the worry that comes along with a job search is uniquely plaguing). Then, just like those warm and sunny winter days here, some goodness come out of nowhere all at once and without warning.

Within the course of about a week and a half, both Peter and I landed jobs and we found a decent apartment. Just like that. And we've been at a sprint ever since.

Peter's job is with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in a security architecture capacity. And I found a relief (substitute) teaching pool that arranges work for relief teachers at all of the various schools in the Wellington area. There are so many of them that these pools are a pretty common and handy way for us relievers to get and maintain contacts.

Since I still had to wait for a bit of paperwork to get processed before I could start working, I took on the temporary job of getting our apartment into shape. You don't quite realise how much crap you have--and need, really--until you either move it, store it, sell it, or replace it all. In our case, until you have to sell it all then replace it. Oy.

Since we don't have a car, I've been making plenty of trips in to town on the bus and getting as much as I can carry back without knocking elderly women out of their seats. It probably would have been a lot easier had we a car, but then again it would have been a lot easier to spend more than was necessary had we a car to carry a bunch of crap in. At least this way we're more aware of the necessities and not tempted to get too many fun things. Although it has been pretty fun to outfit our kitchen with decent cookware and our living room with matching furniture. We even have room for a dining room table (as if the quasi-British accent didn't make us Yanks feel civilised enough).

So here we live, in our own flat not far from our last place in the Hataitai suburb, with work to occupy our days and errands to occupy our evenings and weekends. We're into a new routine, and, although it's keeping us busy, life is good.

Peter's work is interesting, as is mine, and we're starting to get a sense for what it's like to really live in New Zealand. You learn quite a bit about a culture from dealing with people on a professional level. We've learned that the morning tea ritual, a break at mid morning where people relax with a snack, is pretty common at work as well as for tourists. We've also learned that it's not uncommon for work places to go out on a Friday after work to have a staff drink at the pub. Social time seems to be pretty important here.

I'm also getting to learn a lot about the culture from the kids I meet in the schools. Children are culture sponges, and everything they do has been taught to them by through their parents, the movies they watch, and the values placed on them by society. They're turning out to be a curious mixture of Kiwi and American culture, and it's pretty apparent that all of the American media, music, and marketing that makes its way here has had a big impact. I've been told to keep an eye out for American spellings in English classroom here, as most kids type their projects in Microsoft Word, which has a default spell checker set to American spellings. Odd, eh? I guess that's one more incentive for me to quickly learn to spell, punctuate, and conjugate within the language system here. We've even met some Kiwis who actually know more about American history from watching shows like Deadwood than some Americans do after having gone through US schools. You have to hand it to the Kiwis; they're a pretty culturally savvy lot.

We'll be posting again soon about some of the fun things we've done and seen when the sun comes out here. The sun isn't a common visitor for us at the moment, but when she comes out the whole of Wellington scrambles outside. Unfortunately, the work-a-day world is just as boring here as it is in the states, so not much to record there as far as photos are concerned. Stay tuned, we'll be posting again soon!

Talking to Peter & Roni

2006-06-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

Hey, all. This is a quick note to let you know that Roni and I are available via Skype pretty much all the time when we are home. Our joint username is 'schmiedeskiwis' and you should be able to reach us pretty much as reliably as via telephone.

For those of you who don't know about Skype, it is a piece of software that allows you to place internet telephone calls for free. The quality is generally on par or superior to telephone, especially if you have broadband. Quality is acceptable even if you only have dial-up Internet access. Please run (don't walk) to http://www.skype.com and download it.

When you call here, please remember the time difference. Also, we haven't (yet) figured out a good way of accurately setting our status, so it may show us online/idle/whatever regardless of where we actually are. Suffice it to say that, if you ring and we're home, we'll answer. It's a lot like a regular telephone that way :-)

We may eventually switch over to a different internet based phone service, but until that time, Skype works very well.

Happy Queen's Birthday!

2006-06-04T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today New Zealand celebrates Queen Elizabeth II's birthday. Her birthday is actually 21 April, but New Zealand celebrates on the first Monday of June. The country enjoys a three day weekend, and there are a few ceremonies held here and there (though there was nothing special going on here in Wellington).

The nation-wide excitement that happens on the Queen's Birthday is the Queen's Birthday Honours list. This is a list that the Queen comes out with to acknowledge those New Zealand citizens who contribute to New Zealand's culture and society. You can see some of the recipients here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/feature/story.cfm?c_id=513&objectid=10385054

As far as I can tell, most people use the weekend a lot like Americans use the President's Day weekend: make home improvements, take skiing trips, visit family, go shopping, etc. One of the main differences is that here, any business that chooses to stay open on a public holiday like this has to pay their employees holiday pay. This means that restaurants will tack a 15% surcharge to your meal (a very fair thing to do, I must say), and some stores and shops choose to close in order to avoid the added operational costs. So it's a crap shoot as to what's open and what isn't. We spent the day in classic kiwi style: we went shopping for furniture for the new apartment and went out for lunch. After all, it's our new patriotic duty. :)

The Weather Gods Must Be Crazy

2006-05-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Old Man Winter is the same bastard wherever you go. He has this knack for finding your comfort zone and then, with the fingertips of one hand lightly touching those on the other and a maniacal gleam in his eye, nudging the temperature and wind speed just beyond it. I normally consider myself tough when it comes to weather; anyone from Montana has to to avoid the mockery. But I feel that, because I grew up in Montana, I'm also tough enough to take the humiliation standing tall.

I, a country girl, am hiding from 45 degree weather.

It was bound to happen at some time. Like all Montanans who leave their native habitat, I knew that my body would go into shock from the warmth and humidity, unable to cope with hospitable conditions. I knew that eventually my blood would thin, I would gradually switch from wearing long sleeved T-shirts to wool sweaters, and that I would take to using an umbrella instead of just nestling into an ever-dampening jacket collar.

Perhaps it's because I had this image of New Zealand as a tropical paradise. I came here looking for lush, warm, sun drenched valleys safely hidden from the snowy mountains by a wall of silver ferns. Research told me that it can get quite cold in most of the country during the winter, but because I just left a Montana winter behind, my desires overshadowed common sense. I feel a lot like the Montanan in spring who pulls out the shorts just a few weeks too early; I'm stubbornly (and unsuccessfully) trying to force the weather to accommodate my pasty-fleshed desires. I think I'm going to put away the tank tops and go shopping for a few of those comfy looking New Zealand wool cardigans.

That being said, we've been getting a healthy amount sunshine. When those days roll around we hop on the bus and head out for a walk in a new-to-us part of town. We've mostly been exploring the suburbs, as we've been apartment hunting, but on occasion we venture into the more natural parts of the city.

Not too long ago we heard that a seal colony comes to shore every winter near Island Bay, a southern suburb of Wellington. Deciding that while it was breezy and grey, it wasn't all that cold. So off we went to find some seals. Island Bay is named after it's main island feature, Tapu Te Ranga, which served as a refuge for the Ngati Ira Maori tribe when they were under attack. It protects the bay from the harsh Cook Straight weather, and is rather nice to look at, too. The shoreline in this area is fairly rocky, and the tide pools collect surprisingly little plant life. Here's one of the more occupied pools we found.

While we didn't see any seals or blue penguins (who also come to shore here), we did get to watch a number of birds playing in the updrafts generated near the cliffs. With the weather getting colder by the minute, we headed back to our flat for the day. These sunny periods just don't last long enough for me.

Lucky us!

2006-05-21T20:28:00.000-07:00

Just another quick note to let everyone know that we got our passports back from London complete with immigration stamps and everything! We would have let you know sooner but we were distracted by "Lucky John" a street performer with a heart of gold. (Yes, that's a six-inch nail in his nose.)

Mr. Rodgers, Eat Your Heart Out

2006-05-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

This morning turned out to be exactly the opposite of what we planned.

We had set the alarm for 'early', 6 a.m., so we could get out for an early breakfast and get some work done at cafe with broadband access. So what do we do when our alarm diligently reminds us of our ambition? Like red-blooded Americans, we turned off the alarm and slept for another two hours. So much for self-guided ambition.

But, determination has a handy way of turning into simmering coals of guilt, and we decided not to write the day off. It was sunny, a first in at least three days, and looked like a great day to explore the city. On our way out we stopped at our newest coffee hangout here in Hataitai, Salvation Coffee, for a bite. We started chatting with the owner, and he was able to offer us some insight on the rental situation in this neighbourhood. A couple at the next table had some more information on the rental market, and before we knew it we had been chatting for nearly two hours.

These types of incidents aren't uncommon here. We're finding that people are ready to lend a hand if they feel it will be helpful, and typically introduce themselves to strangers more than is normal in America. As in the case of this morning, we've been able to get some good info on how things work here. The people we met today were able to give us some great insight on the rental market, tips as to where to find good cycles, and they offered us a different perspective on the war in Iraq. I was even able to make a professional contact by the end of the conversation (one of the chaps we talked to has a friend who teaches high school English and offered to pass my contact info along to her).

Not exactly how we planned to spend our morning, but it wasn't exactly bad way to spend the morning, either.

I guess the moral of the story would be this: don't be afraid to offer what you can to those who look like they could use it. While we've all grown up with the advice "don't talk to strangers" ringing in our ears, perhaps closing off those lines of communication is what keeps us from becoming anything other than strangers. I've come to the conclusion that this shrinking global community of ours needs bigger neighbourhoods.

Trying on a New Routine For Size. Mmmm...Roomy.

2006-05-10T00:51:00.000-07:00

Truth in Life #1: Adventure is the spice of life.
Roni's Truth in Life #2: Living out of a suitcase stinks.

So how to reconcile the two? Funky dresser shopping! We'll need an apartment to keep said dresser in, though, and that means choosing a neighbourhood, which will in turn depend on where we find work.

Sigh...I suppose this logic dictates we finally let go of the vacation portion of our trip and get down to business. So we've been filling out applications, getting details squared away, and going to job interviews this week. While no one really wants to let go of that sweet goddess called holiday, work and a routine puts vacation time in perspective.

Having a routine has helped us immensely in our reluctant retreat back to normal life. We've taken inspiration from our moms and set a bed time and rising time for ourselves. We're also cooking meals in our flat quite a bit, although popping down the street for a little taste of Hell is always a temptation. (For those of you unfamiliar with NZ's culinary scene, Hell is a pizza chain that has all kinds of sinfully delicious pies. In this picture we're enjoying a taste of Wrath.) Funny, it isn't as hot there as I've been led to believe...must be the humidity down here.

During the day we get down to business, and we reserve the evenings for relaxation. We're even developing a social circle through the Aikido class we're taking three days a week. This has been the best lifestyle choice we've made here so far. This dojo practices the same style of Aikido that I trained in in the Missoula, with the expected stylistic differences of the sensei, of course. My body's felt right at home on the mat so far, and the people we train with are such a friendly and energetic lot that we feel very welcome. I'm quickly understanding the comforts of physical exercise (read: getting thrown around).

Here's a picture of Hataitai, the neighbourhood we're staying in. We're able to see Evans Bay, a bay in Wellington Harbor, and the waters of the Pacific from just up the street. It's a quiet little area with a great community feel to it. And it's only a 10 minute bus ride into the CBD, which has been very handy since we don't have a car yet.

Our first trip back to the US

2006-05-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

Being in a foreign country has its difficult moments. For example, just the other day I said to Roni, "Hey, we should stop by the American embassy to see if it's 'bad' to be out of the country and for our passports to be in London without us." Why do our passports get to travel to sunny London without us, you ask? Well, it has to do with our residency visas. Apparently, if you come from the US, as skilled migrants to NZ, you get your residency visa processed in London. Perfectly comprehensible. Why should I be able to get a residency visa in the capital of one country when I can just as easily pay an expensive courier to expedite our passports to another?

So, we decided to take a trip back to US soil to find some answers about passport partedness. One 10 minute bus ride and a few blocks of walking later, we found ourselves separated by only a tall, grey, iron security fence and a concrete guard station from Old Glory (bless it) waving in the gentle breeze.

We talked to the security guard standing behind thick glass via an intercom, "Hi, um, we're American... citizens. We have a question about our passports." The security guard smiled and responded in a friendly kiwi accent, "Sorry, all passport services are administered by the consulate in Auckland." Hmm... It looked like we might not be taking a trip to American soil after all. "Okay, well, we really just have a question. We don't really need passports or anything, we just want to know if it's okay for us to send our passports to London for NZ visa processing..." He smiled again and explained that this US embassy was only for diplomatic relations and that there really weren't any citizen services at this location. "Hey, but if you want to pop inside for a second I can give you the contact information for the consulate in Auckland."

We went around the side door and he buzzed us in. Inside was a metal detector and a sign saying that any mobile phones, cameras, or other electronics were not allowed through. Otherwise, it was just a plain, grey, bare concrete building. He gave us a slip of paper with the U.S. Consulate General's telephone, fax, e-mail, web site (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~amcongen No, really.), and street address. As he turned away I asked, "Are we, um, technically, you know, on U.S. soil?" He gave a big grin and said once again in his best kiwi accent, "Yes. You're safe in here." I laughed. I said that I hadn't felt particularly threatened so far in NZ. He laughed louder.

We left, walked past the protesters camping in front of the embassy, our mission accomplished... mostly.

It's now Monday morning, and we gave the consulate in Auckland a call. "Well, if you need to take an emergency trip back to the States, you won't be able to do so without your passports. Other than that, there isn't really a problem. Just be sure to make copies of your passports."

For those of you feeling cheated for having just read this dull account of our passport details, I have a special treat for you. Just as I was talking to the consulate, what I'm pretty sure was a pirate ship sailed past, just barely visible from our flat. I hastily took a picture and cropped it for your enjoyment. (Sorry that it's pixelated. It was really far away.) Roni would like to point out that, while pirates can be salty, they may, in fact, be less salty than Marmite. You be the judge.

Adventures in Grocery Shopping

2006-05-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

We walked into a neighbourhood grocery store, on a quest for a taste of home. Since we're staying in a place with a kitchen, we decided to make ourselves at home in kiwi culture by making one of our favourite dishes from the states: chicken soup with tofu and leeks. We were sure that we'd be able to find all of the necessary ingredients, and we were really craving a taste of home.

The first steps into any grocery inevitably lead you through the produce department. In a foreign country this is roughly like falling through the rabbit hole: things are familiar, but rearranged and slightly off kilter compared to our sense of normal. The colours look a little different, prices are based on kilograms instead of pounds, and foods that would cozily rest side by side in the States now lie a respectable distance from each other. We picked up the obligatory kiwis, much larger than we're used to seeing, along with some fiejoas (these are related to the guava family, but are green, tomato-like in texture, and taste unlike anything I've encountered to date). Far from disgusting, we picked up enough to snack on for the next few days.

Limes, check. Leeks, check. Cilantro...hmmm, it should be with the rest of the herbs. No dice on a cursory glance. We head for the nearest employee.

"Excuse me, but do you sell cilantro?"

The gentleman gives us a confused look. "What? What is that again?"

"Cilantro. An herb, has small flat leaves like parsley, very fresh taste?"

"I've never heard of that. Let's see, maybe this is what you're looking for," as he leads us to the beet greens. Not quite.

As we try again to explain what cilantro looks and tastes like, two different shoppers make their way over to us. Evidently foreigners fumbling through grocery stores is a spectator sport here. They both start offering possible names for this mystery herb, showing us a variety of plants, smelling and peering into our faces to gauge our reactions. One woman sniffs her herbs, mulling over our newest rendition of a description. "Oh, you must mean coriander?" She offers me a sniff of her greenery.

Yes, the scent matches. It looks about right too. I'm tempted to pull off a leaf to chew, but somehow that seems too personal (as though putting my nose into another woman's groceries isn't).

The stock person breathes a sigh of relief. The mystery solved, he can now assuredly lead us to the herb section, deftly recommend the best buy, and go about his business. We grab a package of coriander and head for the next isle. Mystery solved.

Tofu, chicken, broth, a bottle of wine. Kiwi's are crazy about their wine, so we figured we'd start the monumental task of sampling the regional products. Ring it all up...uh oh, carded for the wine. (What do you mean you don't accept a Montana driver's licence as proof of age?) Evidently buying wine is a much more important task than renting a car, or driving legally for that matter. We need our passports to prove that we're old enough. We decide to forgo the wine for the moment and complete the purchase. Groceries in hand, we catch the next bus back to our neighbourhood.

Mum's words about a job well done ringing in my ears, I collect my passport later that evening and head back for that bottle of wine. Ultimately it wasn't very good, but we now know to bring our passports with us when we go to the grocery store. We also know to start thinking of coriander not as simply the spice, but as the plant that produces it. And we try to go to the stores often now: it's nice to cook for ourselves, save some cash, develop a routine and, most of all, taste home.

Nearly legal!

2006-04-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

The immigration gods have answered! We received an e-mail late last night informing us that our residency application has been approved!* (*It's now all over but for the paperwork.)

Sorry for the short entry, but that's really all there is to it.

Down to business in Wellington

2006-04-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

At some point during each and every vacation, people get tired of living from suit cases, staying in expensive places, staying in places that they wished they had spent more to not stay in, eating out, cooking in borrowed kitchens, etc. They wish they were home so that they could bask in the drudgery of daily life, sit back, enjoy a good beer, sleep in their own bed, and not be expected to do anything—no expectation to have fun.

Now, if we still had these things, and on a predetermined date, we would be brought back to them, I guarantee you that travel weariness would have taken a lot longer to set in. Sadly, I think both of us are ready to be done with the vacation phase of our trip, and we haven't even been to see the South Island yet.

Don't get me wrong, travel weariness is not the same as homesickness. With homesickness you feel bad even if you have no rational reason for doing so. Travel weariness is simply the desire to veg-out or maybe remember where you are when you wake up in the morning.

Far from bummed out, our trip from Tauranga back to Wellington was a pleasant reminder of what we like about NZ. We showed up at the airport and had a nice conversation with the Turkish counter agent. We payed for the overage of our baggage and sat down at the café at the Tauranga airport. The airport felt like a small-town airport despite Tauranga being over twice the size of Missoula.

A group of schoolboys came in—wired from plastic bags full of the spoils of Easter—and their chaperone told them to go outside as to not bother the other passengers. So, they went outside at sat at the picnic benches separated by a lawn and a four foot chain link fence from the runway.

They announced that we should all board, and so we just walked out the door and up to the plane. There was no security screening. We got onboard the plane, and in a few minutes we were whizzing down the runway, with people leaned over the fence and waving to us. I'm sure that security is tighter if you are flying out of an international concourse, but it was nice to get a glimpse of a society that isn't afraid of itself. And you can feel it, that at all levels, kiwis are not destroying themselves psychologically from within the way that I feel the US is.

So here we are back in the bustling but homely (that's homey, not ugly, for you non-kiwis) capital. We're glad to be here, but nevertheless tired of travelling. We'll be staying at a bed and breakfast for a few days until we can find something a little cheaper and a little longer term. I'm actively submitting CVs now, and once one of us has a job here, we'll be looking to find and furnish an apartment.

I'm still keeping an eye out for positions elsewhere, but at this point, Wellington seems like the place. Also, we had our immigration interview last week while in Tauranga. Our friendly immigration agent, based in London, called and asked us a series of questions about how we were finding life in NZ and what we knew about various cultural aspects. I feel very good about the meeting. He told us that they would be making a decision soon and that we would likely hear back within a week. The three outcomes are: 1. application denial (i.e. we go back to the States, lick our wounds, and find jobs there.) 2. work permits 3. residency approval.

Application denial seems unlikely at this point, and while residency approval would be much more convenient for us, long-term work permits would allow us to meet most of our objectives. Our fingers are crossed. We'll keep you posted.

Yarrr... the sea be a cruel mistress

2006-04-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

Casting a line into water and pulling out something creepy and delicious has long been a favourite activity of mine. We figured the Pacific ocean might be just big enough to afford us that opportunity here in NZ. So we woke up Saturday at dawn or a little before and moseyed across the street to the Tauranga wharfs to get on a boat with Tim and kill us some sea life.

$190 NZ later we were on a boat, outfitted with poles and all the squid we could want, and motoring across a placid harbour. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sun and only a few rain clouds receding in the distance. After a brief stop to pick up more passengers at Mt. Maunganui, we—roughly twenty souls—pulled away from the wharfs to seek our glory.

As we rounded the mountain to exit the harbour, a statue of a Maori warrior knelt as if to lay a fern leaf at our feet. The Maori welcome visitors to their marae by placing a fern leaf at the visitors' feet after performing a ritual resembling a haka. If you are a friend, you will pick up the fern leaf and carry it with you, being careful not to break it or let it touch the ground. So too was this Maori statue welcoming us to the open ocean, or perhaps it was to greet us on our return.

As we left the calm of the harbour, Tim remarked at how placid the ocean was. With swells of a meter to a meter and a half, our fishing boat slowly made its way toward the island of Motiti, which we could see in the distance.

Our first fishing stop was approximately thirty minutes from the Mount, and that's when Roni and I had our first realisation that the ocean was not at all like the various rivers and lakes that we were used to. Yes, the constant heaving of the ocean—mild though it was—had made us both violently ill.

My first thought was to curse my parents. Couldn't they have taken us to the ocean once as children so that we could have maybe developed some kind of tolerance to sea sickness?

"Don't worry," said Tim. "Everybody gets sea sick at some point, even veterans. I knew a guy who has been sailing since..." I looked over and saw a kiwi leaned over the railing. Okay, it wasn't just the Montanans.

You'd think that at some point you'll get over it, but you don't. We had booked an all day excursion and that's roughly how long we were sick. Roni took the opportunity to head below deck and get some sleep. Her body had had enough. I took the "stare at the horizon" approach. I think she faired slightly better, but she missed more. Tim tells me that you don't even feel meter and a half swells in a sail boat because a sail boat has a keel. Note to self: be on a sail boat next time.

I wasn't in much of a condition to cut up baby squid and feed them on a hook. No, I wasn't squeamish about the squid or the fish smell—simply focussing my eyes on anything closer than the horizon caused intense nausea. I didn't feel too bad about not getting to fish, however, because almost nobody was catching anything of legal size. People were mostly hauling in baby snapper, removing hooks from them, and throwing them back. And that's a fine spectator sport.

We moved around to a few more spots and people mostly had the same luck: bad. Toward the end of the day, we had positioned ourselves in a spot where most of the swells had died down. Miraculously, my sea sickness subsided. Equally as miraculously, larger fish started biting.

I took that opportunity to pick up my previously unused rod, cut up some squid, and put them on the hooks. Wham. Baby snapper. Oh well, toss him back. Rinse, spin, and repeat a few times. Hey, this feels a bit bigger. Ooh a keeper. Not huge, but a respectable snapper. Excellent.

Tim had some good luck. He caught a kahawai, which had to be bled in order to keep its taste, and three snapper. While it didn't seem like a huge haul of fish, Tim didn't really want a bunch of fish anyway, and we certainly weren't in a position to prepare them where we were staying. So, in the end, we had just the right amount of fish: enough for Tim to cook a little snapper and smoke the rest. Despite Roni and I periodically chumming the waters, the poor guy fishing next to me didn't catch a single legally sized fish—and he was fishing the whole day.

Aside from the snapper and kahawai, we caught and saw all kinds of other interesting fish. One fellow caught a large eel, which was very interesting. Another caught a blue shark that was simply stunning. I caught a number of scorpion fish and a couple of (too small) blue cod. The scorpion fish are gorgeous. They have every shade of neon red and orange you can imagine. They also look rather spiny.

I'm glad that my evolutionary senses kicked in, however, and that the colour and spines prompted me to use a rag to handle the fish. While I had no problems handling the snapper and avoiding their razor sharp spines, apparently the scorpion fish are venomous. I don't know how venomous, but I'm just as glad that I didn't have to worry about a venomous sting on top of sea sickness.

After catching a few more small fish, the swells started to pick back up and I was done for the day. Fortunately, we headed back in shortly thereafter. Roni came back up from her nap below deck, got sick again, and together we eagerly anticipated solid ground on the ride back.

Once on ground, we found that, in fact, the ground does pitch and roll for a while. After a shower and a bit of a rest, we felt well enough to go find some food. After a very heavy, cheesy Italian dinner we retreated to our room for the night.

Back to Tauranga

2006-04-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

After the bustle of Wellington, we wanted to see a bit more of the sunny north island. We decided to go back to Tauranga for a week to see the sights that we missed the last time around, not to mention the every-day life of the city. Tauranga is the fastest growing city in NZ, after all, so there might be job opportunities here and a progressive style of living. Why not stay for a while to get a feel for the place?

All it all it's been a good layover for us. We had a chance to get caught up on paperwork that we've been putting off up to this point. I applied for a few jobs here, and Peter's been applying for jobs via the internet. We've also had some very fun days on the beaches, another a walk on the mount, checked out a jujitsu dojo, and did some grocery shopping (always fun in another country). We even had our first encounter with The Warehouse, NZs version of WalMart (dun dun DUN!). Not exactly the most exciting week, but well worth it. I think we've seen more of what it's like to live like a kiwi here than on any other other part of our trip.

After a week we've come to the conclusion that Tauranga is a bit sleepy for us. It's definitely a nice place to visit, what with the beautiful scenery and all, but it's beginning to feel like there are two Taurangas. There's the tourist spots that are full of cool cafes, surf shops,kiwifruit orchards, and wineries, and then there's the sprawling shopping and residential areas that are nearly impossible to navigate if you don't have a car. It feels a lot like any other tourist town at this point: nice to visit and equally nice to leave be after a while. We're still drawn to Wellington (for some reason we haven't pinned down yet-call it a predisposition?), so we'll fly down there on Monday to start our next wave of job hunting.

Oh, and this last picture is for Jen. I know you were wanting to see me hugging a tree or some such hippie nonsense, but this was the best we could do for the day. After all, one of us has to be able to dip into the ocean without getting stung by jelly fish.

Wellington: waterfront

2006-04-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps even more-so than Wellington's cosmopolitan central business district (the locals call it the Cee-Bee-Dee), the waterfront dominates the Wellington cityscape. A lovely park symbolically bridges the gap between city and water; on one side, metal and stone blend into buildings. On the other side, Maori styled wood carvings evoke images of the sea.

There is a different kind of vibrancy at the waterfront. The CBD has the excitement of commerce and urban art. The waterfront has happy people strolling, eating ice cream, bicycling, kayaking, and otherwise enjoying themselves.

We spent a good deal of time simply strolling the waterfront and marvelling at the views, but both days we spent by ourselves in the waterfront district we found our way to New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa. Te Papa is an impressive museum with days or maybe weeks of content to peruse.

Though Te Papa is free to visit, certain special exhibits charge admission. We paid to see the "Splendours of Japan" exhibition (no, we did not pay to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition). Te Papa secured an exchange agreement with the Japanese national museum in Tokyo to display a number of Japanese national treasures, including various scrolls, paintings, sculptures, and (our favourites) some ludicrously sharp looking samurai swords.

Additionally, we spent some time looking at some Polynesian exhibits. We found these a bit overwhelming in one shot. In the future, we'll be taking more trips to Te Papa to explore these exhibits to learn more about the Maori in particular.

After working up a thirst, we found a Mac's brewery. The food was mediocre, but they had a beer called "Brewjolais," which is apparently a one time special brew. That was nice to find. It was another taste of home. Made with fresh hops and lots of fermentables, it tasted very much like a beer from our beloved Kettlehouse brewery in Missoula. Now, if only we can figure out how to get them to make this beer again...

Good 'ol Welly

2006-04-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

We haven't been here in Wellington for long, but we're starting to get a feel for the place already. We've met a number of people who have given us a glimpse into what it's like to live here, and it seems like it's a very livable city once you get used to it. It felt very imposing when we first pulled in, we'll admit. But after a day or two of wandering around on foot we're learning where things are, how to get around, and what kind of people make Wellington their home.

So far our impressions of Wellington are mostly positive. The landscape is breathtaking, as the pictures will attest. It has a decidedly metropolitan feel to it and there's a vibrant and artsy feel to the place. The central business district (CBD) is full of professionals wearing suits and game faces, and the skyscrapers and cafes lend it a very urban pace. It can seem a bit sterile during business hours, but on the weekends and evenings it's like any other scenic district.

Not far away is the shopping district, the waterfront park, the national museum Te Papa, and the sloping residential areas. There are little gems of art all over the city. There is a Writer's Walk that features New Zealand wordsmiths, kids play areas, sculptures, and parks. All of these areas sit nestled among the skyscrapers so you're never far from anywhere, really.

It feels as though all of these different areas of the city are all sliding down the hillsides and mashing together on the shores of Wellington Harbour, but they've managed to do it without stepping on a single toe. That being said, we haven't been here long and we've only seen a small portion of the city, but from what we can tell it's a fairly representative sample of the larger community.

We're staying at the Annaday Homestay. For those of you who have never done a homestay before, it's like renting out a bedroom in a fully functioning family home. We have a cosy bedroom and share the bathroom with another couple that is staying here for the month. Breakfast is served every morning in the family dining room, and we get panoramic views in a quiet neighbourhood. Our hosts Ann and Dave are amazingly open and friendly people. They've been very generous with their time and advice, and we've had a number of good conversations in the halls on our way in or out. Their house is of the typical Victorian style of the neighbourhood, high ceilings, wood trim and all. We get the impression that they live in one of the wealthier areas of town because of the size of the houses and the harbour views. These pictures show lots of houses on lush and steep hillsides, and the streets wind their ways like snakes through the trees. It's a good thing they don't get snow here, because getting up and down these hills would be a massive pain in the arse if it did.

This last photo was taken outside of a the Curry Village restaurant. Why the big Luigi statue outside of an Indian restaraunt? The world may never know.

jitsu

2006-04-12T03:46:00.000-07:00

We stopped by a dojo to watch a jujitsu (jitsu, they call it) class tonight. I can tell that I'm missing jujitsu. I made a point not to bring my gi so that I could check out the club without pressure. Finding a dojo is a delicate business I think. Some dojos can be testosterone-charged venues for death sport.

Fortunately, this dojo was not one of those. The guys down an the dojo seem really friendly. They keep the fine tradition of "beer-waza" going. I'm sure if we end up here, I'll eventually fit in.

Sure enough, I was kicking myself for not bringing my gi. The club seems much more educationally focused rather than competition oriented. It also seemed like they were pretty careful on the mat to avoid critical injuries. I had been worried about death sport, but if anything, i think this club is more mild than what I'd been studying back in the sates.

This experience also really helped with the homesickness we felt today. For some reason, watching people strike, throw, and strangle each other is a comforting feeling.

Homesick

2006-04-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it was bound to happen. It coincidentally happened around the same time that we started to poke our heads up from vacation mode to look for jobs. It turns out that vacationing is easy, whereas moving across the globe is hard. Who'd have thought?

But, somewhere around noon, homesickness hit. It was short lived, but there nonetheless. All of the things we'd thought about resurfaced: Where should we stay? Is Wellington the right city? Should we be trying to find jobs right away? We miss our cat.

In reality, NZ has met or exceeded our exceptions in all areas but one (Internet access is costly and slow). Evaluated objectively, everything has gone as smoothly as could possibly be expected even in our wildest dreams.

They say acculturation takes place in five phases: euphoria, distress, re-integration, autonomy, and independence. I don't think that we're going to hit these in order. I suspect we'll experience all of them at various points and at varying intensities.

The upshot is that, after a good dinner and a trip to a dojo, we're feeling better for the moment. We also had a nice afternoon chat with some friends over the instant messenger, and that helped immensely. Thanks, Casey, Heather, Jonathan, and Tim! :-)

Driving South

2006-04-10T01:40:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since we've given a geographical update on our travels. We left Tauranga on Sunday the 9th for Wellington. We rented a car, bought ourselves a good map, and headed south toward our hoped-for promise land. A travel specific entry is soon to follow, so all of you interested in the whole driving-on-the-LEFT-side-of-the-road thing should stay tuned! (Note I said LEFT side of the road and not WRONG side of the road; the Americans we've run into thus far who have said that have come across as a little ethnocentric.)

We didn't stop to take pictures and are now kicking ourselves for it. The geographical- and bio-diversity of this country are astounding. After an overnight stop in Palmerston North we finally reached Wellington, or Welly as the kiwis call it.
A small note on Palmerston North. Most importantly, it's Missoula's sister city! As a funky university town with ties to home, we wish we had dedicated more time to it. We stayed at a truly excellent B&B run by quite possibly the nicest lady on the planet. We had our own newly re-modeled loft with a lounging nook and a wide breakfast spread. When we booked over the phone, the proprietor asked me if I had a partner with me or if I was alone.

"Yes, I have a partner with me."

She then asked my name, so I told her and the booking was complete. As we arrived she had just put some freshly baked muffins in our room and written this greeting on a board outside our entrance. I would definitely recommend Nikau Loft (www.nikauloft.co.nz) to anyone wanting to stay in Palmerston North. Sue definitely takes care of her guests there.

We finished the drive to Wellington the next day. It was a great day for driving, and we pulled into the capital city without incident. More on Wellington later.

Mount Maunganui

2006-04-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

We woke today with high hopes for a full day of new things. We had made the decision to go sailing with one of Tim’s friends in the afternoon, so we decided to take a hike through a mountain trail/garden in the morning. After a leisurely breakfast that went longer than we expected, we ended up simply going back to Tim’s apartment for a walk to the beach. It was low tide, and we had a great time looking around it the tide pools. And then it started raining.

Needless to say it proceeded to rain pretty heavily for the next three hours, the very same three hours we had scheduled to be on the water. Damnit! But there’s a silver lining that comes free of charge with every rain cloud, so we took the opportunity to buy Peter a kickin’ rain jacket.

After lunch we hiked up Mount Maunganui to catch the view of the Bay of Plenty from above. It was breathtaking! Rainbows over the ocean, the sun casting patches of light on lush and rocky cliffs, long stretches of beach and surf. It’s a little hard to believe that we’re really here. During our hour and a half long hike we came across grazing sheep (they graze them everywhere, even on large mountains in the middle of urban areas), a handful of new-to-us birds, and more unfamiliar plants than I can count. I want to get a field guide so we can start learning the names of these little guys that we’re seeing on a daily basis.

Going Mobile

2006-04-08T16:30:00.001-07:00

As much as we wanted to take the day to sight see, we decided to take care of communications details today. We got a mobile phone with a prepaid number for immediate needs and scoped out the wireless access situation in downtown Auckland. Evidently coffee shops here in NZ aren’t keen on offering free access to patrons, so most internet access is found in businesses specialising in computer related activities like web access or gaming. We hear Wellington businesses are a bit more prone to offer general wifi access, so we’re looking forward to checking that out.

We’d made plans to meet with our friend Tim the weekend after we landed, and he surprised us by pulling into town on Friday afternoon. He recommended a sushi bar downtown, so we hopped on a bus and headed back into the bustle. Sushi on a conveyor belt--oh yea! At this little bar you just grab a plate of sushi or sashimi as it goes by and stack the empty plates next to you. Each plate has a design on it that marks the value of the food, so you can eat whatever you fancy and the plates are counted up at the end of the meal. It was the best (and cheapest) sushi I’ve ever had.

After dinner we walked to the pier to look at the boats docks. Most of them were for sale, and we were able to plug Tim for info on sailing. He’s pretty handy if you want an explanation about boat related topics.

This particular boat was designed by a Kiwi to do two revolutionary things: pierce waves instead of going over them, and break the world circumnavigation record while powering its motor with biodiesel. The Maori designs painted on the hull draw on the cultural heritage of NZ and their attention to the environment. Its been in the works for a while and is close to starting its trip. Very slick.

After a few beers here and there to get out of the rain (surprise surprise, the rains tend to soak here) we took a lovely walk home under the stars.

Saturday morning we woke up early and headed down to Tim’s home in Tauranga. It was a gorgeous 2 1/2 hour drive down to the Bay of Plenty (on the east coast of the North Island). They call it the Bay of Plenty because you can basically bury any plant in the dirt and it’ll grow. Personally, I get the feeling that this is the case in a lot of areas of NZ. Once we left the Auckland suburbs we got to see what most of NZ looks like: rolling green hills with patches of trees and livestock. It looks a lot like Bavaria, actually, in that tracts of land are relatively small and each pasture or field is hemmed by a fence of trees or long grass. Of course the big difference between NZ and Germany is the subtropical plant life. There are fern and palm trees blanketing the ground under huge stands of evergreens. I get the feeling that if every human were to leave the island, the plants would simply grow over the buildings and reclaim the area as its own.

Once in Tauranga, we dropped our things off at Tim’s place then headed out to see a bit of the city. Tauranga is the fastest growing city it NZ and has a pop. of a little over 100,000. It sits on a natural harbour and has a great funky small town feel to it. The main beach sits down by Mount Maunganui and attracts surfers and sunbathers. Since it’s fall right now there weren’t that many people on the sand, but there were quite a few surfers taking advantage of waves. We spent most of today getting a rundown of the city from Tim. There’s definitely a cafe culture going on here, so we’ve been eating ridiculously well here. The night life here is pretty much the same as in Montana: all the stores close down and locals go out to eat, drink, and generally be social. We went out for Indian food and a movie. When in Rome...

Tipping

2006-04-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

We found a nice little Thai restaurant for lunch with a friendly waitress and tasty food. The problem only came when we went to pay our bill. What is customary for gratuity? We consulted our trusty guidebook and found that tipping is generally not done at all. Only at fancy restaurants with exceptional service does anyone tip, and even then only at 5-10%.

Afraid to believe the book, we leaned over to a lady at the next table, confessed our Yank status, and asked her. Same thing. No tip. Hmm...

She saw the pained look on my face, "Really?" "Yes, really." She tried to console me in the fact that there is a tax assessed on each and every meal purchased in NZ that goes to the government. I think she thought I was disappointed at getting off cheap at lunch. We thanked her for the explanation. I left two dollars on the table anyway and we left.

Ah, the life of a beagle...

2006-04-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

Here we sit, safe and sound in Auckland. I must say that the trip from Montana to NZ was much more pleasant than we expected. I thought we would have to roll ourselves out of the plane and drink coffee all day to stay awake, but we felt energetic enough upon finding a B&B to hike up Mt. Eden (more on this in another posting).

The actual flight from the US to NZ was fantastic! At twelve and a half hours the flight was much shorter than we expected. Not that we would have minded a few extra hours. Each seat had its own TV screen with a full menu of movies, TV shows, and video games. It was pretty nice to have the option of watching a few episodes of The Simpsons instead of the latest Legally Blonde nightmare. The seats were even nice enough to afford both Peter and I a good 7 hours of sleep. I only hope that future Air New Zealand flights will go as smoothly.

I must say that the customs folks in NZ are much more pleasant to deal with. Of course they’re picky about environmental protection, but they were all very amiable and easy to work with. I mean, who would mind having their bag sniffed by a beagle? How about a friendly black lab? One of the dogs was lucky enough to find a bag with beef jerky in it (which you can’t bring into the country) so the customs people gave him a bite before carting it away. Ah, the life of a security dog.

All in all we’ve felt very welcomed and appreciated here so far. People are glad to answer the silly questions we yanks ask, like Are we supposed to tip wait staff? and Will this bus take us back to the Mt. Eden neighbourhood? They’ve gone out of their way to make sure we feel comfortable with the new customs (it’ll take us a while before we feel ok with the whole no-tipping thing). I like being able to ask questions without feeling silly about it.

Kiwi language lesson #1: A cell phone is called a mobile (pronounced mo-bile), while a gas station is called a mobile (pronounced mo-bl). I guess it’s all in the accent. More language lessons to follow for all you linguaphiles out there.

Mt. Eden

2006-04-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

Mount Eden
Still buzzing from adrenaline we asked the host of our bed and breakfast what she recommended to kill time while our room was being prepared. Being that the Bavaria Bed and Breakfast is located in the Mt. Eden neighbourhood, it turns out that a short jaunt up Mt. Eden killed the required amount of time.

Euphoria set in as we marvelled at the lush green vegetation and gorgeous sunshine. As we walked the path up Mt. Eden, we were treated to several breathtaking views of Auckland.

At the top of Mt. Eden I got an idea of how geologically active New Zealand is. Mt. Eden is only one of a handful of extinct volcanoes that dot the sprawling Auckland cityscape.

Peering down into the crater, my enthusiasm was only tempered by seeing where a band of (presumably) christians had ignored the warnings that the Mt. Eden crater was a fragile and sacred archaeological site that should not be descended into. Down at the bottom of the crater was spelled out in stones, "PRAISE THE LORD." I see that sort of thing, and I hope that they all get taken away in their rapture. Soon, please.

The whole of Mt. Eden was blanketed with green, green grass with the occasional cow milling about (the cattle seemed to be heeding the warning not to descend the crater). Very picturesque.

Our room at the Bavaria Bed and Breakfast was ready by then, and we were starving for lunch, so we left Mt. Eden feeling much rejuvenated.

Pictures of Mt. Eden to come...

Getting ready to leave Three Forks

2006-04-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

We've already sold our stuff and carted the remainder to Three Forks to stash at Roni's parents' place. We're having a relaxing time here in their lovely home and with picturesque surroundings.

Our whole trip so far has been all about purging personal belongings. We started with an apartment, car, bikes, and a cat in Missoula and gradually sold or gave them all away. Getting rid of the cat was the hardest, but that has been eased somewhat in that she and Devin, her new owner, are getting along swimmingly.

Tomorrow is the big day. We'll fly out of Bozeman (Belgrade, actually) and sometime on the sixth, we'll be on the ground in Auckland.