Author: dave

i made it in to the office today to find someone had sticky taped some dead daffodils to the partition on my desk.  that was nice.  they probably would have remained alive a bit longer if they’d been in water, but there you go.  otherwise, a day of meetings for me.  oh, and i attempted to have two cheese and ham toasties at lunch to see if that stopped me wanting chocolate in the afternoon.  it didn’t.

and here’s another interesting thing.  it’s an historic (by new zealand standards) pub which is in the path of the new motorway roadworks so it’s balanced on a concrete base and tomorrow will be dragged 100metres up the hill out the way.  exciting isn’t it !

jane had her day off today so saw various friends and had various funs.  and the girls have got another charity thing where they have to get sponsorship for a really easy maths quiz (Esther) or a really tricky native tree quiz which doesn’t have any answers (kezia). so if you fancy sponsoring them, let jane or me know !

i played at church this morning.  it was a combined ‘family’ service in the school gym which was exciting.  it meant i had a lot more space to play my bass (usually i’m squashed in a small space between the back of the stage and the back wall).  so i took full advantage and did a bit of wiggling.

after pies for lunch we headed in to town to take part in a one off opportunity to walk along the new motorway bridge which has just been opened.

the bridge has been built using a clever ‘big blue’ crane thing which slowly crawls along the bridge allowing the bridge to be built underneath

i’m not sure i totally understand how it works, but it was very impressive !

what was really excellent was the sense of occasion.  there were hundreds of people doing the walk

when do we usually get to celebrate big civil engineering projects in the modern age ?

 

whereas here it was a big occasion.  there was a ‘gold coin’ donation to get in (ie a one or two dollar coin) and then you walked up the on ramp !

i think these are the spare bits they didn’t need

 

there were plenty of bollards which was nice

 

and plenty of portaloos but they weren’t nice

   

and the workmen had even left out diggers for the kids to play on

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here’s a steam roller with a glove

 

of course it absolutely chucked it down when we were on the bridge for a few minutes

like real torrential rain for 5 minutes which then stopped and all was well (though a bit wet)

after that we drove over to the design exhibition thing i had a guided tour of the week before last.  i was able to amaze and dazzle the girls with my knowledge of all the art/design features

we then went to an indoor market near where my new office will be, but it was a bit of a disappointment as it’s all seemed to be shutting down

 

but there were some nice hats to try on

this is me pulling a face

we walked up celebrity walk which has hand prints of famous new zealanders.  we impressed ourselves by recognising some of them – peter blake and rachel hunter (!).

esther’s flippa ball wasn’t so good this evening so we’ll not speak of the result.

the only other notable point of the day was the ‘inorganic’ waste which is a service where the council come round and collect all your stuff which you’d normally take to the dump in the UK.  instead you leave it on your verge or ‘berm’ (we didn’t know either!), and they come in the week and cart it all off to a landfill for you.

however, it’s really popular with scavengers who drive round picking up your quality stuff to either sell on or melt down or something.  we put our old british telly out.  we never meant to bring it with us, but ran out of time to take it to a UK dump before we left so it went in the container.  we dragged it outside still in its wrapper from nearly a year ago.  And it was gone within an hour !   We’ve still got the remote control though.

we had a good family day today

it started with us all piling in to the car and going to the local music centre where the girls have their orchestra lessons on a saturday morning

today was the annual concert and AGM (sneaky way of making sure people attended the boring meeting bit by including it in the middle of the proceedings)

the girls did really well in their pieces.  the other exciting thing is that esther won the competition to design the new glenfield music centre logo.  although this isn’t exactly how her winning entry looked, it’s based on her idea, which is very cool (and a useful introduction to how the world of design works – ideas are the key thing!)

once that was all done and dusted we headed home for lunch (via the pottery place to pick up the stuff the girls did last week – i’ll show you pictures of them in the week)

and then, because the weather wasn’t too bad and we can, we headed up to Sullivans Bay which is where we spent new year’s day nearly 9 months ago now.

we parked up the hill and went for a circular walk

here’s a kereru, the native new zealand pigeon in a tree. can you see it ?

it’s quite a hefty lump so you can hear it and see the wobbling about before you see the real thing.  much nicer than the british pigeon.

the walk was very good, although really wet and slippery because of all the rain

here’s a map in case you want to go, but let us know if you are going and we’ll show you the way

the views were fab.  such views usually require a hike up a hill and this was no exception, but worth it.

here we are avoiding getting our feet messy.  but failing

 

and here’s some family portraits as we haven’t had any for a while

 

and then we went through a field of new zealand lambs

so here’s some pictures of them

 

as you can see, it was typical auckland day – hot and cold, wet and dry, cloudy and sunny, all within a few minutes

after our walk we headed down to the beach for some fizzy pop and biscuits

then we went for a walk down to a little island you can only walk to at low tide.  which it was.

kezia found this which she knew to be a kina (or New Zealand sea urchin)

apparently you can eat the insides raw which is a local delicacy.  I don’t think they’ve got the poison featured in sea slugs (read here) but i don’t fancy eating one raw myself although we did see a few people harvesting them

 

we also saw loads of starfishes

here’s the little island

on the way back (once we knew we weren’t going to get cut off by the tide) we did some crabbing.

esther loves picking up crabs for which i blame my brother in law !

 

here’s a couple she caught.  i think that’s geoffrey tucker (above) and valerie (below) you are looking at there

and graham

and here’s a teeny one that kezia was brave enough to pick up

 

then it was time to make the 40 minute drive home so we could head out to our local favourite restaurant for our celebratory dinner

everyone has had various things to celebrate over the last couple of months, and we’ve missed our 9 month and 10 month anniversaries so we thought it time to go out.  so we did.

whilst there we raised our glasses to my cousin dawn in the UK who is getting married today in York to Eric.  It’s a shame we’re missing all the fun of a family gathering, but that’s the down side of living on the other side of the planet.

so there we are.  a good family day.  and one in which everyone had a jolly time in some good sea air.  hoorah.

our dvd player broke a week or so ago.  it was only a cheapy, but the shop sent it away to mend it and we got it back.  but it broke again.  during the ladies bible study meeting. luckily i was working form home today so set up the living room PC to play DVDs and all was well.

jane was teaching today too, so that left me alone with all the ladies so i hid out the back until they were gone.

in other news some men came and mended our oven so we can now eat warm things.  more importantly it means jane can make more funky chunky cookies.  hoorah.

after school the girls had swimming.  i think i’ve mentioned before that it’s the same pool where the olympian swimmers train, and the girls have noticed that a number of them have olympic tattoos  which we suspect means they were in the olympic team.  Kezia said one of the tall men had one on his side which was perfect height for her to stare at as she walked by !

even jane said she’d get a tattoo if she made it to the olympics (as an athlete), so there’s a challenge.

anyway, this evening i skipped the church men’s group to stay at home with jane seeing as i’ve been out and about for the last few spare evenings.  i went to the video shop and got us a film which was good.    although i must say video shops are a nightmare compared to their online equivalent.   picking up boxes and reading the blurb on the back is so 1980s.

(apologies for the lack of photos – i haven’t really been anywhere today)

“Most family photo albums are a form of propaganda, where the family looks perfect and everyone is smiling: we try to create fabrications about who we are.”  That’s a quote from here (see we still read the british papers) and it’s prompted me to remind you we aren’t living a gilded life here (although it is pretty good most of the time)

anyway, the title of this post isn’t really what we feel, although i did have the day off work today as i had a stinking cold and stomach upset.  it’s either one of the numerous lurgies which are going round at the moment, or detox withdrawal symptoms from chocolate and fizzy drinks (i haven’t had either since sunday).  i did manage to do a couple of hour’s work this afternoon though.

one advantage of being at home was i could observe jane going about her business.  she went to school then went round to her friends house for coffee which turned in to some random finger cleaning and nail painting session.  so that was nice.

then she was back here for lunch then went back to school for two more lessons then back here again for our house inspection. we passed the test, and the estate agent lady even offered to go halves on getting someone round to cut the trees and bushes in the garden which was a bit of a result as we expected to have to pay for it ourselves.

then this evening after skyping and tea and violin and piano practices i went off for a church band practice which was good despite me feeling pretty grim.  meanwhile jane hosted the church prayer meeting here which had twice the amount of people as the time before.  excellent.

now it’s now.  i’m planning on going to work tomorrow but perhaps come home a bit early.

jane did house tidying and school work, i did work work.  the girls did school work and kezia had her piano lesson.  the house is looking very clean and tidy.  except my desk.  that’s a tip.

jane’s gone out to an open evening at a nearby secondary school in case it turns out to be fantastically better than the one we’ve got esther on the list for.  though we suspect it won’t be.

the tiny tikis above are from a tourist shop.  you can read more about tikis here.  they aren’t usually teeny and made of felt

not much happened today – jane started cleaning the house in advance of an inspection from the letting agent later this week.  the girls went to school, then their tennis lessons, and i had a rather ordinary day at work.

the best bit was the weather which was finally sunny and lovely.

anyway, that’s a good reason to show you this which is a very clever way of raising money for schools.  the children get given a box of sweets to sell to friends and family and neighbours and work colleagues.  there was a prize of a wii for the person who sold the most.

the sweets are typical kiwi fayre – eg chocolate fish

talking to work colleagues it seems it’s quite common for parents to take the easy option and just buy the whole box themselves and avoid all the selling hassle.

not us, though.  esther made this excellent display box for me to take to work.  and it worked very well, leaving us with only a few sweets (or ‘lollies’ as they are called here) for our own consumption.

some kids got through boxes and boxes of sweets apparently.  i guess you could work out how much a wii costs and just buy that many boxes and hope you weren’t out bidded.

anyway, no wiiis, for us this time.

esther had a lesson at her new future secondary school today.  it was a science lesson and lasted from start of school to morning tea.  she had a great time by all accounts and is more excited than ever about starting there in february.

this is milk from my work fridge by the way.  notice the bottle of wine tucked down the side of the milk, and the ‘please do not move the milk’ sign.

our oven broke yesterday which is a pain as we don’t have a microwave. it came with the house though so hopefully it’ll get mended soon (there’s a man coming to look at it tomorrow morning).   And jane had her worst class at school, who weren’t their worse today so that was good.

 

meanwhile there’s a bit of mid-winter melancholy in our house at the moment as we think about those in the UK heading for your bank holiday weekend. 

everyone seemed much more awake today so that’s good.

church was good and we went back to tracey and john’s house for coffee and chatting which was very good.

then after a quick sandwich we zoomed off to the chelsea sugar works for a spot of geocaching and a much needed family walk

we saw a bit of wildlife, like this unidentified bird

the sugar factory is on the north side of the harbour, so you get a good view of auckland over the water. 

that’s my (current) office up there on the hill.  it’s the second from the left with the big square black block on it and something that looks like a proper roof (with the company logo on it).  my desk is just above the black blob.  you might need to click on the picture to get a better view

we also saw this bird of prey swooping about

and spring is definitely in the air

  

one street we went down had a big rope tied to a string so the girls had a swing

 

and geocaching took us down a slippery path which had this stream running down the side.  this being new zealand they’d knocked up a nice corrugated iron base for the river.  which made the river glisten as it washed past

 

esther had flippa ball this afternoon which didn’t go too well, and then we watched space chimps or something.

so that’s that. 

 

the second and final day of the semi permanent conference was possibly even better than the first.  there were international and local speakers and the whole thing was excellent.  last up with Storm Thorgerson (above) who famously created the pink floyd album covers as well as loads of other record covers you’d probably recognise.  have a look on his website under ‘work’ and ‘album covers’.  he even took a picture of some of the audience who had kiwis for eyes (not me as i was upstairs)

the girls had a good time too as they went to some pottery painting place and spent lots of hours there.

and then this evening jane watched a film with kezia and esther went to a film night at her chum’s house and has just go back

 

now we’re all tired to even speak to each other so heading to bed.  we’ll do something together as a family tomorrow as i’ve been a bit of an absent dad this week 🙁