Author: dave

i bought my first pair of blue jeans today.  it was a shame and another step to conformity.    you see, we have dress down friday at work, but everyone where blue jeans and smart ‘casual’ shirts.  as i tried on trousers Dire Straits was playing in the background.  dreadful state of affairs.  i even had to get them professionally shortened as i’m too short for my girth.

now i’ve got that off my chest …

so, i got home at around 12.30 last night after my last day in syd-ers.  it was a good flight and the conference was good, so hoorah for that.

and jarvis cocker on monday night was great too.  definitely one of those gigs when you are transported back in time.  for me it was back to being 18 at university in sheffield.  half a life ago and half a planet away.  who’d a thunk back then we’d be here now.

the ticket promised a double bill.  but in the end i wasn’t needed on stage

i worked from home today so i didn’t need to be up so early to catch the buzz to town.  and that worked out really well as jane and i walked down to the garage at lunchtime to pick up my car which had gone in for its long awaited paint repair work promised when i got it a month ago.

the garage man told us he’d kindly filled it up with gas, which was a mistake as it takes petrol.  he’s got egg on his face for sure.

jane and i then went for lunch in a posh cafe in coatesville before heading to the mall (maul?) for the trousers.  i need the kecks for our work christmas party on friday night which is on the theme of Wild West.    Our department are dressing up as the West family from Outrageous Fortunes which is a top local TV series.  Have you heard of it ?  rather full of language i’m afraid.  official website here i’m going as Munter.

jane’s egg benedict

esther had a couple of friends round after school and kezia went to a friend’s house, and then it was tea alfonso on the veranda.

whilst we’re still having a great time out here, we know a few of you back in blighty are having a real tough time at present and we send you all our love and thoughts.

tomorrow i’ve got another session on writing techniques. honestly, what can they teach me that i don’t already know.  but i’ll go along to humour them anyway.

(by the way, just in case anyone is wondering, i don’t write in this style at work – this is just a freestyle ramble – i include pictures so you don’t have to read it all !)

and don’t forget to email jane and/or me with all your mundane news

Hello,

Jane here. It is he week of end of year trips at Esther and Kezia’s school. Esther went to the cinema today to see Where the Wild Things Are.

Yesterday Kezia’s year group went to Long bay Beach for their trip. I was a parent helper and wore my new shorts. Kiwis have a much more relaxed attitude to trips than we did in the UK. So while I was frantically counting and recounting the children in my care, the teachers weren’t that bothered. The days consisted of making sandcastles, playing in the sea and playing on the play park. Then a mad scramble back onto the buses as the bus drivers said they had to be back to do the school run. That was when one of my charges desperately needed the toilet, so we had to sprint there and back and hope the buses didn’t go without us as no-one was taking a register.

When we got back to school parents were drifting off with their children whenever they arrived. Very casual.

I made another cake today. I may have said that the writing by the dials on the over has worn off on both the temperature dial and the one setting the oven to fan, grill or whatever. So baking is rather trial and error. Today was not one of my lightest sponges!

well, the star gazing last night was a triumph.  depsite getting a bit lost on the way there (which involved much more vertical travel than necessary), the astronomy night at the big telescope place was great.  here’s a beetle lying nearly dead on one of the information panels about clouds.  we saw a lot of clouds.

the thing i went to in Auckland a few weeks back was really high tech and had a brilliant 3D roof projection thing in a purpose build modern planetarium thing. 

here we all had to lie on old bean bags with our heads looking up at the inside of an umbrella.  hilarious doesn’t describe it properly.

 

sadly it was too cloudy to see anything decent out of the big slitty window with the massive telescope, but it was a fun evening.

i only went because i heard you could see the southern cross better from australia, but that was a complete lie as you can see it better from new zealand, although the best time to see it is in the middle of our winter. so i’ll keep you posted on that.

    

today i’ve been at the conference which was also good.  it’s been strange when people have asked me where i’m from.  new zealand obviously, although i know more about the UK regulatory environment which was one of the hot topics of the day

this evening jarvis cocker is playing in sydney just 5 minutes walk from my hotel which is marvellous.  it was officially sold out, but i managed to get the last but one ticket from the ticket office on the way back this evening so that’s fab.

i’m now whizzing off to Darling Harbour (say or spell it how you like) for some scran before my young person’s pop concert.

jane’s in charge of the blog again tomorrow as i’ll not get home until past midders as my flight doesn’t get in to auckland airport while 11.30pm ish.

Well this morning was the first morning in a week or so i haven’t felt a bit ill, so i took full advantage of it by going down to breakfast and getting a slap up meal of toast, bacon, sausage, hash browns, melon, hot water and apple juice.  mostly mixed together.

[you do find this level of detail interesting don’t you?]

anyway, i then got a boat from darling harbour round to circular quay which is very scenic but not very quick, and from there i got another (but much bigger) boat to manly beach. 

Manly felt a lot more commercial than Bondi, although still quite amazing.  There were some young life guard competitions going on down half of the beach and various stalls to do with keeping the sea safe (environmental type things).

it was very hot and once again i avoided coming in to any contact with sand.

after that i got the boat back to circular quay then i went for a wander round the Opera house which is rather fancy.  and a bit windy down the pokey end.  of the building.

the opera house is next to the botanical garden and being rather tired of the leg at this point i got one of those little kid train ride type things round the park with a commentary. 

there was an opportunity to get off half way which i did because the driver/commentator was british and her essex accent started to grate.  i used the half hour between trains to watch the flying foxes (giant bat things) flapping around. 

then the next train came, and it was also driven by a female girl from essex.  now, don’t get me wrong, i’ve got no problem with essex girls, but i like a bit of authentic aussie patter on my kid’s train rides, not “okey dokey” and “we’ll be on our way in just a mo” [rant over]

by the way, they are actually foxes rather than bats apparently.  if you click on some of the pictures you can see their fox like bodies.

imagine if all animals had wings.  cats would be a nightmare.  and cows would be an accident waiting to happen

then i got the underground train back to the hotel to skype jane, and cool off a bit before i head out to the Observatory to learn about the night sky in Sydney (which is a bit like the night sky in Auckland, only with better visibility of the Southern Cross as it’s a bit higher in the sky.

it’s the conference itself tomorrow which i’m actually looking forward to.  I’ve just noticed one of the speakers is an old sparing partner from the regulatory world in the UK, and i suspect will be quite tickled that i joined an incumbent even if it is on the other side of the planet.

right, off to the observatory i go …  see ya

well, this morning the rain had stopped coming down (at least outside our house) and my flight to Sydney was fine.  although there was a slight technical hitch when i got to the front of the checkin queue after 30 minutes to be told i needed a visa to get to Australia.  Oops.  luckily that was easily sorted at the info desk, and i queue jumped my way back to the front.

the flight was good.  i watched coraline which was jolly good.  p’haps a bit scarey for the very little ones.  everything else on the airplane selection seemed to have gratuitous unsuitableness or violence as i found out to my surprise when watching an episode of Outrageous Fortunes.  It’s a local TV show that the wife of my work colleague who was hosting the BBQ writes for.  it was good, but a little ‘earthy’ you might say.

Sydney is also in the christmas spirit with a few big christmas trees around the place.  it’s been very hot today (mid/high 20s i recon plus very humid) so it’s all very strange.

 

my hotel is next to the monorail which means there’s a rumbling every 10 minutes or so.  but i quite like that in a hotel.

 

anyway, this morning i went up one of the pylons of the harbour bridge, and walked along the roadside (you can go over the top next to where the flags are, but that takes 3 hours)

there’s a nice view of the sydney opera house from up there

 

after that i got a train, then a bus to the world famous bondi beach.

world famous for its life guards of course.  here they are keeping an eye on people

i got there about 4pm but the place was still buzzing.  plenty of people in the sea attempting to surf

and i think this might be what a packed beach looks like over here

Sydney is a funny place.  it’s got a lot more older buildings than Auckland (when i say old, think 100 years max, but made of brick).  And the streets all have rather strangely familiar names.

When the taxi driver found out i used to work in london he said “we have all british names here from london like Oxford Street, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Kings Cross, Elizabeth Street”.  

I told him that London doesn’t have a famous Elizabeth Street, but he corrected me by saying it must have because it’s the queen’s name.  Then pointed to George Street.   That’s George from Rainbow i think.

on the way back i got a bus and a boat

here’s a boat like the one i got.  probably not the actual one.

this evening i went up the funny tower on a stick in the middle of this picture.  They were really slow and rubbish at letting people in so by the time i got up there it was dark which meant no pictures.  sorry about that.

And then a huge group of tourists arrived with their far eastern cameras and shouted and squashed all over the place, so i gave up and came down.  but that was the only bit of wasted day i think.

tomorrow i’m thinking of going to Manly Beach.  You can make your own jokes up about that.

good bye for now.  and the title was related to the amount of walking i’ve done today.  forgot to mention that.

Ha ha, I have managed to work out how to get into this on Dave’s computer. Well. I set out a sort of dam of towels when I went to bed last night and luckily the rain didn’t come in there, but our bedroom carpet was quite wet this morning and it seems to have come in from under the floor. Also a leak under the kitchen sink, so there is a watery theme going on.

The girls and I went to Winter Wonderland today. These things aren’t quite the same when it is not dark and freezing. It was a sort of exhibition of lots of themed Christmas trees, sponsored by shops or groups or families. There was a Paddington Bear themed one, a tea party one, one with shoes on etc etc. Some of the decorations on their trees ate enormous, like foot high figures and huge words. Anyway, a good experience.

Esther went to her first NZ party today and Kezia and I had some bonding time together. dave is safely is Sydney and may well tell you about that himself.

Toodle pip

hello. dave here.  back from wellington and about to fly off to sydney, though to be honest i’d rather have the weekend here with my family …

i’ve been really tired and a bit under the weather for the last fortnight, having had a stinking cold last week and a stomach upset which seems to have lasted all this week.  hence the early night last night, and a rather uneventful overnight stay in Wellington on Wednesday night.  i did attempt to go and see a band play live, but they weren’t going to be on until 10pm and i was too tired (or too old perhaps).  anyway, hey ho. 

And on a musical note my old chum from university jarvis cocker is in new zealand at the moment for a couple of concerts, which i’ve managed to miss by being in the wrong town on the wrong night.  oh well.

And as for that rain jane mentioned yesterday, it’s got worse and worse and hasn’t really stopped yet.  i even got an emergency email from the national emergency people saying to be careful in the rain. 

we were meant to be going to a barbeque with friends from work but we had to drop out as our house is leaking quite a lot of water through the ‘ranch sliders’ making a rather large and ever expanding puddle.  a soggy shame, but at least it saved jane having to drive in to auckland in rush hour when all the motorways were stationary.

You can read about all the daily dangers we face in auckland here 

It’s still chucking it down and the rain is still coming in.  I hope it stops before my taxi picks me up at 4.30am to get to the airport.

Anyway, the bonus is we got an evening together so kezia used the opportunity to demonstrate her dance routine which she’s been learning at school for the past few days (that’s the picture at the top above)

and now the girls are in bed, it’s time to get back to unpacking boxes, and packing my suitcase.

i’m taking the laptop with me to Sydney which might mean postings from both jane and i.  or might mean posts from neither if i can’t find any internet and jane can’t work my computer !

take care y’all.

Hello! You will be pleased to know it has been raining here too. Torrents of it. Water was flooding through the staffroom ceiling at school apparently. Today I went on a test drive with Debbie my new chum, to where I’ve got to get to tomorrow for Dave’s work colleague’s barby, to Parnell, a posh suburb of Auckland and well out of my driving comfort zone.

Also made some cakes. Kezia has a bring and share lunch at school tomorrow. I have been very lazy at cooking, using the excuse that I had no utensils. Can’t use that one any more. So I did a slow shop today finding the things I needed, which don’t always look the same in a foreign land. Our cooker helpfully seems quite old and all the black writing on the metal front which shows you how hot the oven is etc has all worn off, so it is a bit of guess work setting the oven to the desired temperature. Cakes turned out ok, but could have risen a bit more.

Esther and Kezia had chums for afternoon tea and I have been to my crafty thing and have some nice ideas for Christmas things.

Dave has returned from Wellington and went straight to bed. Sorry this is all a bit mundane, you may fast forward unless you are a close friend or family member.

See ya

Not much exciting has happened today, except that I have had my haircut and coloured (back to it’s original brown). I have also purchased some shorts because I have rashly offered to help with Kezia’s end of term trip, which is to the beach and helpers have to go into the sea!! But I sought advice from Kezia’s teacher, who said I didn’t have to wear my costume – phew.

Amazingly I have managed to put some photos here.

Here are some of the things you can buy from Fruit World. Telegraph cucumbers – that’s how big they are.

 

  

Also here are some Kiwi fruits. The one on the left is a golden kiwi – not as nice as the normal sort.

Byeeee

here’s some rather large decorations in downtown auckland to help celebrate the arrival of December.

not too much to report from me today – other than i have to go to wellington tomorrow too, so i’ll stay over tomorrow night.  and we’ve got our first genuine kiwi barbie on friday evening thanks to the three guys who i sit with deciding we should do something social involving our families.

jane and i had decided at the weekend we’d invite them all round to our house, but one of the others beat me to it so we’re going there instead.  And that’s actually worked out better as we haven’t got a barbeque, which would have made a barbeque party less, well, barbequey.

hoorah.

meanwhile jane has been doing more box unpacking has jollying about with her new friends.  she off this evening packing donated xmas presents at church.

and the girls are enjoying school.  i asked kezia what she had done today and she said “in the morning we worked on our paper machier cows, and in the afternoon we did our dance.  we don’t seem to do much work anymore”.

so hoorah for all of that.  i’ll hand you over to jane for the next couple of days.  see ya