Blog

 

great news -  heard today that my job exists, and, even better, i don’t have to reapply for it or fight any of my colleagues for it.  hoorah.  There’s still some final consultation etc, but hopefully all is good. 

(still stressful for my colleagues though who have to decide what jobs they are going to apply for, so i’ve not been able to celebrate)

 

after work today i went down to party central to see Anika Moa play.  She’s a famous new zealand musician and was very good, although she didn’t come on stage until 7pm so i didn’t get home until 8.30pm.  the rugby this evening is australia vs USA so there were lots americans and australians about.

meanwhile i think the girls had a good day with school and swimming and things.

tomorrow we’re off up north for a night so they’ll be no live update tomorrow

 

here’s someone people were taking photos of so i did too!  (any idea who he?)

 

esther had half a day off school today (i don’t know if she’s been to many lessons this week) to go to the bp inter school challenge   And her team won!  Yeah.

i left home a little early this morning and drove in to work so i could be at SkyCity by 7.15am for a breakfast talk about the minister responsible for transport, tertiary education, finance, infrastructure and telecoms (small country, big portfolios).  he’s also leading National’s election campaign, although it looks like a dead cert they’ll get back in.

here a very milky tea i got for a colleague who thought it was horrible

after the breakfast i had wall to wall meetings all day which ending this evening in a pub across the road from work some work colleagues to discuss job moves etc before driving back home in the busy rugby traffic (i just had a fruit juice for those concerned about safe driving).

this evening kezia took esther and  a couple of school friends up the road to clear an areas of rubbish for a project kezia is doing.  jane took some photos.

tomorrow morning they publish the new structure for Telecom, so i’ll have a better idea if my job still exists.  exciting.

and my guitar came back from the menders.  unfortunate it’s now got a fret buzz.

 

do you remember the sponsored technology free weekend we had in the middle of winter ?  Well, Esther got the most sponsor money in the whole school !  So thanks to everyone who sponsored her.

As a result she got to go to a special day run by World Vision where they learnt what World Vision does. 

A teacher took Esther and another girl (who had got the second largest amount) and in chatting Esther discovered the teacher used to teach at the Holt school and lived in Wokingham!   (near where we used to live in the UK)

Small world.

this is kezia shrine to dan carter for a school project

 

jane had a good day with coffees with chums and laughing.  Work is still weird as people try and work out which side of the organisation split they want to sit on.  i should get an idea if my role still exists on Friday, with more details next week.  There is a more junior role in one part of the organisation which i could apply for just to have a fall back option perhaps.

 

finally, here’s a really big spider i saw squashed on the pavement near my office (no where near our house thankfully!).  its squashed body was a few cm long and the legs a bit more.  i think it’s an avondale spider

not much to report today.  i had morning tea with a chap who runs an internet company which was useful for career discussions but no specific leads at the moment.

i should have a better view of internal job opportunities sometime next week when the structures for both new Chorus and new Telecom are all out.  the Chorus one is due out tomorrow.

otherwise everyone seems to have had good days at school.

 

esther had her school speech competition this morning.  she didn’t win though which was lucky as the winners had to attend an inter-school competition  at some unknown location at some unknown time this evening which might have been tricky.  but she said it went well, although they had to talk in the school gym without microphones which sounds a bit tricky.

esther also had her last trombone lesson with her teacher who is moving to england (new teacher due next week) and demonstrated her balloon hovercraft to her class chums.

kezia also had a good day i think and she spent half an hour this evening singing along to a CD of christmas songs she’s learning for her school choir.  it seems funny hearing xmas songs in spring as we’re starting to think of summer rather than winter

i had my economics & law lecture this morning at the university then it was back to work.

jane thought she’d have plenty of spare time today but got bogged down in some exam marking so didn’t.  she’s gone out to the flicks with chums this evening though.

jane sang at church for the first time this morning.  she did an excellent job.

i was on sound and got a few nice comments about the mix which was nice.  i was pleased with the sound i managed to get so that’s all good.

after church we went to james and janine’s house for morning tea/lunch.

then jane and kezia went to kezia’s swimming competition where kezia did well apparently.  meanwhile esther and i did our various homeworks (her on her hovercrafts, me on my CV)

kezia came home in her swimming costume and left 15 minutes later with esther and me to go to her flippa ball game.  the team won again so are in the final next week for their league.  they are up against the tall balls they played a few weeks back so they’ve got their work cut out.

somewhere along the line we also took esther across the road to order her tennis gear and kezia did some homework and jane vacuumed the house.

you can think about esther tomorrow – she’s in her school speech competition at 9am NZ time.

esther and i spent most of today attempting to build a trebuchet.  we went to a craft shop early in the day to get various bits, then went back later in the day for some more bits, and then went back again later for even more bits.

we’d managed to cobble together the basic structure, but then once we added the weight it all came apart and it was just too powerful! 

so we’ve abandoned the project and esther has another plan for her homework project instead which just involves a bottle top, superglue, a balloon and a cd.

but we had a bit of fun constructing what we did.

jane did various school works and house works and kezia went to ice skating with her friend.

so much for a quiet day

 

it was our work drinks this evening.  here’s the final version of the invite (checked for both genuine japaneseness and non-offensiveness to japanese!).  and here’s the drinks

i walked through town on the way to the bus to see if anything was going on at ‘party central’ which is the slug like structure on the waterfront for people to go to and watch rugby on big screens in a big party atmosphere.

last week there were hundreds of thousands of people squashed in to town and it all got a bit dangerous, so during the week there’s been all sorts of blamings which culminated in the government taking control of the waterfront (!)  Rather than being a military invasion, it just enabled them to get access to a private piece of land next to party central to make ‘party central two – the overflow’. 

Of course this evening no where near the level of fans turned up and the other venue remained closed.  but there were lots of police about in a jovial way.  but no fireworks or international named artists playing on the stage

but there was a popular reggae band playing who people seemed to know

 

there was quite a small crowd though

and the maori wardens were enjoying themselves singing along

  

on the way home i collected fish and chips whilst the girls came back from swimming.  i bumped in to jane’s teacher friend Alex in the chip shop (she does the other half of the maternity cover) with her husband, so we chatted amiably whilst waiting ages for our foods.

then this evening we watched the all blacks beat japan.  excellent.

we’re all really exhausted so hoping for a quiet weekend.  well, we can hope …

jane went to her first church band practice this evening and that was all good apparently.  she’s on BVs which means backing vocals just so you know

i had lunch with buzz which was good although he was a bit late.  then i went to an electronics shop and bought some very strong magnets for an esther school project.  i had to carry them back very carefully so i didn’t wipe any of my portable technologies.

apparently esther went to the motat museum with school yesterday but thought it was boring.  she went before and also found it boring then too!

there was some news worthy earthquake this evening but wasn’t felt in auckland (or if it was it was during esther’s trombone practice which tends to drown out all other noises)

we’re all feeling rather tired and busy at the moment.  And it turns out there probably aren’t any jobs worth me applying for in New Chorus so i’ll have to hope my job appears in the New Telecom structure which will be made public in the next few weeks.  What a palava.

 

look at this.  we’re coming up to our 2 year mark (just a month away) and to celebrate our post forwarding will stop.  so no more buying from 7dayshop.com for me [they only deliver to the UK, so i get camera bits posted to our old address, which gets forwarded to our old NZ address which then gets forwarded to us here, despite the packages from 7dayshop saying ‘do not forward’] 🙁

jane had a busy day at school, and it’s confirmed her maternity cover person is definitely coming back full time next year so that’s a shame for jane.

a high level view of the new department structure in the bit of the company that’s separating from main Telecom has been announced at work and there’s at least one job there that looks interesting, so i’ll need to get my CV updated.

and the girls had good days at school/violin/swimming.  kezia’s swimming friend’s mum was going to book us up to go to a ski resort on a volcano the weekend after next, but it’s all booked out already so that’s a bit of shame (but also ok as we were a bit nervous as we don’t know the people and it’s a 6 hour drive each way just for one overnight!

and in other news my headset plugs fell in my drink at work.