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i worked from home today preparing a presentation for next monday.  i decided to use prezi.com as an experiment and now feel rather seasick after a day of watching swirling words and pictures.  my fault.

now, since i was at home today i got to track jane’s movements !  After walking the kuds to school she went with Debbie from down the road to see the other ladies and have coffee and good chats all morning.

then she came back and she and me (!) went up to the mall to get her a new mobile phone (and get me some fresh air).  unfortunately we were just about to pay for it when they asked to see her licence.  a phone licence ? whatever next ?  turns out they wanted her driving licence and a british one was no good, so we needed her passport instead.  we went to the food court on the way back home empty handed.

after school the girls had their violin lessons and esther’s is being fast tracked to another class with another high achiever from her class.  so that’s good.

and then we all went back to the mall at around 6pm to get the phone.  sadly it took another hour or so to do the form filling and credit checking, during which time we were freed for 30 minutes to go back to the food court for some food, before finally picking up the phone and heading home.  yawn

these pictures are the view from my office window – that’s the harbour bridge above which links auckland to the north shore where we live)

 

anyway, esther phoned her friend who she’s seeing on saturday and it now looks like we’ve sorted a good plan which doesn’t involve esther going to see a film which is rated 15 in the UK, but does involve her going to a Japanese restaurant with her Korean friend’s family which she’s looking forward to.  so that’s all good as they say here.

apologies in advance for another late update tomorrow as i’m off to see imogen heap.  nope, me neither.

here’s an old UK photo i just found of the queen mum eating a calippo near buckingham palace from the olden days last year.

see yas

a busy day at work today made a little more fun by being asked to take a photo of a chap from Human Resources for our company magazine.  He’s just published a book so they wanted some photos of him with his novel.

we went up to the Executive floor to take the photos and were watched by the CEO from his office.  He popped out for a coffee once all the fun was done and the camera was packed away (unfortunately). i should have lunged on him too.

we went to home group this evening at one of the others’ house and had a babysitter so that was good.  And then i’ve spent the last hour on the phone to blighty on a conference call related to a technology journal.  I’m on the editorial board (don’t you know) for this and we had our quarterly meeting.  Did you know you can phone UK freephone numbers for free over Skype ?  you can.  which makes an hour long call quite cheap (if you don’t mind people occasionally sounding like daleks, which i didn’t!) http://www.theitp.org/The-Journal

meanwhile the girls had friends over after school. we’re also going through the quandaries of activities with friends of the girls at the weekend.  the problem being we don’t always know the parents of people who are having parties/suggesting things for our girls to do which makes it a bit tricky to know whether to say yes or know.  this is complicated further by cultural and language barriers with some of their friends whose parents don’t speak english (although seem really lovely).  anyway, you can think of us (mostly jane) trying to guide our family through these cultural ice bergs!).

right, to bed …

i had a very busy (but productive) day at work which is good as it seemed to fly by.  the girls had school then their tennis lessons

and jane got offered a job but after much soul searching decided to turn it down because it was going to take up too many hours in the week. still, it’s good to be asked, and they’ll keep her in mind if they have anything more suitable.  you can email jane directly if you want to know the details.  she’s gone off singing this evening.

the talk of the office today was that some of the people who sat on our floor moved down three levels.  and when they went they took our fancy coffee machine, a load of cups and … most of the tea spoons !  Office politics doesn’t get better than that.   this being kiwi-land everyone just thought it was funny and that was the end of that.   back in blighty they’d be mass walkouts.

the pictures above are of two poster boards near my office which gives the chap in the first poster a head.  nice.

see ya

back to work today after our weekend of busy do-ings.  weatherwise it’s been rain threatening clouds for the last few days but it’s still been really hot (20+ degrees when i woke up this morning) making for a sweaty walk up the hill to work.  we’ve not had the same dramatic weather as wellington (see report here and the big bird thing here). apparently the storm was so strong you could feel building swaying, which is a little worrying.  glad i wasn’t down there then.

anyway, my lovely wife jane and i went out for lunch today which was excellent. we went to the sausage place i went with Buzz last week and it was jolly good. before that jane had been in to school to listen to children reading in kezia’s class.

this evening i went for my regular stomp with warren.  it’s nearly dark by the time we leave so choosing a route which went down by the creek probably wasn’t the best idea.  but we lived to tell the tale.

and i’ve been asked by the Telecom magazine to take a photo of a colleague who has just published a novel.  so that’s exciting. i’ll do that on wednesday.

here’s a photo i took at the Kumeu show on Saturday.  i’m not sure if they want anything quite as psychedelic for the company magazine

the morning started as it often does for me – with a rainbow over the park and ride car park.

the difference being it was a sunday and we were heading down town to do the Round the Bays fun walk/run/jog.  we walked.

it took us 103 minutes.  we definitely could have done it faster but there was 70,000 other people in the ‘race’ meaning it was rather busy with people going at random speeds (those wanted to run had to stick to the right of the course, but other than that it was do what you like)

we got there an hour before the start so stood fairly near the start.  it rained just as we went across the start line, but after a few minutes we were too hot again as the sun had come out.

john key, new zealand’s prime minister started the main race.  politicians here are very down to earth so he was happy to whoop the crowd up a bit.

he’s the chap with the white shirt waving and smiling to people as they went over the start the line.  esther said he should have dressed as a giant key and done the race. 

kezia said he thought he would be smaller.  but i think that’s because she’s been singing ‘little john key’ to the tune of ‘little donkey’

it was quite a site as we made our way along the course. when we got to the end we had to climb up a big hill to get to the Telecom hospitality tent

there we ate tremendous beef sandwiches, had a drink then got the bus back home.  all in all a fab day

and then this afternoon esther and i watched half of harry potter 1 and then she went off to her Flippa ball match where she won 3-1.  their first win this season.  hopefully first of many.

We have been here 5 months and celebrated by going to the Kumeu show. It was great!

 

Here are the entries in the most massive pumpkin competition. The winner was about 156 kilos

 

 

 

 

Here’s the sheep shearing competition. They had to do 5 sheep as fast as poss and got penalties for not doing it properly, cutting the sheep etc.

 

 

 

 

Here are some baby guinea pigs.

 

I am showing you an outfit you could get for your dog.

 

This was an amazing creation celebrating 50 years of Barbie

 

 

 

 

 

This bird didn’t seem to have any eyes

this man sat down in front of the sheep shearing, took of his shoe, stole a fist full of wool from the bag, shoved it in his shoe and then put the shoe back on.

you’re lucky this evening with THREE updates !

anyway, look who what’s just appeared on google street view

i came home early from london one day as the google car went by.  looks like i missed out on being photographed walking up the side passage

but jane appears a few times when viewed from up and down the road

no wonder we didn’t get a great price for the zafira.  i hadn’t realised it was that wonky.

if you want to look it’s currently here on googlestreetmap

today has been a great day for the girls, both coming home with certificates ! 

Kezia got this merit award for ‘Always working her hardest !  She also finishes work before school and uses her time wisely”.

it was presented to her during the school assembly this morning and she’s REALLY pleased 🙂

Kezia also got a certificate for coming 3rd in the swimming competition earlier in the week (which lead to her being chosen for the inter-school thing yesterday)

and esther came second which she was also pleased with.  she insisted i took one photo with the two certificates though.

elsewise today jane had her ladies church meeting (which is going to be here on a regular basis instead of the church office place) and the girls had their swimming lesson. 

after dinner we played a family game of rumikub then the girls did some dancing.  and tonight jane and i are going to watch some telly as it’s the first time we’ve seen each other all week what with my wellington trips and pop concert and her singing and mainly music things.

and, i feel remarkably awake for someone who just had 5 hours sleep last night.

the absolute highlight for me today was seeing buzz aldrin, the first man to do a space walk and the second to land on the moon. 

he gave a well prepared talk about his life with photos.  he didn’t talk about his life after mooning though, which is another story in itself.

it was weird seeing him after the pixies.  Both are reliving their classic moments from their lives, but somehow keeping them interesting and alive rather than turning in to a tribute of their former selves.  Buzz is 80 and still going strong.  well worth listening to if you ever get the chance.  he’s appearing on New Zealand’s dancing with the stars or something which might be amusing.  or might not be.

here’s a good pose for famous people.   stand still and look like you are a wax work.  makes your waxwork model in taussauds look real

amazingly he sat in the chair just in front of me, so i was just inches away from him.  marvellous stuff.

he was so popular that every conversation i had later in the day at the telecoms conference circled back to landing on the moon !

here are the jandals of our lovely babysitters who came this evening from up the road as both jane and i were out.

but first we must tell you the girls did great in their swimming and both came fourth in their races against very strong opposition.  kezia was in the 8 year olds group, so was one of the youngest so did very well.

jane went out to see some of her chums this evening to talk about her Mainly Music thing and learning about friendship evangelism from a 68 year old lady wearing funky jeans.  she said you should drop the ‘e’ word and just be friends with people.

meanwhile i went to see The Pixies at the Powerstation in town.  just 30 mins or so from home with easy parking etc.  they played for 2 hours and were fantastic

it was a bit weird though as i realised they were at the peak of their powers half my life ago.  we played one of their songs in my first ever band and the bass player (now an old lady!) was one of the main people that inspired me to start playing bass.  there were lots of balding  old men amongst the students.  you could tell who the old ones were though as they stopped jumping up and down about a 30 seconds in to each song as they were puffed out !  And the drummers glasses slipped off at one point but it was all right as a roadie picked them up for him.  how rock and roll is that.

 

i was planning on working from home tomorrow to do a presentation but i got a last minute ticket to go to this which features buzz aldrin, the second person on the moon !