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up early again for my flight to wellington.  weather was perfect and i watched the sun rise out the window as we flew down the country.

i went for a walk at lunchtime and saw a hairy man walking in the water and a man in skimpy swimmers practicing solo frisby.  not quite the penguin of monday.

many of the mannequin arty statues had been updated from monday too.  more bums had grown in this particular one:

my meeting with the Commission was much more constructive, although there’s still plenty more work to do before we reach any kind of conclusion.   then it was back on the plane to watch the sun set.  the taxi man arranged it so i arrived home just as home group were leaving !

jane tells me the girls both got selected for the swimming competition tomorrow so that’s jolly good.

here’s my breakfast.  looks good, but didn’t taste good.  just ok.

think it’ll be jane blogging tomorrow night as i’m off to see the pixies.  (the band, not the imaginary little people)

hello.  i went to work.  i got my old pre-walking bus as i was tired from my trip to wellington and didn’t think i should walk up the big hill with my heavy laptop in my heavy bag.  however, the bus lady gave me the wrong ticket so i had to buy another one on the way back and the journey took over an hour because of silly traffic bollards which were too tight for the bus to get through !  see, it’s not all fun fun fun here.

a fancy toilet as seen in a couple of the show homes we’ve visited.

whilst i was busy being busy at work, the girls had big fun of their own.  they had a swimming gala and esther won all her races and kezia came second.  we don’t yet know if they’ve made it to the inter-school competition on thursday though as it’s all about their individual times.

then they had tennis, then we went back to school to hear about esther’s school camp which is a (s)carey park after easter.  it’s the same place we had our church weekend away at, so that’s all good.

the teacher in charge ran through a typical itinerary and made it sound really good. 

one of the parents asked if they’d be doing shooting this year, and the teacher said “we certainly will as there’s some 10 year olds who have never shot a gun”.  they need to fix that dreadful statistic.

can’t remember if i mentioned that there’s lots more trollies in the streets since the students started back at university

jane’s out singing tonight and i’m off for round 2 with the regulator tomorrow in wellington.  meanwhile jane is going to ‘mainly music’ which is a kids music education thing for pre-schoolers where she’s one of the actioneers.  should be fun.

lots of people have gone down with the lurgy at work and i’m starting to feel a bit coldy, so hopefully it’s just lack of sleep.  so early night for me (ready for my 4.30am start)

toodle pip

i got up at 4.30am and drove to the airport to get the 6am flight.  it was really cold on the flight and in wellington at that time of day so i hid in my hoody and slept.

when i got to wellington i decided to take public transport to the centre of town as i had plenty of time and thought i’d save the company a bit of money.  but it was a dreadful mistake as it ended up taking over an hour to get there as the bus was 30 minutes late.  oh well.

i walked past some random religious nutters protesting outside parliament.  and there were some great mannequin window displays which i suspect may be art related

 

at lunch i went for a walk round the bay a bit

and some tourists mentioned something in the water

can you see it ? it was a little penguin and he even climbed up the stairs a little bit so i could see him properly whilst i sat on a wall

anyway, i attempted to get the work shuttle bus back to the airport and that failed too so i ended up getting a taxi.  and then this evening i’ve been out for a giant stomp with warren from up the road

 

meanwhile i think everyone had a good day here (despite me accidentally taking jane’s watch, her house keys and her car keys to wellington).  and Chris was dispatched back to the bus station at some point this morning.  so there.  byeee

Hello, it’s me again!! Today was a busy day and started for me with a skype phone call home to a friend and for the girls a skype video call to their friends. Then off to church. As soon as church was over we had to dash off again, me to skype another chum and the others to Coatsville market, where they got some flags for marking where the girls’ bikes are in the triathlon in 2 weeks’ time.

The Kezia dashed off to a birthday party and the rest of us indulged in some more Open Home nosing.

Dave went to pick Kezia up and collect our first ever visitor – Chris from the bus station. Meanwhile Esther and I went to Flippaball. This week they played really well and scored their first goal!! They lost this week 2:1 so we really must be due to win next week.

Then we took Chris to Long Bay for a little walk and to admire the view and finished the day with a barby at home.

Here is Chris on Long Bay

 

Here are Esther and I walking down to Grannies’ Bay.

 

You aren’t allowed to remove stuff off the beach, so not sure what this pair were up to. Esther thought they must be going to make some wigs to wear at their picnic/barby dinner and take them off before going home.

See ya

jane left the house just after 6 this morning to walk to the beach with two of her friends.  she had to be back by 8.30 as the girls needed to get to their orchestra practice.  it got to 8.30 and jane wasn’t back to i took the girls to their violin.  jane arrived a few minutes later to find us all not there.  apparently she meant she had to leave her friend’s house at 8.30 and had expected us to have waited.  oops.

anyway she met us at the orchestra place and then she and i went on a ‘date’ to a caff whilst the girls orchestrated.

after orchestra it started raining so we went to see Alice In Wonderland in 3D which everyone thought was excellent.

there’s quite a few houses for sale in our street at the moment so we popped in to see a couple which were doing ‘open homes’ when they are open to any comers to have a look round.  one was two doors down from us.  luckily we didn’t fall in love with any of the houses we saw so we’re happy to stick to our original plan of waiting at least another year and half before thinking of buying.  but it’s good to start getting an idea for what’s available.

Then this evening we went to Buzz and Wendy’s house for a lovely dinner.  unfortunately their garden water tank is a little low so we had to restrict our outputs to save on flushes.  actually they didn’t place any restrictions on us, but we felt a little obliged anyway !

 

see ya

Hi Chumz, I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog for a while, mainly because I don’t take photos and my life is a bit more home based that Dave’s. However, today I went running with some new running friends and a dog. They are all marathon runners and iron man ladies, so much fitter than me, but I am still alive and didn’t disgrace myself too much. We went for a fab run along the coastline on a lovely sunny day. (Lots of hills) Ran along a beach and up some really steep hills, had a swim in Grannies’ Bay and then ran back. How cool is that?

I am going to have to up my game if I want to keep up with them.

After that it was domestics I’m afraid. But I did collect a book from the library for Esther. They have a great system here that if the council area you live in doesn’t have the book you want, they will get the book in from wherever in New Zealand it is in a library. For a cost of $5. It took less than a week for the book to get here. It came from Glen Eden btw, which is the other side of Auckland. (In case you were wondering the book was Swallows and Amazons forever. What a disappointment – it is two of the books we have already read under a different name and isn’t even about the Swallows and Amazons).

Tonight after swimming we have tea in the Mall again. It’s very good as you don’t have to have what the other people in your family are eating. I was adventuresome and had some sushi and selected some things which I hadn’t a clue what they were. Mostly nice.

and now dave’s bit:

here’s my favourite tree.  it’s in downtown albany and i drive past it on the way to the bus station.  this morning i walked to get my pedometer score up so here’s a photo

you can really tell the students have gone back.  we live quite close to one of the uni campuses and there are shopping trollies all over the place.  it’s great.

here’s a cool feature of auckland – it’s so warm tramps can sleep on picnic tables

and here’s something i found in the mall this evening whilst waiting for the girls. this was for sale in kmart.  it’s an airbed with a leak.  they’ve decided to lower the price from $89 to $62 to make up for its uselessness

 

anyway, that’s a long way of saying my day at work wasn’t particularly eventful (other than the walk to and from it).  dave

 

i got the plane down to wellington this morning for a single hour long meeting this afternoon.

the flight was really good.  no turbulence at all (amazing for wellington) and for once wellington had much better weather than auckland

i sat by the beach front in wellington town to eat my sandwich

when i was sitting there some seagulls tried to steal my sandwich but i was having none of it.

a few minutes later a seagull flew overhead and dropped something just behind where i was sitting

 

i’m not sure if it was trying to hit me or break the shell so it could eat the contents.  anyway

there was a bra sale, and (separately) they was some filming going on

 

my meeting was pretty rubbish.  i guess i’ve got to get used to being seen as the ‘bad’ incumbent when it comes to regulatory matters.  which is a shame as i prefer it when people are nice rather than shouty !  anyway, looks like i might be back down to wellington for a couple of days next week to try to sort things out.

 

once thing i did note today is that i totally forgot that i travelled to and from wellington by plane.  i did of course, and i went through the x-ray machine and wotnot, but it’s now become like getting on the bus (except with an hour long drive to the terminal rather than 4 minutes to the bus station).  i’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing really.  i don’t want to take it for granted, but good it’s not a chore or a stressy thing.  biggest hassle is unclipping all the technology from my belt for the x-ray machines.

anyway.  see ya

i met up with Buzz for lunch today.  we were heading to a Japanese restaurant and he suddenly had a brain wave that my tastes were more … european.  so we went to a fantastic sausage cafe thing where you could have a sausage in a choice of bread roll.  it looked initially like there was only one sort of sausage and the democracy was around the bread, but there was a good choice of both.

 

just for your interest i went for a french sausage and a portuguese role which was really excellent.  buzz went for an essex model.  the lady behind the counter said she could recommend the recommended sauce (which was good to know they were walking the talk).   

only after it was ‘applied’ did buzz say it looked like it was martian sauce from venus.    obviously it’s cheaper to manufacture on venus than mars, but you have to wonder how the martians feel about it.  and i hate to think how many food miles that would be.

the rest of the day was spent preparing for tomorrow’s meeting with the regulator down in wellington.  i’m not sure if that’s going to be pretty, so think of me if you are awake at 2.30am UK time.

this evening we had our home group and we had a total of 7 tonight which beat the 3 of us last week.  it was probably the best for a decent group discussion after watching a short DVD talk, and was definitely a winner for comedy value.

one lady brought along some chinese cupcakes pictured above).  i thought they were traditional chinese so asked how they were made.  the reply was along the lines of “they are cakes from indonesia.  usually you use coconut but i used milk instead.” 

i commented that they seemed to contain sweet corn and she said “yes, it tasted a bit bland so i threw them in to add some flavour”.   i have to say they did taste nice !

so there we go.  people who know the ‘Edwin and Deirdre’ story may chuckle about pigs trotters at this stage [and the rest of you can be suitably confused].

why don’t you have a go throwing some random vegetables in to the mix next time you make some cupcakes ?   let me know how you get on.

 

well, i got the bus, walked up a big hill to get to the office, did a day of work then walked back down the hill, caught a bus and came home.  we had tea then jane went out to her singing club thing with Debbie (walker Warren’s wife). 

the girls had their tennis lesson after school today and are starting to get pretty good by all accounts.  school also seems to be going well for the both of them.

by the way it turned out kezia won the photos competition but esther is cool about it.

 

the picture above is in a shop near my office.  it’s a 3D picture with an actual working water mill built in to the frame.  tasty !

in food news, my local dairy (7-11 shop) asked if i’d like them to put any other sort of chocolate bars in their fridge because they know i like cold chocolate so much !  i said i was happy with the cookies and cream kitkats, but nice of them to ask !

well, the good news is i’m back on the street.  we’re having a 10,000 step challenge thing at work for the next 10 weeks.  apparently there’s something like 4000 people doing it across the company and we’re all in teams.  it’s very competitive.  and i’m not.

nevertheless it’s funny wearing a pedometer again after wearing one every day from the 2nd February 2004 to the 2nd May 2009. During that time i walked around 20 million steps and 10,000 miles.    When i worked in the centre of london i averaged 80km a week and then it went to nearer 45km when i started driving to work.  It’ll be interesting to see how much i end up doing here in the heat.  it was around 25degrees, humid and sunny when i walked down to the get the bus home this evening. however, today is the first day of autumn so we expect the temperature to plummet soon.

sorry, that was probably the most boring paragraphs i’ve written on this blog.  you didn’t deserve that. now for something more exciting:

i had a lovely treat at work today when jane came to see me for lunch.  we had giant burgers at a place near my office.  i keep forgetting how disappointing burgers are for grown ups.  these were no different sadly.  but it was the company that made it so lovely (!)

this evening i’ve been out for a stomp round the neighbourhood with Warren from up the road.  we walked for an hour during which time we managed to review a document about computer security for schools that Warren has written and i’ve provided some input in to.  luckily we finished before it got too dark to read what we’d both written.

and now it’s now. so there.