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We’re outta here by Wednesday, so here are the views from our gated village. This is out the back from our bedroom window. I think this area will all be built on soon.

Here’s the view out the front. Also to be built on soon as part of this little estate. Dave’s car is the red one.

 

Here is our local stadium. So far nothing has happened at it since we’ve been here. You can also see the Sky Tower in the distance.

Here are some other houses just the same. Actually, the one we are in is up for sale (we noticed it in an estate agent’s window) in case you’re interested.

Sorry Dave, you’re not going to find out what I get up to while you’re at work this way.

 

Byeee

well, thanks for all your thoughts/prayers/wellwishings.  i had a very nice day at my new job today.

 

admittedly i didn’t actually do any real work, but i didn’t fall asleep, and i did manage to set up my computer and arrange my stationery items around my desk so that when the real work starts i’ll be optimised.

truth be known (and let it be!), i’ve never known a company be so good at providing instructions for their new starters.  i’ve been really impressed. i’ve already got my laptop, numerous passwords, pin numbers, usernames and work swipe pass all set up.  My boss is coming up from Wellington for the next two days so she can properly induce me and i hopefully tell me why i’m in a different colour on the department org chart …

anyway, the bus journey in and out was painless – although i learnt from a colleague that the timetabled buses have a habit of leaving the bus station 5-10 minutes earlier than scheduled which can be a bit of a pain if you’ve rushed to get there on time. we’ll have to see how it goes as with only 4 buses in the morning (and a similar amount coming home) timing is key.

i’ll ask jane to do her entry for today as i’ve no idea what she’s been up to, although i can tell she’s started packing up ready for the move to the new house (which starts tomorrow pm, and concludes Wednesday when we have to leave this house in an Indiana Jones stylee)

about the photos:

the mannequins at the top are in a retro-clothing shop near my office.  i thought it was very apt showing me going to work with my lovely wife watching from the background. (if i don’t write anything tomorrow it’s because jane has wacked me round the head).

and the stuffed bird with the hat on is also near my office, but from a different shop.  it’s quite a strange area of town.

today was the rather odorous crescendo of Kezia’s school mouldy milk experiment.  we learnt that if you leave milk out in a cup it goes absolutely stinky, no matter what type of milk it is.  kezia took careful notes.

this evening i emptied the 4 cups down the ‘insinkurator’ which growled unpleasantly as it was forced to much through the slops

we’ve had a really good today – we went back to the same church as yesterday and it was lovely to chat again with people we met last week – both from the service itself, but also from the men’s evening on Friday.  We also went to the welcome coffee session and afterwards we decided that this is the church we’ll probably call home.  we’ll give it a few weeks probation just in case but we’ve gone on their mailing database which i think is as official as its gets !

After the church service we went to a farmer’s market at Coatesville.  It was a sort of village fayre with all sorts of crafts and food stalls, many selling their wares for charity.  There were even some teenage buskers raising money for some music lessons for themselves, which was quite amusing if you think about it – how would they measure success ?  a full or empty tuperware container of money ?

anyway, after the market we went crazy golfing in the (at last!) warm sunny day

we chose the easy course so we can save the harder one for later.  this proved a good plan as the tricky course was much busier than the easy one (which was hard enough for us).

much fun and high fiving was had by all

after that the girls went for a dip in the pool (only two more days of that left before we leave this gated community for our own house) and we watched a film (Bee movie since you asked, which was very good.  Hired from the local library at around a quid for a week)

and i was delighted to see a hedgerow today.  and it was a great one with lovely great red flowers on it !

I start work tomorrow (in just 13 hours from now) which i think will be a big shock.  i’m worried about even staying awake, as i’ve gotten a little used to having an occasion afternoon nap !

i had all sorts of worried person dreams last night including one where my fillings dropped out, and another where i was driving round and round a roundabout but couldn’t find any exit roads despite there being lots of traffic about.  I’ll not attempt to analyse that.
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Service Announcement:

bloggage might be a bit more patchy this week as we move house on Tuesday/Wednesday and i’m not sure of the broadband situation there yet.

jane will also take over the writing reins as she’ll be up to more exciting stuff during the day – but that also might mean less photos.

and don’t forget that NZ stuff is starting to appear on the main funkypancake blog, although the more personal diary stuff is remaining here.

this morning we met up with some strangers for a walk in Cornwall park.  here is kezia being rescued after getting stuck in a tree

 

the family are relatives of someone my mum knows through work and they have two boys a little older than our girls and a black labrador.  we had a great time chatting as we walked in the (often very warm) sunshine.

 

they brought a couple of scooters for the girls to ride round the park on – the highlight was the rapid descent back to the car at the end of the treck

the park itself is called Cornwall Park and is centred on a volcanic cone (long extinct i think). you can read more here  We’ll definitely be back to explore in more detail

here’s a tree that looked a bit like queen elizabeth (or princess leia depending on your vintage).  it really is a lovely park in the centre of auckland.

in the afternoon we headed back home and the girls went swimming in the pool whilst we can still use it (there’s no pool at the new place, although i did meet a future neighbour at the church men’s group who has a swimming pool …)

This evening the girls went to a church alternative-halloween ‘light party’.  Their initial feedback in the car on the way home suggested they had a great time – although (or perhaps because) it meant a late night.  Esther said it would have been better if they knew more people, but seeing as we only went to the church for the first time last Sunday that’s to be expected !

Whilst they were partying jane and i went shopping.  i had a go at the pick ‘n’ mix at the New World Supermarket (Waitrose equivalent – just about).  i went for some salted peanuts, placed my bag under the dispenser slot and pulled the handle slowly as demanded by the sign.

I thought it would dispense a single portion, but instead opened the shoot wide open and my bag rapidly overspilled, only stopping when the peanuts backlogged up the spout !  I was then left with a giant bag full of salty peanuts. 

Luckily i kept my cool, unscrewed the top of the dispenser and empted my bag back in. this was tricky for a couple of reasons: 

1. the dispenser was above head height, so there was an element of trust in pouring my peanuts in to the sky, and
2. jane was laughing too much.

after dropping the food at home we went to a local bar for a crafty drink before picking the girls up, then headed back home to upload the days photos – a process which seems to take an hour longer than previous due to my poor little weedy laptop not being built for such things.

playing ‘bennis’ (balloon tennis) in the garage using suitcases as a net 

tomorrow holds a trip to church (the one we went to last week), followed by their welcome supper, and then probably homework / work preparation in the afternoon.

this will start off as a text only post written on my mobile phone from upstairs whilst jane is skyping downstairs. i’ll try a put some photos (and get rid of the superfluous spaces and spelling mistakes) tomorrow when i regain control of the poota ! So here goes:

This morning, sometime over breakfast, we had a power cut. Fairly normal for auckland i understand. However our ‘holiday house’ seems totally reliant on power so we had no running water (hot nor cold), no internet (noooo!) and no ability to automatically open the garage which contained our car. We found the manual release so jane could take the girls to school through the anarchic streets where it was every (wo)man for themselves as traffic lights were out. Meanwhile i stayed at home as we couldn’t work out how to manually lock the garage – and since the internal door is just an unlockable slidey thing it was like leaving the front door open. Thankfully north auckland was renergised at around 9.15 and we got it closed.

Jane then went for a run and i collected my car (at last). It’ll have to go back at some point to have some repainting, but it’s mine for now ! I then went to the park and ride to buy my weekly season ticket for the bus to work. About 25 quid for the week so not bad when you take in to account free parking.

after that jane and i went to a lovely restaurant on the sand a long bay before a walk up and down its golden beaches. a great last lunch with my wife before work starts up again.

Then we picked the girls up – and they went for a very chilly swim in the on site pool.

this evening i went to our potential new church’s men’s group which consisted mostly of pool tables, darts, ps3 games, poker and some kiwi tucker. And then an amazing talk by a maori gang leader who is now a christian. Quite amazing stuff. Here’s his website  and here’s a photo of him

I got home just as jane was tuning in to a skype conversation so i’ve no idea what she’s been up to.

Crazy kiwi connection of the day: met a chap at the church thing whose wife is best friends with a person in my old department at Sky who i did lots of work with !

Tomorrow we’re meeting some strangers at one tree hill (u2 wrote a song about the place if that means anything) and them some general mooching. Weather forecast looks good.

See ya

The day started off with jane and i going to a sports club not too far away from where we live to look at swimming lesson options for the girls.  it also had a rather nice gym which might be ideal for jane so she can meet fellow stay-at-homers over Pilates (whatever that is). 

the place trains some of the best atheletes in NZ, including the NZ olympic swimming squad.  like all things kiwi it seems completely down to earth and you get the feeling you could be on a running machine alongside some world champion something or other. 

except i wouldn’t be, as i don’t do that kind of exercise (or any other at the moment it seems – ho hum)

anyway, the girls are being ‘assessed’ next week to see what level/kind of swimming group they might go in and we might also put the girls in to this so they can get some sea swimming experience.

after that we drove up to Otewa to look at a secondary school option then went for a drive down a sticky outy land thing (see google map below)

it was really windy today so felt like 10-12 degrees most of the day.  chilly chillsome.  it looks like jane is wearing a baseball cap in the picture, but it’s just her hair blowing away

there’s a bay out that way called ‘Big Manly Beach’.  We resisted the obvious picture (given the state of my physique) and went for this photos of manly price cutter.

 

meanwhile at school Kezia has a visit from New Zealand’s strongest man, who is also the 5th strongest man in the world. she said he said (etc) that he eats 24 eggs a day and like broccoli.  he’s a friend of one of the dads of a kid in her class apparently.  it’s a very small world over here. 

he signed her drinking water bottle but i guess when you are the strongest man in the country you can pretty much sign anything and no one is going to stop you.

after school we went to the local library.  kezia has homework this week.  here are her spellings.  we’ve now reached the stage where i have to check her attempts against the spellings in her book as i don’t know how to spell most of the words.

the interesting thing is that each pupil gets to chose the words they need to learn themself.  she decided to choose some difficult ones.  good on ‘er i say.  but wonder if she’ll do the same next week.

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AND IN OTHER NEWS:  the compulsory hat is also now found so we have two girls reunited with their uniforms.  hoorah !

i still can’t believe we live here.  look at this amazing view:

 

jane and i went looking for swimming pools this morning.  specifically ones which give swimming lessons so the girls can carry on where they left off in the UK.  i think we were quite successful, narrowing it down to three good places, but it all ends up quite complicated as we also need to fit violin lessons for both of them in to the week, and that is proving more tricky to source.  luckily jane is rather adept at juggling timetables.  i think they teach them that at teacher school

but it’s not all perfect here.  for example, there’s a place on this lovely beach where you shouldn’t go swimming at certain times due to, well, you can read it yourself.  probably a few bacterias out there i would think.

but mostly it is pretty perfect.  especially as i’ve still got a few days of freedom so i can have lunch with my wife !

but i didn’t manage to pick up my car (which was originally due to be ready on tuesday but they stuffed up).  i spotted a few paint scratches on it which hadn’t been patched up so they agreed to touch them up and i’ll pick it up on saturday or sunday.  but that’s all good as we only need one car this week.  i think the garage are surprised about how laid back i’m being about it.  but i’m trying to cultivate a laid back attitude.

kezia’s learning about milk at school. one of the mums in her class works as a scientist in the hospital (according to Kezia) and was able to grow some bacteria on some pigs blood for them all to see. kez said “it was really gross”.  who are we to argue.

part of kezia’s home work is to do some experiments on four different types of milk.  a sample of each has being frozen and another sample of each has to sit on the sideboard in the open air for the next week to see what happens. i think we can guess.  good job we’re moving out of here in less than a week’s time.  it’s possible the milk will walk out itself – assuming the mini-ants or local cat doesn’t get it first.

and great news – the missing jacket is found.  although the compulsory hat is still absent.  at least that’s the least expensive item to replace.  a replacement will be bought on friday morning if it doesn’t surface.

tomorrow jane and i are heading north to visit another secondary school further up the coast.  we’ll use the opportunity to do a bit of exploring whilst we’re there.  who knows what adventures we’ll have (chilly ones probably – southerly winds make even sunny days feel cold).

see ya

Here I am giving a virtual tour of our minute garden to a skpe conversationalist.

Today our bank cards allowed us to buy a washing machine. While looking for washing machines we also saw this, which shows you how a dishwasher does its business.

Also we had a look at outdoor tables and indoor sofas.

Esther had a school trip today to the zoo and transport museum, which are next to each other in Auckland. Kezia hasn’t found her hat and jumper yet. She has got a very comprehensive homework sheet from school. They are learning all about milk and we have to do some experiments on it at home.

I think school is going to be a rubbish place for me meeting any mums as they aren’t there. I seem to be the only mother who walks right up to school with her children (much to Kezia’s great embarrassment). Esther and Kezia are really keen to walk to school on their own, which seems to be the norm here. They could do it from the new house as there is only one quiet road to cross, so I’ll have to get my head round that one. That means I won’t have to get dressed at all which will be ideal for getting started on my daytime drinking and tv habit.

here’s a giant kauri tree.  we knew it was because there was a sign next to it.  Kauris are important NZ trees. Do a google and learn my friends

today we went with our friends buzz, wendy, maisie and robyn to a dam in the local rain forest.  it’s where our drinking water is stored apparently

it’s started with a walk / run down a steepish path

and eventually we reached the dam

here’s the water

and here’s the wall

the view was quite unreal, looking down on the rain forest.

After our walk we went back to buzz and wendy’s for tea and cake. then back home for tea.
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tomorrow holds more excitement – esther has a school trip to the zoo and transport technology museum (two different places connected with a tram), kezia has school, i pick up my new car.  And finally, jane and i will (hopefully) buy our long promised / long awaited washing machine, assuming our bank card is up for the challenge !

[one week from now i will have completed my first day at work.  i have to admit to being a little nervous after all this time off and especially as it’s the thing which has brought us all the way across the world to this amazing place !  still, plenty of time to enjoy my last week of non-workyness with jane]

Some of you will know that back in Blighty I had 3 sockulators. I thought I had packed one for this interim period, but it seems not, so I treated myself to a new kiwi one. Just look at it- what a beauty with an amazing clip thing on the top.

Guess what we are up to here.

We visited Herald Island today and did some geocaches.It is so called because HMS Herald arrived there sometime in the past.

 

Here is a good playground boat of HMS Herald.

Below the girls are playing in our local playpark on some upturned sink-plungers.

Also today we went to Shore Community Church, which was jolly good.

See ya