Monday, February 28, 2005
Feel the bandwidth
Mat: Why I ever let Kat talk me into getting dial-up internet access I don't know. I guess it was because it was cheap: $20 (£7.50) a month for 250 hours and it had been so long since I'd had dial-up that I'd forgotten just how bad it was. But today I had to upload a 20Mb file for work and watched the painfully slow percent done creep slowly up to 99% over an hour and a half, to see it fail anyway! Disgusted I rang Telecom and ordered their fastest, biggest ADSL package. A bit of a knee-jerk reaction, I'm not sure we need a 2Mbit connection but it makes me feel better :) Suggestions for what to do with our new-found bandwidth on a gigantic postcard to the usual email address, although not until 7th March when it's installed. A live web cam so everyone can admire the wonderful Kiwi summer?The weather's not been perfect for flying the last few days, so I've not yet got round to getting my student licence. Today it started off beautiful and sunny but as Karl, my instructor, predicted by mid-afternoon the wind was in full force and we're getting something of a battering this evening. Good job I'm not out flying in that! If we had a web cam you could see it now.
While I was crying over the internet connection Kat was round at the Hervey's fixing up her bike, which is now spangly, oiled and inflated but still looking just scruffy enough to not want to steal. I'm getting bike envy and might have to scour the Buy, Sell, Swap for a rusty $20 bike of my own...
Friday, February 25, 2005
Back in the saddle
Kat: As of today I'm the proud owner of a new (to me) bike! It's been in a lean-to for the last 2 years and when it was first brought out the tyres were flat as pancakes, but Mat pumped them up and they've stayed up. It's dusty and rusty but doesn't look *too* bad. Hopefully after a good clean up and copious oiling it will be good enough for me to ride to work and around town - and at $20(£8) who could refuse! Cycle helmets are a legal requirement in NZ so I've also acquired an attractive day-glo one, another bargain from the free-ads. There isn't a lock but from the combination of the bike's condition and how honest and lovely all Kiwis are, I'll take the chance that no-one will steal it.It's the beginning of my working week and now that two full-time staff have left the cafe, my shifts will usually run from Sunday to Thursday - which means that this week I'm working seven days in a row! Mat sometimes meets me at the cafe on my lunchbreak which is a nice way for him to break up his working day and get out of the flat (not to mention the fantastic free food of course). On my days off I potter around the house, bothering Mat. Inspired by the Suter gallery shop, I've started a few crafty projects which may or may not lead to anything. Earlier this week was my first visit to the bead gallery - an amazing treasure trove just down the road from our flat!
Mat has just about recovered from the bruises from Monday's paragliding in time for another session tomorrow, if the weather's right. He valiantly agreed to go on a walk up to the observatory on Tuesday evening but we took a wrong turn and ended up fighting through Gorse thickets in the fast-fading light (I'll take the map next time - the route looked so straightforward I assumed we wouldn't need it). The days are still very warm and often without a cloud in the sky; from the snowy weather reports in the UK it finally feels like we're on the other side of the world :)
By the way, if you haven't seen the film Alien vs. Predator: it *is* as bad as you expect so you needn't bother.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Flying!
Mat: Now we've all settled down in Nelson there doesn't seem to be so much to write about in the blog, but now I've got a new passion so expect to me to harp on tediously on about paragliding (don't worry it's just a fad, I'll be bored of it in a week). I had my first lesson on Saturday on a field near Mapua, to the west of Nelson. The field is owned by a local millionaire paraglider enthusiast and is right on the edge of the cliffs with a wide track cut down to the beach for access. There is usually a sea breeze so the wind rushes up the side of the cliff giving lift in a line along the edge. Most of the flying at this site (called The Edge in typical Kiwi fashion) is along the cliffs then turning and flying back along them.Carl, my instructor, was very patient all day as I messed up yet another launch and got dragged 50ft along the ground by the glider before I could bring it under control. By the end of the day I was doing a little ground skimming managing pretty much to control it (sort of). Yesterday morning I woke up sore as hell covered in bruises from the harness (and the ground). I was almost relieved when I rang to check the weather and Carl said it was going to be too windy for me to fly. Since Kat was working that day I thought I'd work Sunday instead of Monday so I would be able to go again today.
I woke up this morning (ever so) slightly less sore than yesterday but the promise of perfect weather had me in a harness by 10:30am and ready to go. We started off with a refresher, launching practice and some more ground skimming, then Carl decided it was time for me to go off The Edge. After getting the glider up in the air and moving tentatively towards the cliff he grabbed hold of me and pushed me up and off! It was the most amazing feeling to be flying, for a second I totally forgot that I was supposed to be in control and heading for the beach. It was so quiet, still and peaceful - I could see for miles. After what seemed like hours (but was about a minute) I made a reasonable effort at landing on the beach, gathered up the glider and trekked back up to the top for another run! I got in four decent flights today - by the end I felt like I was almost in control of the glider rather than vice versa.
By 6pm when we stopped I was half dead from exhaustion and bruises (photos in the gallery - not). This weekend I'm hopefully having day three of the course from a local mountain at 2000ft for much longer flights. After I do six flights like that I've got my student licence and can fly anywhere in the world with an instructor; the full licence takes forty flights plus an exam.
At the moment I'm looking forward to being able to walk without bowed legs and for the bruises on my arms and chest to go down - then I can't wait to get out again!
In other news we did some stuff and had fun. Kat's still working at the art gallery cafe bringing home cakes and goodies for me, and the weather's glorious. Last week we went for dinner with the Herveys and met Brandreth's sister Ayliffe who's visiting for a few weeks from the UK. It was good.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Lashings of ginger beer
Kat: Happy Valentine's Day! No romantic dinners for us though, as it's all commercially-motivated bunkum.In the end the ginger beer moved into the fridge a day early due to the high risk of explosion (the plastic bottles had become rock solid). Mat's verdict is that although it could be more gingery, he's very happy with the recipe. We were able to compare home brews and get some tips from a family picnicking next to us at the Stoke opera in the park on Saturday night. They gave our beer the thumbs up but said we only needed to brew for a couple of days - great news for Mat as waiting a whole week was torture. The opera itself was very enjoyable; we're not aficionados but the singing was impressive, Christchurch symphony orchestra were excellent and the programme was full of crowd-pleasing *popera* songs. The evening finished with a firework display to the 1812 overture. One of the performers was Yulia, New Zealand's latest adopted daughter and singing sensation (she's half Russian and has a very peculiar accent) with "the potential to be bigger than Hayley Westenra". We've never heard of her either, but surely this can be settled with a measuring tape?
Today, I've worked another day at the Suter cafe (I managed to come home with chocolate cake this time!) and Mat has begun a project for the company he worked for in Brighton.
Some more Kiwi curiosities:
- Bare feet are very common. Whether around town or in the supermarket, Kiwis are comfortable without their shoes on. And flip-flops are called jandals.
- Theft. It happens of course but it's a very different society to the one we're used to. In a bike shop we asked whether theft was common and were told sometimes, if the bike wasn't locked up. We laughed that if it wasn't locked up then you're asking for trouble but the teenage boy protested that "people should respect your property and not steal it". I can't begin to fathom this.
- Coffees: in addition to the familiar latte, mocha and cappuccino (chocolate or cinnamon on top?), the options are long black, short black or flat white (soy milk optional). Luckily there's a barista at the Suter cafe so I don't have to worry about this!
Friday, February 11, 2005
Working girl
Kat: I'm finally a productive member of society again - today was my first day at the Suter gallery cafe in Nelson. It was hard, dragging myself in for 11 o'clock and working for a whole five hours, but somehow I managed. It's a licensed counter-service cafe and all the food is home-made by the chefs in advance. My job is to take orders, heat up the food, serve drinks and take money. There's the usual cafe fare: cakes, muffins, biscuits and some more hearty food like quiches, pies, cannelloni and salads - and it's all totally delicious. I had samosa and garlic flat-bread for lunch (a proper sit-down paid lunchbreak!) plus free tiramisus and muffins to take home. Yep, it seems like a pretty cushy job; the people are lovely, the atmosphere is great and the work wasn't too strenuous. I'll probably be working 4-5 days a week as a couple of the staff are going back to uni next week.Before you start worrying that we'll need two seats each on our flight home, I'll point out that we've both been doing a bit of running recently in an effort to get fit. We tried running up the TV transmitter mountain close to our flat but that proved extremely difficult, so we've chosen the much flatter and altogether more pleasant airport perimeter route instead. Right now, however, there's no encouragement to go outside: the weather has turned and it's bucketing down! The up side is that the cicadas have finally shut up - at times they're almost deafening when it's sunny.
We almost missed Pancake Day. It's doesn't seem to be celebrated at all in NZ, which is odd as there are Mardi Gras celebrations across the rest of the world and other peculiarly English traditions e.g. Guy Fawkes night are followed here. Anyway, we managed to cook up a batch of banana pancakes on Wednesday morning - but technically Tuesday night in the UK - which were very similar to the ones we had in Thailand. I've posted the recipe for your enjoyment.
Greetings from Nelson
Mat: Thought we were just sitting around watching the grass grow? No! We've been busy making stuff for your enjoyment.MatnKat Enterprises, Inc. proudly present: Greetings from Nelson.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Fun in NZ
Today's blog entry is brought to you by Mat's parents: http://www.connolley.co.uk/NZ/Fun_in_New_Zealand.htmTuesday, February 08, 2005
Troublesome tenants
Kat: Finally, even our (barely) managing agents agree with us that the tenants should go. At first I thought it was just unlucky that they blocked the toilet and broke the central heating in the first month, I could even forgive them for blowing up the lighting circuit and being late with the rent in January after overspending at Christmas, but now someone has complained about them being noisy and abusive. I'm mortified that it's one of our neighbours who we were on good terms with. So now begins the process of serving notice (2 months) then the inventory and damage assessment, re-advertising and checking of the new tenants. We're going to stipulate over 25s only from now on which is unfair to people moving out for the first time, but we can't afford any more of them!Meanwhile, on the other side of the world ... we're still dealing with the the last lot of tenants i.e. the fleas. It's amazing how much there is to learn about them. They have 4 stages: egg, larvae, pupae and fleas, and you can only kill them in the larvae and flea stages. Since the apocalypse of the fogging insecticide, all the eggs and pupae have been biding their time before hatching and metamorphisising. Although the adult fleas cannot complete their life cycle with human blood, they can hang around for several months. The cracks between the floorboards in the living room are the problem, full of lovely nourishing organic matter for them to eat and tricky to get the insecticide into, so our daily routine now includes a sweep and destroy mission. We've only found a few and haven't had any more bites (yet, touch wood) so hopefully the situation is under control.
It was Waitangi Day on Sunday, anniversary of the treaty that was signed by about 500 Maori chiefs (in simple terms) for protection in exchange for British land use. If it falls on a weekday it's a public holiday but otherwise it's pretty much a non-event for most of the country, except the Bay of Islands where there are often clashes between police and Maori protestors. It's contentious because there were differences between the Maori and English versions of the treaty; there's a very good site all about it. We visited Te Awhina Marae (Maori meeting house and building complex) in Motueka which had a fete and live bands playing. It was fun but very hot, so afterwards we played crazy golf which Mat won by a whisper. On the way we bought a bag of 54 apples for $6 - that's under 4p an apple! No idea what we're going to do with them but at that price you just can't say no.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
What's that got to do with the price of eggs?
Mat: We haven't done a latitude/longitude reading in ages, so here's the position of our flat: 41°16'58.1"S 173°16'26.9" E. We've had a nice lazy Saturday: wandered into town to see some acts the street performers festival that's on at the moment and stocked up on delicious veggies from the Saturday farmers' market. When we got back we found a few live fleas in the lounge, so we gave the buggers a good dose of Raid and swept the floors. They obviously haven't learned their lesson, eh?The can of Raid was only $3.99 which seems very cheap to me and got me thinking. I thought it might be interesting to do a price comparison of a few items between Countdown, our local supermarket, and Tesco in the UK (while we saw quite a few Tesco stores opening on the way over in Thailand and Malaysia, they have yet to invade New Zealand). I chose a bunch of random items to compare, and I'm sure that what I chose is more interesting than the actual price comparison.
In my shopping basket I've got the following: a local newspaper, 250g Cadbury's Fruit and Nut, a bottle of Hardy's merlot, 100g mushrooms, 3 litres of orange juice, a loaf of nice grainy sliced bread, 1kg of apples, 2 litres of milk and a box of tea. In NZ this comes to $23.15 (£8.75), and buying the same basket online at Tesco (which might surprise our tenants in Brighton when they deliver it tomorrow between 6pm and 8pm) costs £12.64, which by my maths is 44% more expensive. This sounds about right, although a lot of that difference is in the wine, which less than half the price here as in the UK. Wages are probably about 44% lower too, so there's little difference in reality, but since we're still living off UK money it seems pretty cheap.
The two things we've really noticed are cheaper are wine and petrol: a litre of regular (I'm talking about petrol now, although I like the idea of a brand of wine with that name) here is only 45p, again about half the price in the UK. Some things are a lot more expensive though, such as CDs, books and telecommunications. Our phone line rental is $40 (£15) a month compared with £10 in the UK, broadband starts at $40 per month and even basic dial-up internet is $20 (£7.50). However it only costs me 49c (18p) per minute to call the UK from my mobile, which is cheaper than I could make local calls for in Blighty.
Any recipe ideas from my shopping basket greatly appreciated.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Chateau Mat & Kat
Mat: Well, the fleas are dead. They messed with the wrong people this time - an insecticide fog followed by liberal spraying with more dangerous chemicals seems to have done the trick, although it's not to say that we're not still being bitten. I have three kinds of bites on my body: flea, mosquito and sandfly (photos in the gallery - not).It's been a real express move into Nelson: on Thursday morning we woke up on the floor sharing the only furniture in the flat, a single mattress that we've been sleeping on in the car. Thanks to the Buy, Sell, Swap by lunchtime we had aquired a table, futon and double bed! By early afternoon we also had a phoneline and internet connection, and our lives are once again complete. The problem is going to be fitting all this stuff in the car when we leave and start travelling around again...
Workwise we're also doing well: Kat's been offered work in the Suter Gallery cafe, the local art gallery and art-house cinema. I've been discussing with my old company to do some work remotely for them, which would be fantastic! Fingers crossed, eh.
Today I had my first pie, a real institution in this country. The closest shop to our flat is a pie shop, and I thought it was high time I tried one - steak and onion, and fantastic. Expect me to swell massively in photos in the next few months, especially if I work from home and can't be bothered to cook lunch. Another Kiwi tradition seems to be ginger beer, with the local breweries each making their own. In Christchurch it's Ginger Tom (and the non-alcoholic version, Neutered Tom) and in Nelson the local brewery Mac's make a really zingy ginger beer. Keen to join in, we started making two gallons of our own today in a $9.99 bin from The Warehouse. It's not going to be ready for a week, so you've got a while to think of suggestions for a name. My current favourite is Chateau Mat, although Kat reckons it should be spelled Shat-o-Mat.
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Nomads no more (nearly)
Mat: We arrived back in Nelson on the 29th and today signed the contract for our new flat - is that a record? Luckily Saturday is property day in the Nelson Mail, so we called half a dozen and saw two that we liked the look of. After telling the first one that we'd only be around for three months and being declined we decided to keep our mouths shut and not say anything definite. Which is how we came to be in possession of 205a Hampden St, Nelson 7001, NZ. In the meantime we've been sampling the hostels in the area: Tasman Bay (7/10), Palace Backpackers (8/10, free breakfast and a spa pool) and Paradiso Hostel (1/10, even with free breakfast and a sauna, it felt like being at the first night of term in an American frat house).After a couple of days of negotiations and hearing all about the nightmare last tenants they had (unspecified problems that they seemed reluctant to discuss in case we get any ideas) we handed over the cash and got the keys this morning. It's an unfurnished one bedroom flat with polished wood floors in the lounge and carpet in the bedroom. After the herculean effort to get the power reconnected (the last tenants hadn't paid their bill) I was attempting to get the phone reconnected when I noticed a flea on my leg. I killed it absent-mindedly and continued to hold, and then noticed another a minute later. A quick glance at the floor revealed a few more. I put the phone down and walked into the bedroom and watched a dozen leap onto my leg like they hadn't had a good feed since the last tenants moved out. Maybe that's why the landlords were so keen to reinforce the no pets message with us.
Oh dear.
So while Kat sat outside on the phone to Telecom I grabbed all our stuff (luckily still packed up) and we left to fumigate ourselves. We're now at Brandreth and Pauline's again, and going back tomorrow with the biggest can of the most poisonous insecticide fog that the vet would sell us without a licence.
In other news, we're job hunting. Kat's already turned down more jobs than I've applied for (one), at Penguino's, an ice-creamery in the city centre. I'm considering doing a paragliding course, and *then* I'll settle down and find a job. But first, the pests.