Saturday was a bit of a grey day with attempts at rain, although we fared much better than other parts of the locality which suffered torrential downpours. The Mount itself has something of a micro climate, and is generally brighter and sunnier than the surrounding areas. It must be something to do with the large volcano dominating the sky line.
Phoebe demanded pancakes, but we were low on supplies so I was duly despatched to New World to rectify this. On the way, I dropped in on Wayne, who was suffering for the lack of a bottle opener, a situation that I simply could not allow to persist and so lend home one. It's not entirely a philanthropic gesture, I can't get the beer open with his keyring-bottle opener. He was unsure how to plumb in the washing machine, so I arrange to pop back later on and have a look once we were all pancaked up.
The washing machine was a relatively simple affair to resolve. Although I'd gone round to our new neighbours alone, we were invaded by the rest of the tribe and an extra one. Di had picked up Rhiannon's friend from Papamoa and her little sister had tagged along for the ride.
Wayne was after a barbecue, having been slightly disappointed by having to cook in the kitchen. A predictably intense discussion about the merits of gas versus charcoal barbecues ensued which I avoided participating in and contented myself with earwigging from a distance. We ended up at Bunnings Warehouse who were having a sale and a charcoal effort was purchased. The weather wasn't conducive to barbecuing, so it was postponed to tomorrow.
Sunday was a little dull at first but brightened up later on. I started with a run, but this proved rather unsuccessful as something started hurting and it therefore turned into a walk. Vicky was concerned that it was just too hot to sit outside, and thus we ended up whisking her up to Briscoes and scored her a large black parasol. In fact we grabbed one too. We were all rather amused by the shelf labels in the Plastic Box store - one labelled "More Crap", another labelled "Even More Really Useful Crap"! Some of their crap was actually not that crappy, but at least they weren't actually talking things up.
Wayne had the barbie going, but unfortunately was a little too eager to get things going and managed to incinerate several burgers before the coals had stopped flaming. Subsequent attempts were much more successful, doubtless due to the quaffing of an appropriate amount of Stein Lager, and the large parasol temporarily embedded on a flower pot masquerading as a base. Suitably liquified, we wandered home in time to watch Doctor Who on the telly.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Friday, 27 November 2009
Herding Cats
For the last three days I've been helping out at Mount Primary's "Amazing Race 2009". This consists of about a dozen "tasks" which involve wandering around the town, and occasionally around the mount performing various activities. Having been allegedly "in charge" of 5 kids including Imogen, I can honestly say the experience is much like trying to herd cats. We were under strict instructions to make sure that the group stayed together which proved to be more challenging that you can possibly imagine. Imogen was great, but then she knew she'd have copped a lot of flak if she'd mucked about. The other two girls were for the most part OK, but the two boys....give me strength. One boy was constantly miles behind and kept disappearing to the loo without telling anyone, although he claimed he did. The other was forever climbing up or down something, or leaping off/on/over whatever happened to be biggest and nearest. It was a major achievement getting round the mount in one piece without loosing anybody although we were massively late back which caused a little bit of a flap. One of the boys managed to spray sunblock in his eyes with painful consequences, resulting in me lying him on the ground and pouring the contents of his water bottle over his face while trying to prise his eyes open to wash out the sun block. This of course resulted in everybody else laughing which only made things worse.
Thursday morning, and the Mirth Mobile emits an ominous click when the key is turned and refuses to start. I find the open rear door that has left the interior light on all night that has flattened the battery. This is doubly annoying as today we need to take sleeping bags and other camping paraphernalia with us. Di went on ahead. laden like a pack mule, and I rummage through the boxes looking for the battery charger, all the while expecting the battery to be a write off as they sometimes are when completely flattened.
As Thursday was the day where everyone slept in tents, the first task was to pitch them. Alas, the wind on Thursday approached 35 knots, which made for a challenging experience, to say the least. Several tents were flattened by the time the day's activities were completed, and more tents had to be found rather quickly. An impromptu parents' meeting was called to decide the fate of the camp. The consensus was to give it a go and hope that the wind died down a bit, which it did. The evening rounded off with 90 or so kids descending on the hot pools before turning in for the night. I managed to get a reasonable night's kip in the parents' tent, and was in fact the last one up in the morning, everyone else having made it out before 7 AM.
Day three saw three more tasks put to bed and everyone return in one piece, and prizes awarded before heading back to school. Alas our team were not in the top five, even with my generous but honest marking scheme but on reflection I'm rather glad that Imogen did not win a giant inflatable jandal. While out and about on the last task, I receive a call from an agency with a possible position at Rotorua Council. They have yet to decide if they have a position, but my name is going forward if they do. The commute is allegedly 40 minutes on a bad day, so I might have an excuse to get a bike again. Such a cunning plan is doomed to failure.
Returning home, I receive an email from another agency, rejecting my services. This is the one where there are two candidates, the other one having worked there before.
I discover that when Wayne has borrowed the newly recharged Mirth Mobile to move house, a bottle of vinegar has discharged its contents all over the boot. Vicky has therefore stolen the carpet and has scrubbed it and I find it lurking in the back garden of their new house, a stone's throw from us. Wayne runs out of beer so we wander up to New World to replenish supplies, and this turns into an impromptu barbecue expedition, albeit without an actual barbecue to cook it all on. Sadly I have forgotten my wallet and Wayne has to spring for the lot. He sportingly decides to treat this as a house warming party and we are only too happy to accept. Vicky draws the short straw and cooks it all on the stove. We wobble home around 9:30 a little worse for wear and fall asleep, thrilled by the exploits of the local talent on Australian Idol.
Thursday morning, and the Mirth Mobile emits an ominous click when the key is turned and refuses to start. I find the open rear door that has left the interior light on all night that has flattened the battery. This is doubly annoying as today we need to take sleeping bags and other camping paraphernalia with us. Di went on ahead. laden like a pack mule, and I rummage through the boxes looking for the battery charger, all the while expecting the battery to be a write off as they sometimes are when completely flattened.
As Thursday was the day where everyone slept in tents, the first task was to pitch them. Alas, the wind on Thursday approached 35 knots, which made for a challenging experience, to say the least. Several tents were flattened by the time the day's activities were completed, and more tents had to be found rather quickly. An impromptu parents' meeting was called to decide the fate of the camp. The consensus was to give it a go and hope that the wind died down a bit, which it did. The evening rounded off with 90 or so kids descending on the hot pools before turning in for the night. I managed to get a reasonable night's kip in the parents' tent, and was in fact the last one up in the morning, everyone else having made it out before 7 AM.
Day three saw three more tasks put to bed and everyone return in one piece, and prizes awarded before heading back to school. Alas our team were not in the top five, even with my generous but honest marking scheme but on reflection I'm rather glad that Imogen did not win a giant inflatable jandal. While out and about on the last task, I receive a call from an agency with a possible position at Rotorua Council. They have yet to decide if they have a position, but my name is going forward if they do. The commute is allegedly 40 minutes on a bad day, so I might have an excuse to get a bike again. Such a cunning plan is doomed to failure.
Returning home, I receive an email from another agency, rejecting my services. This is the one where there are two candidates, the other one having worked there before.
I discover that when Wayne has borrowed the newly recharged Mirth Mobile to move house, a bottle of vinegar has discharged its contents all over the boot. Vicky has therefore stolen the carpet and has scrubbed it and I find it lurking in the back garden of their new house, a stone's throw from us. Wayne runs out of beer so we wander up to New World to replenish supplies, and this turns into an impromptu barbecue expedition, albeit without an actual barbecue to cook it all on. Sadly I have forgotten my wallet and Wayne has to spring for the lot. He sportingly decides to treat this as a house warming party and we are only too happy to accept. Vicky draws the short straw and cooks it all on the stove. We wobble home around 9:30 a little worse for wear and fall asleep, thrilled by the exploits of the local talent on Australian Idol.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Faking It
This morning I had an email from the temp agency asking me to complete some on line tests. This consisted of a typing/data entry test and tests on Excel, Access and Outlook. I've never used lookout, which I count as a blessing but I still managed to score 57% in the test. This apparently indicated "training is required". Access is also something I've not really used much, and when I did it was access 2000, not 2007. Still, 66% was achieved, demonstrating "broad knowledge" with some areas indicating "expert knowledge". Not surprisingly, Excel was my highest score at 78% which as I've been using openoffice almost exclusively for as long as I care to remember was most pleasing. And the data entry test was 100%.
About 5 minutes after I'd finished all the tests, I got a call from the agency, asking a few more questions and generally asking me to sell myself. They told me a little more about the role, which is alas a very temporary 60 hour position, which pays a fairly poor $25 per hour. Still, If I get it and I am apparently one of two candidates, $1500 would come in handy. The down side is that the other candidate has worked for the same place before, which may well slam the door before it's even opened.
Di had been to visit Vicky, who was having some trouble transferring funds from the UK. As we seem to be well set up with HiFX, Di suggested we do the exchange for them. As it was a really sweltering day, a drive in the Mirth Mobile with the aircon on 11 seemed like a wheeze, so I wandered round to exchange bank details.
Di has also rented a pool key for the primary school's swimming pool. $40 for the summer, with a $5 refund when the key is returned. It's quite a small pool and not very deep, but the kids seemed to enjoy splashing about in it. With the 6 week summer break coming up in 2 1/2 weeks, it seemed a reasonable thing to have on tap.
About 5 minutes after I'd finished all the tests, I got a call from the agency, asking a few more questions and generally asking me to sell myself. They told me a little more about the role, which is alas a very temporary 60 hour position, which pays a fairly poor $25 per hour. Still, If I get it and I am apparently one of two candidates, $1500 would come in handy. The down side is that the other candidate has worked for the same place before, which may well slam the door before it's even opened.
Di had been to visit Vicky, who was having some trouble transferring funds from the UK. As we seem to be well set up with HiFX, Di suggested we do the exchange for them. As it was a really sweltering day, a drive in the Mirth Mobile with the aircon on 11 seemed like a wheeze, so I wandered round to exchange bank details.
Di has also rented a pool key for the primary school's swimming pool. $40 for the summer, with a $5 refund when the key is returned. It's quite a small pool and not very deep, but the kids seemed to enjoy splashing about in it. With the 6 week summer break coming up in 2 1/2 weeks, it seemed a reasonable thing to have on tap.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Uh, Wot?
Shhh. My head hurts this morning. I guess I overdid it a little last night. Although we didn't stay until the 1AM closing time, we packed it in about midnight which was about right, or so I thought. The rest of the day was a bit of a waste really - I didn't do very much other than fill in an application form for a temp agency. They were also threatening to ask me to take an online test to prove my claimed wizardry with Micro$0ft products.
It was a really pleasant day, and about 5PM after a bit of a snooze I was feeling a little more human (OK, less like a bear with a sore head) and we all headed down for a half hour on the beach. It was actually quite windy on the beach, but the sun was really warm and the two elements fought it out with each other while we were alternately chilled and warmed. The kids dug a big hole and Phoebe leapt in and out. The wind picked up so we wandered off home.
It was a really pleasant day, and about 5PM after a bit of a snooze I was feeling a little more human (OK, less like a bear with a sore head) and we all headed down for a half hour on the beach. It was actually quite windy on the beach, but the sun was really warm and the two elements fought it out with each other while we were alternately chilled and warmed. The kids dug a big hole and Phoebe leapt in and out. The wind picked up so we wandered off home.
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Don't Try This At Home
We took Rhiannon over to visit her new friend over in Papamoa this morning. It was interesting looking at their house, since we were offered it while still in the UK but declined since we weren't comfortable with taking a 12 month let on a house we'd not seen. Just as well, since the acoustics in the kitchen/dining area would have done my head in - very echoy.
I was beginning to feel a bit like a Pom on holiday since the majority of blokes seem to be wearing some sort of shorts and here I am in Levi's 501. Thus a trip to Farmers was in order where I bought a couple of knee length khaki efforts for $120.
While we were in that neck of the woods, I popped into Dick Smith's and bought a soldering iron, figuring I'd have a crack at fixing the remote control - nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. This turned out to be rather a mistake. I managed to resolder across the broken tracks, and on first try, the remote worked. Huzzah I thought. Sadly, I soon discovered that I could turn the volume down, but not up and some of the channel buttons wouldn't work. I borrowed Di's glasses which while not exactly reading glasses did help me see what I was doing. There can be no denying that age related presbyopia is rather conspicuous these days. Di's favourite trick is apparently to double glaze herself by wearing contact lenses and glasses in order to read the paper. Alas despite the improvement in vision, I still couldn't get the other remote functions to work. It was only after the sound was turned down to almost nothing that I discovered that the freeview box remembered its setting when switched off! I had in fact made things much worse by trying to fix the damn thing. The TV now has to be turned up to full blast in order to hear the freeview box, but there's a slight danger of acoustic feed back if one inadvertently switches over to the DVD
Rhiannon's friend's parents brought her back and everything seemed to have gone well. Various invitations for sleep overs were exchanged, but apparently my warning about Rhiannon's evil trouser coughing were not well received. I spent the rest of the evening getting the evil eye.
The highlight of the evening however was a night out on the pop with Wayne. We started off in Latitude 37 before moving on to Mellick, an Irish bar where I was able to consume copious amounts of the black stuff, which after the first few mouthfuls which were a little odd (must have been the Tui) tasted just fine. It wasn't a particularly busy night, but we ended up sharing some conversations with a few characters, and we ended up outnumbering the natives with out recently acquired Canadian, Greek and Ukrainian drinking buddies. We stumbled back to Wayne's place and tried to get the radio 5 live commentary working. Alas my best efforts to find an open UK proxy failed and I left him to it.
I was beginning to feel a bit like a Pom on holiday since the majority of blokes seem to be wearing some sort of shorts and here I am in Levi's 501. Thus a trip to Farmers was in order where I bought a couple of knee length khaki efforts for $120.
While we were in that neck of the woods, I popped into Dick Smith's and bought a soldering iron, figuring I'd have a crack at fixing the remote control - nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. This turned out to be rather a mistake. I managed to resolder across the broken tracks, and on first try, the remote worked. Huzzah I thought. Sadly, I soon discovered that I could turn the volume down, but not up and some of the channel buttons wouldn't work. I borrowed Di's glasses which while not exactly reading glasses did help me see what I was doing. There can be no denying that age related presbyopia is rather conspicuous these days. Di's favourite trick is apparently to double glaze herself by wearing contact lenses and glasses in order to read the paper. Alas despite the improvement in vision, I still couldn't get the other remote functions to work. It was only after the sound was turned down to almost nothing that I discovered that the freeview box remembered its setting when switched off! I had in fact made things much worse by trying to fix the damn thing. The TV now has to be turned up to full blast in order to hear the freeview box, but there's a slight danger of acoustic feed back if one inadvertently switches over to the DVD
Rhiannon's friend's parents brought her back and everything seemed to have gone well. Various invitations for sleep overs were exchanged, but apparently my warning about Rhiannon's evil trouser coughing were not well received. I spent the rest of the evening getting the evil eye.
The highlight of the evening however was a night out on the pop with Wayne. We started off in Latitude 37 before moving on to Mellick, an Irish bar where I was able to consume copious amounts of the black stuff, which after the first few mouthfuls which were a little odd (must have been the Tui) tasted just fine. It wasn't a particularly busy night, but we ended up sharing some conversations with a few characters, and we ended up outnumbering the natives with out recently acquired Canadian, Greek and Ukrainian drinking buddies. We stumbled back to Wayne's place and tried to get the radio 5 live commentary working. Alas my best efforts to find an open UK proxy failed and I left him to it.
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Damn And Blast
This morning did not start at all well. Freya was struggling to get the television working and in my efforts to help her, I tripped over the toy box and trod on the remote control for the freeview box. Sadly the application of in excess of 100 kilos to a flimsy printed circuit board did it no good at all and it refused to work from that point onwards. I therefore had to order a new one online, at the cost of $47. Opening it up (I might as well, it's dead) revealed numerous hair line cracks in the circuit board. And to add insult to injury, Diane pointed out the page sized Repco advert giving 25% off everything. Presumably this would have included the brake pads I bought yesterday.
Vicky and Wayne are due to move into their new house this week, but were still shopping around for various household items. Vicky was under the misapprehension that the Warehouse was in Bayfair. This isn't the case, Tauranga or Papamoa are the nearest branches so I gallantly offered to take Vicky out shopping. Wayne was otherwise indisposed playing cricket.
After the shopping trip we all went down to the marina to watch a fishing competition, mainly on account of the free sausage sizzle. Alas, by the time we arrived the sausages were gone so we were reduced to mucking around on the foreshore. Freya managed to find a couple of live 5 point starfish which we avoided bringing back with us.
After all this healthy outdoor fun we went back to ours and ordered pizza. Wayne was still incommunicado and as it was an away match, we scoffed all the pizza. He turned up a bit later looking rather hungry and downbeat on account of an 8 wicket defeat. We stuffed some cheese on toast down his throat and washed it down with a beer and this perked him up no end.
For some obscure reason, we ended up playing poker, which is something I've never done before. It seems I've a lot to learn, but I did manage to bluff Di and indeed Wayne a couple of times and managed a reasonable showing. Craig interrupted the proceedings by requesting a lift home and I took the opportunity to deposit VW back at their place before driving Craig out to a party near Bayfair. It was necessary to wind the windows all the way down since Craig has no idea of how to apply just a little aftershave. On the other hand, it saves on fly spray and insect repellent.
Vicky and Wayne are due to move into their new house this week, but were still shopping around for various household items. Vicky was under the misapprehension that the Warehouse was in Bayfair. This isn't the case, Tauranga or Papamoa are the nearest branches so I gallantly offered to take Vicky out shopping. Wayne was otherwise indisposed playing cricket.
After the shopping trip we all went down to the marina to watch a fishing competition, mainly on account of the free sausage sizzle. Alas, by the time we arrived the sausages were gone so we were reduced to mucking around on the foreshore. Freya managed to find a couple of live 5 point starfish which we avoided bringing back with us.
After all this healthy outdoor fun we went back to ours and ordered pizza. Wayne was still incommunicado and as it was an away match, we scoffed all the pizza. He turned up a bit later looking rather hungry and downbeat on account of an 8 wicket defeat. We stuffed some cheese on toast down his throat and washed it down with a beer and this perked him up no end.
For some obscure reason, we ended up playing poker, which is something I've never done before. It seems I've a lot to learn, but I did manage to bluff Di and indeed Wayne a couple of times and managed a reasonable showing. Craig interrupted the proceedings by requesting a lift home and I took the opportunity to deposit VW back at their place before driving Craig out to a party near Bayfair. It was necessary to wind the windows all the way down since Craig has no idea of how to apply just a little aftershave. On the other hand, it saves on fly spray and insect repellent.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Sports Day Revisited
After Wednesday's wash out, the school rearranged sports day for Thursday and Friday. Diane and I spent the morning watching Imogen compete in the long jump, high jump, shot put, discus and sprint. Imogen was third in the high jump, and claims to have been third in the sprint, although she appears to have been robbed by the referee. It was rather refreshing to see a junior school doing proper sporting events. OK, the shot put was a plastic ball and the discus a rubber ring, but the idea was the same. Also, the whole thing was competitive, with the winners and runners up getting a certificate. All the kids took a turn, and some were much better than others but it's all a contrast to the UK, where the events are a bit limp and the emphasis is on everyone having a go and not on winning. Is it any wonder the UK sucks at sport? Later on we watched Freya doing some of the same events. She was 2nd in 100 metres, 3rd in 50 metres and 3rd in shot put.
This morning, we went back to school to watch Phoebe do her events, and Freya complete the rest of hers. Phoebe was amazing. She was 2nd in the sprint event, 3rd in the cross country (a lap of the school's exterior perimeter, barefoot) and was 4th in the shot put. She finished in the top third of all but two of the events, and scored 16 out of 18 points. Quite an all round athlete.
The whole atmosphere in the school is just great. It's also totally open - you can just walk in off the street and watch the kids do their thing. No one bothers you. There's no paranoia like you get in the UK, where schools are fenced off and you have to be numbered and indexed by the office before you get anywhere near your own children. The openness is perhaps a little worrying, but there does not seem to be any trouble with it. Let's hope the UK style everyone-is-a-pervert mentality does not creep in any time soon.
Another case in point is the play area in the school. Back in the UK, the infant school had to remove its climbing apparatus because it was a matter of an inch or two taller than the "new" "improved" "safety" regulations. Not doing so would have meant the school's liability insurance would be invalid and any child hurting themselves could sue for millions. By contrast, the climbing equipment here is the best part of seven feet tall. Kids are allowed to jump off and use it as they see fit. There is a danger one or two of them might someday come to grief, but no one seems to worry too much. The ACC covers any liability which has the knock on effect of enabling the kids to find their own limits, without having artificial "safe" limits being imposed upon them. As I joked with one of the mothers - if the kid is dumb enough to fall off, it only serves to cleanse the gene pool.
The Mirth Mobile has been developing an annoying squealing noise when braking, and also when being driven on the flat. It's been doing it since I got it. I tried not to worry too much about it figuring it was just the brake pads that needed doing. With all the running back and forward to school over the last couple of days with the windows down, the squealing has become much more noticeable. As I have no excuse for not taking a look now that all my tools (including trolley jack, axle stands and a selection of hammers) have arrived, I jacked it up and took a look. The front pads have loads of wear left, but the rears. Oh my. The weren't quite down to the metal, but there wasn't a lot left.
The reason for the horrible squealing however, was due to a strange metal protuberance, which was scraping on the face of the disk. I'm not entirely sure what this thing is or why it's there, but my guess is that it's a wear indicator and it's supposed to be connected to a wire or something and turn on a light when the pads wear down. The Mirth Mobile has no such wire, so it's completely useless.
The search for new pads was now a priority. Craig mentioned that he'd seen a car parts place on Hewletts road. This turned out to be a branch of SuperCheap Auto. Sadly, they had a computer sez no moment and couldn't seem to find a 1999 Honda Accord 3.0 V6 VTiL in their list of cars, so they directed me down to Repco who were much more accommodating and relieved me of $49.99 in exchange for a set of pads. Now the fun began. Getting the calliper off was a bit awkward, since the pads seemed to have seized on to the disk. Judicious application of a hammer and a bit of leverage saw it pop off. Now for the really fun part, pushing the piston back into the calliper. No amount of pushing, shoving, levering, hammering and swearing seemed to move the damn thing. I took my life in my hands and undid the bleed nipple hoping that this would allow the piston to move. No joy. At least I had escaped without tearing my nipple off. Always best avoided, that one. At this point a bit of googling was called for. It turns out that the Honda Accord has a feature whereby rotating the piston clockwise by means of the very large cross in the back of it screws it back into the calliper. D'oh! Easy peasy once you know. Copious amounts of copper grease was applied and the whole lot shoved back together. The other side should have taken about 10 minutes - sadly one of the calliper mounting bolts rounded off as I tried to undo it. Grrr. I finally managed to get it off with an extra deep 6 sided socket, which I was reluctant to use since it was only a 1/4" drive, and I had to adapt it up to 1/2" to get the leverage on it. Fortunately it didn't snap and I got the bolt out. Pads changed, I put the bolt back in. Naughty, but it tightened up OK and I won't have the Mirth Mobile long enough to merit another set of pads.
This morning, we went back to school to watch Phoebe do her events, and Freya complete the rest of hers. Phoebe was amazing. She was 2nd in the sprint event, 3rd in the cross country (a lap of the school's exterior perimeter, barefoot) and was 4th in the shot put. She finished in the top third of all but two of the events, and scored 16 out of 18 points. Quite an all round athlete.
The whole atmosphere in the school is just great. It's also totally open - you can just walk in off the street and watch the kids do their thing. No one bothers you. There's no paranoia like you get in the UK, where schools are fenced off and you have to be numbered and indexed by the office before you get anywhere near your own children. The openness is perhaps a little worrying, but there does not seem to be any trouble with it. Let's hope the UK style everyone-is-a-pervert mentality does not creep in any time soon.
Another case in point is the play area in the school. Back in the UK, the infant school had to remove its climbing apparatus because it was a matter of an inch or two taller than the "new" "improved" "safety" regulations. Not doing so would have meant the school's liability insurance would be invalid and any child hurting themselves could sue for millions. By contrast, the climbing equipment here is the best part of seven feet tall. Kids are allowed to jump off and use it as they see fit. There is a danger one or two of them might someday come to grief, but no one seems to worry too much. The ACC covers any liability which has the knock on effect of enabling the kids to find their own limits, without having artificial "safe" limits being imposed upon them. As I joked with one of the mothers - if the kid is dumb enough to fall off, it only serves to cleanse the gene pool.
The Mirth Mobile has been developing an annoying squealing noise when braking, and also when being driven on the flat. It's been doing it since I got it. I tried not to worry too much about it figuring it was just the brake pads that needed doing. With all the running back and forward to school over the last couple of days with the windows down, the squealing has become much more noticeable. As I have no excuse for not taking a look now that all my tools (including trolley jack, axle stands and a selection of hammers) have arrived, I jacked it up and took a look. The front pads have loads of wear left, but the rears. Oh my. The weren't quite down to the metal, but there wasn't a lot left.
The reason for the horrible squealing however, was due to a strange metal protuberance, which was scraping on the face of the disk. I'm not entirely sure what this thing is or why it's there, but my guess is that it's a wear indicator and it's supposed to be connected to a wire or something and turn on a light when the pads wear down. The Mirth Mobile has no such wire, so it's completely useless.The search for new pads was now a priority. Craig mentioned that he'd seen a car parts place on Hewletts road. This turned out to be a branch of SuperCheap Auto. Sadly, they had a computer sez no moment and couldn't seem to find a 1999 Honda Accord 3.0 V6 VTiL in their list of cars, so they directed me down to Repco who were much more accommodating and relieved me of $49.99 in exchange for a set of pads. Now the fun began. Getting the calliper off was a bit awkward, since the pads seemed to have seized on to the disk. Judicious application of a hammer and a bit of leverage saw it pop off. Now for the really fun part, pushing the piston back into the calliper. No amount of pushing, shoving, levering, hammering and swearing seemed to move the damn thing. I took my life in my hands and undid the bleed nipple hoping that this would allow the piston to move. No joy. At least I had escaped without tearing my nipple off. Always best avoided, that one. At this point a bit of googling was called for. It turns out that the Honda Accord has a feature whereby rotating the piston clockwise by means of the very large cross in the back of it screws it back into the calliper. D'oh! Easy peasy once you know. Copious amounts of copper grease was applied and the whole lot shoved back together. The other side should have taken about 10 minutes - sadly one of the calliper mounting bolts rounded off as I tried to undo it. Grrr. I finally managed to get it off with an extra deep 6 sided socket, which I was reluctant to use since it was only a 1/4" drive, and I had to adapt it up to 1/2" to get the leverage on it. Fortunately it didn't snap and I got the bolt out. Pads changed, I put the bolt back in. Naughty, but it tightened up OK and I won't have the Mirth Mobile long enough to merit another set of pads.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Why Does it Rain on Sports Day?
I coughed and snorted my way to school this morning with Rhiannon, who became increasingly disgusted with my bronchial discharges. Well at least I tried. It started to rain the moment we set off so we went back and fired up the Mirth Mobile. A return trip was made to deposit the rest of the brood at their school. We were supposed to be going back to school at 10AM for sports day, but a quick phone call a little later revealed that it had been cancelled because of the weather.
We had taken another look at the requirements for getting hold of a community services card. Apparently we are able to use birth certificates as documents "over 2 years old". We'd also figured out that there's a local Work and Income office in Bayfair, where we would be able to get our documents certified. Unlike the UK, where you have to make an appointment to see anybody, over here, you just walk in, or at least it seemed like that. The office was a rather large open plan affair, and there was no evidence of any protective barriers or closeted interview rooms you get in the UK. I guess people getting upset with government bureaucracy is not an issue over here. The girl on the reception desk made copies of our documents and offered to send them off for us. Result. I had been wondering exactly what the card was worth, and a little googling around indicated that it lowers prescription charges from $15 to $3, so it's good that we carried on with it. Rhiannon has finally admitted that she is having difficulty seeing properly (no surprise, we're both blind as bats) and hopefully the card will lead to cheaper eye tests and glasses.
I ordered a leather repair kit over the Internet. With any luck it should make the scratches imparted by Imogen's trousers all but invisible. I do hope so otherwise that's $75 wasted. Watch this space.
My face has begun to peel quite spectacularly. I was already going quite brown before over exposing myself and going read. I now have what appears to be a dirty tide mark of brown surrounding areas of new pink skin. I have no intention of sharing any pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination if you want to feel thoroughly nauseated.
Imogen went to the doctor and had a tetanus injection. Apparently it's standard practice over here for a tetanus shot around age 10/11. It's indicative of the outdoor lifestyle I suppose. Rhiannon had the first of her HPV vaccinations yesterday. Both seem to have escaped any major side effects with only Imogen complaining of a sore arm. We deliberately ignored the vaccinations being offered in the UK, since the all knowing, all wise UK government opted for the less encompassing Cervarix vaccine, which only protects against two strains of HPV, whereas the rest of the world seems to have gone with Garadasil, which protects against four. Admittedly, these extra two are not believed to be cancer inducing, but they are responsible for cases of genital warts and it seems to us to be rather silly not to protect against this at the same time.
Westpac have very kindly pre-approved me for a credit card. This is rather worrying as I don't as yet have any source of income, but this seems no impediment. The credit limit is a mere $3,500 but they have offered to waive the annual $44 fee for the first year. I would also get to collect "hot points". Woo! Tempted as I am, I think I'll stick with the UK cards which I could use if something major crops up.
We had taken another look at the requirements for getting hold of a community services card. Apparently we are able to use birth certificates as documents "over 2 years old". We'd also figured out that there's a local Work and Income office in Bayfair, where we would be able to get our documents certified. Unlike the UK, where you have to make an appointment to see anybody, over here, you just walk in, or at least it seemed like that. The office was a rather large open plan affair, and there was no evidence of any protective barriers or closeted interview rooms you get in the UK. I guess people getting upset with government bureaucracy is not an issue over here. The girl on the reception desk made copies of our documents and offered to send them off for us. Result. I had been wondering exactly what the card was worth, and a little googling around indicated that it lowers prescription charges from $15 to $3, so it's good that we carried on with it. Rhiannon has finally admitted that she is having difficulty seeing properly (no surprise, we're both blind as bats) and hopefully the card will lead to cheaper eye tests and glasses.
I ordered a leather repair kit over the Internet. With any luck it should make the scratches imparted by Imogen's trousers all but invisible. I do hope so otherwise that's $75 wasted. Watch this space.
My face has begun to peel quite spectacularly. I was already going quite brown before over exposing myself and going read. I now have what appears to be a dirty tide mark of brown surrounding areas of new pink skin. I have no intention of sharing any pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination if you want to feel thoroughly nauseated.
Imogen went to the doctor and had a tetanus injection. Apparently it's standard practice over here for a tetanus shot around age 10/11. It's indicative of the outdoor lifestyle I suppose. Rhiannon had the first of her HPV vaccinations yesterday. Both seem to have escaped any major side effects with only Imogen complaining of a sore arm. We deliberately ignored the vaccinations being offered in the UK, since the all knowing, all wise UK government opted for the less encompassing Cervarix vaccine, which only protects against two strains of HPV, whereas the rest of the world seems to have gone with Garadasil, which protects against four. Admittedly, these extra two are not believed to be cancer inducing, but they are responsible for cases of genital warts and it seems to us to be rather silly not to protect against this at the same time.
Westpac have very kindly pre-approved me for a credit card. This is rather worrying as I don't as yet have any source of income, but this seems no impediment. The credit limit is a mere $3,500 but they have offered to waive the annual $44 fee for the first year. I would also get to collect "hot points". Woo! Tempted as I am, I think I'll stick with the UK cards which I could use if something major crops up.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Kill! Kill! Kill!
Today we finally succumbed to the delights of the Mount Maunganui Hot Salt Pools. Vicky and Wayne are regular visitors and we can see why now. It's very relaxing and as residents we get in for $6 each instead of $10. We bought a ten entry ticket and will therefore be going back at some point. A Subway for lunch, and then I tried desperately not to fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.
I wanted to throttle Imogen this evening. One of the rivets on her jeans managed to fall apart leaving a really sharp edge. Alas it has left scratches on not one but both of our new sofas. The jeans were immediately consigned to the bin much to the chagrin of Imogen, who seemed somewhat oblivious to the damage she'd done.
I wanted to throttle Imogen this evening. One of the rivets on her jeans managed to fall apart leaving a really sharp edge. Alas it has left scratches on not one but both of our new sofas. The jeans were immediately consigned to the bin much to the chagrin of Imogen, who seemed somewhat oblivious to the damage she'd done.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Monday Morning Blues
Rhiannon had another filling replaced on the grounds that it was leaking and decay setting in under the filling. This is exactly the same problem that Imogen had, and it does rather call into question the standard of treatment we got in the UK. As we had a private dentist I can only wonder about our teeth.
The girls resumed practising their instruments, to much protest. Some nonsense about not having a teacher or something. Rhiannon seems to have forgotten very little, however Imogen either does not or will not remember what the note directly above middle C is.
I seem to have developed an annoying snotty nose/cough which as it's heading towards summer is rather odd. Maybe it's just the usual November dose, which takes no notice of season. Whatever, it's a nuisance.
Sam's staff discount card turned up in the post this morning, so we wandered down to Woolworths to try it out. If saved us a whopping $4 on a spend of $140. I doubt we'll be making the trip toBayfair specially. On the way back to the car, I spotted a motor home in the car park. Nothing unremarkable about this you might think, which ordinarily I would agree. However this one was a rental from Wenderkreisen in Auckland, the firm we rented from when we visited last year. In fact, looking at the reg number, it was the same exact truck we had! I guess my flamboyant driving on highway 17 last year wasn't terminal
The girls resumed practising their instruments, to much protest. Some nonsense about not having a teacher or something. Rhiannon seems to have forgotten very little, however Imogen either does not or will not remember what the note directly above middle C is.
I seem to have developed an annoying snotty nose/cough which as it's heading towards summer is rather odd. Maybe it's just the usual November dose, which takes no notice of season. Whatever, it's a nuisance.
Sam's staff discount card turned up in the post this morning, so we wandered down to Woolworths to try it out. If saved us a whopping $4 on a spend of $140. I doubt we'll be making the trip toBayfair specially. On the way back to the car, I spotted a motor home in the car park. Nothing unremarkable about this you might think, which ordinarily I would agree. However this one was a rental from Wenderkreisen in Auckland, the firm we rented from when we visited last year. In fact, looking at the reg number, it was the same exact truck we had! I guess my flamboyant driving on highway 17 last year wasn't terminal
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Boring
Another week has come and gone, none of it particularly noteworthy. I continue to swot up on the PHP language, but other than that not much has changed. I've heard nothing more about a job I expressed interest in, despite having a chat with the agency. I can only imagine that they've been inundated with applications, either that or they've done the usual Kiwi far-too-laid-back-for-your-own-good thing that they have going over here.
Last Saturday I managed to run into the Mount, round the Mount itself and back again, a total distance of just over 12K, which explains why it did me in.
The kids are really settling in at school. Phoebe no longer has to be peeled off you leg and will now run on ahead and doesn't want to be followed into class. I am no longer allowed to meet Rhiannon after school, because her friends might see and she'd be embarrassed. Rhiannon's week away has certainly helped her get to know her friends a lot more.
HMRC have managed to produce my long awaited tax refund, which was just like Di's was exactly what I had calculated. We had a letter about the community services card application. Apparently they want certified copies of passports witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, and also they want utility bills and whatnot, which apparently have to be two years old. Fat chance of that happening, so unless we can get them to acknowledge how stupid that rule is, then it's game over.
We have finally managed to get our deposit back from our last place in the UK. There was a lot of nonsense about wanting to see that we'd paid all the bills which as we'd either shredded or packed them in a container proved difficult. The agent hadn't mentioned this before we left, so it was rather annoying to have them requested after we'd left. The landlord however decided that the windows were dirty and claimed for window cleaning. We'd argued that we left them as we found them, and after some wrangling he agreed to pay half. However, the agent took £60 off, which was steep to say the least. We had the last laugh however, as the agent cocked up and paid us £1400 instead, followed by a grovelling request for a refund. We duly refunded all except the window cleaning portion which we wanted to see a receipt for. Our honesty was rewarded with the window cleaning being written off. It's interesting to note that you really have very little recourse if you do make a transfer to the wrong account, as you can see from this article. However, in NZ, well, with Westpac at least, you can cancel a payment made today up until 10PM. This does mean that there's no such thing as an instant transfer, but it does give you a way out if you drop a booboo.
Having failed miserably to get the wireless access point working, I have been a little more successful getting a wireless card to work in my desktop which is exclusively a Linux machine. Huzzah. The only downside is the rather poor network performance which is a function of being 5 rooms away and therefore dropping the signal to a very low rate. Trying to make it function as a wireless bridge so that other machines could access the Internet proved to be a bridge too far.
I received a CD which I ordered from the UK. It took about a week to arrive, which I didn't think was too shabby. However, and airmail letter posted by my brother back in the UK seems to have taken only a couple of days, which is just dandy.
Craig has been having rather a hard time at work. He's been taken out of the kitchen and stuck in the bar. Not that he's done anything wrong, they just wanted to give him more experience. Alas this comes with a cut in hours. To make things worse, they've appointed a new chef who's been barking orders like Gordon F. Ramsay and trying to lord it over everybody else which needless to say was not well received. However, it appears said new chef has gone one step too far and has been given his cards which has brought rather a smile to Craig's boat race.
Today (Sunday) we went to hang out with some more expats on the beach opposite the Tay Street Beach Cafe where there are some free gas barbecues. This spot is also outside the booze free zone, so we were able to blow the froth off a few while soaking up the sun. Alas I have soaked up a little too much and have a rather red face. We were expecting to be out for only an hour or two, as we've all gone rather brown, I never quite got round to the sun block, which was on reflection rather a mistake. The kids were all sunnied up though. Rhiannon got on famously with another girl, the daughter of one of the expats, who was going through a goth heavy metal phase but was seriously into manga, which was a common frame of reference. Imogen had invited a couple of her school friends, who rather formally introduced themselves to me and shook hands. The formalities disappeared later when they all insisted I swing them round by the ankles and generally rough house with them. I can see why Imogen gets on with them - they're all boys. Phoebe and Freya were kept busy running round after Wayne and Vicky's kids, as per usual, and we all tried to stop them eating the sand, mostly ineffectively.
Last Saturday I managed to run into the Mount, round the Mount itself and back again, a total distance of just over 12K, which explains why it did me in.
The kids are really settling in at school. Phoebe no longer has to be peeled off you leg and will now run on ahead and doesn't want to be followed into class. I am no longer allowed to meet Rhiannon after school, because her friends might see and she'd be embarrassed. Rhiannon's week away has certainly helped her get to know her friends a lot more.
HMRC have managed to produce my long awaited tax refund, which was just like Di's was exactly what I had calculated. We had a letter about the community services card application. Apparently they want certified copies of passports witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, and also they want utility bills and whatnot, which apparently have to be two years old. Fat chance of that happening, so unless we can get them to acknowledge how stupid that rule is, then it's game over.
We have finally managed to get our deposit back from our last place in the UK. There was a lot of nonsense about wanting to see that we'd paid all the bills which as we'd either shredded or packed them in a container proved difficult. The agent hadn't mentioned this before we left, so it was rather annoying to have them requested after we'd left. The landlord however decided that the windows were dirty and claimed for window cleaning. We'd argued that we left them as we found them, and after some wrangling he agreed to pay half. However, the agent took £60 off, which was steep to say the least. We had the last laugh however, as the agent cocked up and paid us £1400 instead, followed by a grovelling request for a refund. We duly refunded all except the window cleaning portion which we wanted to see a receipt for. Our honesty was rewarded with the window cleaning being written off. It's interesting to note that you really have very little recourse if you do make a transfer to the wrong account, as you can see from this article. However, in NZ, well, with Westpac at least, you can cancel a payment made today up until 10PM. This does mean that there's no such thing as an instant transfer, but it does give you a way out if you drop a booboo.
Having failed miserably to get the wireless access point working, I have been a little more successful getting a wireless card to work in my desktop which is exclusively a Linux machine. Huzzah. The only downside is the rather poor network performance which is a function of being 5 rooms away and therefore dropping the signal to a very low rate. Trying to make it function as a wireless bridge so that other machines could access the Internet proved to be a bridge too far.
I received a CD which I ordered from the UK. It took about a week to arrive, which I didn't think was too shabby. However, and airmail letter posted by my brother back in the UK seems to have taken only a couple of days, which is just dandy.
Craig has been having rather a hard time at work. He's been taken out of the kitchen and stuck in the bar. Not that he's done anything wrong, they just wanted to give him more experience. Alas this comes with a cut in hours. To make things worse, they've appointed a new chef who's been barking orders like Gordon F. Ramsay and trying to lord it over everybody else which needless to say was not well received. However, it appears said new chef has gone one step too far and has been given his cards which has brought rather a smile to Craig's boat race.
Today (Sunday) we went to hang out with some more expats on the beach opposite the Tay Street Beach Cafe where there are some free gas barbecues. This spot is also outside the booze free zone, so we were able to blow the froth off a few while soaking up the sun. Alas I have soaked up a little too much and have a rather red face. We were expecting to be out for only an hour or two, as we've all gone rather brown, I never quite got round to the sun block, which was on reflection rather a mistake. The kids were all sunnied up though. Rhiannon got on famously with another girl, the daughter of one of the expats, who was going through a goth heavy metal phase but was seriously into manga, which was a common frame of reference. Imogen had invited a couple of her school friends, who rather formally introduced themselves to me and shook hands. The formalities disappeared later when they all insisted I swing them round by the ankles and generally rough house with them. I can see why Imogen gets on with them - they're all boys. Phoebe and Freya were kept busy running round after Wayne and Vicky's kids, as per usual, and we all tried to stop them eating the sand, mostly ineffectively.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Banished to the Garage
I've been a bit slack in the last few days with the blog. Sorry about that. The fact that people are actually sending in comments does actually clear up the little nagging doubt in the back of my mind - at least somebody other than me reads this drivel. In mitigation of the lack of output recently, I can report that Thursday was rather unspectacular and not blog worthy in any way unless anyone's really interested in what I had for breakfast. I'm not that interested and even less interested in writing about it, so you'll all have to use your imagination.
Friday was a bit more entertaining. I was in a bit of a grump since I'm used to having my own room to do my own thing, and this just isn't possible in this house, as we have but one living area with an en-suite kitchen. It's too small for a desk once the table and the lounge suite is in, and bedrooms have no space for anything interesting (watch it!). Having whined about the ambient level of noise and general wittering on, I was summarily banished to the garage, which is quite capable of housing both desks. I managed to locate the wireless access point which is supposed to function as a repeater, but sadly it wouldn't plays with WPA2 security on the router. Not being inclined to turn off security, I've had to move back into the living room when wanting to run operating systems other than Windoze, which is the only way I can get any real work done.
Rhiannon (AKA Madam) was due back from her week long camp trip to Wellington. I got a garbled call on the mobile at around 6 saying "my phone is about to die", so I took this to mean come and get me. Having made the mistake of going to the first entrance, I went to the furthest one, the one with the bus stop, which is where I left her. She wasn't there. After a minute wait while it became apparent that everyone was gone or going, and after asking a teacher, I went to the other entrance. No sign. I rang her mobile which went straight to voice mail. Nothing for it but to go back home, and then of course I found her half way home. Not in the best of humours by this point, Madam refused to get in the car, so I left her to it. I was of course not fit to be trodden on by the time Madam got home. Later it emerged that her phone was low because it had been confiscated by a teacher on Thursday night since all the kids were texting each other and thus she was unable to charge it up. She didn't know her way home from the bus stop entrance, so walked through the school and out of the other entrance, which is why I missed her. After she'd calmed down I was forgiven (really, and there I was thinking this would last for at least a fortnight) and peace was restored.
Saturday I got sucked in to some of the admin for the West Sussex Guitar Festival. Such are the tendrils of the club that I cannot completely escape, even 12,000 miles away. Apparently my sooper-dooper excel spreadsheets with tonnes of VLOOKUPs were too much to handle and no one could make them behave. Even me, it seems. Some really quite odd effects trying to sort rows, which just refused to do as instructed. This was a result I suspect of the interaction of Openoffice and Excel which seem to save data in ever so slightly different ways. OO seems to think something's a number until you sort on it, when it decides it isn't. Grr. Add to this all the "late" entries and multiple versions from different people each competing for the prize of the "latest" version, conspired to do my head in and persuaded me to dust off my PHP coding skills and implement the spreadsheets as a web based application, which I've just about finished as of Monday afternoon. This was all good practice for the Zend Certification I'm intending to take in the next few weeks. Talking of which, I've had a sniff of a vacancy for a PHP/MySQL programmer which I'm hoping to hear something about this week.
Everybody else went to the beach, while I continued to nerd about. However at about 3:30 I wandered off down that way too, and lazed about watching the kids run amok and generally tried to pretend they weren't mine. Rhiannon was playing troglodyte, and spent most of the weekend in her room glued to her laptop with the blinds shut. Apparently a week away from the Internet was too much, although it did help her get to know some of her mates a bit better.
Sunday we ended up at Vicky and Wayne's place. Wayne was feeling fragile on account of a post match celebration. Apparently he'd managed to return figures of 24-2 off 8 overs and the team won the match, so much beer was consumed. He tried to talk me into joining, but as I've not played or tried to play cricket since the age of nine, and I have all the natural coordination of a cross legged pig on acid, I suspect that even the standards of the fourth team would be beyond me. I'm a bit of a Monty, but I can't bowl. Although I have plenty of variation, the safest place is invariably in front of the stumps. V&W have apparently "agreed" that the house a few doors down from ours is the place to be, so we will I suspect be seeing even more of them than we do now. Bonus.
This morning I had a visit from another expat, Tim, who has a broken PC. He popped it round and we had a chat about various things while I prodded it and kicked the tyres with no obvious effect. A little later I decided the PSU was OK, and it was a motherboard fault. (For reference folks, short the PSU green lead (14) with the adjacent black (15) and the PSU will fire up with a suitable load i.e. a hard drive, attached). Spares are available on fleabay for a modest outlay, but it's worth fixing as it has a 1G of ram and a 2.8GHz P4 processor.
And hot off the presses, we have the news that Di has managed to win a double pass to the 2009 Gartshore Tauranga Wine and Food Festival, held on the 6th of December. These tickets are $25 a pop, so I'm guessing that there will be at least some free booze to be had. Huzzah!
Friday was a bit more entertaining. I was in a bit of a grump since I'm used to having my own room to do my own thing, and this just isn't possible in this house, as we have but one living area with an en-suite kitchen. It's too small for a desk once the table and the lounge suite is in, and bedrooms have no space for anything interesting (watch it!). Having whined about the ambient level of noise and general wittering on, I was summarily banished to the garage, which is quite capable of housing both desks. I managed to locate the wireless access point which is supposed to function as a repeater, but sadly it wouldn't plays with WPA2 security on the router. Not being inclined to turn off security, I've had to move back into the living room when wanting to run operating systems other than Windoze, which is the only way I can get any real work done.
Rhiannon (AKA Madam) was due back from her week long camp trip to Wellington. I got a garbled call on the mobile at around 6 saying "my phone is about to die", so I took this to mean come and get me. Having made the mistake of going to the first entrance, I went to the furthest one, the one with the bus stop, which is where I left her. She wasn't there. After a minute wait while it became apparent that everyone was gone or going, and after asking a teacher, I went to the other entrance. No sign. I rang her mobile which went straight to voice mail. Nothing for it but to go back home, and then of course I found her half way home. Not in the best of humours by this point, Madam refused to get in the car, so I left her to it. I was of course not fit to be trodden on by the time Madam got home. Later it emerged that her phone was low because it had been confiscated by a teacher on Thursday night since all the kids were texting each other and thus she was unable to charge it up. She didn't know her way home from the bus stop entrance, so walked through the school and out of the other entrance, which is why I missed her. After she'd calmed down I was forgiven (really, and there I was thinking this would last for at least a fortnight) and peace was restored.
Saturday I got sucked in to some of the admin for the West Sussex Guitar Festival. Such are the tendrils of the club that I cannot completely escape, even 12,000 miles away. Apparently my sooper-dooper excel spreadsheets with tonnes of VLOOKUPs were too much to handle and no one could make them behave. Even me, it seems. Some really quite odd effects trying to sort rows, which just refused to do as instructed. This was a result I suspect of the interaction of Openoffice and Excel which seem to save data in ever so slightly different ways. OO seems to think something's a number until you sort on it, when it decides it isn't. Grr. Add to this all the "late" entries and multiple versions from different people each competing for the prize of the "latest" version, conspired to do my head in and persuaded me to dust off my PHP coding skills and implement the spreadsheets as a web based application, which I've just about finished as of Monday afternoon. This was all good practice for the Zend Certification I'm intending to take in the next few weeks. Talking of which, I've had a sniff of a vacancy for a PHP/MySQL programmer which I'm hoping to hear something about this week.
Everybody else went to the beach, while I continued to nerd about. However at about 3:30 I wandered off down that way too, and lazed about watching the kids run amok and generally tried to pretend they weren't mine. Rhiannon was playing troglodyte, and spent most of the weekend in her room glued to her laptop with the blinds shut. Apparently a week away from the Internet was too much, although it did help her get to know some of her mates a bit better.
Sunday we ended up at Vicky and Wayne's place. Wayne was feeling fragile on account of a post match celebration. Apparently he'd managed to return figures of 24-2 off 8 overs and the team won the match, so much beer was consumed. He tried to talk me into joining, but as I've not played or tried to play cricket since the age of nine, and I have all the natural coordination of a cross legged pig on acid, I suspect that even the standards of the fourth team would be beyond me. I'm a bit of a Monty, but I can't bowl. Although I have plenty of variation, the safest place is invariably in front of the stumps. V&W have apparently "agreed" that the house a few doors down from ours is the place to be, so we will I suspect be seeing even more of them than we do now. Bonus.
This morning I had a visit from another expat, Tim, who has a broken PC. He popped it round and we had a chat about various things while I prodded it and kicked the tyres with no obvious effect. A little later I decided the PSU was OK, and it was a motherboard fault. (For reference folks, short the PSU green lead (14) with the adjacent black (15) and the PSU will fire up with a suitable load i.e. a hard drive, attached). Spares are available on fleabay for a modest outlay, but it's worth fixing as it has a 1G of ram and a 2.8GHz P4 processor.
And hot off the presses, we have the news that Di has managed to win a double pass to the 2009 Gartshore Tauranga Wine and Food Festival, held on the 6th of December. These tickets are $25 a pop, so I'm guessing that there will be at least some free booze to be had. Huzzah!
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Shaken, not Stirred
Yesterday was a lovely day, but nothing much to report other than being "VWed" at about 4:30. The girls made the usual fuss of the toddlers and we expanded the curry to include an additional two adults. It was rather fun listening to Vicky and Wayne having a barney about where to live - they had been to look at a house round the corner from us but it lacked a "view". My suggestion of the purchase of a 50" plasma telly and some appropriate scenic DVDs was not appreciated by Wayne, although Vicky found it amusing.
Sam missed the 8AM bus this morning, and had to walk to work. She was not in the best of humour when she got home, and we apparently lacked sufficient sympathy, citing her taking a whole hour to get ready for work as the reason for her lateness. It's not like there's a choice of what to wear is it?
This morning I got in touch with Westpac about the amount of tax we were paying on the savings. Currently it's a whopping 38%. Apparently the tax paid is known as "Resident Withholding Tax". They said I'd need to come in with some ID and my IRD (tax) number and then they could reduce this down to 19.5%. Apparently it's common to be on the higher rate if your tax status is unknown. We duly trogged on down and waved passports at people and got it changed. As it happens, we have virtually no money in the savings account, but that may not always be the case and it would be a shame to pay too much tax when we do convert all the loot into funny money.
I had another call from the agency - it's an official no-go on the job that I interviewed for. Apparently they can't make up their minds if they want someone to train (for the part that I didn't know and I suspect not many people would) or someone already in the niche market. All things considered, I don't think I want to work for a firm that prevaricates so.
A few days back, I was sat watching the telly, and I could have sworn that the train that runs parallel to our road but is several streets over had got a little closer. It certainly sounded like it had and I was sure I could feel the vibration. It turns out that it wasn't my imagination, but it wasn't the train either - I had in fact experienced an earthquake! It wasn't much to write home about, at 2.8 on the Richter scale, but it was entertaining nevertheless. This site lists the most recent quakes, and at the time of writing shows that there were in fact two quakes of similar magnitude that afternoon, about 2 hours apart.
Sam missed the 8AM bus this morning, and had to walk to work. She was not in the best of humour when she got home, and we apparently lacked sufficient sympathy, citing her taking a whole hour to get ready for work as the reason for her lateness. It's not like there's a choice of what to wear is it?
This morning I got in touch with Westpac about the amount of tax we were paying on the savings. Currently it's a whopping 38%. Apparently the tax paid is known as "Resident Withholding Tax". They said I'd need to come in with some ID and my IRD (tax) number and then they could reduce this down to 19.5%. Apparently it's common to be on the higher rate if your tax status is unknown. We duly trogged on down and waved passports at people and got it changed. As it happens, we have virtually no money in the savings account, but that may not always be the case and it would be a shame to pay too much tax when we do convert all the loot into funny money.
I had another call from the agency - it's an official no-go on the job that I interviewed for. Apparently they can't make up their minds if they want someone to train (for the part that I didn't know and I suspect not many people would) or someone already in the niche market. All things considered, I don't think I want to work for a firm that prevaricates so.
A few days back, I was sat watching the telly, and I could have sworn that the train that runs parallel to our road but is several streets over had got a little closer. It certainly sounded like it had and I was sure I could feel the vibration. It turns out that it wasn't my imagination, but it wasn't the train either - I had in fact experienced an earthquake! It wasn't much to write home about, at 2.8 on the Richter scale, but it was entertaining nevertheless. This site lists the most recent quakes, and at the time of writing shows that there were in fact two quakes of similar magnitude that afternoon, about 2 hours apart.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Nuts
Yesterday we took the girls over to Rain Bar in Papamoa and met up with a few other ex pats for brunch. Service wasn't massively swift, and a "rare" steak sandwich wasn't at all pink but it tasted OK. The kids didn't like their burgers though, so human dustbin that I am, I left feeling rather full.
An early start this morning, as I needed to deposit Rhiannon at school at 6AM for her camp in Wellington. We got to the school but there was no one there! A couple of panic phone calls home asking Di to double check the location, but then I drove round the back of the school and found a mass of small people with suitcases. Panic over. I left her to it and went back home. Imogen had a dental appointment at 9AM, so I whisked here along for her replacement filling. The X-Ray may have taken a week to process but is showed decay under the filling which needed to be replaced. She coped with it really well, which as it was a very deep filling was admirable.
Tidying up the kitchen, I came across the collection of macadamia nuts which we acquired from next door's tree. I tried the nut cracker on them, but it started to bend. Hmm. More power needed methinks. A No. 3 Record vice did the trick quite nicely. Nothing like crushing your neighbour's nuts in a vice to start a conversation running.
An early start this morning, as I needed to deposit Rhiannon at school at 6AM for her camp in Wellington. We got to the school but there was no one there! A couple of panic phone calls home asking Di to double check the location, but then I drove round the back of the school and found a mass of small people with suitcases. Panic over. I left her to it and went back home. Imogen had a dental appointment at 9AM, so I whisked here along for her replacement filling. The X-Ray may have taken a week to process but is showed decay under the filling which needed to be replaced. She coped with it really well, which as it was a very deep filling was admirable.
Tidying up the kitchen, I came across the collection of macadamia nuts which we acquired from next door's tree. I tried the nut cracker on them, but it started to bend. Hmm. More power needed methinks. A No. 3 Record vice did the trick quite nicely. Nothing like crushing your neighbour's nuts in a vice to start a conversation running.
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