Surf's Up - Not

Monday morning was rather grey and a bit overcast. I rolled over to discover it was 8:30 - oops I need to get a move on as I'm supposed to be meeting Wayne at 9 and heading off to the beach. I made it just in time, but then Wayne suggested that I bring my body board, as there would be nothing to do when one or the other of us was on the surf board so we ended up back at my place again.

Next stop was the beach but despite the promises of the board hire guy, he wasn't there. We wandered down to the surf, which looked reasonably impressive and we noted a number of folks out there trying to catch waves. I gave the reef slippers their first outing and tried out the body board - and failed to catch any decent waves.

Wayne suggested I try his flippers - which were a rather tight fit since his feet are a size smaller than mine. I don't know if you've tried wading out into the surf wearing flippers, but it's near impossible to do in anything like a dignified manner. I ended up on my bum at least twice before I got to water that was deep enough to start swimming. I tried to swim out to the point before the waves were breaking, but it was hard work and there seemed to be a current dragging me along the beach. I still failed to catch any waves, so gave it up as a bad job and let Wayne have a go. He fared little better than me. After observing the other surfers for a few minutes, it became apparent that they were struggling to catch any decent waves, so when the board hire bod did show, we were on our way home.

I made use of the rest of the morning, playing some more with Joomla and putting a few page designs together for this afternoon's meeting. Alas a phone call around 12 postponed it until Thursday.

The major news on Monday was that the NZ licensing authorities have agreed to grant him an exception on his driving licence and he can therefore apply for an NZ driving licence without having to present his UK one, which of course he does not have. It was looking increasingly as if he might have to fly back to the UK in order to sort out his UK licence since they were insisting on a new photograph. His first reaction was to start looking at cars he can't afford to buy and getting narked when it was pointed out that he did not actually have his licence yet and it would be best to wait until it was granted.

Decent run into the Mount and back in the evening. It's definitely getting easier.

Today I did a lot more PHP stuff - basically sat there all day. It did get to the point where simple things just were not working. The icing on the cake was mixing html form parameters and javascript with PHP, and tripping over unexpected quote errors the parser complaining it had fallen off the end f the script. I packed it in as a bad job. At one point I was interrupted by my potential customer, asking legal (can i rip off this content and use it on my site) as opposed to technical questions. On your head be it, mate.

Di took Rhiannon to Specsavers (yes folks, they have them over here) in Bayfair to get her eyes tested. We had suspected for a while that she would need glasses. The Doctor who did our emigration medical suggested this would be the case. Di was really impressed with the eye examination which seemed to include every possible test you could think of and a few she'd not come across before. Rhiannon does indeed need glasses. We were expecting it to be a bit pricey, and indeed it came in at $250 for two pairs, one being prescription sunglasses. However, our community services card saved the day, making Rhiannon's specs FREE. The only thing we had to pay was a $10 eye test fee. Slowly but surely we are recovering the fees paid in order to get here. The optician recommended that Rhiannon wear the glasses only when she really needs them, and gave her a slightly weaker prescription than she really needed. His view was that it's good to make the eyes do some of the work and that this slows the inevitable degeneration down. Also, the "goldfish bowl effect" is minimised, meaning the poor girl won't walk into things when wearing them since the depth/distance perception can be altered.

Later on Di took all the girls to the hot pools before tea time. While they were out, an estate agent knocked at the door claiming to have been instructed to make an appointment to give the place the once over. He needs to take photographs apparently, and so tomorrow will require a big tidy up before the visit on Thursday.

Craig was on at me about exchanging his money. He'd left his last month's wages in the UK and had thus far refused to transfer the money because the exchange rate was pants. Now, of course, he can't wait to exchange as he wants to get back in a car. Sadly the rate we got was a paltry $2.10 - the dollar is at nearly an all time high, which is most depressing. He was whining that it would take 3-4 days to arrive, so to shut him up I transferred some of our money into his account. It does leave us a bit short, and if the money does not show up, we're in the doo.