Mess Room
On the senior officers mess room door
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Congratulations to Kylie & Darren on the birth of their little boy Oliver - big kudos to Kj for managing without pain relief and well done to Ollie for not putting his mum in major pain for a too long before putting in an appearance (although I'm sure it felt like forever for Kj!).
Also, big congratulations to Belle on her completion of her swimming badges!! Currently top of her class - atta girl!
The recession is obviously taking it's toll on people's social lives as I know of four friends that have given birth so far this year and there are another four between now and October! Staying in is obviously the new going out!
Nothing to report on the job front, I keep applying and hearing nothing back, and haven't had any more sewing work so no extra pennies to help out this month. After several months of asking, there are now transfers in some of the major cities through Dave's work available so I think he is going to apply for them as obviously if we are in a more central and "metropolitan" town/city then there is more likelihood of me finding a job, and there will be more of a social life, things to do etc.
Gisborne is a lovely place to be in the summer, a bit like a lot of seaside towns in the UK, but can you imagine Teignmouth if it was three and a half hours one way to a Torquay sized town and two and a half hours the other way to an Exeter sized city? Well, to be fair, at least Teignmouth has got a nightclub - it may be the size of a postage stamp, but it's still a club!
It's difficult not to get completely frustrated with the lack of things to do here. Nineteen months is more than long enough here I think, so I hope that something comes through with a transfer for Dave so that we can both start feeling a little more positive about being here and get out and about and see more of New Zealand. Being in/near one of the major cities makes travelling a lot more of an option as you can fly from Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton to loads of other places where as from Gisborne you can only get to Auckland and Wellington. It would be really nice to catch up with a school friend of mine who is living on the south island, and being more central would make that a lot easier to do.
So keep your fingers crossed folks - we need to get jobs in one of the major cities. And if so, hopefully it will be sooner rather than later that we will be visiting an English county near you!
Also, big congratulations to Belle on her completion of her swimming badges!! Currently top of her class - atta girl!
The recession is obviously taking it's toll on people's social lives as I know of four friends that have given birth so far this year and there are another four between now and October! Staying in is obviously the new going out!
Nothing to report on the job front, I keep applying and hearing nothing back, and haven't had any more sewing work so no extra pennies to help out this month. After several months of asking, there are now transfers in some of the major cities through Dave's work available so I think he is going to apply for them as obviously if we are in a more central and "metropolitan" town/city then there is more likelihood of me finding a job, and there will be more of a social life, things to do etc.
Gisborne is a lovely place to be in the summer, a bit like a lot of seaside towns in the UK, but can you imagine Teignmouth if it was three and a half hours one way to a Torquay sized town and two and a half hours the other way to an Exeter sized city? Well, to be fair, at least Teignmouth has got a nightclub - it may be the size of a postage stamp, but it's still a club!
It's difficult not to get completely frustrated with the lack of things to do here. Nineteen months is more than long enough here I think, so I hope that something comes through with a transfer for Dave so that we can both start feeling a little more positive about being here and get out and about and see more of New Zealand. Being in/near one of the major cities makes travelling a lot more of an option as you can fly from Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton to loads of other places where as from Gisborne you can only get to Auckland and Wellington. It would be really nice to catch up with a school friend of mine who is living on the south island, and being more central would make that a lot easier to do.
So keep your fingers crossed folks - we need to get jobs in one of the major cities. And if so, hopefully it will be sooner rather than later that we will be visiting an English county near you!
Random assortment of Kiwisms
* Afghan - type of biscuit
* Backblocks - out in the sticks - also referred to as out in the wop wops, up the boohai
* Docket - receipt
* Bludge - scrounge
* P.M.S - Pest management strategy - wouldn't be safe to use that in front of hormonal women!!
* Billy - billy can as in camping pot, but also refers to peoples kettles "put the billy on"
* Jug - also means kettle
* Jafa - j.a.f.a = just another f***ing aucklander - dereogatory term for a city person i.e "you're just anonymous face" they don't know anything about country ways
* Tukus - slang for mens underwear originating from a financial scandal where the director of a company allegedly bought very expensive underwear with company funds! Also used to denote dubious use of funds
* To have "tickets on" someone - to fancy someone
*Stonkered - knackered, to be beaten (in a game)
*Curly - difficult, or very good (both apply to Dave depending on what mood he's in!)
*Toss your lollies - be sick
* Backblocks - out in the sticks - also referred to as out in the wop wops, up the boohai
* Docket - receipt
* Bludge - scrounge
* P.M.S - Pest management strategy - wouldn't be safe to use that in front of hormonal women!!
* Billy - billy can as in camping pot, but also refers to peoples kettles "put the billy on"
* Jug - also means kettle
* Jafa - j.a.f.a = just another f***ing aucklander - dereogatory term for a city person i.e "you're just anonymous face" they don't know anything about country ways
* Tukus - slang for mens underwear originating from a financial scandal where the director of a company allegedly bought very expensive underwear with company funds! Also used to denote dubious use of funds
* To have "tickets on" someone - to fancy someone
*Stonkered - knackered, to be beaten (in a game)
*Curly - difficult, or very good (both apply to Dave depending on what mood he's in!)
*Toss your lollies - be sick
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Blue, blue, my world is blue
Well it has been for the last few weeks. One of Dave's colleagues asked if I would make him some covers for traffic signs, I made a few, he liked them and asked me to do a shed load more. So our front room has been covered with blue polyester for the last couple of weeks, and my sewing machine has never been so busy since I inherited it!
Yes, I know, pick yourselves up off the floor, I have been sewing. And have made a few pennies out of it, which is good, as I STILL do not have a job and am going slowly out of my mind. Gisborne is not the place to be unemployed in the autumn. I'm applying for the few jobs that come up in the paper, but as yet, no interviews.
Very homesick at the moment, missing friends and family and just generally the familiarity of being in "my" country. I would give anything to go into tescos and buy my favourite foods! I really want to come home, better to be unemployed and be able to see friends and family than be miles away from them......
Yes, I know, pick yourselves up off the floor, I have been sewing. And have made a few pennies out of it, which is good, as I STILL do not have a job and am going slowly out of my mind. Gisborne is not the place to be unemployed in the autumn. I'm applying for the few jobs that come up in the paper, but as yet, no interviews.
Very homesick at the moment, missing friends and family and just generally the familiarity of being in "my" country. I would give anything to go into tescos and buy my favourite foods! I really want to come home, better to be unemployed and be able to see friends and family than be miles away from them......
Monday, 23 March 2009
Not really a lot to report at the moment. I'm still not working so that is making life very difficult.
Just thought I'd check in and let you know I'm still alive.
Congratulations to Claire and Richard on the birth of Annaleeza, and to Rich and Jodie on the birth of Alice, I'm sure that both of them will create as much mischief as their parents do!
Missing friends and family very much, and knowing that it will be a long time until we get to see everyone again in the current situation.
And wondering whether it is better to unemployed in New Zealand, or in the UK? At least in the UK we'd have friends to see and share a consolidatory bottle of wine or two with.
It's very hard not to be melancholy having all this time to myself, I'm reading a lot, revising my very rusty french, and spending far too much time on Youtube.com and watching E! on sky (sometimes you just need a hour or so of pure trash tv). Oh and I'm now really good at spider solitaire and hearts (God I'm bored!).
I've applied for everything that I can do in Gisborne, and have only had a rejection letter back from three of them, so I guess the rest of them are working on "east coast time" and I probably will never get an acknowledgement of my application.
In a lot of ways here, businesses are very "cruisy" (i.e. laid back), but some just take it to extremes and in a lot of instances quite unprofessional. The problem with people running franchises or small businesses here, is that their personal life seems comes before their work life - don't even bother trying to get hold of people in the east coast on a Friday afternoon - they will be playing tennis, or golf, or gone to their "bach" (beach house) for the weekend, or gone to watch the rugby, or to buy a new boat, gone fishing, or some other similar thing. But yet they expect everyone else to be there when they want something. Very strange. I think this is more of a Gisborne/small town thing than a New Zealand thing, having spoken to other kiwis who were not Gisborne born and bred, but it's really annoying!
I managed to get to see a neurologist about my back pain and pins and needles and he told me that as my reflexes are fine, I should just keep taking the painkillers. Which was really helpful - and when I tried to question him about what causes the pain, he said that he didn't have time to discuss it further as he had a plane to catch! Just goes to show there are idiots everywhere, although he wasn't as bad as the psychologist who reviewed my meds who told me that coming off my tablets and having kids would sort things out, as I'm not working anyway I might as well start popping kids out!!!!!!! I must go back to hospital soon, I do so love being patronised!
We had a bit of a scare last week as Dave had a fever, and had spots of his legs that wouldn't blanche on touch, so he had to go to hospital to get checked for Meningitis. Whilst on the other side of the world, poor little Belle was also very poorly and was in hospital getting checked for meningitis as well. Spooky! Thank God, they are both fine
Just thought I'd check in and let you know I'm still alive.
Congratulations to Claire and Richard on the birth of Annaleeza, and to Rich and Jodie on the birth of Alice, I'm sure that both of them will create as much mischief as their parents do!
Missing friends and family very much, and knowing that it will be a long time until we get to see everyone again in the current situation.
And wondering whether it is better to unemployed in New Zealand, or in the UK? At least in the UK we'd have friends to see and share a consolidatory bottle of wine or two with.
It's very hard not to be melancholy having all this time to myself, I'm reading a lot, revising my very rusty french, and spending far too much time on Youtube.com and watching E! on sky (sometimes you just need a hour or so of pure trash tv). Oh and I'm now really good at spider solitaire and hearts (God I'm bored!).
I've applied for everything that I can do in Gisborne, and have only had a rejection letter back from three of them, so I guess the rest of them are working on "east coast time" and I probably will never get an acknowledgement of my application.
In a lot of ways here, businesses are very "cruisy" (i.e. laid back), but some just take it to extremes and in a lot of instances quite unprofessional. The problem with people running franchises or small businesses here, is that their personal life seems comes before their work life - don't even bother trying to get hold of people in the east coast on a Friday afternoon - they will be playing tennis, or golf, or gone to their "bach" (beach house) for the weekend, or gone to watch the rugby, or to buy a new boat, gone fishing, or some other similar thing. But yet they expect everyone else to be there when they want something. Very strange. I think this is more of a Gisborne/small town thing than a New Zealand thing, having spoken to other kiwis who were not Gisborne born and bred, but it's really annoying!
I managed to get to see a neurologist about my back pain and pins and needles and he told me that as my reflexes are fine, I should just keep taking the painkillers. Which was really helpful - and when I tried to question him about what causes the pain, he said that he didn't have time to discuss it further as he had a plane to catch! Just goes to show there are idiots everywhere, although he wasn't as bad as the psychologist who reviewed my meds who told me that coming off my tablets and having kids would sort things out, as I'm not working anyway I might as well start popping kids out!!!!!!! I must go back to hospital soon, I do so love being patronised!
We had a bit of a scare last week as Dave had a fever, and had spots of his legs that wouldn't blanche on touch, so he had to go to hospital to get checked for Meningitis. Whilst on the other side of the world, poor little Belle was also very poorly and was in hospital getting checked for meningitis as well. Spooky! Thank God, they are both fine
Friday, 13 March 2009
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Videos from Te Puia Geothermal Park, Rotorua
Bare in mind these were only taken on our dinky digital camera, but it gives you the idea of the heat!
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
The good, the bad and the ugly
So, we have had sixteen months of living in a foreign country. Which sounds a bit strange as they speak the same language and have the same queen as us, but actually it’s a lot more foreign than we gave it credit for before coming over here.
By which I mean the customs are different, the social life is different, the climate is different, the seasons are the wrong way round, the shops are different, they work in kilometres instead of miles, their computer keyboards are laid out in the American way, but their spelling is the same as English so you have to keep changing the spellings and the telly is pants!
New Zealand isn’t the promised land, it does have crime, it does have illness and is hit by financial crashes, but in a lot of ways it is kind of isolated from the rest of the world (and not just geographically).
Kiwis are kind of breed of their own. From what I can gather, they are mostly hard working, very outdoorsy sort of people that tend to socialise a lot more at people’s houses than pubs (there aren’t really “British” style pubs out here), believe that if you’re not dead you’re “bludging” time off work, and are generally quite friendly and welcoming, but quite hard to get to know “properly” and become real friends with. The New Zealand way seems to be work hard, play harder.
There is a wealth of history even though New Zealand as we know it now is a baby in terms of established countries. But it's quite a historic country in a lot of ways. It was the first country to give women the vote; it was the first country in the British Empire to have a female mayor; it was the first country in the world to introduce the 8 hour working day; it was the first country to become nuclear free. There are many other firsts, and many of them were positive.
Like many other "empire" countries, the invaders or colonisers as they would have preferred to be called made a lot of mistakes. And that still causes issues now. There are many arguments that will probably go on for many decades to come, about the abuse of the established Maori population's rights as they see it. And there are wrongs on both sides of the story, but for such a young country I think that it has come a long way in resolving things, but still has a long way to go.
The green message is in some ways extremely evident, but in other ways sadly lacking. Recycling (I believe) is mandatory in most of new zealand, with recycling being free and landfill waste being paid for. You get X amount of rubbish stickers when you make your rates payment each quarter and any other you require after that are $2.50 each per 5kg bag. The idea being that the more you recycle the less likely it is that you will need to be excess rubbish stickers. There are also subsidies available for composting or mulching systems.
A major paint manufacturer out here has some serious green credentials, so it's not just dinky out of the way one man band job that no one's ever heard of; there are big campaigns to "buy kiwi" to support NZ businesses as well as reducing the carbon footprint.
But the insulation regulations are way lower that we would expect, double glazing is almost non existant on the North Island and top of the South Island (when you get further down the South Island it starts to get very nippy) so you can find it there.
The use of solar, hydro, wind and geothermal power is much lower than I would have thought it would be considering that New Zealand is in the "ring of fire", is surrounded on all sides by sea as well as having many many lakes and rivers, and gets way more sunshine that many other countries (even in the winter it's not 'cold' here - here meaning the east coast), there are bits of nz that get very cold in winter!
When I win the lotto I will put some money into developing these things!!
By which I mean the customs are different, the social life is different, the climate is different, the seasons are the wrong way round, the shops are different, they work in kilometres instead of miles, their computer keyboards are laid out in the American way, but their spelling is the same as English so you have to keep changing the spellings and the telly is pants!
New Zealand isn’t the promised land, it does have crime, it does have illness and is hit by financial crashes, but in a lot of ways it is kind of isolated from the rest of the world (and not just geographically).
Kiwis are kind of breed of their own. From what I can gather, they are mostly hard working, very outdoorsy sort of people that tend to socialise a lot more at people’s houses than pubs (there aren’t really “British” style pubs out here), believe that if you’re not dead you’re “bludging” time off work, and are generally quite friendly and welcoming, but quite hard to get to know “properly” and become real friends with. The New Zealand way seems to be work hard, play harder.
There is a wealth of history even though New Zealand as we know it now is a baby in terms of established countries. But it's quite a historic country in a lot of ways. It was the first country to give women the vote; it was the first country in the British Empire to have a female mayor; it was the first country in the world to introduce the 8 hour working day; it was the first country to become nuclear free. There are many other firsts, and many of them were positive.
Like many other "empire" countries, the invaders or colonisers as they would have preferred to be called made a lot of mistakes. And that still causes issues now. There are many arguments that will probably go on for many decades to come, about the abuse of the established Maori population's rights as they see it. And there are wrongs on both sides of the story, but for such a young country I think that it has come a long way in resolving things, but still has a long way to go.
The green message is in some ways extremely evident, but in other ways sadly lacking. Recycling (I believe) is mandatory in most of new zealand, with recycling being free and landfill waste being paid for. You get X amount of rubbish stickers when you make your rates payment each quarter and any other you require after that are $2.50 each per 5kg bag. The idea being that the more you recycle the less likely it is that you will need to be excess rubbish stickers. There are also subsidies available for composting or mulching systems.
A major paint manufacturer out here has some serious green credentials, so it's not just dinky out of the way one man band job that no one's ever heard of; there are big campaigns to "buy kiwi" to support NZ businesses as well as reducing the carbon footprint.
But the insulation regulations are way lower that we would expect, double glazing is almost non existant on the North Island and top of the South Island (when you get further down the South Island it starts to get very nippy) so you can find it there.
The use of solar, hydro, wind and geothermal power is much lower than I would have thought it would be considering that New Zealand is in the "ring of fire", is surrounded on all sides by sea as well as having many many lakes and rivers, and gets way more sunshine that many other countries (even in the winter it's not 'cold' here - here meaning the east coast), there are bits of nz that get very cold in winter!
When I win the lotto I will put some money into developing these things!!
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
The deputy manager of our house
Well folks, I completely neglected to tell you about the newest addition to our household, our new kitten Mia. A friends cat had an unplanned pregnancy and as we have been looking for a new mog for Billy to be friends with since next door moved out taking their cat Tiger (Billy's best mate) with them, as he has been a right clingy sod.
So we said that we would take one of the little balls of fluff from Sulle (our friend). So Christmas Eve, Mia arrived with a little gift tag on her collar and she has been impossibly cute ever since. And she knows it. I don't think she is necessarily the brightest candle in the box, but she's so endearing you can't help but love her on sight.
Having done his "I'm boss cat, don't mess with me" bit, Billy has now accepted her as his slightly eccentric surrogate sister and she loves using him as her own personal climbing frame. She has absolutely no fear, is an intrepid explorer, jumps from heights with no safety net and has a fascination with chewing feet. And her own tail. It follows her. It's a conspiracy don't cha know?
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