Changes

Life goes on here. After 39 months there have been a few changes here in Wellington. Recently the Black Harp closed down. (It was the pub where my father-in-law met the bartender who use to live in Stone Mountain.) I think of Wellington as being timeless. I just get to the point where it becomes familiar and then I notice a change. Now of course there are changes occurring all the time just that I don't notice them for one reason or another.

And my life goes on as well. I too have changed (fortunately nothing has closed down!) But like Wellington that which is familiar in me has been changing. Just that I don't realize the change anymore. Sure some things stand out, small cars, smaller portions, walking everywhere, and much of it up hills. I am no longer sure how my vocabulary has changed, but still hear Dennis' accent. :)

Alas life goes on, things change. And as I walk by the shell that was the Black Harp and watch the transformation of the city, I wonder wonder how Wellington has transformed me.

Auckland

I went to Auckland this past week for a couple of days. The trip was chocker full of work and I did not get out to see the city at all. It was airport-cab-office-cab-hotel-cab-office-cab-airport.

I really enjoyed the flight home. My seat was taken by Patrick which was find by me as I was able to take the isle seat (so much better than a window.) The good new is that this started a conversation which lasted the entire flight home. Patrick is an English immigrant who has been here five years longer than me. We compared notes about culture and ended up on the topic of home ownership where we compared and contrasted customs in three countries. Quite the interesting conversation.

This particular flight had the added benefit of a couple of amazing flight attendants even by New Zealand standards. I generally are impressed with how personable people in are here in general, flight attendants in particular, but these two were just great. They had me laughing throughout the flight, I suppose it helped that I was sitting in the front row and talked to them a bit more than the average.

Here they making everyone's trip more enjoyable during takeoff.

Melbourne

I am off to Melbourne for a day of training today on Tuesday. I will be staying two nights as there are no direct flights between Melbourne and Wellington in the evening. And I think more to the point I would like to have some time to explore the city again, it has been over 10 years since my last visit.

Baking

I have been baking quite a bit lately. It all started when Chris was at outward bound. Dennis wanted pizza so I dutifully picked up a few pizza bases (crusts) from the local store. At $3/each base I was shocked and figured I could make them myself ...

I got the recipe from a small book that Chris had picked up locally. The crusts were easy to make and quite good. So embolden by my success I picked another recipe to try. Croissants. (I never was one to aim low.) The croissants took four tries before they were respectable but I did get there.

Then came bagels, baguettes,

and now most recent is a Chicago style deep dish pizza.

Oh the future is truly bright!

TKD Test

We had another TKD test this past weekend.  I was testing for my "red tip" that would 7/10 of the way to Black Belt, Chris was testing for her Green Tip or 3/10 of the way.  Dennis just got to kick the living daylights out of some people who were testing for various belts.

From my perspective the testing went very well.  I finished without falling on my but, only because someone caught me when I was doing a jumping-turning-back-kick.  It is harder than it sounds.  Sparing went well I was able to get through my three one-minute rounds without gaping too hard.  In one of the rounds my sparing partner delivered a great side kick to my gut.  He promptly fell over, poor guy weighs about 80lb less than me.

At the end the grader said that he was very impressed with my progress over the past year and told me to focus on chambering my legs and making sure that I keep my balance at all times.

I will not know the results of the test for a couple of weeks.  It takes some time here in NZ for them to add up the points, order the certificates and belts to make it all official.  Either way I am pleased with my performance for the test.  I have made some noticeable improvement and that gives me the energy to keep at it.

Victorious!

I just won a two day Risk battle!

It was down to the wire (leave for TKD shortly) my forces spread thin and my opponents poised to acquire 10 or more armies with their Risk cards; I pulled a daring move. I concentrated my whole army and swept through Europe and Asia.

I cleared the board of every last remnant of the opponents and took the title of Ruler of the known world!

A leaf!

At church over the weekend I made a few good leaves, a couple were ogled (much to my delight) by the crowd.  However I left my cell phone back at the chair so did not manage to get a picture.  :(

Well today we had some friends over, John and Lilly, and, as I do from time to time, I made coffee for the four of us.  The first coffee came out pretty bad, I ended up drinking that, second and third looked okay.  But the fourth well that was a special one!  A real honest to goodness leaf!

Still some work to do before that turns into a fern but you get the idea but those who see the fern on a regular basis (and coffee's with ferns in them) see the resemblance.  I figure I have a good six months of coffee making before I will make my goal of the fern.  But then again drinking the coffee is half the fun!

Going to church

Today is the last Church service of the year.  New Zealand pretty much shuts down late December early January so Church takes a few weeks off.  The service will be short, a children's recital, and plenty of mince pies and other Christmas treats to enjoy.

Starting time today is 11:00am; however as a parent I have to get there at 10:15 so my son can practice for the children's recital (singing silent night.)  I will be hanging around with the other parents and those who have forgotten the late start and will arrive at the normal time of 10:00am.

I am on coffee duty today which I think will be particularly fun this end of year Christmas party.  I always enjoy chatting with the congregation one by one as they wait for their coffees.  I also have another objective for today, I have managed to make one fern leaf (at least something that would pass in a darkened room) so today it will practice ... practice ... practice.  If I get a good one I will take a picture and post it!

Temptation

For just over two months I have been on the wagon, I fell off yesterday. While I was at the local shell station waiting to hire a trailer to take our old lounge set to the dump I was faced with an assortment of candy bars. None of them interested me until I saw the peanut slabs.

Peanuts slabs you ask? Words cannot do them justice. Just amazing chocolate that is used to hold together peanuts.

I was introduced to these wonderful confections my first month in New Zealand. Someone dropped one on my desk at work I took one bite and was lost. The chocolate melts in your mouth, the peanuts are roasted to a turn, and together it is heaven.

I promptly went out and purchased another, and another and another. Soon I started hiding 1/2 kilo bars in my desk, at home and in my briefcase. I was hooked. It got better after I gave up my office at MoH, I was only able to hide bars at home. I told Chris about my problem and she graciously volunteered to help me kick the habit. So whenever she found a peanut slab around the house she would thoughtfully eat it for me.

After Chris had some success finding the peanut slabs she redoubled her search efforts and soon I could not keep them in the house. Chris would find them as quickly as I hid them and they would be gone! I went through withdraw symptoms and soon found that the disappointment of loosing my peanut slabs overcame my desire to eat them. So I hid less and less (for some reason Chris did not seem very happy at this turn of events) and soon they started to fade from memory.

Then yesterday I saw them again. The emotions came flooding back and I purchased one as I picked up the trailer. Ate it quickly and picked up another when I dropped off the trailer. I write this blog entry in hopes that telling the world about my problem will somehow give me the strength to not go to the store today.

http://www.whittakers.co.nz/beantobar.aspx

One year

Well we left the US 52 weeks ago today. Looking back over the year I am very glad that we have done this.

Not that life is very much different; Dennis is sitting at the breakfast table eating some sweet cereal he pumped up with more sugar, the laundry is in the washing machine, I have dry cleaning at a shop in the city, the car tires needed rotating, and Dennis still likes to play 'slamwhich.'

Reflecting back I realize that we have not seen enough of New Zealand, spending most of our time in and around Wellington. Some of that was the business at work, but most was us trying to carve out a life here.

Our visa's are going along well having met all the requirements for the indefinite returning residence visas in a year.

There was plenty of angst this year. Most notably my job at MoH going away, oh about a year ago today, looking back I realize that all the anxiety was of my own making. I am quite enjoying what I am doing right now and have some big plans for the spring (the fall for all you northern hemesphere folks.) Unless they get interrupted by an interesting job opportunity.

Chris just came back from her morning walk with the girls. Bringing junk mail in with her - see there really is nothing different down here.

Hope some or most of you can come visit soon. It really is lovely (he types looking out over the bay from his dining room table.)

Tom (& Dennis)

Year from Hell

This has been the year from Hell. (my apologies to the adults with children for use of that phrase.) There is no better way to describe it. The first four days started out well then from there it went down hill.

The MoH was hit with a particularly bad virus on the Monday that I went back to work. This has taken my full time efforts to combat it thus far this year. I have put in quite a few additional hours and now I am just nakkerd (that is Kiwi for tired.) I would write a bit about the virus however there are quite a few journalist asking questions and in case someone finds this blog I am best keeping the details to myself.

In addition to battling the virus my acting role at the MoH ends soon as the permanent person has arrived. This is a good thing for it allows me to get on building the life we want in New Zealand however it is bitter sweet as the MoH has a great bunch of people. In short I am grieving the change there.

Back to the virus!

With the virus running I don't have anytime for anything else. Which means I have not been updating this Blog, looking at other options in Wellington, or spending enough time with my family.

At this moment Chris is out getting our tickets to the South Island for next weekend. Dennis has come back from a friends house and is asking me to play a board game with him. So I am off to play Cadoo. At least I can end this first month of the year right by posting a blog entry and spending time with my son.

Wish me luck!

Tom

Codine and TKD

Yes Codine. I would like it to be known, for the record now, that the most civilized part of New Zealand is the fact that you can buy Codine over the counter. Ibuprofen and Codine in a mixture that cuts pain like nothing else known to us mere mortals.

I need this because of Tae Kwon Do. That is the Koren martial art which I find myself enrolled. I am not sure how this happened to me. It all started way back when in the US when I finally woke up and decided to loose some weight. My son was going to a TKD class and the instructor as well as half the adults around there encouraged me to attend their remedial exercise class called Kick Boxing. Well I went and kept at it only to loose quite a bit of weight. Actually enough to get me through New Zealand immigration. However I did not know that in time.

I say it that way for I eventually enrolled in TKD. It was a way of changing my twice a week exercise for five days a week. I needed to burn more calories to loose even more weight. So I signed up back in the US. Now I find myself in a New Zealand TKD club at Victoria University. That means I am attending a club with a bunch of 20 year olds, except for the occasional freshman who is 19 years old.

Sunday I sparred with a black belt. Not that this is unusual I have sparred with many black belts over the past two months. The average black belt around here is 5'5" and weighs 150lb when wet. What was unusual is that this guy, David, is as big as I am except he doesn't have my gut and he is 20 years younger than me. David figured I knew what I was doing so he came "full on" as they say over here. I lost every single time I sparred with him, about 15 times over an hour. At the time I felt pretty good for I was able to block many of his kicks, and actually take some major kicks and keep in there fighting away no matter how feeble.

Where I blocked with my arms and shoulders I am black and blue. The kicks in the chest do not have the marks however there is internal pain which is a reminder of the exercise. This leads me to my opening comment about Codine. The codine makes the pain almost bearable. I can remember five kicks to the chest on Saturday, three of which David visibly staggered from the impact with my body. Like I said I kept in the fight. All I can say is that I am so glad he wasn't wearing shoes.

I asked David why he was not blocking my kicks, he kept his arms at his side when we fought. As David put it "in our weight class bones break. A good kick will easily break a forearm." He went on to say that he has seen a few tournaments where people walk off the mat with bones protruding from their skin. Ouch.

So back to the drawing board. I have been known as the guy who blocks well. I realize I have to be much faster on my feet and learn to avoid the kicks.

In all my sparing on Saturday I scored -1 points. That would be one real point with David and a minus two. In case you are wondering TKD sparring rules deduct points for kicking to the head and groin. I really tried to kick high enough to get him in the stomach ... really I tried.