Funky yogurt

Really, who would have thought we would ever see the day when the hardest supermarket decision was yogurt. After much pondering I have become a fan of The Collective.



Fab flavours (including Choc Fudge which I haven't tried yet). Then you take the lid off...

Says it all really. And they are right, it's great dairy and all from cows!

The Art of the Jandal

The jandal is the national footwear of New Zealand. Depending on where you are you may know them as flip-flops, thongs or shower shoes. The word jandal is a contraction of Japanese sandal, inspired by those worn by the Japanese swimming team at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. My self nominated task for this summer is to master the art of wearing the jandle.

How hard can that be you say? Well here are mine - nothing flash, purchased from the local discount shoe place, note the parrot design. Usually worn to the corner shop and to avoid bindies (prickles) in the lawn.


And here is how you do it with a bit of class. Look closely - gold jandal colour co-ordinated with toenail polish. These lovely tootsies belong to a girl at work who was happy to demonstrate.

I have also noted the existence of the formal jandal - sequins, faux jewels and always the co-ordinated polish. Might need to work my way up to that. Needless to say this only works on girls.

It's officially Christmas

When I was living in Aus Christmas meant a long drive to Sydney from Albury and then Melbourne, usually listening to the cricket on the radio. So this past weekend has put me well into a festive frame of mind.

I went up to Waima, a 9 hour drive away in the way far north for a family hui. It was a long way but absolutely worth it. Part of the time was spent doing this...

comparing notes and working on our combined family trees, lots of talking and the inevitable fabulous and massive meals.

On the way back we stopped to visit Tane Mahuta, a massive kauri tree named after the god of the forest. It is almost 14 meters around the trunk which gives you some idea of it's age. We also saw hundreds of cabbage trees in full bloom - the sign of a hot summer ahead.

Visiting parts south

I have just got back from 3 and a half days in Dunedin at the annual libraries conference at the University of Otago which is full of beautiful old buildings like these.

The first two days were beautiful (26 degrees which everyone from the taxi driver to the conference convener kept telling us was highly unusual) and then the normal weather returned and it looked more like this.

On Tuesday night about half of us took the train through the Taire Gorge, wonderfully rugged country. We turned around at Pukerangi - this was it, just the 'station' and one house. Oh and I got lots of great photos of telegraph poles.

The bach has landed

You've seen the flying thresher and tractor, yesterday they hoisted a bach (holiday house) into the main exhibition space. It is one of the first prototypes of the port-a-bach and was built in the 1970's (I think) out of a shipping container - that's why it doesn't look like much here. But when it's all back together and opened up it has everything you need including kitchen, sleeping space and one of the sides drops down to form a deck. It had to have it's top taken off to fit through our loading bay, which it did with only millimeters to spare, one reason why I just couldn't watch the whole process, the other being that it took 5 hours. So here are some photos from the start of the process.

Arriving - if you look closely you can see the wall units inside

Up she goes

A tight squeeze - museum on the right, security fence on the left.

What do you do...

if you have arranged for an end of year class get together at the beach and the weather is best described as dead dodgy and more than a bit damp but not technically raining?

You go anyway, set the van up to block the breeze off the water, get out the BBQ, fire it up and have a great time anyway.


We started as just a small dedicated crew from our combined Te Reo classes BBQing in the mist but by the end we were about 30 students and whanau (family) and a good time was had by all.

Rhodofesting

Mum and Dad have been visitng gardens each day they have been here and yesterday we did an organised trip to 5 gardens including the big garden up at Pukeiti. All of them were beautiful in their own way as you can see, what you can't see is the howling wind that threatened to knock us over if we ventured into parts unprotected.

Today we walked part of the new extension to the coastal walkway including the Te Rewa Rewa bridge.

Tragic end to the week

Sipping bubbly and eating cheese and fruit...

in a lovely garden whilst listening to live music.

Hamlet gets his geek on

Each month I get the Wheeler Writers Centre's newsletter. They are in Melbourne and even though I can't go to any of their events it is interesting to know what's going on.

This month in honour of Nicki Greenberg's graphic novel of Hamlet they have given over editorship to the Prince himself. And the best bit? Right at the bottom...

Wouldst thou stay in Touch?

Lend thine ears for atwitterings

Locate thyself on foursquare

Befriend us in the manner of facebook

Impart this e-missive to a friend

Sounds lovely doesn't it? even if you have no idea what any of it means.

Watch out...

there are gardeners about! (Soon to be joined by my Mum & Dad)

Rhodofest has kicked off and their offices are decked out accordingly in a verticle garden.

Cool eh?

Guess where this is

You get proper coffee at the hair dressers in New Plymouth!

The door on the right is on an old refrigerator which currently houses magazines.

Hangi hands

The 3 Te Ara Reo classes went away to Puniho Marae last weekend as part of our course. It was a fantastic weekend of workshops and all kinds of fun but the best bit was Saturday dinner.

The wahine (women) got the do the hangi which is normally a job for the tane (blokes) only. So these hands (note impressive amount of dirt under nails) with these friends dug this fabulous hole...

built a serious driftwood fire which produced a pile of seriously hot rocks...

which go into the hole, a flax mat goes on top of the rocks and then a huge basket of food goes on top of that. The whole thing is then covered in water soaked cloths and sacks, the dirt is piled back on top and you wait for 4 hours.

and when you take it all apart you hang up the washing before...

the cooks sing in the dinner which, according to very reliable sources was one of the best hangi ever. Yay us!

I know where a Taniwha lives

Taniwha (Tar-nee-far) are either monsters or protecting spirits depending on your point of view. They are generally associated with water and are basically pretty scary things not to be trifled with. We have one who lives in our basement, which is below river level, has a sump that collects and drains ground water. As part of the school holida programme the kids made scales for our Taniwha (underwater lighting care of the exhibitions crew) - he's pretty cool isn't he! He goes all the way around the pillar too.

Patience pays

One of the things I have not been able to find here is my favourite tea, Twinings Russian Caravan. I have been bringing it back with me from Aus and using it sparingly.

Imagine my pleasure when I scanned the tea shelves at the supermarket today and found not just my fave tea but loose leaf to boot!

One bag limit

The 24 hour book sale is on again, yeah!

I have a self imposed 1 bag limit but it's amazing what you can fit into one standard green shopping bag.

And just to prove it, here it is packed up. You can see that i even had a little room to spare - what will power.

Look what I found

It's hard to spot amongst all the overgrown fruit trees, calla lilies and rampant passionfruit vine but look carefully...

As of yesterday afternoon the side view now looks like this and you can better see what it is.

A little glass house. Hopefully with better weather and a little more motivation my attempts to get into the garden will prove more productive and I will show you what it looks like on the inside.

We won!

It was quiz night again and everyone was there.

Warriors and Rockers

The all blacks

And Te Stig (no that's not a typo, he's the Maori Stig)


But Flower Power prevailed and if you look carefully you can see Niall, the quiz trophy on the table. Actually in an unprecedented result and even after a tie breaker round we were declared joint winners with another team so we have shared custody of Niall for the next 12 months. We are studying up on our sports for 2011.

Almost too much weather

If you like weather then NZ is definitely the place to be. Earthquake and hundreds of after shocks; enough snow to collapse the Invercargill Sports Stadium (seriously); 300km/hr wind gusts (that was the highest, most of us just got 100-140km/hr breezes); driving rain and the attendant flooding and land slips. All up perfect rugby conditions really and Taranaki won against Canterbury in these perfect conditions on Saturday (Yeah!).

The earthquake woke me up but I slept through a storm at 2am this morning that tore up trees and took off roofs. This has lead to high seas and a very active Wind Wand which apparently will continue well into the weekend.

Bumblebees

Yup, real big fuzzy bumblebees. When we visited on holidays when we were little we thought they were fantastic but were never allowed to bring one home in a matchbox (customs would not be amused). Somehow this fellow got inside and was beyond help when I found him so I took the chance of a photo up with a bread tag to give you an idea of how big they are.

He proves that spring is definitely on the way!

Context

I found this on the Geonet website. All the little orange dots are earthquakes over the last 10 years and the star is the latest one in Christchurch. You can see why it was a bit of a surprise, not being on any of the 'usual' faults. I guess it does make us all a very special kind of nuts to love living here. Mind you I'm a bit hoha about bush fires and sharks having grown up with them so I guess it's kind of the same thing.

Being prepared

Christchurch is very slowly starting get itself back together after their 7.1 quake on Saturday morning which did actually wake me up although I didn't realise that's what it was. Today there is serious flooding in the lower Nth Island and we had horizontal rain for most of the afternoon.

So have I heeded all the warnings and got my emergency kit together?

Kind of - I have emergency chocolate, muesli bars, baked beans, cat food, candles and first aid stuff. Yet to come - water, a decent torch and probably a whole bunch of other things but at least it's a start.

It's not a UFO...

it's a princess cut diamond fashioned out of an orange shipping container, made by a Chinese artist currently in residence at the gallery. It is internally lit at night so I'm going to try and get a shot of that too.

It's with us for a month and the engineering firm that built it were asked to make it so it could be taken apart and flat packed. At the end of the month it will be deconstructed and shipped to China with the artist when she returns.