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.