The Big Move - NI to NZ

The end of this blog

2011-11-07T20:54:00.000+13:00

I am stopping this blog. It was never meant to go on as long as it has -- my intention was to document the emigration process, which has been done. Although I may take up another blog in the future, this one was not intended to become a general diary, and I don't want to turn it into one. I want to leave it as a legacy for anyone else who is considering moving to New Zealand or is curious about the emigration process from Ireland.

We are now settled into New Zealand and, unless I move to some other country, I won't be dealing with emigration again.

Thank you for reading.

Over and out.

A year to the day

2011-09-03T16:35:00.002+12:00

This day last year I (along with everybody else in Canterbury) was blissfully unaware of how life was about to change for all of us. My husband was overseas and I had just returned from a very enjoyable few days visiting family in Wellington. I went to bed happy and relaxed after a busy Friday spent house cleaning and buying groceries in preparation for my other half's return on Sunday.

I'll never forget the shock of being woken in the middle of the night thinking that the house was going to fall down around me. First I heard a roar like a train somehow passing through our garden, and then I was being thrown from side to side. Not knowing the first thing about best practice during an earthquake or that I was supposed to "drop, cover, and hold," I stood frozen with fear in the corner between my bed and the window. The whole house was full of the noise of crashing (which turned out to be roof tiles clattering as well as bits of furniture falling down inside) but that was almost drowned out by the roar coming from the earth itself. It only lasted for a matter of seconds but they felt like very long seconds to me.

When the shaking stopped, I gingerly stepped out of the bedroom to see was the rest of the house still standing. Flicking on the light in the living room, I was greeted by fallen bookcases and DVDs thrown everywhere on the floor, but the house itself looked fine. I went straight to the telephone to call my brother in Wellington. Christchurch had no history of earthquakes like this so my immediate assumption was that we had caught the tail end of what must have been a devastating earthquake along the Alpine Fault. Imagine my surprise when my brother's sleepy voice answered the phone, and he hadn't felt a thing!

We still had electricity and internet access so I went straight on to Facebook to tell my friends what had happened and compare notes with other people. While I was doing this we were having frequent powerful aftershocks, but I had no idea if this was normal or not. I didn't even know if what I felt was a large earthquake or just something small - I had nothing else to compare it to. This confusion only increased when I put on my dressing gown and slippers and took a walk down to the street. Houses were dark and quiet, and there was no sign of any activity. Perhaps I was overreacting and should just go home and go back to sleep like everybody else apparently had.

It took several hours before I felt calm enough to sleep, and during this time the aftershocks kept coming. I felt so powerless in the face of Mother Nature; there was nowhere that I could go to get away from the shaking. And yet I still had no idea that we had just survived a 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

The following few days revealed the extent of the damage to the oldest and most vulnerable buildings in the city centre and out towards Darfield at the epicentre of the quake, and to the land in the riverside suburbs in Christchurch and in Kaiapoi. People had lost their homes and businesses, and we were all scared and traumatised - but we were all still alive. We had survived. The miracle had happened and a terrible quake hit at a time when few people were out and about and those who were awake managed to escape with their lives, even if some people were badly hurt. We would pick up the pieces, deal with the ongoing aftershocks, and get on with things again.

Little did we know what was in store for us six months later...

Nail varnish

2011-07-23T15:44:00.002+12:00

For the last few months I have been doing my nails with CND Shellac. It's a gel hybrid polish, which means that it has to be cured with a UV lamp rather than air dried but it lasts really well. If I take the time to properly prepare my nails before painting it on, I can get two weeks without any chipping or peeling (by which time I'm so bored with the colour that I am dying to switch it for something else anyway).

This is the sort of lamp I have - a cheap one from Hong Kong that I found on eBay:

And this is what the varnish itself looks like:

The process also requires the Shellac base coat, Shellac top coat, some isopropyl alcohol, and some acetone.

Step 1: prepare the nails (clean, tidy, remove stray cuticle).
Step 2: dehydrate the nail plate (use a 50:50 mixture of alcohol and acetone on a cotton pad).
Step 3: apply a thin layer of base coat, cure under UV lamp for 10 seconds.
Step 4: apply a thin layer of colour, cure under UV lamp for 2 minutes.
Step 5: apply a second thin layer of colour, cure under UV lamp for 2 minutes.
Step 6: apply a layer of top coat, cure under UV lamp for 2 minutes.
Step 7: wipe off the sticky top layer with alcohol on a cotton pad.

There it is, easy peasy! The end result should be perfect shiny nails and they are dry straight away. No more smudging or denting or having to avoid touching anything for half an hour just in case something smears! Use a nail oil every day to keep the cuticles nice and keep everything well-oiled and flexible.

I have had some bad experience with the polish peeling off because I put it on too thickly, so it's vital to keep the colour coats thin and build up colour with multiple layers rather than one thick layer. The polish will also chip or peel off if the nail isn't properly cleaned and dehydrated first or if the nail itself peels off. But the more I practise the better the results are, and now I have no excuse for ugly chipped polish.

Removal is easy too. Just cut up a cotton pad into little nail-sized pieces, soak in acetone and hold in place on the nail with tin foil. Wait ten minutes, remove cotton pad, polish slides right off with it. There is no damage to the nail itself (unlike some gel polishes which require the nail plate to be filed).

A verdict on the city's land

2011-06-23T14:59:00.001+12:00

The first official government report on the state of the city's land came out today. It doesn't cover everywhere (some places haven't been assessed yet, or have to be re-assessed after last week's shakes) but it is a start.

For some people it will represent a sense of closure, knowing that the land under their home is in such bad shape that they should leave it. The government will buy them out if they have insurance, and they can move on with their lives. For others in the orange and white zones, it means nothing except that the wait for a decision goes on.

We are incredibly lucky - although we are relatively close to the Avon river, we aren't close enough to be in the red zone that follows its path. Our house is in the green zone. But I really feel for the people who have to leave a house they once loved in an area where they may have spent their whole lives and have so many memories and so many friends and neighbours. Whole communities are going to be torn apart and it will take a long time for many of the displaced people to feel at home somewhere else.

Of course some people have had enough and will be delighted to take the money and run. They have been living with broken houses, few services, and wet silty ground since September, and they don't want to spend any longer in that situation than they have to. Who can blame them?

I hope today's decision is good for most people even if it represents bad news about their house. But I don't envy anyone outside of the green areas.

June 13th Aftershocks

2011-06-14T21:45:00.000+12:00

I have been meaning to update this blog anyway, with non-earthquake stuff, but that can wait for another day.

Yesterday we had two major aftershocks here in Christchurch; a 5.7 followed some time later by a 6.3. I was working from home for both of them and was by myself in the house. Both times I dived straight under the dining table to ride it out. A year ago there is no way I would have dived under a table -- it just wasn't in my mind or my muscle memory -- but now there's no hesitation whatsoever. As I clung to the table leg, both me and it bouncing around on the floor, and listening to things crash down in the kitchen beside me, I was glad to have some solid wood between me and whatever might come down over my head.

As it turned out, we had no structural damage to the house and no damage to contents either, which seems miraculous, especially as I am certain I heard glass smashing. I can't find any broken glass now, so either it is hiding until I let my guard down or else I was mistaken. It could have been the roof tiles crashing around a few feet above me -- they do sound like breaking glass when they shake against each other.

My husband was at work for both shakes and they had no significant damage either, although a window cracked and I believe some insulation tiles in the roof came down.

Since yesterday we have (so far) had more recorded aftershocks than I can count. In the last 24 hours we have had 44 of them. Check out the action on the quake maps -- there has been a very significant change in the last day or so!

Coping

2011-04-26T21:37:00.000+12:00

A few people have asked me how we're coping after the earthquake. I feel like a bit of a fraud when they ask, because honestly we haven't suffered much at all. Our house is mostly fine apart from some superficial cracks, we both have jobs, our toilet flushes, etc. But that doesn't mean everything is normal, so I suppose I'm allowed to exhibit some strange behaviour as part of the coping process.

The strangest thing for me is that I have almost stopped wearing perfume. I've worn perfume just about every single day for the last decade or more, but since February 22nd I have hardly worn it at all. A very sweet lady in Australia sent me some perfume oils recently and I've put those on from time to time, but other than that I've hardly reached for a spray bottle at all. However, I have become obsessed with soap, and washing in general.

In the last two weeks I have purchased almost fifty bars of soap (24 of them are tiny guest soaps but the rest are full sized bars) and enough face cloths and wash cloths to see me through a lifetime. I freely admit that I tend to obsess about things that take my fancy, but this is strange behaviour even for me. It has been suggested that it is an effort to take control of my immediate surroundings and also to reassure myself that I can still be clean and smell nice even though we have had all sorts of problems with water and sewerage over the last couple of months. It seems likely that it's some sort of psychological coping mechanism. Oh well, if the way I cope is to have lots of nice smelling soaps then I suppose I can live with that!

On the plus side, I have learned a lot about soap recently, particularly as far as men's shaving and washing habits go. There are a lot of shaving-related internet sites out there, and a lot of men who really enjoy a good bar of tallow-based soap. I would have assumed that women would be the driving force behind most fancy soap purchases, but it turns out that plenty of men are at least as bad, if not worse.

As for today's choice? It is Caswell-Massey's Almond Cold Cream soap, triple-milled, finely scented, and apparently good enough for President Eisenhower of the USA. It's certainly good enough for me.

What's working / what isn't

2011-03-21T23:01:00.000+13:00

On a personal level:

We got electricity and water back a few days after the earthquake. Going to the toilet in a plastic bag became the new norm for people in this city, but people on our street only had to do that for a few days. Some people are still doing it now.
Tap water has been chlorinated in the last few days but is still not safe to drink or cook with. Everything has to be boiled before it can be used, but that's not practical in the shower. I come out of the bathroom wondering if I'm less clean than when I went in. The boil water notice should be lifted once the chlorine gets through the whole system, but then we get to smell like a swimming pool at all times. Lovely.
Our house shows only very minor damage (apart from to contents which were flung everywhere), just a few cracks in the plasterboard where boards join, and some flaking paint in the corners.
Our garage, despite being badly cracked in September's quake, shows no new damage now. We were told by EQC in early February that it would have to be demolished and rebuilt, but I assume that has been shoved way down the list of priorities. It's certainly less important than fixing somebody's house.
My husband and I are both working fairly normal hours in work that is reasonably close to what we normally do.

On a grander scale:

Our part of the city is very badly damaged. I don't know how we escaped so lightly, given what surrounds us. Liquefaction, broken walls, broken buildings. Five minutes on foot will take me to our local park, which has ruined rugby pitches and badly cracked and slumping paths. The little drain that runs along the perimeter, which is normally a stream with ducks swimming on it, is now an open sewer. Another couple of minutes on foot takes me to our local shopping mall, which has to be partially demolished, and our local shops which have collapsed on one side of the road.
The city centre is a complete mess. A month after the earthquake, building and business owners still don't know what is happening with their property or their livelihood. The CBD is cordoned off for safety reasons (not just overly PC safety reasons but very genuine ones, given the huge aftershocks we are still having and the risk of people being electrocuted or otherwise harmed by broken power connections) and nobody knows when it can be reopened. It must be a really awful time for those who own irreplaceable stock or personal items and are terrified -- with good reason -- that the building will be demolished before they have a chance to rescue anything.
My office building, housing well over 1000 staff, will not reopen for at least a couple of months. It has some minor damage but is surrounded by buildings that need to be demolished. Even if my office had no damage at all, which is not the case, it would not be safe to go anywhere near it. So all the staff have been distributed around various locations in the city, often without their own computers or any access to the staff network (computer network and also people network). I'm working from home this week but have no idea where, or on what, I'll be working next week. Right now I'm just grateful that my employer is still in business.

February 22 Earthquake: My Experience

2011-03-16T18:10:00.000+13:00

Hereford St just after the quake

My husband and I had popped out to buy some lunch, and were walking along Hereford Street heading towards the river and our office building. We were almost outside Mythai Thai Restaurant & Monkey Bar (which was red stickered in September and still cordoned off while being repaired) when the quake hit. Almost immediately we could hear and see debris crashing down around us. We tried to run into the road but it was impossible to direct ourselves because the ground was moving too much. We managed to stagger away from the buildings and were not hit by anything but it was extremely frightening. I'll never forget the sound of glass and bricks shattering around us, and the screams of other people on the street.

Damage to Mythai

When the shaking stopped we realised that Mythai had been severely damaged. If it hadn't already been cordoned off then we probably would have been on the pavement right beside it and been killed. The concrete kerbstones on Hereford Street were buckled and broken. We had to cross the Hereford St bridge to get back to our office building and see what had happened there and it was also buckled in the middle -- we had to jump over it.

Buckled bridge

At this stage I knew things were bad but had no idea just how badly that part of the city had been hit; we happened to be walking away from the worst of the devastation rather than towards it. It wasn't until we walked home along St Asaph St and saw what had happened in Colombo and Manchester streets that I grasped the magnitude of it. I still don't know how we got through the day without a scratch.

Damage to Colombo Street

February 22 Earthquake

2011-02-25T09:13:00.000+13:00

Just a quick note to let you know that I'm still alive. The earthquake has been utterly devastating. I will post more when I have the time and energy, but that might not be for some time.

Things New Zealand Doesn't Have (Part 9)

2011-01-13T21:26:00.002+13:00

Haven't done this for a while, but I thought it was time to talk about something other than earthquakes.

This may not be a blanket rule throughout New Zealand, but it's something that we have noticed in many places, including our own home. Sinks here don't have overflows!

I managed to flood our kitchen recently by turning on the tap and then responding to some emergency (chickens vs cat, if I remember rightly). By the time I turned back to the kitchen there was water all over the place. A simple overflow built into the back of the sink would have prevented it. So why isn't there one?

This is what I'm talking about:

Maybe I've only ever looked at really old sinks and modern ones here do have it, but even really old sinks in Ireland have overflows. It's just bizarre not to have such a basic feature.

The earthquake's back

2010-12-27T21:13:00.000+13:00

We had a lovely relaxing December and a glorious calm Christmas Day. Swimming, barbecue, relaxation, calls to family elsewhere around the world -- it was great.

On Boxing Day in the early hours of the morning we had a very big aftershock. Then at 8am we had another. Then at 10.30am we had a 4.9, shallow and located right under the city and therefore both frightening and damaging. People are freaked out and lots more buildings are cracked or otherwise damaged, but thank God nobody was killed (despite bricks raining down around tourists in Cathedral Square), and the infrastructure is fine.

Here are some photos from today. Lots of damage high up on buildings, cracked parapets and fallen bricks.

(Note: the street in the first photo was already damaged before Boxing Day, but not as badly as this.)

What will this weekend bring?

2010-12-01T20:36:00.001+13:00

This weekend will be the three-month anniversary of the earthquake. We had big shakes on the one-month and two-month anniversaries. I wonder what December 4th will bring! It has been really quiet over the last couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean there aren't more big aftershocks just gearing up to give us a wobble. The North Island got a couple of good-sized earthquakes a few days ago, but they get earthquakes quite regularly and nobody seemed to bothered. I do wonder if something down here triggered something up there.

One other thing this weekend will bring is the third anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand. It's hard to believe that it has been three years already. We've had our ups and downs, and we miss family and friends and Ireland, but still: no regrets. Moving here has been a wonderful experience overall, and I hope it continues to be one.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: Two months on

2010-11-04T11:55:00.002+13:00

Things have been relatively quiet recently, but two months on we are still getting aftershocks. Just after midnight we got a 4.2 and just before seven this morning we got a very shallow 4.1 which woke most people up. It reminded me of the bad old days in September when I was woken before my alarm on a daily basis. The first time that I slept right through until morning was wonderful!

Two months on and the rebuilding process has barely begun. The nightmare of red tape for doing anything with heritage buildings or any other work that needs consent is way more than I can go into here, but it is badly affecting a lot of people. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some building owners end up committing suicide because of the pressure they are under from all sides. Safety barricades are blocking the roads and preventing access to shops and businesses, people can't live or work in dangerous buildings, businesses can't reopen, the insurance companies won't pay out until they know what they're paying for, rebuilding can't happen without consent, consent can't be granted without money to pay for the consenting process, building owners can't pay out of their own pocket because they don't have any money left... It just goes on. I don't know what is going to happen to the unlucky folk caught in the middle.

I'm still waiting for the time to change on the clocks that were stopped by the first earthquake.The clock tower on the old train station on Moorhouse Avenue still reads 4.35ish on two faces (I think the other two read 6). It's a constant reminder of what happened.

NaNoWriMo 2010

2010-10-30T20:56:00.000+13:00

Some of you may remember that last year I took part in NaNoWriMo, which is a one-month whirlwind of fiction writing. People across the world take part, writing a 50,000 word first draft of their novel during the month of November.

I finished my novel last year (well, I finished editing it last weekend, and am still not 100% happy with it) and decided to go for it again this time around.

I am still working on the plot, but here's the back-cover blurb. It could well change a little, a lot, or completely between now and November 30th, but it's a start.

Rose Cooper has almost everything a girl at the end of the nineteenth century could want: a loving family, a handsome suitor, a fulfilling social life, and a great future ahead of her. The only thing she doesn't have, the one thing which threatens to drive a wedge between her and the most important people in her life, is the vote.

The women in the fledgling colony of New Zealand are fighting to overthrow the Victorian oppression of the British Empire, and become the first in the world to have their say at the ballot box. Despite the misgivings of her family and the treachery of her opponents, Rose is determined to stand tall with her suffragette sisters as they fly in the face of everything society expects of them. But is the price worth paying when every political move she makes threatens to tear her personal life apart?

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: Manchester Courts

2010-10-24T21:38:00.004+13:00

Manchester Courts is a seven-storey building on Manchester Street in the city centre. It was built in the early 1900s and at the time was the first "skyscraper" in Christchurch. It's a listed heritage building, but unfortunately it was badly damaged in the earthquake and is very dangerous at the moment. A 5.5 or bigger aftershock would probably send it crashing to the ground.

This is how it looked before September 4th:

This is how it looked straight after the earthquake:

And this is how it looked last time I saw it:

That is normally one of the busiest streets in the city centre, and it is very strange to see it blocked off and completely empty of cars and pedestrians. Obviously the businesses in the immediate vicinity have been forced to close as well, which must be causing a lot of problems for their owners, staff, and customers. I found this out the hard way when I went on a lunchtime trip to Dick Smith's to buy a new pair of earphones, completely forgetting that Dick Smith's was located on this corner.

The demolition was bitterly opposed by those who thought the building should be saved at all costs, although I don't remember seeing any useful suggestions about how to raise the many millions of dollars that would require. If the building had a steel frame there might have been some hope for it, and newspaper reports from the time it was built suggested that there might actually be a steel frame, but that turned out to not be the case. Engineers used radar to scan for a steel frame and saw nothing, and then they drilled into the supporting pillars and found nothing but brick. The only steel is in some horizontal beams and internal columns, not in any of the load-bearing features.

The demolition is expected to take six weeks or so, assuming that Mother Nature doesn't speed things along. There is a webcam here where you can follow its progress (use that link, don't rely on this photo updating itself):

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: A very bad aftershock

2010-10-21T10:17:00.000+13:00

Just before lunchtime on Tuesday we had a very violent 5.0 shake, shallow and close to the city, that caused minor damage in my office building and forced the evacuation of all staff for an hour while structural engineers were brought in to check the place. I understand that it caused more damage around the city to places that were already vulnerable. I took a half day from work so I could go home and check our own house. We have some more minor cracks and damage to plaster but nothing that looks serious.

I found this clip of a liquor store during Tuesday's aftershock. (For comparison, here is video from another branch of the same chain on the morning of the 7.1 earthquake.)

I can't help but feel that I partly brought this one on! I was at a vendor presentation that morning by an Australian company who are hoping to sell us some very expensive software, attended by about 20 local staff. The two presenters had just arrived in Christchurch and I thought to myself, "I hope we have an aftershock just so they see what it feels like." Twenty minutes later, BAMMM! The place felt like it was about to come down around our ears. Of course we had to stop the presentation because the building was evacuated, and I never went back. I wonder if the presenters (who had never felt an earthquake before) were able to hold it together for the rest of the session when they had just seen half their audience panic and run for the doors!

The panic reaction was quite interesting. I am not a panicker by nature (except inside my head), but I could feel the actions of those around me influencing me. A couple of people lost all dignity in their haste to run for the door and they spurred me into action, although in retrospect that was not the smartest thing to do at all because you're meant to duck and cover where you are even if there's nothing to duck under (I had been aiming for the nearest wall). At least one chair was knocked over and one lady had to be escorted out of the room afterwards because she just fell apart. If there had been a larger audience today that could quickly have become dangerous if the crowd lost control of itself.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: Ongoing in October!

2010-10-17T22:57:00.003+13:00

We still rock and we still roll. It's not to the same extent as last month, thank God, but still noticeable.

On Friday night I was playing pool with a few friends when a shallow 4.6 struck. The whole venue wobbled noticeably, resulting in what would have been a hush if the band hadn't kept playing, and the slight displacement of all the balls on the pool table, then a sudden burst of conversation. I have to say one thing about this earthquake: it has given us all something to talk about. No matter who you are, what you do, or who you know, there is common ground ripe for discussion. Over the last few weeks I have had heartfelt chats with friends, colleagues, cleaners, taxi drivers, neighbours, sales assistants, and random strangers at the bus stop. It's way better than the weather as a subject for small talk!

Most of the weekend was quiet, but this evening we had a 3.something that made the ground wobble as if we were at sea. Most of the aftershocks are shaky but some of them have a very rolling motion which leads to queasiness. It can go on for 30 seconds or more and leaves me feeling a bit strange for quite some time.

Looking back at the 7.1 and the immediate powerful aftershocks, the worst memory for me is the lack of any way to get away from this. There was no refuge, nowhere to flee to. Roads were broken (at the time we did not know how badly), the airport was closed, the port was out of action -- but even if those places had been available I would have been too scared to travel to them because the ground was so unstable. There was literally nowhere to go that would get me away from the earthquake. It's a horrible feeling to be scared and insecure in your own home. If your home isn't a refuge then what is? That first night I made a nest for myself in the bedroom, with emergency food supplies, torch and batteries, cellphone and charger, laptop and charger, and I holed up in there for the night. The ground woke me up on probably an hourly basis, but I felt safe there because nothing had fallen on the bed during the 7.1. Other things did fall in the room but nothing actually fell on me. I was by myself for a day and a half, until my husband got home from Ireland, and I barely left that room the whole time. I just didn't feel safe in the living room or kitchen, where so many things had already fallen over, and it took about a week for me to relax in those rooms or anywhere in the house outside the bedroom. As I said, it's a horrible feeling to feel insecure in your own home. I hope I never feel like that again.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: And still we rock and roll

2010-10-04T22:54:00.000+13:00

Three hours after my last blog post we were hit by a 5.0 aftershock, the biggest in weeks. Clearly this isn't over yet.

At any other time a 5.0 would be a newsworthy earthquake. But because it followed a bigger one we have to just shrug our shoulders and put it down as an aftershock. It doesn't seem fair, does it?

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: One month on

2010-10-04T19:16:00.002+13:00

It's hard to believe the earthquake happened a month ago. It all seems so long ago, and yet it's fresh in my mind too. We haven't had any noticeable aftershocks in a couple of days, but that doesn't mean they've stopped -- they're still going on and there's no guarantee that we won't have any more big ones. The three we had last Saturday night did some visible damage to the plasterboard in our living room, so I do hope we don't get any more like that, but nobody really knows.

Damaged plasterboard with the panels visibly out of alignment (ignore that bit to the left of the light switch)

The city feels largely back to normal, but of course it isn't normal at all. We're just doing better at looking past the broken buildings and the rubble. Many people still don't have basic sewage services in their homes, or even homes at all -- every day there are more stories of people packing their belongings and moving on. It must be very difficult to spend such a long time not even knowing if the house can ever be repaired, or even if the land can be built on again if the house is demolished.

Our City O-Tautahi -- an old council building, propped up from all angles

There are many businesses that can't reopen yet because they are beside or underneath something that has been damaged to the point of being dangerous. Ordinarily those dangerous buildings could be pulled down (although that is a huge job in itself), but the difficulty lies in deciding what to do with the ones that are a valuable part of the city's heritage. It could take years to make those right, but what happens in the meantime to the people who are affected by the very presence of a tottering mass of bricks?

The old Civic Building, with smashed and boarded-up windows

Just about everybody has minor damage to report even if there aren't any structural problems. As well as the damage to our plasterboard at home, there's clear evidence of it at my workplace and in just about everywhere else I've been. Of course it's hard to tell what cracks were there before the earthquake! But I'm sure most of the damage to concrete and brickwork is only a month old.

Emotionally I'm doing okay but not great. Loud or sudden noises make me flinch, and a rumbling lorry going past gets my attention now where before I wouldn't even have noticed it. It's hard to keep my mind from going back to September 4th and reliving the terror and uncertainty of the hours after 4.35am, and I don't know if it would be better to let myself think about it or to try and shove it away. Cycling to work through the city centre (my route takes me past many broken buildings) brings me to the verge of tears almost every day -- I feel wound up like a clock that is almost but not quite wound too far. All it will take is one more turn of that key and I'll go BOINNNG!!! and it will all come out.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: Still ongoing

2010-09-25T20:38:00.002+12:00

You may think that the aftershocks would have died down three weeks after the 7.1 earthquake. You'd be wrong.

Within the space of 15 minutes tonight we had a 3.8, a 4.1, and a 4.0 -- within 5km of us. They were centred on Oxford Terrace which is smack bang in the city centre. I wonder if they did any more damage to the buildings in the CBD... They really rattled our house quite vigorously and made a couple of precariously perched items fall off their perches.

My day up until this point was extremely relaxing (an aftershock woke me up at half nine but other than that it was a fairly quiet time) and this has completely wrecked my peace. Adrenaline is still pumping more than half an hour later!

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: More than two weeks later

2010-09-20T23:00:00.002+12:00

The earthquake was more than two weeks ago now -- 17 days, almost -- and at last I find myself thinking of other things for most of the day. We have yet to go long without detectable aftershocks, and we had a 4.6 magnitude less than 24 hours ago which left the whole house wobbling for at least 30 seconds afterwards, but they are definitely less frequent.

I am back to my normal job in my normal office building, although not at my own desk. The earthquake damaged important things like fire stairs so some areas of the building are still out of bounds. I'm currently sitting on the fourth floor mezzanine, with a huge concrete beam and cracked plasterboard directly above my head.

The city is no longer in a state of emergency, as things have been downgraded to a state of urgency. This is probably small comfort to the people who have been made homeless, or who still don't know if their house is safe enough to live in. In some cases they are hoping for a demolition order, which will at least allow them to take the insurance money and move on. The alternative is living in a damaged house on a street that nobody will ever want to buy on, but there will definitely be people stuck in that position too. Property values for houses that border on demolition zones are going to plummet, as with every subdivision built on land that we now know is prone to liquefaction. Who is going to want to buy a house there? Nobody who can afford to live elsewhere, that's for sure.

Walking around the city centre is surreal. Life is going on as normal almost everywhere, but then there are pockets where it's only a matter of time before the demolition equipment moves in. These buildings are just around the corner from my old office building (the one we only moved from a week before the earthquake). It's hard to see the damage in the second photo but up close the building is cracked and broken. There is a red placard on the door and little hope that it will be made safe for business anytime soon:

And here's my old office building itself. Poor old girl, she has seen better days, but she's still standing! I don't know what the future holds for this 1934 structure but I do hope it escapes demolition despite the current damage. It's a heritage building so worth saving if that's possible.

Although we are still getting aftershocks, the last fortnight is starting to feel like some crazy dream. It's not a dream that I ever want to experience again in my lifetime but it's starting to feel like this is almost over for me. I am one of the lucky ones, for sure.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: Other people's stories

2010-09-19T00:42:00.000+12:00

I didn't compile this but I did contribute to it. It makes interesting, and occasionally distressing, reading.

Earthquake Map

Christchurch earthquake September 2010: Civil Defence

2010-09-14T22:15:00.002+12:00

I thought last week that I wouldn't be on Civil Defence duty much as I didn't see how I had any practical skills that would be useful, but I was wrong. As part of my normal job I spend a lot of time working with people from all parts of Christchurch City Council, and I (and the other people in the same role as me) knew many of the people working at the Emergency Operations Centre. This made me a natural choice for working on the front desk, acting as an interface between the public and external organisations and the inner sanctum of the EOC. I've put in more hours there this week than I would put in at my normal job, but it's all to the good. I've been delighted to be able to help.

The first shift that I was there, I brought supplies of fruit, water, and muesli bars with me, but I quickly realised that wasn't necessary. We have proper catering! Staff at the EOC get a proper meal at lunch and dinner, and I've heard there's a proper breakfast as well but I have been doing shifts from 1pm onwards so missed that. The food has been excellent and is a vital part of the whole operation, keeping staff properly fuelled rather than relying on energy drinks and junk food.

The response from the public has been incredible, too. We have had all kinds of people coming by with offers to help, offers of free/discounted services, or heaped plates of goodies for the staff. Lots of people who don't know how else to help have been baking cakes and biscuits and scones and muffins and bringing in sweets for us. There was also a lovely lady going around giving us free shoulder and hand massages to ease the tension! It really does mean a lot to know that we are in their thoughts, and the generosity has been astounding. If I am ever on the other side in this type of situation I'll try to remember this.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010, day ten

2010-09-13T17:26:00.001+12:00

I can hardly believe it is Day 10 already. Ten days of trauma, stress, aftershocks, Civil Defence, uncertainty, and unity. We are still getting detectable aftershocks, but not as strong (nothing today has exceeded 4.1 so far) and not as frequent. I hardly dare to say it but it seems like we are getting back to normal. The scientists say there's still a risk of another 5 or 6, but with every hour that passes that risk lessens.

Today was a day off Civil Defence duties for me and Skry. We spent a few hours righting in the inside of the house (putting the bookcases back up if undamaged, throwing out the broken one, replacing things that have been on the floor for more than a week), and then enjoyed a couple of hours reading on the deck in the sunshine. It felt like summer holidays, not a state of emergency. He is off for another day but I'm back on the front desk tomorrow afternoon. I have been doing front desk duty at the Emergency Operations Centre, directing people to the right place or finding the right person for them to talk to. The army is helping me -- army reserves in camo uniform man the sign-in/sign-out desk -- and it has been quite enjoyable knowing that I am doing something genuinely useful. It can be upsetting when people come in who are facing the loss of their business or all their rental properties, but thank goodness I haven't had to deal with anybody who is losing their home. That must be horrible for everybody talking to them as well as the person themselves.

It will be a long time before Christchurch is back to normal, but for now I am just enjoying the normal feeling that we got today. I can deal with the ground shaking so long as nothing else falls down.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010, day seven

2010-09-10T23:50:00.003+12:00

Did I tell you about the 5.1 mag earthquake we had on Wednesday morning? We thought we'd had a terribly strong aftershock from the original quake, but it was actually a quake from a new fault only a few kilometres from here and did lots more damage around town. Buildings which survived the first quake with no damage didn't all survive this one, and it badly frightened a lot of people including me. For many of us this quake was just the last straw. The Civil Defence emergency headquarters at the Art Gallery had to be evacuated while the building was assessed (thankfully it stayed safe), and staff members were reduced to tears.

The 5.1 struck just before 8:00am when we were asleep. I dived off the side of the bed onto the floor, and Skry froze where he was to see what would happen. The whole house was rocking quite violently and making a tremendous noise, but although it was bad it was nothing like Saturday's earthquake. Nothing fell on the ground, probably helped by the fact that we haven't put anything back up that fell on Saturday. It's all just lying there, waiting for the aftershocks to stop.

My nerves were completely shattered by this and I couldn't bear to stay in the house just waiting for the next one. Skry came with me for a walk around the neighbourhood instead, where we saw many chimneys just barely keeping their balance, and some big cracks right across the road at the bottom of Linwood Avenue where it reaches the river. That is the edge of the Avonside area which has been very badly damaged this week.

By lunchtime it was obvious that I needed to get away from what was going on for the sake of my mental health. Skry and I joined the steady stream of people leaving the city (the queues at every operating petrol station were impressive) and fled to friends in Scargill, about 1.5 hours north of here. The aftershocks were barely detectable at their house, which I always love anyway because it's so relaxing in the countryside there. We had two wonderful nights of unbroken sleep and my nerves feel in a much better state now. I am so grateful to have friends in a position to give us the gift of sanity!

We are still getting aftershocks on a regular basis, of course, but I feel better equipped to deal with them. I know that many people haven't been lucky enough to get away, and the strain is definitely starting to show on those who have lost homes, businesses, or both. It must be devastating for them.

Here is a picture that I pilfered from the Stuff website. It shows the aftershocks we have endured this week. An impressive collection, isn't it?!

Christchurch earthquake September 2010, day four

2010-09-07T16:48:00.001+12:00

When I said yesterday that the aftershocks were smaller and further apart, I was wrong. We got slammed last night.

11:24pm 5.2 mag
11.38pm 4.0 mag
11.40pm 5.4
11.47pm 3.7
11.54pm 4.2
00.21am 4.7
00.47am 3.5
00.51am 3.9
01.39am 3.4
02.52am 3.1
03.14am 3.7
03.24am 5.4
04.17am 3.5
05.14am 3.9
05.17am 3.3
06.22am 3.5
08.14am 3.6

As you can see, there were three aftershocks overnight of magnitude 5.2 or higher. These are big enough to qualify as earthquakes in their own right -- any one of them would be newsworthy, and we got three, along with plenty of smaller ones. These aftershocks caused more damage to the buildings that have already been damaged, and led to a refuge centre being evacuated, the airport's domestic terminal being temporarily closed when cracks appeared, and damage appearing in houses that had seemed unscathed up until now.

We are very fortunate to still have no visible damage to our house. The garage is damaged, but it was damaged already and it's hard to tell what was caused by the earthquake and what was caused by subsidence years ago. When we bought the house the garage was already cracked and broken along both long walls because one end of the building had sunk a little, but that could have happened any time since it was built. Anyway, we now have a broken window pane along the side, and I'm pretty sure the gaps around that window frame are bigger than they used to be, courtesy of either last night or Saturday morning. But honestly the garage should really be knocked down and replaced anyway, and we should be grateful that it's still standing after the battering it received this weekend.

Skry and I both ended up at work yesterday, helping at the Civil Defence headquarters based in the Art Gallery. He works in IT support and is very useful to them, but I don't have any skills that are particularly in need right now. I thought I'd end up making cups of tea for people, but even that was all in hand! It's a very well run organisation and I have great admiration for those in charge and all the volunteers doing their civic duty.

It's strange to see the Art Gallery used for this purpose, and it's not perfect because of the lack of desk space and IT equipment such as printers and network ports, but it's working so far. And for a building with so much glass in its frontage, it has held together wonderfully. There is no visible damage at all.

Skry has been rostered to do more shifts but I don't think I'll be called in again. Last night I volunteered, but I am really not the most useful person to be in there. If something comes up that I can really help with I'll go back, but right now I'm leaving it to those better qualified.

Today has mostly been aftershock-free since this morning, but it always seems worse in the evenings and overnight. There is no reason that should be, that I know of anyway, but I'm not looking forward to tonight if the pattern holds. I suppose we'll find out.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010, day three

2010-09-06T11:36:00.001+12:00

We are starting to feel a bit more normal today. Aftershocks have been fewer, smaller, and further apart. But does that mean this is almost over, or are we still facing a second big quake? Nobody knows.

All we can do now is get on with life as normally as possible in a city where the central business district is closed off, businesses in Christchurch must not open until they have been assessed and deemed safe by a structural engineer, and those of us lucky enough to have running water have to boil it for three minutes before using it.

My employer has advised us not to come to work until the 13th unless we are specifically requested to come in. There are lots of people who have been called in because they are needed to help with the assessment and cleanup effort, but I can't see how my skills are helpful right now so I probably won't get called. Will wait and see.

My colleagues are all fine, at least the ones in my department, but two of them are out of their houses. One (and his wife and family) had chimneys fall through the roof, not sure about the other. Other people are without running water.

My brand-new office building has structural damage, which must be hugely disappointing for the people who worked so hard to make it perfect for us moving into it last week. But I have heard through my friend Fiona, who is at work now to do heritage assessments, that it should be okay. Let's hope her information is correct. The building I left a week ago was badly damaged and nobody is allowed back in, not even the people who hadn't moved yet and still had all their things there. It's another example of how lucky we were that this didn't happen during the day as I can't see how everybody would have lived through it.

Here is what's left of one of my favourite restaurants:

At least the owners have retained a sense of humour. Here's what it now says on their website:

ALVARADOS IS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT (and has been totally remodelled).
Was a must for authentic traditional style Mexican Cuisine.
New menu out now! (if you find it blowing around on the street, could you return it please?)

Was fully licensed and BYO (wine only).

Was open Tuesday - Saturday from 5.30pm

Alfresco dining apparently isn't an option. Something to do with the lack of access, water, power and hygiene.

Christchurch earthquake September 2010

2010-09-04T13:08:00.002+12:00

So, I have survived my first earthquake -- the first one I was consciously aware of, anyway. And boy was it a doozy. Christchurch was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake at 4.35a.m. today, jerking me out of a sound sleep and scaring the wits out of me too. As soon as I woke up I knew what was happening, because the signs were quite distinctive: the whole house was swaying and shaking, and things were crashing to the ground in every room. There was no way this could be mistaken for a burglary, or even a car crash outside.

It felt like the initial earthquake went on for half a minute or so, although I can't be sure about that. I was in the corner of our bedroom which seemed to be a relatively safe place, so I stayed there rather than dashing for the nearest doorway. Advice about where to position oneself during an earthquake seems to be conflicting -- should it be under a doorway or towards the outside walls of the house? The doorway might be more stable, but if the whole thing comes crashing down there's a better chance of being dug out if you're near the edge. Anyway, I stayed where I was and that was fine. We don't have much in the bedroom that is likely to fall down, so at least there weren't things falling around me or on top of me. The heater fell face-down onto the carpet and my makeup danced to the edge of the dresser and plummeted to the ground, but that was all. When the quake stopped I turned on the light, grabbed my dressing gown, and went to see what damage had been done in the living room.

I could hardly get through the living room door because there was a heap of CDs lying on the other side of it, topped off by the bookcase they had been stored in.

The television was okay! I had been sure it would get smashed, but a few months ago we bought a really sturdy entertainment unit with a wide top shelf, and thankfully that was enough to keep things steady. But the DVDs and their bookshelf had both toppled over, taking the ironing board with them.

There was some other minor damage -- a pot plant upside down on the carpet, baking trays on the kitchen floor -- but we really got off very lightly.

Just as I was assessing this, another quake struck. This one was a mere 5.3, but still very frightening. I didn't know if it was a proper earthquake or just an aftershock. Anyway, it wasn't enough to send anything else flying, so I calmed myself and continued around the house. The only other real destruction was in the study, where my big heavy bookcase had fallen down, breaking the short bookcase opposite it as it fell. We were very lucky that it missed all the expensive stuff in that room and took out the crappy piece of flat-pack furniture instead!

You may detect a theme here, and you'd be right. We have far too many unstable bookcases in our house. These all need to be screwed to the wall as soon as possible; if we'd done that already the house probably wouldn't have shown any damage at all.

Structurally things appear to be fine. I'm no expert, but I took a walk around the house and couldn't see anything that looked different from how it used to. We didn't lose power or water, and the sewage lines aren't obviously damaged. There have been aftershocks regularly ever since, for the last seven hours, but I'm hoping they will tail off. They make me feel frightened and seasick, and they scare the chickens.

The rest of Christchurch didn't get off so lightly. There has been terrible damage to some of the older buildings in the city centre. You can view photos here and read the current news articles here. I haven't ventured out of our street but I'm sure I'll see plenty of damage on my way to work on Monday.

That's all for now. I will blog more on this subject over the next couple of days.

Musings on handkerchiefs

2010-09-03T20:04:00.000+12:00

Handkerchiefs -- or is it handkerchieves? -- are something that I have never used. That may partly explain why I don't know how to spell the word in the plural, so I shall just call them hankies from now on. My dad is the only person I can think of who always carried one and probably still does. I remember a few times when I was a little kid and was trapped in church with a runny nose. Dad would pass me his hanky, I would blow my nose heartily in it, and he would put it back into his pocket. The things fathers will do for their children obviously includes carrying their snot around for them. Nice.

For my whole adult life I have used paper tissues whenever I've had a runny nose or needed to quickly wipe my hands. I wonder how many tissues have gone into landfill purely on my account. Lots, I'm sure -- my nose is almost constantly wet, like a puppy, any time that the weather is cold outside and I'm moving between outside and inside. Temperature changes set it off every time! And most of the time it just needs a quick wipe and I'm good, but that's a whole tissue gone.

Now I'm thinking that it might be time to obtain a supply of cloth hankies and see how those work out for me. Some people think that it's disgusting to carry a used hanky around, and I totally agree with that if it's been used during the throes of a bad cold, but most of time there won't be very much actually going onto the cloth. Just grab a couple of clean ones every day, or more often if necessary, shove them in a handbag or pocket, and that should be it.

Now I just need to find somewhere that sells them. I know the Warehouse does, but they might not be the best quality. I want something soft, durable, and that washes well. Cotton or maybe linen. Actually I have no idea if linen would be soft or not. More research may be required!

Spring is in the air

2010-09-01T18:09:00.000+12:00

It has been a long, wet winter, but things are starting to look up at last. The mountains are still covered in snow and we are forecast some icy wind and rain for the next few days, but at least today was warm and sunny. The daffodils are showing themselves, the cherry trees are in full bloom, and the weeds are growing like crazy.

We have what I believe is a greengage tree in our garden. It is attracting bees at the moment, which I love to see. Bees are great.

We also have some variation of box tree which smells like cocoa butter when it's in bloom. Yum.

This chocolate-smelling-tree (as I call it in my head) is a real indication for me that summer isn't too far away, and if I get the chance to sit out on our deck in the sunshine and smell it wafting over me then I'm going to do just that. I've managed it for the last two years so let's hope I manage it this year as well. I can hardly wait!

A self haircut

2010-08-04T17:48:00.000+12:00

My hair was getting very long and scraggy, but I hate going to the hairdresser. It's so painful getting my hair washed at those basins where you have to lean backwards and put your neck onto that rock-hard porcelain. So I thought this time I would do it myself.

I didn't have the wit to take a proper "before" photo, but here I am with my hair parted (badly, it seems!) in various places, ready for snipping.

Snip snip.

Ta-da! I look cross, don't I? Think the light was in my eyes or something.

I was very cautious with this haircut because I hadn't tried anything so complicated before, but I'm really happy with it so I will cut it again soon and put in some more layers around the back.

I Love Egg

2010-07-18T21:34:00.001+12:00

A friend of mine sent me a link to a silly cartoon video for a song called I Love Egg, which discusses the virtues of egg eating. Here's a link if you want to see it: I Love Egg video on YouTube. He specifically requested that I play it to our chickens and capture their reaction, so I did.

I lined up the song and took my laptop out to the deck. The chickens were all milling about, and of course they were interested in what I was doing, so I thought they would crowd around the laptop and perhaps peck at the keys. I couldn't have been more wrong.

As soon as I hit 'Play', two of the chickens scarpered. Sean Henn was the only one brave enough to take a closer look. As soon as the music got going, she recoiled with a look of shock visible on her beak. Now, if you've ever spent time around chickens you'll know that they always look shocked. Things like daybreak, egg-laying time, feeding time, and dusk take them by surprise every day. But this... this was shock in its most genuine form.

Within a fraction of a second Sean Henn was legging it away from the laptop and the song.

She regrouped with Beulah and Cluck Norris, and the three of them turned their feathery backs on me. The song played forlornly to itself as the chickens retreated to the safety of the water tank.

I think it's safe to say that I Love Egg is not on their Top Ten.

A few photos for you

2010-07-04T16:00:00.000+12:00

Here are some random pictures for you to look at.

It was feijoa season not too long ago. I'd never heard of feijoas before moving to New Zealand -- apparently they don't travel well, which is why they weren't on offer in Ireland. They are soft on the inside, eaten with a spoon, and taste like medicine. Germolene or something. I don't like them much...

We had a "Christmas dinner" at the end of June. Christmas in summertime just doesn't feel right to me, so we moved it to winter instead. Much better. There was a tree with tinsel and fairy lights, Christmas music, friends, gifts, and of course brussels sprouts.

This is a terrible photo of just about everybody (and doesn't even include two of us), so I probably shouldn't put it up, but it's the only group photo I've got. Sorry, folks!

The chickens dined well on leftovers the next day. They enjoyed the dinner, and ate most of the dessert but left all the strawberries that were in the trifle. They ate every scrap of cream and custard and jelly, but the strawberries remained whole and untouched. Weird little birds.

The weather has been very mixed recently. We had an unbelieveably wet June, but it seems to have perked up a bit recently. Yesterday was almost like summertime, and I enjoyed a walk past the Heathcote river.

This morning we woke up to thick frost. The chickens don't quite know what frost is, and kept pecking it.

Oh, and here's a beautiful gramophone that I found in a shop yesterday. If I had space for it (and the requisite $950) it would have followed me home. I did buy some gloves, but that's not quite the same, is it?

My antique sewing machine

2010-05-02T17:16:00.003+12:00

It has occurred to me that I never blogged about my other main sewing machine, a Singer 28 which was manufactured in 1899. It is operated by a hand crank. Isn't it lovely?

Here's the hand crank that drives it. I thought it might be difficult to sew with only one hand to guide the fabric, but that really hasn't been a problem at all.

The bobbins aren't like anything else I've ever seen. Rather than being squat circular things, they are long pins which fit into a bullet-like "vibrating shuttle" that goes where a bobbin case would normally go. It's a bit of a pain to use because you can't look in and see how much thread is left without actually unthreading it, but the pins hold a surprisingly large amount of thread.

This is the bobbin winder. It flips up to touch the hand wheel when in use. There's a little cog mechanism that guides the thread back and forth across the length of the bobbin pin.

Here are two bobbins full of thread. They really do hold lots! It feels like they hold more than my modern bobbins on the other machine, but maybe they just last longer because the sewing process is slower on this one.

Obviously this machine does no fancy stitches because it's so old, but it can sew in a perfect straight line and that's really all I ask of it.

The beauty of this old Singer, apart from the fact that it is portable and requires no electricity or cables of any kind, is how much control it gives me. Because I'm cranking it by hand I'm obliged to sew slowly, and this gives me more neatness and precision than my electric machine. If a single stitch is out of line I can correct it before things get any worse. I use this machine for decorative top-stitching and any sewing that requires great accuracy, such as undersewing facings or repairing damage within an existing seam line, or sewing something very small such as a credit card wallet. I wouldn't be without it now.

Sewing patterns

2010-04-29T06:35:00.002+12:00

We haven't had a proper frost yet, but it's getting very close and I've seen my breath on more than a few mornings. Our lawn is covered with fallen leaves, and we're taking in apples by the truckload from the big old tree in the back garden. Unfortunately many of them are bird-pecked or diseased (by what, I have no idea) so we are trucking them out to the organics bin quite frequently as well.

I am going through a clothes-making phase. Right now I'm trying to get a good fit from this (Simplicity 2917), which involves learning how to adjust it for my shape, sew princess seams, and make facings. I hate facings. Grrr. How do you make them so they don't flip outwards and just sit nicely on the inside of the neck opening like they're meant to? I have the theory, just not the practice.

It's obvious that this could be a very flattering shape on me once I get the pattern adjustments perfected, and my sewing techniques of course. Although I still love my old Singer sewing machines, I do think longingly of zig zag stitching abilities and wish I had an overlocker. That would make finishing off the seams so much easier...

I also dream longingly of being able to sew something like this (Vogue 2903) and have it look good on me. In my head, wearing a dress like this will also give me a figure to suit. Isn't it a pity clothes don't really work like that? Still, I'm buying this pattern and might give it a go at some time in the distant future, when I have become skilled enough to put it together without wasting the 10 metres of fabric it requires!

Oops

2010-03-26T20:10:00.000+13:00

I haven't finished updating you about our trip Up North, but work has been really busy and it went clean out of my head.

To amuse you while you wait, here's a photo of our chickens eating watermelon.

A trip up north (Part 2)

2010-03-12T22:46:00.001+13:00

While we were in Napier, we got acquainted with Don and Liz's pet mantises. These are very cute little creatures, but as they are kept confined in tanks it's up to Don to catch flies with which to feed them. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the flies as they buzzed around inside the tanks, inches from something intent on eating them and with no hope of escape. And I was quite revolted when one mantis caught a fly by the wings and then began to eat it from the tail end up. It may just be a fly, but it was still horrible to watch it struggle to free itself while its abdomen was being eaten away.
Having said that, they were certainly interesting to watch when they weren't eating - like little green aliens. I don't think we could keep them as pets - I wouldn't be willing to feed them live prey, and if we let them out they themselves would probably become live prey for our chickens - but they're very photogenic.

A trip up north (Part 1)

2010-03-10T18:31:00.001+13:00

Skry and I took a little holiday last week - a trip to Napier to see our friends Don and Liz, who moved there from Ireland not too long after we moved to Christchurch. It was great to catch up with them, and great to have a week off work as well!
While we were there, we took the bus to Gisborne for a couple of nights. The bus journey was about four hours long, but it was very scenic so the time passed quickly. These are the things we saw most of:

Trees

Cows

Sweetcorn

Palm trees

Logs (on the road and piled up waiting to be transported elsewhere)

Gisborne is a fairly quiet place without much by way of entertainment, but we amused ourselves quite nicely and enjoyed the perks of our "executive suite" in the Emerald Hotel. Bedroom, sitting room, and massive bathroom, use of the swimming pool and spa, and a ginormous breakfast each morning, for $135/night. Not too shabby.

My new sewing machine

2010-02-05T11:40:00.001+13:00

I got a new sewing machine yesterday! Well, it's new to me anyway. A quick glance at the photos will tell you that it's not actually a new machine - it is a Singer 201K, made in Kilbowie in Scotland in 1950 or 1951. (Fact fans: this was once the largest sewing machine factory in the world, at one point employing 12,000 people.) The serial number on this machine allows me to trace it to part of a batch of 50,000 machines which were allocated to a batch on December 18, 1950, but I don't know if that was the end date or the start date.

This is a beautiful sturdy piece of machinery. It weighs a lot, and I'd struggle to carry it for any distance, but I firmly believe that it will outlast me and still be in working order when I'm long gone. This is in stark contrast to my modern sewing machine, which was fairly lightly used for three years and then broke. A small plastic tab snapped on the handwheel, rendering the whole machine useless until I can get a replacement, and none of the repair shops here seem hopeful of getting a spare for that particular part. In any case, although I loved that little machine and learned to sew properly on it, it's incapable of anything beyond light duty. Two layers of denim or suchlike would leave the little motor whirring in futile desperation as it tried to force the needle through the fabric and got nowhere.

In contrast, I am pretty sure the 201K would pierce bone if I was foolish enough to stick my finger under the needle when it's at full speed. Gotta be careful of my hands around this one! According to what I've read from various sewing or machine enthusiasts on the internet, this was the finest model that Singer ever produced and I should consider myself lucky to own one. It can't do fancy stitches - I can go straight forwards, or straight backwards, and alter the stitch length using a lever, but that's it - but what it does do, it does perfectly. The mechanical parts can be serviced by anybody, and the instruction manual gives details on how to do that. Singer makes the manuals readily available (it's great to see a company still standing by its old machines), and of course it churned out a lot of this model at the time so the parts can be found online.

The machine comes in a large lockable bentwood case, which I'm hoping to restore a little to hide the scratches. It has been fitted with an electric motor and light, and the motor itself is controlled by a curved metal bar which is fitted into the hole on the bottom right of the case, and moved by the user's knee. This is a change from the foot pedal that I'm used to on my other machine, but apparently it's easy to work with once you're used to it. The motor can be removed, too. The 201 was mostly an electric machine, but the 201K (made in Scotland) was catering for a European market where many homes were not yet fitted with elecric sockets. Because of this, the machine is belt-driven rather than gear-driven and that means it can be fitted with a hand crank or a treadle and used without electricity. Have to say I find that very tempting! By all accounts treadling is very soothing, and of course it's free to use and burns up a few calories too.

I'm short on bobbins at the moment, so I probably won't be able to get much use out of this machine just yet, but I've tracked down a couple of people who might have spare ones that they'll part with. Right now I just have one bobbin wound with emerald green thread, which is better than nothing but perhaps not the most versatile of colours!

An emigration update

2010-02-03T22:35:00.000+13:00

We've been in New Zealand just over two years now. With that two-year anniversary came the expiration of our returning resident's visas (RRVs) - the visas that allowed us to come back into the country if we left for any reason. The expiration is a standard thing; everybody who arrives on permanent residency gets two years to start off with (the residency permit itself is indefinite, but the returning visa is limited).
We didn't like being in a situation where we could find ourselves having to fly back to Ireland for some sort of emergency and then having trouble getting back into New Zealand. So, once we had accumulated some cash again following the Christmas splurge, it was time to apply for indefinite RRVs which do not have an expiration date.
Turns out this is a very easy thing to do. We each filled out a form, added our credit card details (the current charge is $140), and handed it to the immigration office in Christchurch along with our passports. Less than a week later the passports were couriered back to us with indefinite RRVs stuck inside them. We easily met the residency requirement - at least 184 days in New Zealand in each of the previous two years - so it was really just a formality. Now we can leave for a holiday or a visit home secure in the knowledge that we won't have to jump through hoops to get back to Christchurch again. That's a comforting thought.

A trip to Ferrymead

2010-01-10T19:44:00.001+13:00

I'm still revising and editing my novel, and one part which has been causing me trouble involves a journey on a steam train. I just didn't know enough about how that would look, smell, or feel. Luckily for me, there is a place called Ferrymead Heritage Park only a ten minute drive from our house, and they run steam trains every Sunday during the summer. A visit there gave me a perfect opportunity to do some first-hand research.

Ferrymead makes me think of a baby museum - maybe a toddler, maybe even a teenager, but definitely not fully mature. Many of the exhibits (particularly the aeronautical display) are still unfinished, but it's obviously a labour of love for many people who are pulling together to save what bits of New Zealand's past they can get their hands on. It is the meeting place for numerous clubs and enthusiast groups, who restore aeroplanes, build model train sets, work a printing press, restore engines, or otherwise contribute to what is a wonderfully eclectic heritage park. As well as the working steam train there is a working steam tram and an electric tram which ferry people from one end of the park to the other.

Here's the train we took (the route is extremely short and the journey only lasts a few minutes, but you can ride the train and trams as often as you like at no extra cost):

The working printing press was fun - they do lots of personalised posters and notecards for anybody who wants to buy them, and have a selection of other printed bits and pieces too. We watched at a man in overalls ran batches of cards through a metal press which cut circular holes in one end of each card. No idea what they were for, but it all seemed very authentic and olde-worlde with the smell of paper and the clunk of machinery. Not a computer in sight, of course.

The fire museum ("The Hall of Flame") was another favourite of mine. I was particular interested in the steam-powered fire engines and the old alarms dating back to the late 1800s.

There's a great telephone and telegraph museum in the post office, which has phones going back to 1881 and a working telephone exchange where you can play and make connections to other phones around the park. I didn't get near it because some father was playing with his kids there, but I might go back sometime and have another go.

There are lots of old settler style houses and shops arranged as if in a village, which is lovely to walk around. Most of the buildings have at least one room which you can walk into, although many other rooms are glassed off across the doorway so you can look but not touch.

All told, Ferrymead is well worth a visit and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who's at all interested in the past. There is enough to keep most people interested for a few hours at least, and I think I'll get good value from my "annual" pass ($30) which lets me visit as often as I want until the end of March 2011, and get half price tickets for up to two adults accompanying me as well. That's definitely a bargain!

Dolphins in Akaroa

2009-12-14T19:34:00.002+13:00

A few weeks ago Skry and I took a trip to Akaroa, about an hour and a half away from Christchurch, with a couple of friends. Here's some information about Akaroa, which I swiped from somebody else's website and am too lazy to reword:

Akaroa Township
Akaroa is Canterbury's oldest township. As well as being a former French and British colony, it also has a colourful whaling and Maori history.
The charm of this old town, together with the incredible scenery encountered en route has assured Akaroa's popularity as a unique tourist destination.
Today the township is home to 1000 people, many of who work in the tourism industry. Akaroa has superb examples of historic homes and there are approximately fifteen gardens within twenty minutes of Akaroa open to the public. The area is unique for its heritage roses and microclimates, its herb farm, streetscapes and also its historic churches.
Akaroa has a vineyard near Barry's Bay on the way to Akaroa. French Farm winery on the eastern side of the harbour is situated within the valley where the French navy established farms and orchards in the 1840s.
Akaroa has its own swimming beach with other beautiful, deserted beaches within thirty minutes at both Okains and Le Bons Bays.

We hadn't made any particular plans, but as it turned out we arrived just in time to take a harbour cruise.The cruises take about two hours and costs $65 - well worth doing if you have any interest in wildlife and pretty views. We were told to expect to see maybe one or two dolphins if we were lucky, but I think at one point we had about ten of them around the boat. The Hector's dolphins are (I think) unique to this area, and they were very playful and mobile, constantly swimming under the boat, popping up for air, and diving back down again to swim back under the boat to the other side. We didn't see any other wildlife apart from two fur seals and a couple of seagulls, but it was amazing to see so many wild dolphins up close. The weather was great too, which helped to make it a very enjoyable afternoon. I'd recommend this to anybody who's visiting the area.

The Win is Official

2009-11-25T14:28:00.002+13:00

Look, I've got a banner that says Winner on it and everything. It must be official.

NaNoWriMo victory is mine

2009-11-20T16:50:00.000+13:00

I've done it - I reached 50,000 words this afternoon!

The story actually ended right at the 50k word mark, which was extraordinarily well timed (and completely accidental) but it needs some serious editing. There are some parts that I know are absolute guff, and some that have been glossed over and need a lot more detail added in. Plus, my characters are rather devoid of personality at the moment and I need to go back and give them some. I reckon it'll finally end up at around the 80k word mark. Anyway, that's for another day. I'm not going to start editing right now. I'm just going to rest on my laurels for a little while - I'm a NaNoWriMo winner :-)

Novel slowing down

2009-11-13T22:27:00.001+13:00

We are nearly at the end of Week 2 and my novel has really slowed down. I'm at 35k words, which sounds impressive, but I did the first 20k words in three days so you can see how much my pace has slowed. I'm still just as excited about my story as I was at the start, but it seems to be in the doldrums. I know where I've been, and I know where I'm ultimately going, but I can't quite see the way clear to get myself out of the current situation gracefully and believeably. I'm slogging along, writing in 400 word bursts, but the story is definitely not flowing.

My aim for this weekend was to hit the 50k goal, but after struggling all day (it's a public holiday here today so I had no work to do) I only churned out less than four thousand words, and we are going to a wedding tomorrow afternoon, so unless I get a sudden burst of inspiration on Sunday I don't think I'll meet that goal. I'll settle for 40k instead, if I can make that by Sunday evening. Let's see what happens!

Novel going well

2009-11-08T13:15:00.000+13:00

All is quiet on the blog update front, but my novel is going well so far. I'm a week ahead of schedule and am roughly half-way through my plot, so I'm pretty pleased with my progress at this point. It's full of holes, stilted dialogue, and missing chunks of storyline, but that doesn't worry me since it's only a first draft. And on that note, I'm off to see if I can reach my daily word count!

NaNoWriMo

2009-10-27T17:26:00.000+13:00

This year I am taking part in NaNoWriMo, the national novel writing month which is held in November every year. This is a free event which encourages people to spend one crazy month writing the first draft of a novel, which should be at least 50,000 words long.

In November 2007 Skry and I both decided to take part in this, but in retrospect our plans were doomed from the start because that was the same month that we emigrated from Ireland. Naturally we did not have the time or energy to spend a couple of hours every day writing, so neither of us finished our novels, and mine would have been pointless drivel anyway. I had no real plot nor much potential to develop one with the shallow and boring characters that I had, so there was no way that what I started with could have lasted the course.

This year we are trying again, properly this time, and I already think that it’s going to go well. Not only do I have a proper plot (with some holes but a lot of potential), but I have also been doing some research and will be able to write with some degree of historical accuracy rather than just making everything up. In fact, the more research I do the more I think I should just abandon half my original plot and focus entirely on New Zealand in the late 1800s, because that’s where all the interesting stuff seems to be.

Of course my novel’s success is rather dependent on my ability to write it well, but NaNoWriMo doesn’t ask for polished perfection after thirty days; in fact, it positively discourages such thoughts. No editing or revising is allowed – this month is all about the word count and getting the story on paper (or screen, in most people’s cases).

Keeping up the momentum for a full month may be a problem too, I suppose. I’ve never suffered from writer’s block, but nor have I attempted anything on this scale or over this duration. The minimum that I should be writing every day is 1,667 words, which is pretty easy as far as volume goes but may be more of a challenge as far as content goes. Still, I’m really looking forward to the challenge, and have roped in as many friends and family members as possible to join us - so if you're reading this, and it sounds tempting to you, now's your chance to sign up!

On Driving

2009-10-23T12:40:00.002+13:00

I am an embarrassment to my gender. Yes, I’m admitting it – despite all that we know about equality and ability, I let the side down by being a crap driver.

It’s not driving itself that causes me problems. I’m a careful and attentive driver (most of the time, anyway!) and haven’t experienced any problems navigating or getting myself from A to B. What gives me trouble is anything that involves spatial awareness. I just don’t know where the edges of my car start.

When I first got my licence (I was a late starter, not even taking lessons until I was in my mid-twenties), I was fresh from hours of practicing manoeuvres under the watchful eye of my instructor, Laurence, who was close to retirement age and probably hoped I was his last client. It took him months to get rid of me, and I’m sure I saw tears of relief in his eyes when I finally passed my test on the third attempt. Laurence was a great instructor with a lot of patience, and he taught me to parallel park swiftly and accurately and to reverse into spaces and around corners with no trouble at all. I finally passed my test in his little Nissan Micra, and thought that everything was done and dusted.

Sadly for me, I had failed to take into account the fact that my own car was considerably larger than Laurence’s. As soon as I was left to my own devices I dropped the ball. Laurence had shown me how to detect the edges of his car from my position in the driver’s seat, but had failed to make me understand how to transfer that knowledge to a different vehicle. Sitting in my brand-new four-door saloon rather than his dinky little hatchback, I soon foundered. In fact one of my very first solo jaunts resulted in my smashing the passenger side wing mirror as I backed through our driveway gate.

Things soon went from bad to worse. My parallel parking skills stayed with me for a while – I distinctly remember impressing my boyfriend mightily by nipping into a very tight space on a busy shopping street with nary a pause – but it didn’t take long for me to lose confidence. The straw that broke the parking camel’s back, so to speak, was when I got trapped in the car park at Sainsbury’s supermarket. However I managed it, I pulled into a parking space at an angle, attempted to straighten up, and somehow edged myself to within inches of the car to my right. Not only could I not squeeze out my door but I could not reverse the car out of the space either – its rear end was even closer to the neighbouring car than the front end was, and I was terrified of damaging somebody else’s vehicle. So there I had to stay, for several minutes until the person who had parked nose-to-nose with me came out of the supermarket and drove off. With their space freed up, I was able to drive straight out without doing any more reversing.

Not long after I got married, my husband and I went to visit friends. The visit was wildly successful until they waved us goodbye, at which point I reversed into their neighbour’s fence and broke it. I also punched a square-shaped hole in the back bumper, but that barely mattered because of the other scrapes it had accumulated; the broken fence, however, was an embarrassment.

That little misadventure led to what has now become something of a phobia about reversing in general and parking in particular. Because I rarely drive anywhere and the roads in New Zealand tend to be wide with lots of parking space, it’s not really an issue, but I will go out of my way to find a spot that I can just drive straight into with no manoeuvring, and then have to walk back to wherever I was actually meant to be. However, sometimes I just have to deal with what I’ve got.

My husband and I own a car that has had several previous owners since its manufacture in 1994, but despite that it was in very good condition when we bought it nearly two years ago. Now it’s a sorry sight. When I had no choice but to park in a busy hospital car park I somehow drove into a wall, scraping the paint off the front left bumper. Reversing out of a small space when we went to choose carpet for our house, I hit a bollard and took most of the paint off the back right bumper. Conversely I have also (frequently) parked several feet away from whatever I’m trying to avoid, leaving me practically in the middle of the road in some cases and at wildly unsuitable angles in others. I do my best, but I just don’t know where the air stops and the car starts.

I know I’m not stupid and I’m well able to understand technical details (I’ve got an IQ of 156 and a degree in computer science), but my brain just cannot grasp the seemingly simple concept of spatial awareness. Millions of people, men and women, park their cars every day without removing half their paint in the process. So why can’t I?

Please note that this is a rhetorical question, and any helpful instructions from my male readers on what I should be doing will be read, understood, but immediately forgotten when it comes to the point where I should put them into practice. I’ve had fantastic instructions (from the trusty Laurence) already but still can’t seem to manage to get it right when I’m on the road. I’ve come to accept that my otherwise reliable brain just doesn’t do well in this area. Luckily for me, my husband is well on his way to getting his own driving licence and he already does most of the driving when we’re together. Maybe I can live without this skill.

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 8)

2009-10-14T18:15:00.002+13:00

One of the benefits of living in New Zealand is that we do not have to pay any television licence fees. The television licence in the UK is expensive – currently £142.50 per year for a colour television – and it only funds the BBC, contributing to their radio, television, and internet services and to some foreign-language programmes they produce for other channels. Although the BBC does provide some quality programming (Planet Earth springs immediately to mind), the vast majority of what they broadcast is of little or no interest to me, I don’t use their radio service, and there’s little news on their web site that I couldn’t get elsewhere. When we lived in Northern Ireland we had a cable connection and almost exclusively watched cable channels, not terrestrial ones, and rarely if ever switched to BBC (I did watch the soaps on ITV and Channel 4, but neither of those channels benefit from licence fees; they rely on advertising for their revenue).

Over the last few years it has become increasingly difficult to avoid paying a television licence fee in the UK even if you do not have a television. The licensing enforcement authority, TV Licensing, apparently finds it difficult to accept that a person truly doesn’t watch one, and if there is any sort of device in the house which can receive any sort of television broadcast then you are expected to pay for a licence. It doesn’t matter if you use it or not. Oh, and the licence is not per building either, it’s per household. You’re a student with your own privately rented room in shared accommodation? You’re expected to pay your own licence for that little TV in your room, or that computer with a TV card installed. If you buy or rent a device capable of receiving a television broadcast, the dealer you buy or rent from is required to notify TV Licensing. If TV Licensing catches you without a licence when you should have one, they can impose a fine of up to £1000, force you to buy a licence at full price, and saddle you with a criminal record to boot.

The BBC has stated that a licence is not needed simply because a television receiver is owned, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the enforcers have a hard time accepting that somebody in this day and age might actually not want or need to watch television. And of course they take no account of whether you use or benefit from any of the services which are funded by licence fees; even if you only ever watch Comedy Central on Sky you’ll still be expected to cough up annually in support of Auntie Beeb.

Because of the frustration and sense of injustice that I felt whenever I had to purchase a TV licence in the UK, I am doubly pleased that New Zealand has no such thing. Channels here rely on advertising, and licence fees were abolished in 1999. Although having American-style ad breaks every few minutes is very annoying when watching broadcast programmes, we mostly use our television for watching DVDs or playing games and so the ads are less intrusive than they could be. And they’re certainly less annoying than being forced to spend our hard-earned cash on something that we neither want nor support!

Chickens

2009-10-11T16:01:00.004+13:00

I don't have any news. Here are some gratuitous pictures of the chickens just to keep you amused.

Gardening

2009-09-25T23:32:00.000+12:00

I only have gardening stuff to talk about at the moment. Go read my garden blog:
http://gridgarden.blogspot.com

Spring has sprung

2009-08-28T16:28:00.006+12:00

It's not officially spring for another few days, but today has leapt straight past spring and into summer, a balmy 19c with blue skies and a fresh breeze. I spent the afternoon in the garden pottering about and am now taking a well-earned break.

The plum (or greengage or whatever it is) tree beside the chicken house is in full bloom and looking very pretty. We got tons of fruit off it last year but didn't know that it was edible, so most of it rotted. We'll make better use of it this year!

The daffodils are out in full bloom at the moment too, and provide lovely splashes of colour here and there. And the tree that smells like chocolate (a boxleaf azara, I believe) is blooming again! The flowers on this are tiny yellow things, barely visible, but they smell like chocolate or cocoa butter when the sun is shining. It's just beautiful.

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 7)

2009-08-21T17:39:00.007+12:00

Here's something New Zealand doesn't have, which I don't miss: pennies. And tuppences. And five-pence pieces. Not that it would be pennies here anyway, since we use dollars and cents, but there are no coins to represent anything smaller than 10c. The 1c and 2c coins were ditched in 1990 and the 5c coins in 2006:

On 31st July 2006, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand introduced a new set of smaller and lighter coins to replace the existing 10, 20 and 50 cent pieces. The 5 cent piece was phased out of circulation, while recovery of the old coinage began.

The strange thing is that prices still have odd numbers, such as $1.58 or $3.99 - you just can't pay that amount if you're using cash. Cashiers round the total up or down using a system called Swedish rounding. If you're paying with EFTPOS, credit card, or bank transfer, then you can use the exact amount.

Here are the coins we do have - 10c, 20c, 50c, $1, and $2.

Even the 10c coins rarely get used and just accumulate in my purse. From time to time I clear it out and dump the shrapnel into my piggy bank or into the vending machine at work, but other than that they don't get much use. With this being a largely cashless society, I expect it's only a matter of time before we lose the smallest denomination that we have right now.

Sunny afternoon

2009-07-31T16:21:00.004+12:00

Four days after I posted the photo of the cold frosty morning, I walked through the same park in glorious sunshine and 16c temperatures. What a change!

I walked in to town and met Skry on his lunch break. We went for beer and burritos at a little place near his office. It was lovely to be able to sit outside in the sunshine and pretend that it's summer already.

Frosty morning

2009-07-27T17:57:00.002+12:00

Walking through the park on my way to work, at 7.30am today. At -2c, I was glad to have my big puffy winter jacket on!

Just checking in

2009-07-24T20:36:00.002+12:00

It's winter here. Not much going on. Cold nights, frosty mornings, sometimes blue sky and sunshine all day, sometimes rain.

I'm busy planning the garden for the next few months, and getting a tad over-excited buying seeds for flowers and salad veggies. I've never been a fan of most vegetables, but I do love tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumber, so if I can grow some of those and a bit of lettuce and onion I'll be very happy for as long as I can keep them alive and edible. As for flowers, if it doesn't smell great I'm unlikely to be interested. On the to-grow list are stocks (night-scented and regular), carnations, sweet peas, and various others. My previous history with growing flowers has shown mixed results, but I remain hopeful of great things in the months to come!

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 6)

2009-07-12T20:37:00.003+12:00

New Zealand does not have Orange parades on July 12th (and the weeks before and after). No marching season. After way too many years being inconvenienced, irritated, angered, and prevented from exercising my right to walk or drive from A to B, this is a GREAT thing.

It made me extremely happy this weekend to realise that I'd forgotten all about it being "the 12th" until I saw people talking about it on Facebook. Hopefully I'll never need to remember again.

Midwinter Carnival

2009-06-20T19:55:00.002+12:00

On our second evening in Dunedin we made a point of going to the Midwinter Carnival. This was a really great evening - lots of people had gone to a great effort making paper lanterns, dressing up in costume, and generally bringing a lovely fun atmosphere to the Octagon.

Skry and I went to an Irish bar called the Craic for an early dinner, and commandeered a window seat to watch out for the start of the parade. This was my view, which looked very cool in real life with the church all floodlit and just visible through the trees:

The parade got going with some dancers and a white witch / snow queen type person on stilts.

They were quickly followed by dozens and dozens people carrying all sorts of paper lanterns. It really did look lovely, especially as the authorities and local businesses had got together to switch out most of the electric lights in the area so we could appreciate the candles.

The parade was followed by entertainment from the bandstand across the way, although we couldn't see what was going on and were too lazy to walk over, and then fireworks. And amazingly the weather was just perfect, crisp and cold but not even a hint of rain despite the poor forecast beforehand.

The whole event gets a big thumbs-up from me. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, the kids were loving it, and it was just good clean fun for all the family. Up with this sort of thing.

To Dunedin

2009-06-19T19:39:00.001+12:00

Skry and I headed to Dunedin for the weekend, about a five hour drive south of Christchurch. We didn't have any particular reason except that it is a long time since we had a break together, so why not!

Since there had been lots of snow and ice down south during the past week (and in fact the road we needed to take into Dunedin was closed for a day or two because it just wasn't passable), we expected it to be cold. That didn't stop me packing a picnic! Egg and onion rolls, peanuts, yoghurt, and a Thermos full of boiling water for our mugs of soup made for a very enjoyable break in a little spot called Glenavy.

I enjoyed the view from our picnic table.

When we got to Dunedin we headed straight for our apartment. Rather than stay in a hotel or a B&B, we booked a studio suite in the Chapel Apartments, which are build in an old church (or chapel, I suppose) about five minutes' walk from the Octagon and with private parking. They were pretty nice inside too! Pity I didn't think to take some photos before we had trashed the place :)

I'd definitely stay here again if we were back in Dunedin - the location is so convenient, and the place was very well equipped. There was even a laundry area with a washing machine and tumble dryer, and free wireless broadband. Fantastic.

Playing with rubber stamps

2009-06-13T15:30:00.006+12:00

Since Craft2.0 I have taken a complete break from the sewing machine (despite having three projects for other people that I really need to get finished). Instead, I've been playing with cardmaking again. I love to use rubber stamps, so I used some of the proceeds from the craft fair to buy a new selection and some nice markers for colouring them.

Here are some cards made with a Penny Black cat stamp from their Critter Party set:

I love that one stamp can be used in so many different ways!

I survived Craft2.0

2009-06-06T23:19:00.004+12:00

Craft2.0 was held in Christchurch today, and it was great! I brought along a selection of bags, purses, and jewellery [this last I had made before the last craft fair I did so was just a bonus offering for today]. Skry came with me and was my helper for the day, and did a great job fetching, carrying, helping customers, and generally being a great support for me. I couldn't do it without him!

The venue was at Our City, in an old building in Christchurch, which has lots of small rooms rather than one large one. This made for some overcrowding downstairs, apparently, but we were upstairs where there was a bit more room to breathe.

My jewellery. I could do with a more professional looking display, but it still sold pretty well.

Some pouches and purses.

More pouches and purses. The sets on the bottom right are matching pouches and wallets. I was quite astounded that they didn't sell today, because they are absolutely the nicest things that I had to offer, but I think I was sending out a, "Don't buy those," vibe because I want to keep them for myself. In particular I really didn't want the red set to go so that'll be added to my private collection tomorrow.

Ready for action, five minutes before the doors opened!

There was a constant stream of people coming through the doors for the four hours that the fair went on for, and I had a lot of customers. By the end of the day my pockets were bulging with notes and coins. Of course I didn't make a profit if you factor in how much I spend on craft stuff, but at least I'm funding my hobby!

Sew sew sew

2009-06-01T15:38:00.005+12:00

Most of my spare time over the last couple of weeks has been spent making things for Craft 2.0, or thinking about making things, or procrastinating about making things. When it's over I probably won't want to touch my sewing machine for months!

Here are some of the things that I made yesterday and today (and sorry about the awful photography - I really do not have the energy to set up for photos after working all afternoon!). They are really cute if I do say so myself - I am half tempted to keep the light blue and cream set. The bag and coin purse are padded with fleece and lined with silk, so they feel really expensive and luxurious to touch.

Opened up so you can see the linings. The zippy pouches are lined in the same fabrics as the Teeny Tiny Wallets.

That'll do for today, I think!

A trip to the Supershed

2009-05-23T11:01:00.006+12:00

I took a trip to the Supershed yesterday. It's like a massive garage sale - so much stuff for so little money!

This big wicker picnic basket was on sale for $7. I would have bought it if we didn't already have a picnic set.

Printers, $4 each.

Lots of computer parts!

Missing a rack for your fridge or cooker? You might find something suitable in this pile.

I think the suitcases were $2 each.

I wouldn't hold out much hope of getting a complete set of anything, but there certainly wasn't any shortage of crockery.

I bought a scanner (not sure if it works yet - I need to find a cable that fits), some old National Geographic magazines from the 1960s/70s, a couple of other magazines, a tea caddy with geese on it, a teatowel hook with a goose on it, and a new non-stick baking tray, for a grand total of $7. Due to the terrible weather we've been having lately, I only looked around indoors so I don't know what is for sale outside, but there is a large area piled high with stuff. I'll be back to check out what else is there whenever this rain stops.

Things that keep catching me out

2009-05-14T18:57:00.001+12:00

We've been in New Zealand for nearly 18 months now, and some things keep catching me out, particularly regarding the seasons. I know the facts, but they haven't quite clicked in my head yet. This is the type of thing that I'm having trouble drilling into my thick skull:
- June/July/August are not "summer"
- Easter is not in spring
- Hallowe'en is not in autumn
- there is no holiday to break up the long winter
- my birthday, traditionally in autumn, has suddenly moved to spring
- daffodils bloom in August
- leaves fall off the trees in April

and one other thing which kept tripping me up when we were looking for a house to buy:
- south-facing properties are no longer a good thing. North-facing is what you should look for if you want a nice sunny home and garden.

Weirdness.

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 5)

2009-05-13T18:40:00.005+12:00

New Zealand doesn't have fuses. Well, I'm sure it does in some places, but standard electrical plugs don't seem to have fuses. I've got no idea how this works or why it's deemed safe (and we already had one plug meltdown which could easily have set the house on fire), but it seems to be standard.

Here's a UK plug. Note the large size, three rectangular prongs, and drawing of a fuse on the label to show where inside the plug the fuse lives:

And here's a Kiwi plug - small size and with three flat prongs, only the top two of which are actually required :

I think the third prong is for earthing the appliance, but the sockets work fine without it, unlike UK sockets which seem to require that third prong to "open up" the other two. The third prong also makes all the plug sockets look like sad little faces.

This is what has kept us going over the last 18 months - that's right, it's a plug adapter:
Skry's dad did rewire lots of UK plugs for us when he was here in January, but we haven't figured out how to do that for ourselves so there are lots of UK plugs still in use. My bedside lamp, laptop, camera chargers, our DS chargers, my hairdryer, the stereo... the list goes on. We really must figure out how to rewire the rest of them for ourselves, but it just hasn't happened yet!

Signed up for Craft2.0

2009-05-08T19:56:00.007+12:00

I've signed up and paid for a stall at Craft2.0 this year - it's a craft fair and is being held in Christchurch on June 6th this year. If you're around, call in and check it out! I'll be selling fabric items and jewellery, but there will be lots of other sellers too making and selling all kinds of things. I'm really looking forward to it.

Here are some pictures of the types of things I'll be selling:

Hopefully it'll be a really fun day, I'll sell lots of stuff, buy lots of cool stuff from other sellers, and meet some nice people as well. This will only be my third time doing a stall, but I feel like I've got a fairly good idea now of how to prepare for this sort of thing. Expect to hear more about this topic in coming weeks!

Library books

2009-05-01T17:23:00.000+12:00

I don't go through the main entrance for the bus station in town very often, but I spotted this the other day beside the ramp leading to the station itself. It's a facility for returning library books without having to go to the library. Isn't that handy?

Dawn in Christchurch

2009-04-30T17:12:00.001+12:00

A few mornings ago, we woke up to a beautiful dawn sky, and I was coherent enough even at that hour to go out and take some photos. Isn't it pretty?

Wet chickens

2009-04-29T17:09:00.004+12:00

The weather here has been very changeable recently. The last two days were like summer - it was 26c on Monday! - but today is like winter again. It has been cold and wet all day.

The chickens have eaten all the grass from the inside of their run, and with all the rain it has turned into a big mud bath. Their eggs in the nest are all muddy from their dirty feet, and their feathers are all bedraggled. But yet they don't seem too bothered at all!

The Nor'west arch

2009-04-08T17:16:00.006+12:00

The Nor'west Arch is a a really dramatic cloud formation in the sky towards the Southern Alps, caused by a particular weather pattern. The clouds make a perfect, even arch in an otherwise clear blue sky. (While I was on the roof of our office building on Monday I had a perfect view of it, and was wishing I'd brought my camera.) It also brings a strange warm wind called the Nor'wester which can mess with people's brains and make them feel angry or depressed or give them migraines.

By the time I was walking home from work that afternoon I couldn't see the dramatic arch any more, but I did see some really unusual clouds and was able to photograph them on my phone. They looked like there was a big dent on the underneath. And it certainly was big - this plane looks quite dwarfed by it.

True to its nature, the Nor'wester also trailed some cold wet weather behind it. By Tuesday night it was pouring rain, and it has been raining for most of today (Wednesday). I hope this weather pattern blows away again before the Easter weekend!

Just popped in to say hello, and show off my new bag

2009-04-04T22:50:00.006+13:00

I have been neglecting my blog recently (and my emails too - sorry folks!). I'm spending so much time crafting that I am not online much apart from the sewing sites and jewellery sites and the online handcrafted item selling sites.

Here's a bag that I made for a colleague's daughter-in-law, which he asked me to make based on one of hers that is falling apart. He hasn't seen it yet. Hope he likes it - and the daughter-in-law too, of course.
It's about 30cm wide and 20cm tall. I made it out of a lovely soft black gabardine fabric, brightened up with some pretty pink flower cotton from Michael Miller. It's all fully lined, even inside the pockets.

Lifting up the front flap reveals a full sized zip pocket on the front:

Inside there is another long zip pocket, and three patch pockets.

This bag holds loads of stuff - in the first photo above, it was padded out with two of my cardigans. It took me about three hours to make once I had figured out the pattern pieces that I needed (I have a little notebook that I am using for drafting patterns - bags aren't really that difficult once you have a grasp of inserting linings and inserting zips). I'll definitely make this style again, as I think it would sell very well.

A four-day week

2009-03-24T21:34:00.003+13:00

A few weeks ago, I reduced my hours at my office job to 30 hours a week in order to have more time for the other things I do in life. While this means a fairly substantial cut in pay, having a four-day week is wonderful. I'm feeling more relaxed, more creative, and have started up my online shop again.

I've opened up a shop on ArtFire, which is an American-based online store for all kinds of handmade items. There are artisans there from all over the world, and the site is growing every day. It's free to join, and I recommend that you go there if you make your own things and want to sell them, or if you want to buy gifts that you won't find anywhere else.

The link to my shop is here:
http://DaisyhillDesign.artfire.com

From there, you can browse all over the site. There are some wonderful items, and great prices!

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 4)

2009-03-17T20:35:00.006+13:00

Here's something New Zealand doesn't have that is actually quite cool. Unless I have been misinformed, there are no traffic lights anywhere on the west coast of the South Island. In fairness, this whole island only has one million people on it, and the vast majority of those are on the east coast, but still I think it's pretty cool that the towns don't have traffic lights. Greymouth has nearly 10,000 people living in and around it, but still, no lights. (They do have roundabouts.)

I wonder how people are able to pass their driving tests if they live somewhere that doesn't have much traffic or standard junction types. It's hardly fair to make them travel to another part of the country to take their test, especially since they will need a few lessons as well, but it's also hardly right to give them a full licence without having experienced the basics of "normal" driving conditions.

Mind you, I obtained my own driving licence in the UK without ever having driven on a motorway (because learner drivers are not allowed on the motorway) and was then expected to just know how to join traffic driving at 70mph/112kph or more (usually a lot more!) and be able to change lanes and deal with that speed with no experience or tuition whatsoever. There is definitely something wrong with that system. The first time I had to join a motorway, 13 days after passing my test and with nobody else around and no real driving experience apart from lessons twice a week, I nearly cried with terror...

(By the way, I have no idea if the west coast of the North Island, or indeed any other coasts, also have this paucity of traffic lights. Maybe my dear Kiwi readers can keep us informed.)

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 3)

2009-03-14T12:03:00.004+13:00

New Zealand doesn't have Boots. It doesn't have anything even close to Boots, not in Christchurch anyway.

Boots is the Mecca of one-stop-shopping for all toiletries, cosmetic items, and perfume. The main branch in Belfast had aisle after aisle of just about every brand I could think of and every product I could imagine for primping, preening, and prettifying oneself. And it had a loyalty scheme as well as great offers for free gifts with purchase, or buy-one-get-one, or buy-one-get-1000-points. I was the mistress of going in with a fiver and coming out with an armful of goodies thanks to clever use of my Advantage Card. And I really miss it!

Having said that, I am spending a lot less money now that I don't have this sort of shopping available to me. And it is possible to find some Boots brand stuff in the shops here (I've seen a lot of Sanctuary range for sale in Postie+ and some Natural Collection bits and pieces in the local chemist's). So it's not all bad!

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 2)

2009-02-28T18:23:00.005+13:00

New Zealand does not have Quorn. Shops aren't allowed to import it because MAF objects to its origins.

Quorn is a meat substitute, made from some sort of mushroom product. My husband is a vegetarian and I don't like many vegetables, so we struggle to eat healthy meals together and usually end up making two versions of something, or eating totally different things. Quorn enabled us to eat things like lasagne, spag bol, chicken stir fry, beef and black bean sauce - I could barely tell that it wasn't real meat, and of course Skry was happy because no animals had to die for his dinner.

Since we moved to Christchurch we have pretty much given up cooking together, and although our crappy kitchen is one factor, the lack of Quorn is another. I don't want to experiment to find out what vegetables I can eat - I'll do that in my own time. And of course I could not ask Skry to start eating meat again. Tofu is just about bearable, but nowhere near as meat-like or versatile.

Come on MAF, let us have our Quorn! Do you really, honestly think that it's a danger to the native ecology just because it started life as a mushroom?

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 1)

2009-02-26T18:10:00.005+13:00

This is Part 1 of a new series on my blog, Things New Zealand Doesn't Have. This is not a criticism, just an observation!

New Zealand does not have hamsters. They aren't a native species here, and MAF is very careful about preventing plants and animals being imported if they might mess with the plants and animals that are already here.
At least one person has been sent to court for smuggling a hamster into the country (probably more, but I did not carry out an exhaustive search).

MAF says this about importing pets from abroad:
"Importation is currently limited to dogs and cats from certain countries, rabbits from Australia and chinchillas from the United Kingdom."

Who would have imagined that British chinchillas enjoy special status where other chinchillas don't? Bizarre. And I am very sad that I can never have a pet hamster for as long as we live here. They are such cute little things and very interesting pets (although annoying when they make a racket late at night, or chew something they shouldn't), but we will have to content ourselves with just the chickens.

(As an aside, one day about a year ago when Skry was walking home from work, he helped a very drunk woman carry her chinchilla back to her house. It was covered in pink chalk dust. I am not making this up.)

Cicadas

2009-02-18T20:01:00.006+13:00

Somebody* just asked me if we have cicadas in Christchurch. The short answer is: yes, we do.

Living in Ireland, my exposure to cicadas was limited to books and films. The grim, cold, rainy Irish climate just isn't attractive enough for them (they prefer an average temperature of 29c). But as soon as I visited a hot country, the noise was obvious. They congregate in trees and make enough noise to be audible even through the closed windows of a car while driving past at 100kph.

Wikipedia says that 'they have loud noisemakers called "timbals" on the sides of the abdominal base. Their "singing" is not the stridulation (where two structures are rubbed against one another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like crickets: the timbals are regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened "ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the timbals return to their original position producing another click.'

Those timbals are certainly effective, I can tell you that much. Apparently they can reach up to 120 dB, which is definitely on the loud side! On my way to work in the mornings, I cycle through a park with several big old trees, and on a hot morning the cicadas are audible as soon as I reach the park gate.

Oh, and here's a picture of a New Zealand Cicada, courtesy of Landcare Research:

Consider yourselves educated, readers in non-cicada-having countries!

*my brother :P

I'm still alive

2009-02-09T18:38:00.002+13:00

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. I am working extremely hard at my day job, taking on some freelance editing work at the weekends, and just haven't found the energy to come up with anything interesting to blog about.

The Australian bushfires are certainly topical, but too heartbreaking to discuss at length. I will mention that the skies here were a weird yellow colour on Sunday night - I think the wind blew some of the smoke and ash in the direction of New Zealand.

God be with those poor people who have lost so much - loved ones, homes, pets, livestock, and businesses. I just can't imagine how awful it is for them right now.

A day out in Geraldine

2009-01-24T21:16:00.010+13:00

Today we went with Skry's parents for a day out in Geraldine, which is about a two hour drive south-west from Christchurch.

When we arrived, we had a lovely lunch in a cafe called Verde, which has tables outside in the garden surrounded by flowers. It was a scorching day, above 30c I reckon, so we guzzled cold drinks while we waited for our food.

After lunch, the next stop was the Vintage Car and Machinery Museum. I hadn't paid any attention to the plans for visiting this place, and didn't expect much, but it was really enjoyable! A lot of people have put an awful lot of hard work into gathering and restoring the cars, tractors, farm machinery, motorbikes, and sundry mechanical items. The museum has had some bad luck over the last few years, it seems - at least one fire and a collapsed roof after a huge snowfall which damaged a lot of the exhibits - but they have put together something that was well worth the $7 entry fee.

Since I grew up on a farm and spent a lot of time around tractors as a little girl, I was particularly drawn to the farm machinery sections. Skry's dad was very excited to find a vintage car almost identical to one that he owned when he was much younger, and Skry's mum was very taken with the van kitted out like a gypsy caravan, complete with cast-iron stove inside. As for Skry, I think his favourite piece was the tractor that looked like it had been drawn by a cartoonist, with eyes instead of headlamps.

The swamp plough particularly caught my eye (although I could not get a good photo of it because it was so closely surrounded by other bits and pieces in the shed). First of all, it's the biggest plough that I have ever seen (not that I make a habit of seeking out ploughs of ever-increasing size). Secondly, this was built in the 1940s with an estimated cost of £350, but an actual cost of £1,350. That is a colossal difference, but I guess Mr Wilcox could afford it since he seems to have enjoyed many years of use from his commission. I wonder how many other people could afford one of those... Maybe the company never made any other swamp ploughs of this size after the first one was sold. I'd quite like to find out more!

A special post for Wendy

2009-01-16T21:54:00.002+13:00

That is all.

Monarch caterpillars

2009-01-16T16:52:00.004+13:00

A few months ago I expressed a desire to plant something which would attract butterflies, then Fiona and Richard very kindly gave me a swan plant for a birthday present. This tiny little plant is quite the butterfly magnet! A few weeks ago we had lots of monarch butterflies landing on it, and now it is covered in colourful yellow and black striped caterpillars. I counted 16 caterpillars on it today and it has barely any leaves left. Poor plant!

But aren't they striking?

Way too hot

2009-01-08T17:17:00.003+13:00

Help me, I'm melting!

The thermometer from our now-defunct spa pool still works, and it registered 40c in the sunshine of our deck today. When I moved it into the shade [which I think is the correct way to measure temperature] it dropped to around 34c. I almost wished I had gone to work today just to enjoy the air conditioning! I know that other places, Australia for instance, regularly get this sort of temperature, but I don't know how I'd adjust if it was like this all the time here in Christchurch.

From today's paper:

It's a sizzler: temperatures soar nationwide
By MICHAEL FOX - Stuff.co.nz | Thursday, 08 January 2009
Much of New Zealand sweltered in unusually hot weather today, with reports the mercury topped 40 degrees Celsius in Christchurch.
Hotter than normal temperatures were widespread over New Zealand with 12 locations between Timaru and Gisborne recording temperatures of more than 30C, MetService spokesman Bob McDavitt said.
The MetService had recorded air temperatures up to 35.7C in Christchurch, which made it the hottest day of the summer so far and neared its January record high of 35.9 degrees in 1979.
However, Christchurch-based weather analyst Richard Green reported temperatures of 40C in the early afternoon with the suburb of Barrington reaching 41C, Cashmere 40C and Christchurch city 38C.
MetService spokesperson Nic Bonnette said a ridge of high pressure over the Mainland, combined with north-westerly winds blowing across the ranges, was creating the high temperatures; a weather pattern known as the "Fohn Effect".
"So, much of the areas down that east coast [of the South Island] will be getting quite warm temperatures," she said.
Around Christchurch, Lyttelton was also 33 degrees, while further north Blenheim was 30. Middlemarch and Cromwell have so far peaked at 29.
However, the run of good weather is set to end as a cold front prepares to cross the South Island tomorrow, she said.
In the North Island, Tauranga and Gisborne topped the recordings with 28 degrees.
Police are asking motorists to exercise caution when travelling through the Desert Road this evening. Extreme heat on the Central Plateau caused the tar seal on the road to melt and lift on the Desert Road, and police advised drivers to exercise caution.
The good weather is set to last until Saturday.
HOT OUTLOOK
New Zealanders are looking set to enjoy a long hot summer.
Temperatures through to March are likely to be average or above average across the country, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) said today.
It was likely to be drier than average in the south, but rainfall in the north was expected to be normal or above normal.
Niwa predicted more easterlies than normal in the north but lighter winds than normal in the south.
Moderate La Nina conditions were likely to continue into autumn, it said.
There was a slightly higher chance of an ex-tropical cyclone passing within 500km of the country during the cyclone season through to May.

Jetboat crash anniversary

2009-01-07T23:22:00.002+13:00

It was one year ago today that we were in the jetboat crash in Hanmer Springs. Although the year has sped by for us, and Skry has healed well from his injuries, not everybody was so lucky. Lesley, the Australian woman who was sitting in front of us, is still off work and still very much incapacitated by her spinal injuries. Skry got an email today from her and her partner (who was also injured, although not seriously), saying that she plucked up the courage to go on a small boating cruise on a canal. I think that was a big milestone for her. She is still trying to get compensation for the serious injuries that she suffered, which is no easy task, but since Maritime NZ found the driver at fault I think she is justified in trying to get something back. Her life has effectively been ruined by that accident.

I don't know how any of the other passengers fared after that day, one year ago. We aren't in touch with any of the others. But thank God things weren't worse for me or for Skry.

Funnily enough, Skry and the others are all heading to Hanmer for the day tomorrow. Nobody had remembered that it was the anniversary until we got that email from Lesley today. I hope they don't go on any jet boats!

Frolicks in the sun

2009-01-05T17:41:00.004+13:00

Our friend Brian is visiting, and on Sunday we took him north out of Christchurch, to make the most of a beautiful sunny day.

First of all we stopped by some wineries in Waipara, for tastings and purchase of some very fine wine. Then we went a bit further north to Scargill, to visit Fiona and Richard. They are lovely people and also have three cute little kittens and a swimming pool, so our visit was very enjoyable. Skry's broken arm is in a sling so he wasn't able to take part in the water sports, but he did make an excellent photographer and ballboy. Thanks, Skry! :)

This is true.

2009-01-03T22:49:00.000+13:00

Festive Milk

2009-01-01T17:01:00.005+13:00

I just noticed that our milk has "Season's Greetings" stamped on it. Cute.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T11:07:00.002+13:00

We are well into January 1 2009 here now, so happy new year everybody!

I've been thinking about New Year resolutions. Here are mine:
- take my lunch to work every day that I don't have a pre-arranged lunch date
- complete the Couch to 5k program

I've done the Couch to 5k program a couple of times before so I know it's doable, but I've become very lazy since we moved to New Zealand so I'll be starting from scratch with that one. Having said that, if I could motivate myself to get out running in Ireland where it was frequently cold and wet, it should be a breeze to get myself out here in the sunshine!

The lunch resolution is the continuation of something that I began a few months ago and should save me money and ensure I eat a more varied diet. Left to my own devices in the shops at lunchtime, I'd eat an egg and onion sandwich every day. Hopefully I'll do better than that with a bit of advance preparation :)

These resolutions don't come with photos, but I like to show you something every time I post, so I'll go and pick something random from my hard drive now.

It is my cat Freyja that lived with us in Belfast. She went to another home before we emigrated, and I really miss her (and her sister Flora), but we had some good times and she made me laugh a lot with her catlike silliness.

Happy Christmas

2008-12-25T13:46:00.004+13:00

As I write, we are about half-way through Christmas Day. Skry, Rok, and my brother Stephen are in the kitchen making Christmas dinner, and I am at my laptop in front of the telly. This arrangement suits me just fine!

We were all up relatively early today and exchanged presents before going for a quick walk on New Brighton pier. This is the same place that Skry and I went to this time last year, with Phil and Lou. The weather was a bit different this year - very overcast with rain on the way - but it was still nice to get out.

After our walk it was time to come home and Skype the family in Ireland. It was still Christmas Eve for them but it was lovely to be able to see each other. Skype is just great for keeping in touch with people.

Anyway, happy Christmas everyone - I hope you all have a lovely time. Now I'd better go and at least pretend that I am helping in the kitchen!

A chicken update

2008-12-25T01:35:00.000+13:00

On Christmas Eve the chickens got a holiday feast of bacon scraps left over from a meal earlier in the week. I'm not sure of the correct approach to feeding chickens meat - is it the done thing? I know they eat insects anyway and they are definitely not vegetarians by choice, but I don't want to recreate the whole Mad Cow problem by giving them something unnatural. (Not that chickens eating pork is ever going to be natural, really. How many chickens would have to band together to take down a pig?)

They have a new extended run which is almost complete apart from some minor work to the original henhouse layout, and seem fairly content in there. It has some bushes and a tree, and did have grass as well up to about a week ago. They made short work of that, so the ground is looking a bit bare, but if it rained more often I'm sure a few things would grow back.

I do feel a bit guilty about leaving them locked up all the time, but I know they've got more space than most of their kind and are very well treated generally. We are getting three eggs a day at the moment, including some with soft shells and some with double yolks. The eggs taste great and have really yellow yolks, so my egg mayo sandwiches for work have become very colourful recently. It's all good.

Perfume

2008-12-20T17:25:00.005+13:00

I love perfume, and have done so for as long as I can remember. But I used to content myself with a couple of different bottles and the occasional scent strip from Boots. Not any more!

Over the last couple of days I have ordered several new bottles on the internet, and it occurred to me that I didn't know how many I owned already. My guess was about 30. Oops - it is over 50, and that's not counting samples and decants. They don't all get worn on a regular basis (in fact there are a couple there that I don't even like) but I keep everything because it will get its turn to shine sometime in the future even if I don't wear it right now. My taste has evolved over the years, and some perfumes just work better in warm weather or in cold weather.

Boudoir is the one that I would choose to keep if I could only have one. It is as close to a "signature scent" as I can imagine having. But it's nice to have a selection to choose from every day :-)

A day of ups and downs

2008-12-12T17:56:00.002+13:00

What a day yesterday was. I can't remember the last time I had so many ups and downs in such a short period!

UP: Sold a lot of my handcrafted goodies to people at work -cute stocking stuffers for them and extra pocket money for me.

UP: got paid for a two-hour freelance technical writing job that I had done the previous night - job well done and super-fast payment

DOWN: discovered that the tyres on my bike were very soft, meaning it would be even more of a battle than usual to cycle home from work into the wind

UP: complete stranger outside the bike shed complimented my bike and then hauled a foot pump out of the boot of his car and pumped up my tyres for me, meaning I practically glided home

DOWN: came out of the shower to discover that the converter on the tumble dryer plug had melted and fused into the plastic of the extension cord, leaving all the electrics black and smoking. (It is obviously past time to replace the UK plugs on our appliances rather than relying on dodgy converter plugs.) That came scarily close to a house fire.

DOWN: belatedly realised that I had picked up a melted extension cord without switching it off at the power point first. What kind of moron am I?

UP: found our first ever eggs in the henhouse, one small egg and one large egg that is surely a double-yolker.

UP: Skry arrived home at a respectable hour from a work-related evening do. I always worry about him when he cycles home after dark, because drivers here are so selfish when it comes to cyclists, so it's always a relief when he eventually turns up.

DOWN: Although Skry had arrived home, he was in shock and had a broken arm. Not the safe arrival I had expected when I heard his key in the lock.

What a day!

Drunk driver 1, Skry 0

2008-12-12T13:20:00.006+13:00

Skry and his bicycle were in a surprise battle with a car last night, most likely controlled by a drunk driver. Skry came off worse, and now has two breaks in his arm along the left shoulder. He's in a lot of pain but is otherwise okay with no other injuries - although I would not wish a broken arm on him, it's a huge relief that he didn't end up even more badly hurt.

We spent most of last night and again this morning at the hospital. I took a snap of the x-ray screen while the doctor was away from his desk. You don't need to know much about biology to know that something isn't right here!

Apparently there is no treatment for this kind of break. The hospital sent us away with a prescription for painkillers and a prescription for a shoulder restraint thingy (after we both kicked up a huge fuss about Skry being sent home with nothing but a sling, and his broken arm just hanging loose). Now that the shoulder restraint thingy - sorry, I don't know the proper term! - is in place and the painkillers are taking effect, he is a bit happier, but he has a long and unpleasant few weeks ahead of him still.

We got our first eggs!

2008-12-11T19:46:00.004+13:00

When I went to let the chickens out after work today, I found these in their coop. Our first eggs! I don't know which of the three are responsible for these two eggs, but hopefully they will all be laying regularly soon.

They're getting a new, extended run tomorrow as well. We are being driven mad by chicken poo all over the path and front step, and it's impossible to keep them away from that area without a fence. After much extended and vigorous debate between myself and Skry, we have hired a man with a van to come and enhance our borders. The chickens will no longer be free-range, which saddens me, but they'll have lots of space to run about in and our doorstep will stay clean. Hopefully the trade-off will be worth it.

A global epidemic

2008-12-07T21:26:00.003+13:00

For the last week or so, half my friends on Facebook have been complaining about having colds, having sore throats, coughing, being bunged up, etc. Now Skry and I are both sick with it as well. Is it possible for the cold to be transmitted like a global epidemic across the internet?

Although not the end of the world, I have not slept properly for two nights now as I cannot breathe through my nose, and I missed most of a friend's party yesterday because I slept through the afternoon. This had better pass quickly or I will be most annoyed!

A full year in New Zealand

2008-12-05T23:13:00.004+13:00

Yes folks, we have now been here for a full calendar year. It has been an amazing year - saying goodbye to friends and family, travelling, new jobs, new house, making friends on this side of the world - and we have loved nearly every minute of it. (The jetboat crash we could have done without!)

It would be impossible to describe all the memorable things that happened to us over the last 12 months, but I would like to share just one photo that helps summarise it in my head.

This was taken in Bluff, at the very far south of the South Island. Look how far away from everywhere we are! But look how happy I am!
Actually I am squinting a bit as the sun was in my eyes - but trust me, I was happy. Moving here has been one of the best decisions I ever made. Our quality of life has gone up, our surroundings and lifestyle are generally better, and this country has some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen or imagined. No country is perfect, and New Zealand has its problems just like everywhere else, but Skry and I absolutely love it here.

Here's to a great year, and to many more great years in the future!

The most offensive bouncy slide I've ever seen

2008-12-03T20:16:00.004+13:00

At the school fair last Sunday (my craft stall did fine, thanks for asking!), Skry snapped a photo of this offensive article:

That's right, it is a bouncy kids' slide in the shape of a sinking Titanic. I can't believe anybody thought this was appropriate to create, let alone hire out. I can't decide if it is offensive or just extremely tasteless - maybe both.

These days I have mostly been making...

2008-11-27T23:07:00.005+13:00

... jewellery. I'm doing a stall at a school fair on Sunday, and although I hadn't planned to sell any jewellery at it I've now changed my mine. After finding a whole shoebox full of unsold jewellery from when we lived in Ireland, it would seem rude to ignore it now that I have the chance of shifting some! And rooting through the box inspired me to grab my beads and pliers and create some new things to go with the older ones.

Here are some I made earlier:

Hope I get some sales on Sunday!

4 x 4 x 4

2008-11-21T20:32:00.002+13:00

My friend Suzy was doing this on her blog, so I thought I would copy her.

The rules-

1. Go to your pictures file.
2. Go to the 4th file.
3. Go to the 4th picture.
4. Post it and tell the story.

I have multiple picture files, but I am going to the one that is most freqently used. Here is the 4th file from the 4th folder.

This is a photo of part of my bedroom in my old house in Belfast. It was taken when I was getting the house ready to sell (although it has since been taken off the market and rented out, due to the housing market collapse in the UK).

I loved that house, but this is the first time I have looked at photos of it since we moved to New Zealand, and I am shocked at how small the rooms are. In the photo above, the camera lens was not able to capture most of the room, but I still remember how little space there was on each side of the double bed, and how much of the room was taken up by a triple wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Now that we are in a country with more space and bigger houses - and built-in wardrobes! - I wonder how we managed to live in such cramped conditions. Our bedroom here isn't especially large, but there is space to walk all around the bed and that is a king size one.

Beached Whale

2008-11-20T19:28:00.006+13:00

My boss at work sent this to me a couple of months ago, and it still makes me laugh. A lot of the humour is because of the exaggerated Kiwi accents used, so my loyal readers in the northern hemisphere may not really appreciate it, but here ya go anyway.

A few of the clothes shops around here have started selling t-shirts with the beached whale on them, so I think the joke is going mainstream now and likely to become less funny. I'll enjoy it while I can!

A chicken photo for Chris

2008-11-16T20:35:00.005+13:00

My friend Chris demanded more chicken-focussed blogging. His wish is my command! But it is nearly dark and the chickens are in bed, so I will have to use the only photo currently on my memory card, which was taken for an entirely different purpose.

They're getting bigger, and bolder. We are having to cope with constant invasions of the living room and attempts at sharing our food, and the front steps and path are a minefield of droppings, but they're a great source of amusement to us as well. And we're training them to keep out of forbidden territory by using water pistols. They learn fast, too; even picking up a water pistol sends them frantically flapping to the far side of the garden. Pity we can't set up something automatic to keep them in line while we're at work...