Nail varnish

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).

Coping

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 will this weekend bring?

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.

Musings on handkerchiefs

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!

A self haircut

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.

A few photos for you

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?

On Driving

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.

A trip to the Supershed

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

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.

The Nor'west arch

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!

Cicadas

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

Festive Milk

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

Happy New Year!

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.

Perfume

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 global epidemic

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!

The most offensive bouncy slide I've ever seen

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.

Beached Whale

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!

NZ Elections

The general election was today, and I didn't vote. Does that make me a bad person? Women fought and died in order to give me the right to vote, and I'm not using it.

In my defence, the reason that I didn't vote was that I don't feel like I have enough understanding of the issues in New Zealand yet. We have been here for less than a year, and I haven't been paying much attention to things that don't involve my job/holidays/house/husband/chickens (in no particular order).  Who am I to make a decision on behalf of the rest of the country about whether Helen or John or somebody else should be in charge? How can I make a decision to support the Maori Party or the Green Party or New Zealand First or any of the others? I'm not even sure of their names, let alone what they stand for.

The election results are mostly in, and it looks like National (John Key's party) have won. But I have no idea what that means... I'm still glad I didn't vote, because I do not have the ability to make an informed decision, but I hope to be in a different position next time a general election comes around.

This little piggy stayed at home

One of the main banks here, BNZ, has really cute pigs in its advertisements. Really, they're possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Y9j9yM6Dc

Skry went down to our local branch and got a piggy bank for me as part of my birthday present! I am delighted. His name is Hamish and he will eat all my spare change, then vomit it out when he's full.

Houses on the move

This is nothing to do with us, but something I noticed while browsing online for houses for sale, a few weeks back. It is not unheard of for people here in New Zealand to buy a house and then actually move the house to a different place. I'm not talking about mobile homes, but actual houses. I suppose it's possible because many houses here are made of frames sitting on piles, rather than bricks sitting on concrete foundations. The house is actually picked up, loaded on a trailer, and trundled along the road to its new location. Puts a whole new spin on the idea of "moving house", doesn't it?!

For example, here is a listing that I just plucked from TradeMe, the NZ equivalent of eBay.


I suppose it is more practical than knocking a house down just because it's in the wrong place. As the owner of this house did, you can just split it in two and put the pieces in storage until the right place becomes available!

Just another example of "things we find noteworthy" in our new country, I suppose...