The First Few Days

I appear to find myself with a bit of time to 'Blogg'. I am now on day 2 of work, and that is work in the loosest sense of the word. The Battery that i am supposed to be working with have deployed on exercise for 2 weeks, without me. I therefore have the job of chief seat warmer in the coffee, or 'smoko' room. Either that or i sit and talk about people we know with the Regimental 2ic who is an ex-Brit. Either way i am home at lunchtimes! The other good thing is that when they talk about going away for a long exercise, I think of 4 weeks minimum and being thrashed for that entire period. They mean no more than 10 days in the 'bush' at a sedate pace. Brilliant.

We had a lovely weekend, in a mix of power tools and walks. I needed a manly boost so went and bought some tools, to fix baby gates with etc...I ended up drilling holes in things that didn't need holes, and wanted to find a use for my brand new 450 piece drill bit collection, for the girls reading this you probably wont understand.

We ventured out into the hills, and found the most amazing scenery. We very quickly ran out of superlatives for the views. Breathtakingly beautiful countryside. I also found it very amusing that they refer to hiking as 'Tramping'. This conjured up images of beating up old men that smelt of stale wee. We beat up no men on our first Tramp. Jocelyn is the proud owner of a backpack, she can now sit on Dads back whilst he kicks the crap out of the homeless, or goes for a nice walk. She also gets to pull hair, ears and constantly kick my kidneys for hours on end. Excellent. We strolled through an area of the Manawatu Gorge, which is simply outstanding. I will not talk about it too much more as words will not do it justice. All of the pictures are from there.

The wind farms on the Hill seem to be very effective around these parts!

Me and Baby J on the Manawatu Gorge Loop Trail

Liz and a really big tree (or tiny Liz next to a tree?)

Baby J and her new backpack!

iPhone me up Baby!

We have now rejoined the 21st century. We have broadband at home, a land line, bank accounts and mobile phones...wow all this in just 2 days! But as i am quite sure all of you must know, it isn't just any old phone, but the all singing, all dancing iPhone...superb!

We are settled in quite nicely, although he jet lag has yet to wear off. 5 am seems to be my favoured time of waking. Baby J joined me at 5 this morning, so at least i wasn't alone - she is a very kind and thoughtful person.

I had my first Mess 'do' last night, and am pleased to report that not much changes on the other side of the world in terms of Mess life. The young 'uns get pissed far too quickly whilst the grumpy lot (of which group i now officially belong to...) get pissed more slowly whilst putting the world to rights.

Now on the subject of piss....you might think this is me being crude. You are half correct. The kiwis refer to alcohol as 'piss'. So it is quite common to go out and consume a pint of someone else's piss, and no one would bat an eyelid....bizarre.

We have had a few firsts as well. One of the Brit guys who transferred over here 4 years ago warned us of these things, yet i did not think that i would see them so quickly. A gentleman going shopping bare footed, a gentleman going shopping in shorts and gum boots (thats wellies to you and me (and it was the same shop - maybe i need to shop elsewhere?)) and another gent wandering around the shopping centre in his slippers. All of this is absolute quality. The one thing we have yet to see is your man shopping in his pajamas; apparently quite common around here. As soon as that one is sighted i will attempt a photo on new iPhone and share it with you all.

It is exceptionally windy here at the moment, we were told that it is a very windy place but seriously this is windy. Some gardeners turned up today and completely re-mulched our flower beds and leveled them out, and mowed the lawns. All free, could get used to this.

We are off out to supper tonight with Bart Simpson (not his real name, i hasten to add. It is in fact Ian). No doubt i will be ready to come home by 8pm. Tomorrow is to be spent investigating car dealerships for our new motor, as i suspect the colonel might want his car back before too long! I will let you know what we come up with.

What a difference a day makes!

We are now all firmly ensconced in 'Palmy' and i think the shell shock is beginning to wear off. After a mammoth 14 hours of gonk, Baby J is feeling a little more human as are we.

It is 0547 (Tuesday 25th August 09) and we have been up since 0500, but that is o.k. as luckily we are in a hotel, and Baby J had a travel cot and plenty of stuff to eat.

The NZDF have been very helpful thus far, met at the airport and ferried to the hotel. They offered us a night out on the town, however we declined and went to bed...how sad?

Today is a day of orientation. I think i meet the colonel at some point, but that is small fish...Stu (our friendly Kiwi) is taking us iPhone shopping....winner! We shall also go to the new house to hook up with electricity, gas and phone (hopefully interweb too!)

Breakfast starts in 30 mins, and i shall be demolishing the place. No food since my Dim Sum yesterday...rubbish!

More soon!

Hi All,

I thought we couldn't have a one sided blog, otherwise when my DH (for those who don't know, that stands for Dear Husband, not what Jonathan thinks it stands for!) goes away on ex, you won't hear anything for a whole month. So far the whole experience has been not too unpleasant although for some reason I always got to sleep next to the baby....mmm.... We're very excited to be here at last, and I for one am a little nervous following my epiphany on the plane (I forget which plane) in which I realised the enormity of the situation. We're going to live here for 2 years and it's a bit late to change my mind. Wow!

The view from the plane window was wonderful, huge snow capped mountains in the far distance, mossy green covered hills in the middle distance, and a man in a grey cloak smoking a pipe and chatting away to a small guy with hairy feet just at the base of the hills. The wide green plains seem far too big to host the modest number of (2 legged) inhabitants and a dusting of sheep seemed to cover every other available surface. It's like England, only better.

I will let you know what I think of 'Palmy' a little later, possibly from my new iPhone. So far, I think it looks a little like an American small town with wide streets and low, wood-covered buildings. Except that they drive on the proper side of the road over here, of course!

This is being typed at 696mph, and altitude of 36998ft and at an outside temperature of -54c. That I believe has to make me one of the most extreme first time ‘bloggers’ – I wonder if there is a prize? I have just enjoyed what I shall call a varied breakfast. A glass of tomato juice, a cup of English breakfast tea, 2 rather nice croissant – followed by a plate of Dim Sum and chili sauce. A new experience for me, but one that I have just been informed is standard practice in the Far East. Liz has now been instructed that this is now to be the norm for my breakfast. This was a vast improvement to ‘supper’ at Heathrow. On going through security, I was informed that I would have to taste 50% of all of Baby J’s food…I now know the sense of dread and foreboding that those poison tasters must have had before sampling their Master’s food. Baby food is revolting, fact.

We sit 735 miles of the starboard bow of Auckland. We have flown the width of Australia, crossing the west coast between Melbourne and Sydney. It all looks very small on my map. The trip has been good so far. I will forever be indebted to the British tax payer for shelling out for business class. At one point we thought we had lost Jocelyn in a scene reminiscent from that airplane film with Jodie Foster (the Lecter girl?), but no she had just crawled into one of the countless storage compartments. The cabin crew are fastidiously attentive, hardly 5 minutes goes by without a “…Mr Scott, would you like another….(gin and tonic being the most common ending to that)…” Jocelyn has been cooed over for nearly 2 days solid, and has been a little star. A few tears before bedtime, and during bedtime, but aside from that a little star; I believe you can forgive a few tears.

I am going to try out a setting on my new camera, it is called ‘taking a picture out of a plane window setting’. I think I could have come up with a name that trips off the tongue a little easier. Stand by… I can now report that modern technology has caught up with health and safety. On turning to ‘taking a picture out of a plane window setting’ a message flashed up on the camera screen telling me “turn the camera off during takeoff and landings, and follow the instructions of the cabin crew at all times”. Marvelous. I wonder if it will tell me to “Brace, brace , brace” if we are about to crash? The picture is rather good though. In the time it took me to chuckle a bit at the daft message, take picture and turn around, my empty cup of tea has been whisked away and replaced. Once again, marvelous.

Well, I shall leave this first ‘blog’ here for now, although I feel it will be some time before it is published. I shall keep myself in suspense!