No time for Blogging, I have done a days work!

I feel I must let you all know that I have completed a full days work, for the the first time since arriving in New Zealand! I believe that it would nearly be called a full days work in Englandistan as well? In work for 0745, and home at 1715......wow.......

I am almost too tired to type......

So since the last entry, what has been going on? Probably the highlight was the boys night out in Wellington, which involved the Australia vs All Blacks game a huge amount of drinking, and a nightclub called Boogie Wonderland....did I mention the 6"10 transvestite??

I feel that the less said about the transvestite, the better. To cut a long story short i was drunk, he/she was massive, and Liz was in a different post code....

The game was good though, I proudly wore my england shirt, and took a bit of abuse. Neither side seemed to be able to accept the argument that you are only as good as your last World Cup, or in their case, as good as your last two World Cups....I barely escaped with my life (that applies to both the rugby and the tranny).

I shall leave it there, with some photos of the match....

The Westpac Stadium in Wellington

Another England Fan!!

(and a right stunner sat behind me.......the Tranny was better looking!)

Snowboarding and other such stuff

Where to begin? It has been a busy few days, we've had two new cars, been snowboarding, bought a new mountain bike, discovered the funniest sounding food on the planet and picked a name for a dog that we haven't even bought yet (and probably not going to buy).

So, i think i shall start with the non-dog. It kind of coincides with the snowboarding trip. We decided to go with some friends up to Mount Ruapehu and to get good parking we had to leave at 6am. On route we stopped off for some petrol (the kiwis complain with the price being 66p/litre...they don't know they are born....) and being in dire need of coffee i wandered in for a quick 'flat white', not fancying a cheese and meat pie for breakfast, i looked at the chocolate selection. A bar a Cadburys starred back at me, and i had to do a double take to ensure i had read the name correctly. Yes i had. The name of this fine bar of chocolate was Scroggin. Maybe because it was so early i found this very funny, and the rest of the journey assed with various conversation centered around the word Scroggin. Jocelyn is now referred to as "..the wee Scroggin", and this is the name that we have decided to give to our next dog. What a combo they would have been...Muppet and Scroggin. Just to prove this to be fact -

http://www.cadbury.co.nz/Products/Blocks-of-Chocolate/Energy-Scroggin.aspx

So onto the snowboarding itself. Mount Ruapehu is a small resort, built on the side of a volcano. We are coming to the end of the season over here, and the snow was not great. It was however good enough! There is a huge amount of off-piste (or 'track' as the call it) and that is where the enjoyment really lies. The photos of steep drops, and wide open mountain that i had seen previously were done justice to what we experienced. It was brilliant. The wee Scroggin had her first snow experience, and loved it. Liz and i took it in turns to go and board, whilst Jocelyn crawled in the snow and did some elementary sledging. I am afraid to report, however, that the European influence of poor taste all-in-one ski suits has manifested itself over here...it is not a good look. The 2 1/2 hour drive to the mountain was thoroughly worth it, and we will be investing in a season pass for next year, no doubt at all!

At the bottom of the Mountain

The off-piste was simply brilliant

The "Wee Scroggin" enjoying the snow!

Now onto the car saga....after careful consideration, and pre-purchase tests, we purchased a Toyota Harrier from a dealer. 2 days later, on flashes the engine warning lights and traction control switches off....hmmmm....not too good i thought. Off we trot to the Toyota garage and ask their opinion...the mechanic looked slightly surprised when i told him the problem, when i asked why the surprise he told me that a car dealer had brought in a Toyota Harrier the morning that we bought the car with exactly the same problem....yes you guessed it, it was the same car. $300 to fix.....understandably, i was less than amused so went and had a very closed door chat with old Luke at 'Adopt-a-Car'. Liz was told to wait outside. We now have a second 'new' car whilst our other one is being fixed and warranties written. I was very close to doing some proper English style "Tramping"...

So finally onto the new bike. Liz's bike made it through customs in one piece, and we have quickly realised that a good way to see a lot of the country is by bike. So I bought a bike and a seat for Scroggin Jnr. The seat was brilliant fun. The shop sold it to us and offered to fix it to the bike for a nominal fee of $25. Being all manly, i said to the man "...how hard can it be?" he looked at me and said "...you will find out...and if you want to bring it back, then feel free." Well this was like a red rag to a bull. My manly-ness was on the line, failure was not an option. The instructions were in Chinese, and soon got binned. All it took was 3 hours, a huge amount of bad language, 16 different screw drivers, a chisel, several bastardised nuts and bolts and a power drill. It looked just like the picture on the box. I was so glad when we managesd a 20km cycle without it falling apart! McScroggin enjoyed it as well!

A well engineered bike seat indeed!

And that, folks, is all for now!

Oh look, I have a minute to myself!

Good morning everyone. I have decided to write in pink so that you'll know it's me, and not my other half who is currently at work. What? Working? Surely not! Probably not, but the battery is back from exercise so he might be doing a lot of meeting people and drinking coffee.

Life is slowly settling down to a less frenetic pace. We've unpacked most of our things, although I have nowhere to put my clothes so they're still in their boxes. We are also a little short on coathangers, but there you go. I was feeding Jocelyn her breakfast this morning when I looked out of the window so see a dead bird on the grass pathway that runs along the side of the house. The poor thing had been got by a cat (boo, hiss) so it's in a pretty terrible state. Anyway, I mention it because I'm looking out our front patio (decking really) window and seeing an inch thick trail of ants marching around the corner to the bird. These same ants were all over the bathroom last night as I tried to bath Jocelyn and I had to spend 30 minutes vacuuming them up - no exaggeration, I promise. At least they've given up on the kitchen, although I am still finding mouse poo on the floor despite there being poison down - it's the good stuff too, for warfarin resistant vermin. Oh yes. We're very close to nature over here. All the houses are built about a foot off the ground so all the nasties move in underneath where you can't get at them, and the ants have made it their task to excavate pathways into various rooms in the house. I find them in different rooms every day, they're terribly organised. Needless to say, most of them don't make it back to the mothership.

On a good note, we've found a lovely car. Subject to it passing its roadworthiness test we will be proud owners of a Toyota Harrier 4WD gas guzzler this afternoon or on Monday. It's big and silver and more like a Lexus than a Toyota and there's no way we could afford to run one in any country in Europe. It's great!

Ah, the errant husband has returned from his arduous hour and a half in the office. He bought a bike the day before yesterday and went to ride it this morning to work and the chain snapped. Not the best start to a new purchase, so he took mine which is thankfully in good working order despite being broken down into many pieces for the shipping company. Soon we will have a carrier on the back for the wee one - she already has a helmet which she loves to wear! She is like her cousin - she has a hat problem. Hat-o-philia, I like to call it. Anyway, we are all looking forward to exploring the countryside on 2 wheels, especially now the weather has taken a turn for the better. We are also looking forward to going snowboarding on Sunday, yippee! Half a day each because of the baby of course, but hey, it's better than nothing. Woohoo!

Ok, time to go and have some coffee before a large voice from a small girl interrupts my me-time. Lots of love X

Just one more thing...!

For those of you that were worried, I want to make it quite clear; I have not been beating up any homeless old men that smell of wee.

Another month, another Blog

My first Blog of September. Having just sent out an e-mail to the masses, i thought that i had better add something recent, in case i get any more followers. I might even start to measure my popularity by this....Going back to my geekyness, i have just had confirmation of my first success on the 'texting' using Skype. I feel that i might have finally joined the 21st century now, both in terms of having the gadgets, but also that i know how to use them.

So what has been going on? You should all know about our trip to 'Welly' from 'Palmy' (the language barrier is very easy to overcome). A beautiful city, or to be more accurate, a medium sized town. But i like that; i have never really liked large cities where the foreign students practically force you under the nearest black cab. I tried to take one of those long exposure type photos of cars going down a street at night. It took over half an hour for enough cars to be

passing to make it any good (even then it was a bit crap!). I found it quite strange to see a capital city so quiet.

We enjoyed a lot of fish, complemented by some good wines overlooking the harbour. The hotel we were staying in has a baby-sitting service so Liz and I were able to go and let our hair down for an evening. A really good idea, and maybe there is a niche in the market in the U.K?

We have continued to explore our immediate surrounds in Palmy, and recently went to explore the Te Apiti wind farm which runs along the ridge behind Palmy. That is where this Blogs selection of photos comes from. We chose a good day to go, as i could hardly open the car door due to the strength of the winds up on the ridge. I found them very therapeutic to watch maybe ...i have been in this country too long already!?

Other exciting news....we have finally got round to getting a dishwasher! Hurrah! The old one was becoming very unreliable, and had the cheek to ask me to help....(i am so brave when she has gone to bed!) I therefore did the only thing that made sense. It was purchased via TradeMe, which is the Kiwi version of eBay. It has served us well already, always after a bargain, me! Lets hope it lasts!

One of the many turbines.....GEEK!

The Hobbits were really pissed off with the new fangled wind things...

It was a bad hair day at the wind farm...

A little less windy at the bottom (careful!)

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.