Howzat!

It's still early but England are doing well against New Zealand in the Twenty20 World Cup. The Black Caps are 95-5 after 13.2 overs. At this rate I might be able to go into work tomorrow as an England sports fan with my head held high for a change. To be honest, people have been very well behaved regarding the rugby. The worst of it actually came from someone other than a colleague. Two of the guys from the furniture shop came round tonight to bring us our dining table chairs, our barstools, and more importantly, our bed. (Yes, we finally have a bed!) One of them started on about the rugby. I told him I'm a football fan. Two wins in a week for England. It's been a while since that's happened. And the women's team have reached the quarter finals of the World Cup in China too, following a 6-1 win aganst Argentina. Impressive. Well done, the lasses.

Hmm, NZ are knocking the ball around a bit now. They're back into it at 134-5 off 16.

The curtains and blinds guy came round tonight to measure up. I'm looking forward to being able to take down the magazine pages from our bedroom windows, I can tell you. Although I guess it means we have something to read.

140-7 off 17. They must be looking for 170 now.

We heard today that our container hasn't been released yet, which is a pain. The shipping company haven't been paid by the company we dealt with in the UK so they won't give us our stuff. Someone over there should be expecting a call from Joanne in a bit. She's going to growl at them, let me tell you.

152-8 with 1 over left.

Last night was the company's AGM out in the country, in a place called Darfield. Given the company is a cooperative the customers are also the shareholders and so the majority of the people there were farmers. I quite enjoyed meeting some of them. There was one guy there, a dairy-farming Coaster (someone from the West coast of the south island) who I had quite a chat too. He was very understanding about my lack of knowledge and told me loads about how his farm worked. The meeting was also a great opportunity to get more background info about the company too. The CEO and the chairman both gave presentations talking about the fertiliser industry worldwide, in NZ and the company in the past year and going forward. Useful stuff for me to hear.

164-9 after all 20 overs for the Black Caps. It's not enough, mark my words, but they'd have taken that at 31-4.

Working is going well at the moment, three and a bit weeks in, but there's certainly a lot on. They weren't wrong when they told me in the interview there would be no problem finding enough to do. I was given a big project late this afternoon, to generate a grid of typical farmers by farm size and farm type looking at our market penetration and what it would mean for both revenue and customer service levels should we increase our market share. An interesting exercise in modelling and it'll be a good way for me to learn more about the industry.

Joanne's still enjoying work too, which is great news. The pain though, is with her still doing the consultancy thing for her old job in the evenings. We'll both be glad when that's over. And when she gets paid for it.

OK, time for England to bat now.