Paddling

We awoke this morning to beautiful blue skies. This was good news. It meant our plan to visit the Christchurch Arts Centre market after church followed by a bit of kayaking on Avon through the Botanic Gardens could go ahead. I've been looking forward to both of these things for ages. Everyone has recommended the market to me while I work opposite the boat sheds and often, if I take a walk at lunchtime through the Botantic Gardens, I see tourists paddling on the river and it looks like fun. I've always had this idea that I'd like to get into kayaking.

I'm not sure what I was expecting with the market really. It wasn't comparable to Borough Market, or the markets we used to go to with Bints and Rene in Vienna. There were some nice handicraft things, I guess, but I suppose it was aimed at the tourists really. The food was good though. Down one bit of the Arts Centre there was a 'street' with food stands both sides where you could get all sorts of different foreign foods, from Egyptian to Indian to Chinese to Thai to Lebanese to Hungarian to Greek to German. Pretty much something for everything. A slice of leberkaese and a souvlaki later it was time to hit the kayaks.

It was really relaxing, paddling along the river, ducks and ducklings swimming by, the sun shining and the trees and river bank sheltering us from the breeze. Definitely a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon, working off lunch. I'm going to ache tomorrow though. I had a different kayak to Joanne. Hers cut through the water like the cliched hot knife through butter. Mine was more like a brick through a window. I don't think it was down to technique. Still, it was great fun. And Joanne enjoyed it too, once she got in the boat and set off.

I think I'd like to investigate some sort of kayaking day-touring thing (down-stream, of course). I think it'd be an awesome way to see the countryside. Lots of people have their own kayaks, it seems, and just head off into the back of beyond at weekends. I presume there's some sort of kayaking map you can get to let you know when you're about to fall down a waterfall or have a bit of fun down some white-water rapids.

Last night we were out to dinner at the house of a couple from St John's, Tim and Christine. Another case of friends in common. They know a guy, Tim, from the barge from his time in Chch, and also they have just got back from five years overseas, the last few years of which were spent in London where they went along to St Helen's so we're bound to know some of the same people from there. It was a lovely evening though. It's so great that people have been so welcoming. And with Tim and Christine having spent time in London and at St Helen's it gives us all something in common right away. We had roast lamb again, like at Monika's on Wednesday. I do wonder whether Kiwis do eat roast lamb all the time or whether it's just the traditional Kiwi meal so with us being new here it's the traditional first meal to be cooked. Not that we mind. We both love roast lamb.

I've got my rearranged appraisal tomorrow. Supposedly. I guess more time will be spent on looking forward rather than backwards, given that there isn't that much backwards to look at. I am looking forward to some feedback though, just to get an idea whether I am beginning to deliver what they employed an analyst for.

And speaking of illumination, in a smooth linking way, I found some lights outside the garage door at home last night that don't appear to have a switch to turn them on. How frustrating is that?

Cooking with gas

Hurray! The new 'internet month' has begun and we are back up to full speed after two weeks of dial-up speed. It's amazing how spoiled you get with broadband speeds. How did we ever manage with dial-up modems to do everything on the net?

Well, it's been a full on weekend of entertaining. On Friday night we had Mark and Renee round for dinner and their four children. I don't know how people manage with more than two kids. How do they keep their eye on them all all the time. The food seemed to go down well and the kids loved the Playstation once we fired it up after dinner. Pro Evolution Soccer is the answer to so many questions.

In case you're interested, I cooked gnocchi bolognaise (kind of like a lasagne but with gnocchi instead of pasta) followed by chocolate and black cherry crumble.

On Saturday Joanne and I had a good sesh at the gym and she joined up as her one-week trial pass was up. I've really enjoyed going to the gym with her and sharing that time with her. I try not to be too bossy forcing her to squeeze out another two reps. I don't always succeed.

On Saturday evening we had more guests over, namley Simon and Rebekah and Anne and Sarah. (The menu consisted of a lamb tagine done all day in the slow-cooker followed by a spiced tropical fruit crumble.) Again, it was a really lovely evening. It's so nice being able to entertain and have people over. It really is something we enjoy.

Something that's different here to back in the UK is how people at church are more spontaneous. To arrange to do something with someone back at the Barge, or at St Helens before that, you'd need to diarise about six weeks in advance. At least six weeks in advance. Here it's quite normal to invite someone over for lunch as church finishes. That's less than half an hours notice in some cases! It's going to be hard for me to adjust to that, I think, but I think it's a good thing. Last week Al and Naomi invited us over as we were walking to the car after church (but we couldn't make it as we had Tim and Christine and Lizzy coming over to ours) and then this week Jane and Jona invited us for lunch. I cannot stress enough how welcoming and encouraging it's been how inviting people have been, wanting to open their homes and lives to us. It really is the way church should be and our new family at St John's have modelled it perfectly.

After lunch we headed back to home to get some chores done. I don't know how people have kids and look after a house and get their washing done and everything. Where does the time come from? I washed the little car and then made a fist of washing the windows (they're not too streaky) while Joanne did a load of washing and zapped some weeds. The 'wild flower' garden is coming on rather nicely.

A short week this week, with Friday being 'Canterbury day' or whatever. And next weekend is the church parish camp. We're really looking forward to that actually. It'll be a great time to get to know people at church a bit better by spending some time with them. Plus the location looks idyllic. Much like much of New Zealand, to be honest. I never cease to get blown away by the scenery here. I have to pinch myself sometimes when I suddenly remember I live in New Zealand. It still strikes me as rather an abstract concept sometimes. It's going to be interesting having friends from 'our previous life' visiting us out here (as we hopefully will have in the next couple of months - fingers crossed), or my family. I'm not sure what will happen when the two worlds collide. I remember when I first moved to London it took ages for it to sink in and the novelty to cease. I have a feeling it will take a lot longer here.

Entertaining

This weekend we've done our first proper entertaining in our new house. Yesterday Joanne had the girls from our bible study group round for lunch and then today Tim and Christine and Lizzy (an English lady who's been here about five years, lives less than five minutes from us and goes to St John's too) came round after church for lunch. Next weekend's the house is going to be full of people too. We've got Mark and Renee and their kids over for tea on Friday and on Saturday Sarah and Anne and Simon and Rebekah are coming round for dinner.

It's so great to be able to have people round and have plenty of space. The open living room - dining room - kitchen space worked exactly as we had hoped it would. I always felt that when we had people round at our flat in London I missed half the conversation as I'd be in the kitchen cooking. Now I can be in the kitchen, Joanne can be helping and neither of us are ignoring our guests.

I never realised before today how satisfying it can be to wash a dirty car and have it gleaming when you're finished. I'm not sure washing house windows will give me the same sense of satisfaction but I think perhaps I ought to give it a go as they're looking a tad grubby.

I spent a decent amount of time yesterday going through our photos on my laptop. We have three or four groups of four photos in the same frames (there's the four seasons of the same bridge in Central Park in New York, the four iconic New York structures, four San Francisco shots, ...) that we like the idea of and wanted to replicate with our own memories. I think we've come up with some striking combinations but you can tell us when you see them maybe. Now we just need to get them printed and framed. But the main thing that struck me when going through all these shots is just how fortunate we are to have been able to travel and see so much of the world. Why even only this year I have been to Ghana, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Romania. It all made me realise I am so fortunate to have been born in western society and to have the priviledges and opportunities that's afforded me. I pray I would never take that for granted and would always thank God for how he has blessed me and use what He has given me to serve Him better. In our bible study group at the moment we're looking at 1 Timothy and last week we studied chapter 6 verses 3-11. As part of that we spent some time thinking about how godliness should bring contentment and love of money leads to "ruin and destruction." We need to remember that money is a gift from God given as a blessing, true, but also (and mainly) given to us to allow us to serve Him. It's something I forget sometimes. Why is it that the more God blesses us the more we take His blessings for granted?

Christchurch Idol

Last night was so much fun. Caroline, a friend from back on the Barge in London is a good mate of Sarah's, the women's worker at St John's. She's over here at the moment coming to the end of a one month sabbatical thing with a bit of holiday thrown in. With my dad being here and Jo going over to Oz and stuff last night was the first time we'd been able to all get together. It was worth the wait.

It started with dinner at Sarah's. Tasty food (balsamic chicken with couscous followed by chocolate brownies and fresh pineapple - actually the pineapple would have worked really well in the balsamic chicken dish, but that's another matter). It was just loads of fun. We laughed so much. It was great to catch up with Caroline properly and hear how she's going and how everyone back on the Barge is doing and stuff as well as being great to spend some time getting to know Sarah better. What I really liked was getting to see another side of them both, a side of them that only exists when they're together. As I say, we laughed so much.

The evening climaxed with a trip into town to the gloriously titled 'Christchurch Idol', a real Japanese-style karaoke bar. One of those ones where you hire a private room to do it rather than embarassing yourself (in my case) in public. An hour and a half later we were all sung out. Solos, duets, a group effort on 'The End of the Road', the evening had it all. A particular highlight was the emotion Caroline poured into 'Sorry seem to be the hardest word'. I was almost quite choked and nearly rather moved. Again, we all laughed so much and were more than a little hoarse by the end of the night. I am glad the machine seemed to reward effort and enthusiasm rather than talent though. At least I think it did. It's the only way I can explain my scores in the high nineties for my Bon Jovi cameo.

This morning Joanne and I got up and headed over to Lyttelton. We'd arranged to meet Tim and Christine over there for a wander around the farmers market and a coffee. It was a nice little place, lots of fresh produce and locally grown and made stuff. Sure it was no Borough Market, but taken for what it is, it did it well. Plus, as a real bonus, we met a butcher there who is willing to make me some Lincolnshire sausages! I have a recipe I found online so all I have to do is phone him on Tuesday to let him know sage and pepper proportions and he'll knock up a 10kg batch, 5kg for us (we had to take 5kg to make it worth his while) and 5kg that he'll take to the market next week to see how they sell. Mmmm, Lincolnshire sausages. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

One plus one plus one equals two

Meet Buckley. He was only with us for two short days but he touched our hearts. He had big soft ears he had to grow into and a youthful enthusiasm for adventure. To him everything was new and exciting. But the time was short. There will however always be a spot in our hearts that is forever Buckley.

That felt like writing an obituary. It's not one but it felt like one. On Saturday we bought a puppy. A three-month old black lab who we named Buckley. He was perfect. Everything we could have wanted in a dog. But it turns out we didn't think it all through enough. I thought we had but it seems not. We couldn't do him justice. We couldn't give him the time and effort and stimulation he would need and, more importantly, deserve. We had to take him back. It was the responsible thing to do and the best thing for him. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my entire life. We feel like we're grieving.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of sunshine and poop-a-scoops. We had lunch on Saturday at the Arts Centre in town and joined Tim and Christine to celebrate Holly's first birthday on Sunday at her party in the Botanic Gardens.

We had to go out tonight. Just to get out of the house. We went to see National Treasure 2. I hate it when films have car chases around London and pay more attention to cinematography than to geography. Yes, I know the shot looks good but St Paul's not just round the corner from Buckingham Palace if you cross over Tower Bridge!

I was thinking tonight about how things would be if we'd not move here because of St John's. Who would we know? A few people at work but that's it. And that got me thinking about friends at church. It's a hard time, having been here four months or so. Everyone has done their "welcome the newcomers" bit but what next? Everyone moves on to the next newcomers. I guess it's up to us then. We have to get out there and follow initial leads, so to speak.

Connections

Yesterday, while wandering round Lyttelton, I spotted this sticker in a car parked by the side of the road. I must admit, it wasn't something I expected to read in the window of a car parked by the side of the road in a small port town in New Zealand, to be honest. For those of you less familiar with the term, a Yellowbelly is a term to refer to someone from Lincolnshire, the county I was born and grew up in. I'm impressed someone bothered to bring a BBC Radio Lincolnshire sticker all the way over from the UK to stick in their car. Although is it any different to me having a Grimsby Town car window mini-kit in our car? I guess not.

Also yesterday in Lyttelton Tim & Christine introduced us to to another couple from St John's. They're from the UK too and have been here a couple of years now I think. It's a small world though, eh? Julie was at St Helens for some of the time we were there and knows some of the same people such as Vaniah and Juliette, and David was at Warwick doing maths (although it he was the year above me). It's just weird to think that we've probably been at the same parties as Julie back in London and at least have sat in the same church services, while it's conceivable that David and I walked past each other at uni, him coming out of a lecture theatre as I walked into it or something similar. And now we cross paths with them again on the other side of the world.

Last night Si & Bek came over for dinner (chicken fajitas followed by chocolate and banana filo parcels) and then we headed out to the theatre. They'd had some vouchers as a wedding gift and my sister had got me and Joanne vouchers for Christmas so we'd decided to go together. I was especially keen to go now because currently playing is Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. I studied it at school when I was 15 or 16 I guess and I seemed to remember I really enjoyed it. I wasn't disappointed last night. I think a small cast playing so many parts (only six actors played everyone in the play) made it difficult for people who didn't know what to expect to work out quite what was going on but by the second half it became clearer. The bonus though was the delivery by the actors. The play is such a lyrical, poetic piece with beautiful and innovative use of language. It would have been easily been spoiled with poor delivery but the cast did it proud, although the attempts at Welsh accents warbling between Indian and South African did make my toes curl a little. I actually found a copy of the play on-line so if you're interested you can see what I mean about Thomas's use of language. The way he uses nouns as both adjectives and verbs is like nothing else I've read.

Bouncy bouncy

The 15th annual world buskers festival is currently on in Christchurch. I'm not quite sure why the world buskers festival is held here but it is, it seems. On Wednesday when I went to the driving range Tim mention that he and Christine had seen a few acts at the weekend and one he particularly liked was the piano juggler. It sounded quite entertaining and I found out he was on at lunchtime today in Cathedral Square so Joanne and I arranged to meet up.

With a name like 'the piano juggler' there were two possibilities for his act. One would be for him to be a juggler of pianos. The second would be for him to juggle on a piano. The guy's act was the latter of those two options. Which was a shame, in a way. It would have been mightily impressive to see someone juggle pianos, grand or upright, but he didn't.

His act was padded out with some normal ball juggling, some club juggling and some other stuff but the main, and most impressive, part of his act was when he bounced balls on his 'bounce piano', a keyboard on the floor. He sometimes 'juggled' up to five balls on this bounce piano and managed to perfectly play tunes, chords and all. He played some classical stuff as well as La Cucharacha and the Can-can. I'd seen some of his juggling stuff before, but the bounce piano was a new one on me. Impressed? I applauded wholeheartedly.

He also played Good King Wenceslas while bouncing on his pogo-mounted cello but that was just showing off, frankly.

Dancing dragons

Every year Christchurch City Council along with the Asian NZ Foundation organise a Chinese Lantern festival. It started in 2006, I think, so last weekend was the fourth annual running. I think it started originally as a sort of celebration of the Chinese New Year and Chinese culture with a few lanterns down by the Avon in Victoria Park but has grown into a whole cultural experience. As well as the lanterns, some of which are pretty amazing really, there are Asian food stalls and Chinese entertainment, such as dancing, music, singing and traditional puppet and face-changing acts. I think the highlight for me was probably the face-changing thing or maybe the face-changing puppets. That was an impressive combination.

The lanterns were really quite impressive too. I'm not quite sure what I expected but maybe the traditional type lanterns. You know, the sort of pop-out corrogated paper ones, with a candle inside. In the end, they were really amazingly detailed, as you can see from the photos. Well worth a wander round to have a gander. It was pretty busy though. Some of the biggest crowds I've seen in Christchurch.



Another totally original act, the like of which I've never seen, involved this elaborate crane-like contraption and a whole load of ropes, and dancing orange dragons. Hopefully you the video will give you a bit of a taste of what the show involved. I still cannot figure out how they turned the dragons round to make them go back to their house. And I'd hate to imagine the hassle it would be sorting out all the ropes if they got tangled.

This weekend has been quite a social weekend. On Friday night we had those involved with the Exploring Discipleship course over to ours for a bit of a debrief about how the course went last term and how we might tweak it going forward. Then yesterday we had a pot-luck lunch over here for Joanne's indoor netball team and their other halves, while today, after church, Tim & Christine had us and a few others over to their new place for a barbecue to thank us for helping them move back in December.

Too summery to feel festive

I do like three-day weekends. I think I've said that before sometime. This one was our own doing though, not a public holiday type one. It was my birthday yesterday, so following another hectic weekend Joanne and I decided to spend the day together, just hanging, doing stuff on our own time, with no place to be by a set time.

The day started with a trip to the immigration office. I won't bore you with talk of residence permits and returning residents' visas. All you really need to know is that I can get back in the country when we leave for the UK trip in June. Following that we wandered round town for a bit, seeking Christmas present inspiration, before dropping a tasty pie for lunch at the crumpet club. Real steak pieces. Yum. The latest James Bond film followed that (had to do it, despite less than rave reviews, just to tick it off) before dropping Joanne at home, heading to the park for a game of touch (last of the year) and then picking up a Chinese on the way home for our tea. What a great day. I think we should hang out every birthday really.

I think we both appreciated the day off too. We had another busy weekend. The sort of one where two days are just not enough to relax and unwind after the week of work.

Friday night was Joanne's work do at the Convention Centre. It was a good evening. Santa goes on Safari was the theme. The buffet counter was full of tasty meat, so no complaints from me.

On Saturday we helped Tim & Christine move into their new house before going to buy a Christmas tree. We'd bought all the decorations a few weeks ago when they were on sale in Farmers so Saturday evening was spent decorating it. It almost made me feel Christmassy. Almost.

I also spent Saturday knocking up a black forest trifle. We had the bible study group round for a barbecue after church on Sunday (the carol service complete with shepherds in shorts like last year) and my part of the deal was a dessert. I do love that trifle and any excuse to make it and share the love is grabbed with both hands. The barbecue was kind of an end of year social thing but also I guess a sort of goodbye to Lisa & Steve for just our group before they head off to Bible College in Sydney in January.

Sunday was also spent carving up the ham from work. In case you missed the explanation last December, every year everyone who works for the company gets a ham as a Christmas present. Last year it was 8kg, which I thought was pretty big. This year's was 10.7kg. That is a big ham.