Whizzing by

When things come around again that have happened before, that's when it reminds me how long we've been here. This morning I attended another men's breakfast at St Stephen's church in Shirley. Admittedly it was held in September last year but it's still the second annual men's breakfast I've been to.

This morning Cam was speaking on living as a Christian in the workplace - how the workplace is a place for evangelism, how evangelism is something we should be not something we should do, and how we should be prepared. A very challenging talk with some great tips to take away too. Why is it that when someone asks on a Monday "What did you do yesterday?" it's easier to say "Hmm, not much. How about you?" rather than "I went to church yesterday morning and heard a great talk about Jesus before having some friends from church back for lunch" or whatever?

Thinking earlier about being here for over a year and stuff got me thinking again to what we were doing this time last year and where we were with stuff. This Wednesday marked my one year anniversary of having this job (we went out for coffee and cake to celebrate) and tomorrow is the one year anniversary of getting the keys to our house before next weekend marks the one year anniversary of living here.

Things happening again reminds us of so much that has happened in the past year, but also of the things we're missing. This weekend, if we were still back in the UK we would be heading up north to Grimsby. It's my niece Ellie's birthday this weekend (Happy Birthday, Ellie!) and we always used to go home for it. And we're missing her 7th birthday now, after missing her 6th birthday too. Things like that make it hard to be here sometimes.

Sporting frustration and sickness

I didn't realise how frustrating it would be watching the Olympics over here. Great Britain are have a great Games. They're currently third in the medal table. Third! That's quite honestly an amazing achievement. But the frustrating part comes in the fact that unless there's Kiwi interest in an event there's limited coverage of it. I guess it's understandable, and is probably much the same in the UK, but it is very frustrating. We topped the rowing medal table, have won 4 out of 5 track cycling golds (and 8 out the 15 medals presented so far) and have won both the sailing golds presented to date but I've had to follow pretty much everything on the BBC Sport live text feed thing. I guess it's a downside to put up with every four years that comes with living on the other side of the world.

The weekend just gone was a bit rubbish. Last week was one of those when I didn't get home before ten any night (taking Jo's uncle out for dinner on Monday, Bible study group on Tuesday, standing in leading at CE on Wednesday and Joel's stag-do on Thursday) and slowly over the week I felt my health gradually on the slide. By Friday lunchtime I felt pretty terrible and so had to go home. I've been in bed (or crashed on the sofa) ever since. A sore throat that led to a rasping, chesty cough followed by a streaming nose and eyes and finally headaches and throbbing sinuses weren't much fun. I think I'm on the mend now and will probably be good for work tomorrow. Maybe. I lost my appetite and hardly ate anything at all over the weekend. I think that shows quite how ill I was. I did scrape myself out of bed on Saturday to go along to Joel and Liz's wedding though. It was great to be able to make it. I just hoping my wheezing and coughing weren't picked up by the video camera.

Joanne's old stomping ground

This week I've been up north. I attended the Sales & Store Conference (North Island) with work which was held in Palmerston North. 'Palmy', as it's known, is one of the places Joanne grew up. I think she was there from when she was 7 till 13, or something like that.

The conference was an internal work thing where the sales team and the stores team all get together to meet up and hang out and learn to work together and stuff like that. It has a work side to it, definitely, but there was time for fun and time-building stuff too.

The work aspect involved presentations, like the one from the CEO breaking down the company's strategy and plan for the coming 18 months, and workshops and discussions and such. I am really impressed with how the senior management let people know that it's 'our' company. If we have ideas and thoughts and suggestions, if they're good and worthwhile, they'll be considered and even implemented. It's great that people feel their ideas and opinions are valued. It means they're willing to speak up and volunteer stuff.

The fun aspect of the conference had two sides to it. The first involved team-building events. The conference had a topically Olympic theme to it and so the delegates were all divided into teams and throughout the conference there were games and tasks we all had to participate in, scoring points for our team. Some of the events were fun, some were silly, but I guess it was all about breaking down barriers and making people step outside of their comfort zone and stuff. It certainly helped people to get to know each other, which was a good thing. Workshops and break-out groups function so much better when you've just been cheering each other on in gumboot (wellies, in English) throwing contests. Add in the banana race (passing said fruit along a row of team members using only your knees), the fertiliser and spoon race (think egg and spoon race but themed for our company), tying knots in human ropes, selling a bag full of random products around the city centre and turning up on the last morning wearing pyjamas or dressed as Fred Dagg and you'll get a sense of the sort of thing the 'Olympics' involved. Our team didn't win, but my nail polish (don't ask!) matched our team hat (we all wore team beanies; each team wearing a different colour).

We also had off-site entertainment which involved a trip to the Te Apiti wind farm, a tour of the Tui brewery at Mangatainoka and an evening of bull-riding and line-dancing at the Woodville racecourse. The wind farm was quite impressive really with these huge turbines scattered along the side and crest of a gorge. The brewery tour was interesting but didn't have the same appeal to me as it did to those colleagues of mine who could enjoy the three free beers. The evening event was all a bit 'rural' for me but it was a coupled with a casino event so I enjoyed some Texas Hold 'em while others line-danced and rode mechanical bulls. The evening climaxed with the 'Sheriff's session' - a kind of kangaroo court where amusing events from the past year were retold, sometimes with photographic evidence, with 'offenders' being fined (all proceeds donated to charity). Somehow I managed to avoid any fines at all.

All in all the conference was a good, if tiring few days. It was good to meet a few colleagues that I've only previously emailed or spoken on the phone to. It was good for them to meet the face behind the spreadsheets too!

I arrived back at Christchurch airport on Friday remembering that exactly a year previously I had arrived at the same airport. A year in Christchurch now. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, it really has flown by.

Snowy fun

Spectacular, eh?

On Monday the weather was a bit hit and miss. We woke up in Methven to fog but headed out to Mt Hutt regardless. Halfway up the mountain road the cloud lifted a little and by the time we reached the top we were out of the fog but still below high cloud cover. The snow was lovely though. Great skiing was to be had, and we did indeed have it. All day. Until the light got a bit flat mid-afternoon-ish, at which point we headed back to Methven to recover from the day's exertions.

We spoke up this morning to find Methven again shrouded in fog. The snow report lifted our spirits though as it was scattered with phrases like "fantastic skiing" and "above the cloud". Once again we headed up the misty moutain road and today when we popped our heads about the clouds conditions were definitely not overcast. Beautiful blue skies highlighted fresh powdery snow. Oh boy, what a day.

It was a strange sight to look out over Canterbury and have it completely hidden by cloud, having a grey and miserable day when we were basking in sunlight. It was also rather a bizarre sensation to be skiing on a mountain we can see from our living room window.

We definitely timed the ski-trip right, I think. Tomorrow they expect 50cm of snow and winds topping 100kph. Such a contrast to today's utterly fantastic conditions. As you can probably tell, I'm still on a bit of a high. I think Joanne and Jason enjoyed themselves too. They were both certainly shattered by the end of the day, enjoying a kip in the car on the drive back home. A sure sign of a good day's snow fun.

I'm not sure I'll get used to see kea in the snow though. I didn't realise alpine parrots even existed.

One year down

I've just realised that somehow I managed to miss our one year anniversary. On Friday Joanne and I had been in Nuzziland a whole year. 12 whole months away from the motherland. It really has flown by. It's been good though. We've done some great stuff while we've been here and God has blessed us richly with our house and jobs and mostly with the friends we've made at St John's. The hardest thing about leaving the UK was leaving friends and family behind. It still is difficult and I miss so many people so much, but we're building lasting friendships here now and it helps.

I think having Jason here this weekend has brought it all back to the surface again too, in some ways. Having a friend visit from back on the Barge has reminded me of everyone we left behind. It was the same when Caroline was here and when Ruth and Keith were in NZ too. I wouldn't want not to see old friends though, and have them not visit, don't get me wrong.

So yeah, Jason arrived on Saturday. My football match was cancelled due to excessive rainfall during the week which means that our moat/impromptu duck pond is back across the road and more significantly that I was able to take Jason on a bit of a drive around Christchurch to show him a bit of the place. It ended up being quite a tour.

We started up Dyers Pass Road stopping at the lookout point near the Sign of the Takahe for a couple of photos before the clouds came in. Then came the drive over the back of the Porthills round to Lyttelton, round the corner and over to Sumner before heading back into town to take in the cathedral, a shop or two, the Art Gallery, the Arts Centre, the Botanic Gardens and a quick cup of bubble tea. We then met up with Joanne in town (who had, incidentally, just won her first netball match of the season - a real cause for celebration!) for some dinner at the Tap Room. Mmmm, stonegrill.... you can't go wrong.


Today, after church we had Ryan, Bek & Si and Chris back for lunch. We wanted to introduce Jason to some of our friends from St John's. Scotch broth with home-baked rosemary bread followed by banana rum nut crumble and hokey-pokey icecream. Lush.

And now, presently and at the moment, I'm sat up in bed in a hotel in Methven. Tomorrow, assuming the mountain's open, we go skiing! My first time in the southern hemisphere too.

Winter wonderland

In the words of Hubert J. Farnsworth - good news, everyone! 88cm of snow fell at Mt Hutt today which will be great for next week. Not sure if I mentioned but Jason is arriving here for a few days on Saturday (on the way back home after almost a year in Chile doing missionary stuff) and Monday and Tuesday next week we plan to take him skiing, reliving the Bulgarian snow adventure we shared back in early 2007. The bad news is that unless the weather clears a bit and they have time to perform what they call 'extensive work' on the mountain it is unlikely to be open by Monday. Fingers crossed, eh?

I just got back this evening from Hanmer where I've been for a work meeting. it was pretty full-on really but it is so nice up there, and it's good to get away from the desk for a while. Last night before dinner we had time to head to the hot springs too. There really is nothing like lazing back in an outdoor hot pool at night when it's cold out. So exhilerating. It brought back happy memories of all those February half-terms at Center Parcs we had growing up.

Flying around

I flew up to Auckland today for a meeting. The week before last I flew to Wellington for a meeting. It all seems a bit strange, flying to Auckland and Wellington for meetings. I guess it's no different from flying to Zuerich or Antwerp for meetings like I used to when I was back in London though. It just sounds more exotic or something.

When I was in Auckland today the company we met work in an office in an area called Highland Park. It's near where Jo's mum used to live in Howick when Jo half lived there growing up. The office is also across the road from a Denny's restaurant. The same Denny's restaurant that Joanne used to work in when she was at Uni. It just seems totally weird to me that today I was at a place where almost 20 years ago Joanne worked opposite flipping burgers and pouring coffee. I'm not sure why it seems weird. Maybe it's just because that part of her life is so far away (in time and geographically) from the Joanne I now know. We grew up on opposite sides of the world. I guess I always thought I'd never have a link to that part of her life. And yet today I got a little bit closer.

Oh wow, it's just got even freakier. We've just discovered, by Joanne going through her old job references (why she has references from 20 years ago, I really don't know) that the first chartered accountancy company she worked for after graduating was also on the same street. Not only that, but it was actually in the same building as my meeting today. And that company still exists and is still in the same building. That's just spooky. In the whole of Auckland the only business meeting I've ever been to ended up being in the same building as Joanne's first professional job! Is it just me that's freaked out by that?