News from Nelson – December 2007

Hi all,

Go to http://gpsinformation.info/main/merryxmas.swf to get in the Xmas mood - or to http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1583109341 to see our board of the Business Development Company (the company CEO organised this & sent it to all the board members as a Christmas 'surprise'). Very cute - our CEO must have the same contacts as Tina & Jeremy!

Jan & I have had a busy few weeks, what with some extra Christmas functions that we have been invited to & were able to get to, going to Wellington & work.

Jan has his "end of work" BBQ on Monday for the Christmas shut, but he is back at work on Thursday for all the shut maintenance, upgrades & commissioning. I was at drinks at NMIT's Business School on Friday, and am technically off until 7 January, but will be busy preparing the lectures for the rest of the semester, have some assignment marking to do, and a course delivery proposal for Semester 1 next year to work through & decide if I want to do it. That should keep us both out of trouble.

Jan was asked to attend the Business School's prizegiving a week ago & thought he must have got a prize for having come top in the Strategic Management class. However, his name wasn't in the programme when we got there, and we found, after having got down to the second to last award, that he had won a prize for being the top performing part-time student. Not bad, eh?!

Magda graduated with her Batchelor of Nursing Friday a week ago & has just heard that she has also passed her State Finals, so is also now a fully registered nurse, a B.N with twenty years experience. I dragged out the old SLR film camera & took some photos of her in her flat hat & bat cape after the ceremony conferring her degree :-)

We had a lovely time in Wellington, staying with John & Brigitte. Tina is recovering slowly from surgery, so her birthday on Friday night was a low key, family affair. Lunch on Saturday at Clarks was great; it is amazing how quickly everyone's children are growing up. Karen looks fantastic & Sonia is pregnant! We missed Hui-Ping, Wendy & Gerry & Christél (all otherwise engaged). Karen, Jan & I slid across to the City Gallery afterwards to see the Bill Hammond exhibition, which was quite disturbing & challenging (as usual). We caught up with Hartmut & Uta for dinner & a play - Streetcar Named Desire - at Circa, then went out to Upper Hutt to see them on Sunday morning. A final trip to visit the Nelsons & we were off home once more.

I have heard from my cousin Susan in the UK, and, having been off work for quite a while, she has now finished her breast cancer treatment. She feels that the prognosis is good & expects to be getting back into work fairly soon. All a big relief.

This weekend is a weekend of catch ups with us seeing Andrew & Jennie (and Maya & Ella), John & Jo (and Bonnie), trying to catch up with Max & Karen (missed them), my family Xmas get together and then hooking up with Jenny L, Bunty & Donald on Boxing Day. We are also catching up with Bertie & Megs on Christmas eve, which will be great.

Wendy Sawyer is back in Nelson & I hope to catch up with her for lunch sometime next week, while things are a bit quiet. Kelly Atkinson & I have been trying to catch up for a coffee, but ran out of time before Xmas. I did manage to drag her along to Rotary with her Cancer Society hat on to talk to the members, and before we knew it our Rotary club was entering a team in the Cancer Society Relay for Life (yep, I am in the team), and probably selling programmes to raise funds at the Opera in the Park (yep, Jan & I too).

Coco is about to be deliriously happy for Xmas - Jo has got her friend in Florida to send some more of those delightful squeaky toys over. Coco won't know where to start - with six of them there will be far too much choice! I think we might need to get Fliss some earplugs... or perhaps just some pigs ears to take outside and gnaw.

We have booked some events for the Nelson Jazz festival which starts on 2 January, and for Kiri at Opera in the Park on Feb 15th. Jan, Karen, Hui-Ping & I all have posh seats. With champagne, blinis & smoked salmon catering. Mmmm...

We are going to organise a trip away, but are debating on whether that will be going North or South. We have some airpoints to use up, so will come back to you when we have made our decision about where we visit next.

Take care, hugs, happy New Year. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – November 2 2007

Hi All,

I hope this finds you all feeling fit and well.

Our holiday in Sydney was fine. We went to the Technology & Maritime museums, had a day out on the ferries, went to Manly, went to the Opera House & the Botanical Gardens, watched fireworks & a Regimental band concert, visited the Museum of Contemporary Art & the Art Gallery NSW, and did a tiny bit of shopping.

We went on board the replica HMB Endeavour - specifically commissioned by the Australian Maritime Museum - which was really interesting. We hadn't realised that the original vessel had been converted from a coal cat collier to a South Pacific exploration vessel; 96 officers & crew lived on board with very, very tight space below decks. Jan was walking almost bent double in many places. Lots of opportunity for head-cracking! Cook's original vessel went down off Rhode Island USA in 1778 blockading the French, and the replica Bark was finally commissioned in 1994. The only structural differences between the replica and the original are the timbers and the metals used. If you are interested, go to http://www.anmm.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=439.

We saw a camera that we will think about buying (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18), but we decided we could buy it more cheaply in New Zealand. Once we get a chance to catch our breath we will start having a look around.

We walked at least 5k each day - and some days were double that, which was great.

However, we both came back from Sydney feeling tired! It was fairly hot over there, but we came home to the same temperatures here. It was 29 degrees inside here on Sunday evening, in the hall (one of the cooler parts of the house), with all the curtains having been closed against the sun and the windows open all day. Summer is apparently with us.

This week we are back into Xmas function mode; tonight we had a Catamaran harbour cruise for the Business Development Company (whose Board I chair), which was just lovely. Tomorrow night we are meeting Jenny L at the airport for a coffee & then have my brother's partner Donna's birthday party. Then Thursday night we have Dawn coming around for drinkies & a catch up. Saturday night we have "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" night organised with the Rotary club - goodness knows where we are going! - and next Tuesday night we have the Chamber of Commerce Xmas do. Next Weds is the Career Practitioner Association Xmas do; Thursday is Rotary's Xmas do and Friday we have been invited to the Independent Electrical Merchants' Xmas dinner. So far, the week starting the 10th we have nothing on aside from coming to Wllg on the Friday!

I am flat out at present preparing for delivering a semester's study in just eight weeks. At least it looks like I will only have a dozen students, which will be nice. Jan is busy at work commissioning some new machinery so that is keeping him busy too.

We would love to catch up with any of you who are in Wllg on Saturday December 15th at Clarks in the Library for lunch at 12.30pm. We were going to try & organise a BBQ at Sonia & Guy's new house, but we simply don't have enough time as we have to be at a ballet recital somewhere in central Wllg for Lara by 4pm. Let us know if you can make it! We would love to see you all.

There are no other trips away planned for this year - we will have to get down to Chch sometime before Easter, but we will leave organising that until after the silly season.

Take care, all of you. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – November 2007

Hi all,

I hope you are all feeling fit and healthy!

As I said last time, we had started looking at house plans, and are going to put together a creative brief & go to an architect. But we haven't done it yet! Maybe during our holiday in Oz next week.

We had a great night at Woollaston Estates listening to Viva, accompanied by a fantastic Russian trumpet player; they were just fabulous. What a great night that was.

The wind up to the silly season seems to come a little earlier each year - we had something on every night last week and this week is the same. Thank goodness we are away for a large chunk of the rest of the month!

Congrats to Yi & Paula who have a brand spanking new wee girl called Zofia. I think they are all coping with life!

Hui-Ping was in Nelson a couple of weekends ago, and we took both her & Cornish out to the land. Jan was all set to do some spraying, but got stymied by the weather - it rained. So we abandoned all thought of work and slid off to the Mot Valley Café, which is run by a German guy who grows lots of his own produce and bakes his own bread. We had a great lunch there, the sun came out & we drank pinot gris in the sun. Lovely.

And after talking about all this hedonism, this is a real recycling and environmental footprint awareness year for us. Truly! While we aren't getting really green, we are consciously trying to lessen our impacts. Aside from the usual (hanging the washing on the clothesline, vege garden and compost), we have been trying a bit harder.

I have been using the library very regularly, borrowing books from other people and buying second-hand books where I really want to own something. Our local library has also added in a DVD loan service which has been great, as they have movies that you don't get at mainstream video shops (for only $2 hire, as well).

Jan is taking his motorbike to work when the weather is fine, to keep our car use down, and I am trying very hard to make only one trip into town each day - if I can't avoid using the car altogether, that is.

Despite recycling cardboard and glass, we haven't managed to make a significant impact on reducing our plastic rubbish. I use cloth bags & avoid plastic grocery bags, but I can't see my way around all the plastic milk bottles and things. We try to buy larger items so we use less plastic - or refills, although they are often not very economical. The plastic pile, while not enormous, is still there and is very annoying. However, we will keep working on it :-)

We are trying to decide whether we should buy a soda stream to make sparkling mineral water or soda water to help cut down on plastic. I would ideally like to get one on the Fly Buys points. I email & ecard... wherever possible go electronic; bills, payments, invoices, pdfs rather than hardcopy. I have bought an online subscription to the newspaper so I am not consuming trees for my daily media fix. We have a 'no circulars' sign on the letterbox. We start the fire with ancient client files and our paper rubbish.

We have gone through all our old videos and DVDs, our old electronics and computer stuff, trying to get rid of things that we haven't used, or that we have left over from old systems. I am amazed how much has been 'recycled' on TradeMe. We still have lots of cabling to go through & get rid of, but I need Jan's expertise on exactly what the specs are for each of those, so that can wait until after we get back from Oz.

I have also helped some friends from just down the street load all sorts of furniture & household stuff like chests, lamps and glasses onto TradeMe for sale, and they sold all but two items. They are about to move into a new house, so getting some $ and clearing out was excellent for them.

Jan has brought a little up from the garage and sold it, but hasn't really had the time to go through and really decide what really is surplus to requirements (the garage is so full you can hardly get in there as well!). Also something to tackle after his exam & our trip to Oz.

TradeMe doesn't work well for selling books, in our experience. However, we have another outlet for recycling books & magazines in Nelson; Founders Park houses a load of old Nelson buildings & heritage displays which they keep in part maintained via an annual book fair. So while we wouldn't part with most of our books, I do have a load of out-of-date business studies text books that will become donations for the next book fair. The fair - staffed by volunteers - runs for a week at Queen's Birthday weekend, and usually raises $100,000.

Another thing that's happened recently is that the Tasman District Council has bought into a website called terranova.org.nz, which is sort of a message board for people with recyclable items to hook up with people who want things, NZ-wide. A very good idea, and I am wondering if we could find a use for our plastics there... !

If any of you have any ideas or solutions about what else we can do to lessen our environmental impacts, please let us know. I have started a list that you can access (if you are interested) via the link underneath the photos on this page.

Well, next week we are away to Sydney. Our Wellington trip is on December 14-16, which will be a good family catch up for Tina's birthday, and everyone else we can possibly fit in... maybe a lunch at Clarks on Saturday?

Take care, everyone. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – October 2007

Hi all, I hope you are all fit & well.

I would have to admit that daylight savings came and went with hardly a blip. That surprises me, as we are usually both hammered by that extra hour lost in the mornings, but we both have coped admirably!

We have had loads of rain - there are no farmers in the Nelson Tasman region who can possibly be complaining about the lack of rain. Luckily we have also avoided the heavy downpours that so many other areas have had, so although the grass underfoot sounds like a wet sponge, there hasn't been any flooding.

We have been using our once-UWH time to start to look at house plans. And now I think we have decided that we need to put together a creative brief & just go to an architect.

We have been to a few of the Arts Festival programme items; we managed to get along to see Elena, a violinist based in Wellington, with her group at the Woollaston Estates last week. That was a great evening out with John & Jo, kicked off with Jo's cooking, and completed by lots of Woollaston Estates Rosé!

We also got to see "Cycology", a creative music piece done by an Australian guy who actually drilled out various parts of a bike and fitted clarinet mouthpieces onto them and played them. Very interesting combinations he created by using recording loops and overlaying them.

In Nelson, as with everywhere in New Zealand, we have just had local body elections. We had a group of concerned business people from throughout our region form a group called "Hands Up" and they were all voted into Council. We have an interesting mix of 6 old hands and 6 new hands as our newly appointed - or reappointed - city officials. We also have an ex-Tasman District Council mayor as our new mayor. I think we will be having some very interesting council meetings over the coming months; and if Hands Up stays focused on their election platform, then we should be seeing some great things happening.

This Saturday night we are off to Woollaston Estates once more to see Viva, a chamber music orchestra, accompanied by a Russian trumpet player. Should also be a great night out.

TradeMe has been getting a hammering from us again lately. I am still finding things to flick onwards to new homes. Jan is still deciding on what he wants to part with in dribs and drabs, so a few items each week are being sent on their merry way. And all the dosh earned from sales goes into our travel account, so we have 'money for nothing' when we are on holiday.

Our next trip away is to Sydney for our wedding anniversary in November. Our Wellington trip is now in the second weekend of December (14-16), which will be a good family catch up for Tina's birthday, and everyone else we can possibly fit in.

Take care, everyone. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan