News from Nelson - January 2011, Part 2

We are having a great summer. We had a lovely bbq recently with about 50 people here, and got to catch up with folks we haven’t seen in ages. We were also surprised how many of our friends had other connections between each other. It all goes back to that Kiwi thing of 1.5 degrees of separation.

Tanja, Brigitte & John all came to stay for a week, and we got to celebrate Tanja’s birthday with her. I think they had a good time in Nelson, including going for some very scenic drives – and only one of them was unintentional! We had fish & chips down at the Mapua wharf, from the fish & chip shop that has just got the Wild Tomato Award for the best F&C in the top of the south, had the bbq for Tanja’s birthday, and had a very relaxing time. Mind you, Brigitte & Tanja could have shopped for New Zealand – it should be an Olympic sport! And I know I don’t have the staying power to do what they do. I should emulate John & grab a coffee & a paper & have them swing by afterwards to pick me up.

Jan has now built the second wine rack built and that has a couple of columns of bottles in it already. We still have some more space that we need to free up in the cellar, but we feel like we are starting to make more progress. This week I hung some of our pictures, and we bought some wall-plugs for those things that are a bit heavier, so hopefully this weekend they might get put up, along with our bathroom mirrors. The list gets shorter!

We have rented Montrose Drive again until this coming October, when it will go back on the market for the 2011-12 summer. We have some great tenants for this year (so far, anyway!), and what is more, we had two lots of really nice people to choose from. We downloaded all the forms from DBH and filled out everything that we needed, have sent off the things we needed to and took lots of photos. Should be all good.

Bon dog went home for a few days when John F got back from his first tour of the summer last week, but she came back again last night for the next month while John is away on #2 tour. Fliss & Coco were beside themselves when she arrived back with Jan last night. We ended up having to take them 2k down to the end gate last night at 8pm to get them to calm down. At least it was quite cool by that hour.

We had Wendy & Wayne up to see us last weekend, and it was great to see them. We were also going to go & see The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) in the meadow at Fairfield House on Sunday night, but it got rained off. Next time.

My study is going well – I am onto unit 9 of 16, as my second lot of course materials finally turned up. Mind you, I am still waiting for 4 assignments from the first half of the course to be marked & come back.

Jan is going to Underwater Hockey tonight, which will be the second time this year. He is thinking about playing in the South Island Masters Games which will be held in Nelson in October this year. So he needs all the pool time he can get between now & then.

He has also signed up for all the NSO concerts for the year, and I have signed up as a  “Friend” and booked my concert seat all the way through. My mother was talking about becoming a friend too, but I don’t know if she has registered yet.

At the beginning of February we also have the Adam Chamber Music Festival starting. Jan is going to see five concerts, and I am going to three. He is going to a Paganini concert on his own as I can’t stand the Caprices – to me it sounds like cats being dreadfully murdered :-(

Next weekend is the Sarau Fair, which is a blackcurrant festival. That should be fun.

Happy birthdays in the next couple of weeks to Tamara, Mike S, Eberhard and Oma Friedel. I hope Andreas' footballing birthday party went well, as did Christian's birthday celebrations.


Best wishes to Steph - I hope the floods haven't damaged your Rockhampton property too much (let us know if there is anything we can do); and we were glad to hear that Uncle Lin escaped most of the damp north of Brisbane.

Right, I think that's it. All the very, very best for the coming few weeks, and we look forward to catching up with you all sometime this year.

Take care and alles liebe!

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young

Random Acts of Kindness - dead or alive?

I have been reading today about Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) by Interflora (go to http://lnkd.in/izxY6W ); Interflora are crawling Facebook & Twitter to find people who have had bad days, then they send them flowers. 

Interflora's RAK is a nice idea, but I would rather get a live plant than a bunch of dead bits... what do you think?

Hello Mall

For those of you who remember the film "Shirley Valentine", you will no doubt remember Shirley uttering those memorable words "Hello Wall" in a monologue to the wall, which reveals her innermost spirit, and by degrees, how narrow, confining and boring her life has become. Shirley wants happiness, challenge and change.

Entrepreneurs and service workers have flocked to Dubai to get an economic bite of the wodge of oil dosh that is transforming this splinter of the East into the West. On the surface, the Dubai development looks like it could bring both the immigrants and the locals happiness, challenge and change, but Joe Bennett isn't so sure.

I have just been reading Joe's latest travel book - this time he delves into the UAE, in "Hello Dubai: Skiing, Sand and Shopping in the World's Weirdest City". As with "Where Underpants Come From" (2008), Joe's writing is most entertaining, with him gently poking his finger at both the Western and Eastern cultures.

However, I was most struck by a couple of paragraphs on pages 60 and 61 of his book, regarding consumerism, and our consumer society, which read:

“Malls are easy to despise, but they are merely covered markets and markets are as old as agriculture. But what a mall offers is far more than agricultural surplus. It offers the ideal fantasy world as seen on television and in magazines. And nothing is permitted to disrupt the fantasy: no weather, no thugs, no traffic, no dirt, no distress. There are security guards, piped music, and cooled synthetic air. Malls are the apex of the consumer society that Dubai has come to represent. And of all societies in history the consumer society is the least social. It emerges from Fortress Home only to make raids on stuff, to take that stuff home in a sealed car, haul up the drawbridge, drop the portcullis and then watch television in order to learn what to get next.

“It is so easy to forget how constantly we in the West are bombarded with a single lie. It is the notion that the things we buy – the cheese spread, the duvet inner, the all-in-one barbecue tool - will make us happier than we were before we bought them. The lie is bellowed from the radio, the television, the newsprint, the roadside billboards. Experience tells us that the lie is a lie. Yet some instinct continues to respond to its siren call, and the balloon of hope keeps re-inflating.

“In our world the call of advertising is as constant as the call of the muezzin. Commerce and religion use identical marketing strategies. The mall is effectively our mosque and, like a mosque, it is built to impress. Like a mosque it is a focal point, the place where people gather to do a culturally important thing. Like a mosque it confirms a belief and gratifies a need. And if Dubai had to choose between mosques and malls, it would choose malls. Indeed, though it would never admit it, it already has. Just as we have chosen them over cathedrals.”

Having not watched TV for fourteen months, Joe's comments give me hope that my consumer edge is becoming dulled. I certainly feel no pull to buy the latest supercallifragilisticexpialidocious goods. Mind you, that could be the results of building a new house and being poor, and having an intense aversion to malls. But I digress.

Buy Joe's book, and support a good, transplanted-Kiwi writer. It is a thought-provoking read.

Bennett, Joe (2010). Hello Dubai: Skiing, Sand and Shopping in the World's Weirdest City. UK: Simon & Schuster.

News from Nelson - January 2011

Well, what a busy few weeks we have had. We are both well; Jan narrowly skirted getting a summer cold, but it didn’t quite eventuate. Jan’s work isn’t too busy, and my study has reached a stall-point as I am waiting for my next lot of materials to be sent to me, and I have completed all the on-line work available. So for the next couple of days, I guess I have to read a few books and go for some walks instead.

We are still battling the gorse in the gully, and we now have a large pile of it against our shed, drying out to burn in autumn once the fire danger is low and we can get a fire permit.

Not only do we have cars in our garage, we also have one wine rack built and full of bottles. Jan did a great job welding last weekend, and we stocked it up. That has freed up a lot of space in the cellar, though we still have one more rack to build, and then some benches and shelves down there before we are really organised. There is still some timber and a few remaining workshop items in the garage that need to go across to the shed.

Our new tandem axle trailer arrived from Briford in Christchurch just before Christmas, which was great. Jan managed to clear some space in the shed for it, so it is stored out of the rain.

We have had lots of visitors – in the past week we have had Kathleen & Frits and John F for an overnight; Megs, Will & Emily along with Noreen & Paul and Max & Karen on New Year’s Day for brunch; Hui-Ping, Ella & Nikus a couple of days ago; Kent C & his wee boy Cameron. Kathleen & I played tennis at the Moutere Rec Centre courts, which was great fun. 

The Chamber of Commerce Christmas function was entertaining at the upgraded Theatre Royal – the restoration team have done a wonderful job of the theatre, including recreating the original wallpaper. The AUT graduation party, NMIT’s graduation and the Business School's farewell get together all went off well. The Roses Road Christmas Party & our family pseudo-Christmas lunch went off well, but we ran out of steam for the Neudorf Road Neighbourhood Party (at Glenys & Kevin's) & put in our apologies instead. We caught up with Glenys & Kevin a couple of nights later & caught up with their news first-hand anyway.

Our Wellington trip went well – read the entry immediately before this one to catch up on that info. Unfortunately we missed seeing Guy & Sonya, but hopefully next time; and also didn’t manage to catch up with Sam & Moose or Gary & Karen on this side of the Cook Strait either.

We have Bon dog here for a couple of months while John F is off on tour. Fliss & Coco are thoroughly enjoying having their partner in crime back.

John, Brigitte and Tanja are coming down to visit us for a few days next week, and I have a few brochures for them to decide what they would like to see while they are here.

We have a barbecue on January 15^th from 3pm if any of you are about Upper Moutere & looking for a party :-)

Right, I think that's it. All the very, very best for January, and we look forward to catching up with you all sometime this year.

Take care

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young