News from Nelson - July 2013

Hi all,
A sad catch up this time, as Jan & I had to have Fliss put to sleep on the weekend.

We had her at the vet only a week ago, and Jonathan had said that we would try some different meds, but said that if we were not in the top 10% of owners, she wouldn't have gone home from the vets that day. Jan wasn't ready to let her go, though, and we came home with her to try a few more things. However, she only got to Wednesday before we realised that she was really going downhill quickly, and we arranged for Jonathan to come out home on the weekend to send her on her last big sleep. However, despite that, she had got pneumonia on Thursday and by Saturday had almost put herself to sleep.

We have buried her next to Drew in the garden, with a baby Lancewood (Horoeka) on her grave. For all the non-Kiwis, see them at http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/lancewood,tree/Interesting).
 
Both Jan & I were very quiet over the weekend, just pottered around at home and watched some films, and remembered her. She had been my friend for 13 years.

Her life in pictures below. Her birthday:

Four weeks

One year:

Two:

Three:

Five, with Drew:

Seven, with Coco:

With Bonnie:

And with Coco again:

Nine at the mudflats with Coco & Bonnie:

And on the Atawhai reserve (Jan in delightful shorts):

At Montrose Drive:

With Jimmy in Chch:

Is it dinner time?

At Montrose Drive with Coco:

At the land:

Last year, with Bonnie:

And with Camila:

And Camila on the day she left to go home (Bonnie, Coco & Fliss):

In April, in the rubbish bin!

Last day, Saturday 13 June 2013:

We have ordered a canvas to put up in the office of one of our wedding photos that had both Fliss & Drew in it. 

That's it for today - I will post some more news a bit later on.

Hope you are all well.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - June 2013

Hi Everyone,
I can't believe another month has ticked by. I have no idea where the time has melted away to!

Jan & I have both been flat out - Nelson Symphony Orchestra, dogs, study and work. Bonnie has been to the vet several times with a few fairly minor ailments. Fliss is getting so wobbly now she is tripping over her own feet. We have got little boots for her now so she gets good purchase on the floor - and I wouldn't have persisted had she still not been so bright, so keen for her dinner and a cuddle. But we know it won't be long. As soon as she stops enjoying telling us off because we haven't lit the fire quickly enough, or she goes off her food...

The cycle of all things, eh. And I wouldn't miss a minute of it. At least our families are currently fairly well, though I know Tanja is having trouble with her knee following surgery.

Temperatures are dropping, and we have had quite a bit of rain lately. No problems with having enough water. There is a shed full of wood to stoke the fire, and it is very cosy here - sometimes too cosy! I constantly find myself throwing the covers in the night because I have got too hot (and no, it's not the menopause!).

My father had a birthday BBQ at our place on May 26th. Uncle Norman, Mike & Donna came out too, as did lots of my folks' friends - Ralph is an RSA member (Vietnam) and borrowed the RSA van to bring a swag of them out, which was great. We had Ana from Brazil staying that weekend as well. Twenty for lunch worked out just fine. I made black forest gateaux - though only one got eaten. In fact, there was so much food that we made doggie bags up for everyone to take some bits home, because we would never have fitted it all the leftovers in the fridge!

We went to a Chamber of Commerce function at the Suter Art Gallery, about the new development project there. 

Last weekend we went to the basketball (Nelson Giants vs the Bay Hawks) with Sharon & Ian, which was great, preceeded by dinner at Krauts. Herman and Agnes Seifried were there as well, and Jan said to me, "That guy looks familiar - who is he?"!

We caught up with Frits, Kathleen & Amy on Saturday night, which was great. Amy did the dinner (mushroom risotto), Kathleen did the dessert (a light chocolate mousse), and it was just lovely. 

Yesterday I finished my assignment marking, to have a colleague contact me in a bit of a state. Lots of things have gone really badly pear-shaped in their lives, so I am now marking their assignment work this week. What can you do? As I explained to Jan, if I was at the end of my string so much that I asked someone for help, the last thing I would want them to do is say "sorry, mate; I have just finished and don't fancy doing any more"! Nothing wrong with a bit of 'cast your bread upon the waters', I reckon.

I have been to dinner with the Sport & Rec team at NMIT: Jan has caught up with work colleagues. He is also going to the US in November for a week-long industry tour and conference, and to Rotovegas in September to present at a conference.

Jan has been practicing for the next NSO concert (29 June), which should be really fun. It's programme you can really imagine being performed at a grand event, with a little light entertainment - Tea for Two - thrown in:

On the Sunday of that weekend, I am off to Wellington for another CDANZ meeting - the Sunday and Monday, then back home. I hope to catch up with Tina & Jeremy then too. Tina is so busy at work I don't know how she does it, and Jeremy's clown doctoring is going well (see the story below this one for the latest thing in the paper). My next CDANZ meeting will be October for the Career Symposium & AGM in Chch, I think. Then I think I have a conference in Queenstown to go to in November - but I am reconsidering whether I should attend that one as Jan will be in the US then. Julie from CNZ was down in Nelson last week for a meeting, and we caught up for coffee. It is great how you start to roll your contacts out around the country with involvements like this.

We are off to a quiz night this coming Friday night with Robbie & Janet, which should also be fun. We have also been trying to catch up with Glenys & Kevin, but just have not got there yet!

And some other sad news - while we were in the North Island, our neighbour, Kath, died. As many of you know, she had a brain tumour diagnosed when she was pregnant with Harrison. "They" said she would have three to five years after the treatment - she had three before it came back, and then the end came quite quickly. It is very sad, though Ian seems pretty stoic about it. Hopefully Harrison will remember his mum.

Sunrise from Roses Road last week:

Hoepfully we will all stay healthy, eh. And be kind to each other, and remember that we are a long time gone, so make the most of it while we are here. And remember we don't get points for it.

Right - that's all I have time for. Just a quick update :-)

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - May 2013

Hi all,
Wow lots to report since last time. Jan's grandmother died in Germany, and a memorial services has just taken place. More on that later.

We have been very busy: trip news etc will follow in a few days once we have our heads back in the right place. A few photos follow, taken by Amy as she house sitted for us.

Back to you all with an update once we are organised :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson - February 2 2013

Hi all,
Just a quick update again as we are both pretty busy! Surprise, surprise!

Happy birthday to Jan's Oma Friedel who has just turned 99, here with Katrin & Monika: 

I went up to Tauranga for a couple of AUT training days, and caught up with DJ & Dilani, who are both in great form. Hopefully we will catch up with them both again when we take the Rotary exchange students around the far north this April too.

Kathleen & Frits came to stay for a weekend and we shamelessly put them to work. First we cleared some of the rubbish piles from when we had our trees felled about six years ago:

Then, where Jimmy had felled some trees which were threatening our powerlines, Jan & Frits cut them up.

And Coco and Bonnie helped.

And, what a delight for the eyes. Bonnie, sound asleep with eyes slightly open, dreaming and snoring with her tongue out. Bless.

Flissy is getting pretty frail: her back end is getting pretty wobbly due to the Ankylosing Spondylitis. We had them all at the vet the other day for check ups, and basically there is nothing else we can do for her now except control her pain (and she seems relatively pain-free, so that's good). Old dogs :-(

This week Jan has been in Auckland at a work conference/seminar and I have been in Welly for another CDANZ meeting. My next 'meeting' will be via video link from the BNZ Centres all around the country. It will be interesting to see how that works! But if it does work well, it will mean that we can save some $ for our members and have some 'minor' meetings during the year. I don't think the technology is good enough to replace collegiality yet, but it may come.

I teach students in Marlborough via video link, so does work OK: but it is not a replacement for being there.

We have rented our house again, as aside from one offer which fell through, there was nothing happening on the sales front.

Jan is playing in the next NSO concert - a salute to the Steinway - and I am trying to get my NMIT courses sorted so I can get back to my own study. I have some interesting students in my classes though. All those good things that make it enjoyable!

Our neighbour, Kath, is not good again, which is a real shame. But at least Harrison is three now, so will have memories of his Mum.

Our next trip will be the Rotary Youth Exchange one in April/May.  Hope to see some of you then.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - January 2013

Hi all,
Again, things are a bit busy, so will mostly post images :-)

Camila has sadly left us, but has received a great welcome at home.

She also took a lovely photo of her journey home across the Pacific:

And had a good send-off at the airport with other exchange students

 And her host parents

And her friend Lydia

And the dogs

We hosted three other exchange students for the week before Camila left (they played pool and watched rather a lot of movies!). Kazu made us sushi, which was great, with able apprentices Camila and Timo:

We had a great New Year's eve celebration, with about 30 people here at various times. We saw the New Year in, had our chat with Andreas, Katrin & Christian and went to bed for a lovely long sleep :-)

On Christmas Day we had 13 people here for lunch and dinner. It was a very relaxed affair, with Frits' sister and her husband here from Holland, Kathleen, Amy, Camila, Andreas, Katrin & Christian and my folks. We had a very laid back and relaxed day having cooked a barbecue covering two meals, with a walk up our neighbour Christian's hill in between time. Camila and her friend Karin dressed the Christmas tree. We had a bit of a house-full with Camila, Andreas, Katrin & Christian all tucked up in bed for the night (those two small fold-out couches I bought from Nood did great duty as single beds!).
 
Magda came up for Christmas, so we were able to catch up for lunch during the break. We have also caught up with the Hofmans, and had a lovely lunch at Ellie & Greg's place along with Duncan & Kel.

Hartmut has had an accident with his wood-lathe but is OK. A piece of wood broke, but as he wears safety goggles, he was saved serious injury. A good reminder that safety equipment is worth it! 

Bonnie had an eye ulcer, but it has healed well, now; after a trip every three days to the vet, for three weeks. Phew. Fliss is getting very frail.

We hope all of you are having a good 2013 thus far, and we will catch up with you more fully as the year unfolds

All the best

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - November 2012

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all well and prosperous! We seem to have avoided the spring colds that are doing the rounds, though Jan has a bit of a sore throat still.

Camila has been with us for a month already; it has gone so fast! We can’t believe that she is away this weekend to do the South Island Tour and tramp the Milford Track. She will be away for nearly two weeks, and will see a lot of the South Island, in the company of the other South Island Rotary exchange students. She will have a ball.

Jan has helped her pack, so she is thoroughly well organised too!

Camila’s pool playing has improved by leaps and bounds since coming to stay here: she has beaten us both at times, and will be able to earn a living in bars in no time (:-D).

We have been so busy lately, I can’t think where to really start; so perhaps I will go backwards. Last weekend Jan & I helped out at his work on the annual “Big Beach Clean-up”, where volunteers clean up the coastline. We cleaned up the perimeter of Nelson Pine and the Waimea Estuary for a couple of hours. It was reasonably clean, but we managed to get a Ute-load of junk and rubbish from a couple of kilometres of shoreline and estuary (some stuff been there for a long time). We also had Michelle and Tony here for a BBQ, had dinner with Kathleen & Frits, and went to a Thai Food night fundraiser (I am now totally in love with Thai Green Curry from a little food-cart in Nelson!) with Ellie & Greg, Mark & Nicky and Camila and her friend Lydia (who turns out to be the daughter of some master cider-makers who live down the road from us). We tidied up our garden beds, put an extra layer of timber on them to make them higher, and filled them with fresh soil ready for planting this summer’s crop of vegetables.

The week before we went to the Upper Moutere Fair, went to Dawn’s Guy Fawkes party (where Jan & I saw Shelley & Kevin and spent a lot of time talking to Ross L & his wife... and came up with a novel way of cooking sausages), and went to the Chamber of Commerce Business Awards with the Nelson Pine team. Camila's friend Flora has been to stay (and played pool). While at the business awards, Jan got roped in to playing for the Greenhill Orchestra again for an upcoming concert (2 December) which is conveniently on the same day as the Nelson Symphony Orchestra’s Friends Thank You bash; so I have to choose which one I go to. We also had the sliders in the lounge measured up for blinds, so we can watch movies before 9pm in the evening (it is so light here in summer). The blinds will be ready and installed before Christmas.

 

 

 
The week before that we installed some shelves… doesn’t sound like much, does it. Well, it was a four day mission. The story goes: NMIT, as part of the government building earthquake safety audit, had to close their nursing school building. It is being demolished now, but just pre-demolition, all NMIT staff were emailed on the Wednesday asking if they wanted to buy any of the building fittings (at very reasonable rates, I might add). I emailed the list to Jan, and he suggested that find out if we could go and have a look at what was there. So bright and early on Thursday morning, I emailed Mira at NMIT to see when we could come and have a look. She got back to me at 10, and said there were only two more supervised, guided tours of the building, with the next one happening at 11 (and we should be quick, because things were going fast). Jan had already put the trailer on the car and gone to work, just in case we were able to pick anything up on the day. So I raced in to his work, picked him up, and got into NMIT on the dot of 11, with Jan still driving around and around the campus looking for a carpark that would fit a car and a trailer. Well, for the grand sum of $220, we got a two benches, one with timber drawers and cupboards, one set of wall-mounted cupboards and shelves, and two big sets of shelves, all in solid rimu. Staggering. And staggeringly heavy.

We had a deadline to get our purchases out of the building: 5pm the next day. Luckily there were a few other staff whom I knew, and they pooled their muscles and tools to get all their materials out. The most exciting part I missed: Jan and the team getting our big sets of shelves down the stairwell, as I had to go and deliver my last Leadership lecture of the semester. Camila arrived on Friday after school, helped us get everything loaded and then helped with unloading at home.

We then spent the weekend putting everything in place and completely reorganising the cellar (and very fine it looks too). And no, I didn’t get any Masters work done!

Speaking of my masters, it is continuing well – so well that my supervisor is suggesting I consider skipping the masters and going straight to PhD as the depth and quality of my work is exceeding masters’ standards. He is going to investigate the process and whether this might be possible; and has already warned me that this will mean a lot more work (I will really have to come to grips with ontology and epistemology <sigh>). Regardless of whether I am able to do that or not, I am VERY pleased to have my work considered so highly. Jan will prevent me getting an inflated ego though. When I told him, he said “Oh, lots of people at Uni did that”. <pop>

We have had fish and chips with Camila down at Mapua, and have done plenty of trips in and out of town for various events. We have also got some great shots of the neighbour having their top dressing done, which was pretty cool with the plane flying right over us!

 

The next NSO concert is on 24 November, ‘Dusk’. Jan is not playing in it, as he decided with being away in October in Australia, and all the other things he had to do at work, he would have some time out. A good move, I think (and of course, now he has volunteered for the Greenhill concert anyway).

On Wednesday nights the NSO Secretary, Becks, has been coming around for a pot luck dinner and we have all been working on getting NSO systems and PR sorted. It has been very productive.

My CDANZ stuff has been a bit neglected – I will have to get back into that, but I have been marking final semester projects flat out. I have one more left to do – a late submission which will come in tomorrow – then some preparation for Leadership being moderated. I have already moderated AUT’s Leadership paper, so that is one more thing off my list. I am going to get three of my courses overhauled over the summer break, as well as work on my masters, but I am not teaching again until February, which will hopefully mean I am fresh and ready to start teaching with lots of zing.

Jan & I are both in Welly from 7-9 December (next CDANZ Exec meeting). I will be free on Saturday evening, so catch ups Sat night with the Hutt crowd would be great. 

I will also be up in Tauranga for an AUT leadership training session on 7-8 February. I hope to catch up with DJ & Dilani while there, but haven’t heard from them yet.

Congrats to Magda who has a wonderful new job. But sad faces to Sam & Jan who lose her as her new position is in Christchurch :-( She is coming around tonight for a farewell dinner as she leaves next Wednesday.

Tessa is coming to Nelson at the end of this month for Donna’s birthday. She got knocked off her bike a couple of days ago, but seems – luckily – to have escaped serious injury. Just at home, getting better.

Happy birthdays over the coming month to Dawnie, Lara, Justine, Jeremy, Donna & Neil! 

Right – better start peeling potatoes for dinner tonight.

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young