News from Nelson – April 2 2008

Hi all,

Well, I am sure we have been pretty busy in the last few weeks, but I am not exactly sure what we have been busy AT. However, I will do my best to relate our activities to you!

Jan had his braces fitted yesterday and I thought he was coping pretty well until he said last night "These things a VERY annoying, aren't they." Yeah-huh, they certainly are. Never mind; he just has to keep telling himself, like I do, only 2 years to go!

Last weekend we cooked up a storm; we did our annual apple preserving session. We now have about 24 litres of Dell Blush juice in the freezer, and about 20 kilos of Royal Gala and Pinova apple puree preserved in jars. I also made another 10 kilos of green tomato chutney. That lot took almost the entire weekend, necessitating the compost bin to be dug into the garden to make room for all the apple scraps, and a great jar hunt to ensure we had enough glass to pack everything into. However, we find it so therapeutic to make our food this way - there is something very nurturing about getting so up close and personal with your food!

My folks are off to the UK for three months from May Day for three months. They arrive back on the first day of spring. I think they will have a great time, and hopefully they will have a wonderful summer in UK... according to Justine, who I was speaking to the other day, it can only get better!

Karen Trotter came down for two weeks from March 30th, which was great. We all slothed about and did nothing much in particular. Karen & I went for a couple of trots (couldn't call them runs!), played a bit of tennis, ate a lot & drank a bit. We also went to the Suter, caught up with lots of people, went out for dinner and lunch a lot, and even had a facial. Had a WONDERFUL time.

The Business Development Company, of which I am Chair of the Board, is currently seeking a new CEO. Our just-past CEO sadly left us after eight years - for good reasons - and we are currently in the process of selecting someone. That, along with the teaching, has taken up an awful lot of time. However, interviews with the shortlist are happening this Thursday, so at last I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

I have enrolled on the Certificate in Adult Teaching Foundation Course which starts next Monday (just in time for the CEO selection process to be over, I hope). That should keep me pretty busy for a week! I have managed to get a whole load of things sorted out this week so that I can take a whole week out of work and still remain sane. I hope. NMIT is paying for half of the course as I have now been teaching part-time for a year, which is great.

Jan & I have been out to a few functions lately tho. The local Chamber of Commerce is turning 150 years old this year, and we both attended the AGM. Jan unexpectedly had to accept a presentation for Nelson Pine in his motorcycle gear! It was a great night, as it was held that the museum and was built around old Tyree photos of early Nelson businesses and business ventures. Then the Chamber has organised an exhibition at the Suter Art Gallery of "The Art of Business" with a host of past-Presidents choosing their fave work from the Suter's permanent collection, and writing up their rationale for the choice. Very interesting. And, according to Jan, very good sandwiches on offer too :-)

Then we have had the farewell to the Business Development Company's CEO, at Bouterey's Restaurant in Richmond. Very, very nice food and a great night out - really fitting send-off. Last night John Fitzwater took us out to the Hong Yun, a Chinese Restaurant in Stoke as a thank you for looking after Bonnie for this past week while he has been in Oz (and it was fantastic - we will definitely be back there. There was a birthday party for one of the owner's family going on while we were there; always reassuring when the owners eat in!). This Thursday night we are out at the Arthur Wakefield Restaurant for an electrical supplier dinner, which will be nice too. Hmm - who was it who said that all we ever seem to do is eat?!

Jan has got his results back from his last two percent assignment, and a ten percent assignment for his management course; 100% and 90% respectively. He has another assignment due after the study break, which started yesterday. So he has eight more working days to complete it. And I do believe that while he hasn't started writing yet, he has started reading.

We are heading down to Chch on Friday May 16th, staying with Megs, attending Warren & Trace's housewarming on Saturday night and heading home on Sunday. I have a Rotary training thingy to go to, to which I am ONLY donating my Saturday day, and Jan plans on playing UWH on the Saturday morning, then catching up with those of you who won't be at Warren & Trace's on Saturday night, in the afternoon. It will be good to see everyone again! Oh, except Jenny L, who is heading to Nelson that weekend!

Right - that will do for now.

Take care & more next time. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – April 2008

Hi all,

And a new financial year rolls on around! Things are pretty busy at the moment, so this will be short.

Karen Trotter is down here again for a fortnight's holiday, which is wonderful. We went with Karen & with John Fitzwater to 'MarchFest' at Founders on the weekend. It bucketed down with rain - the first rain since Relay for Life - but the beer was good.

Jan has had his second results back for his management paper at nmit - and, surprisingly 100%. Again, it is only out of 2%, but isn't he clever?!

We have decided that we will not go any further with PureStyle (the show home designers) as they really were VERY expensive! Instead, we have found, through the Inwoods, an architectural draftsperson, Leigh Briars, who lives over in the Moutere about 3k away from the land. Megs & her folks have both used Leigh &, since we have had a meeting with him which went really well, we are feeling very comfortable. Leigh has some really good ideas & will make use of as much solar energy as possible. Our house layout plan is largely cribbed from PureStyle's, but with a lot of our ideas incorporated. And a lot more energy efficiency, sustainability and use of environmentally-friendly materials. The current plan is to start building in spring 2009, and aim for completion in autumn 2010.

We have spent some time at the land to fillet our timber - and Megs was up here for Easter so we got her to help out as well. Isn't it really great how we rope people in! That means the timber is all sorted for now; we will need to get the pine sleepers treated, but we have just heard about some locally-based copper treatment - at Pangatotara - so we can avoid any process that uses arsenic, which would be fab.

The papers I am teaching currently are going well, and I am enjoying it. I have been asked if I would teach three papers in the Sports & Rec school, and another three in the Business School next semester (I am enjoying it, but not that much!). I have trimmed it down to one paper in each school. At this stage it looks like Intro to Marketing for Sports & Rec (a year three paper for S&R, but equates to year 1 Business school level), and Leadership, a year 2 paper in the Business School. I also got asked if I would be interested in Management lecturing on NMIT's joint venture in China (the paper I taught last year that Jan is currently doing), but I don't fancy going up there for a month at a time. Not only would that mean a problem for continuity with my clients and the boards I am on, but it would also provide a pretty large problem for the dogs & Jan! So that was firmly declined.

I had breakfast out for my birthday today - I am teaching tonight, so we will have a BBQ on Saturday and have a bit of a knees-up then.

Jan is off in Chch tomorrow doing a course, so will catch up with whoever of you has replied; for a couple of hours! At the Loaded Hog, I think...

We are still planning a mid-year trip to Europe. We are still not sure of dates, but likely to be July or maybe August.

Take care, lots of hugs & more next time. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – March 2008

Hi all,

Hey, it's nearly Easter! Where did the last three months go?

Well, we now have another 32 cubic metres of sawn timber. Half of that is eucalypt floorboards, and the rest is a mixture of eucalypt and Pinus radiata railway sleepers. Phew! Now we just have to find a weekend, the materials and the labour to go & fillet and cover the whole lot. Anyone want a great workout?!

We went over to Marlborough a few weeks ago to see where Magda is living - she has a great place heading out toward Redwoodtown. We caught up for brekkie with her and had a good chat.

The next weekend was the Cancer Society Relay for Life. Thanks so much to Hartmut, Joan & Peter, Magda K, Karen Trotter, Hui-Ping, KT, Shelley & Kevin, Merrill & Colin, John & Jo, Nicki & Gary, Megs, Bertie, Pat & Marjie, Paul T, Warren & Tracy, Murray & Leigh; you are all wonderful! Jan & I raised over $600 between us, which was great.

It bucketed down on the day of the relay; Jan & I turned up at midday to help our esteemed team leader, Tony, to put up the tent at the Relay for Life site at the Tahunanui sports grounds. Tony was so organised that he pretty much had the tent up already and we just helped knock the pegs in & then we spent an hour mopping the water out of it!

It was very, very wet - we started in pouring, driving rain. They called a halt to proceedings for an hour to decide if they were able to go ahead and probably had to get agreement from the Council as it was on their turf (literally!). But we got the all clear, and after the first round, we all decided to abandon shoes altogether & do the walks/runs barefoot, in shorts and rain jackets. Sadly we don't have any photos of our mud-coated bodies after our rounds; but luckily, with the rain, we had plenty of water to wash the mud off! The team went well, and I think the adverse conditions actually made it all feel a bit more meaningful.

However, I think the Nelson City Council will have to do a lot of work to put the playing fields to rights again; the mud was shin deep in places and it was an absolute quagmire.

Jan has had his first results back for his management paper at nmit - 100%. Now sadly, it is only out of 2%, but it's a pretty good mark!

This last weekend on Friday & Saturday we had the Rotary district conference & I have been on an organising Committee, so that has kept me very busy on top of work. It all seemed to go off well enough; lots of people really enjoyed the event & a few people are thinking about coming along to our Rotary club to learn more about what they can contribute to our community, so that's great.

On Sunday we went to see PureStyle - the house designers - and now have some more concrete ideas to think about. We are going to be very busy organising what we want & what we don't want in the plans for when we go back to talk about $ on the 31st of this month. I took some photos of inside & out which I have posted on this page (warning; they are large! Dial-ups need not apply!).

I have had lots of marking to do for the Applied Management paper I am teaching, so that has kept me out of trouble, too. This is for a self-directed research project the students are completing. Their first assignment was a research proposal. Next I will have three lots of progress reports coming in; then it is their oral presentations & then lastly their reports. My other paper, the Facility & Events Management paper, has students preparing a contract bid which also has a slick report and an oral presentation component. It will be really interesting to see which paper goes better. NMIT has also asked me to do some evening training with some business people from the construction industry; just a one night session, so that's not too onerous.

Next weekend we will be trying to organise a day at the land to fillet & cover the 32m3 of timber - weather willing. Then Easter is upon us & Jan has his first large assignment to hand in (he hands in his next two percenter tomorrow). Megs will be up here for Easter - and perhaps Bertie? Anyway, we hope to catch up with whoever is around & swap some stories. Then Karen is with us for a couple of weeks from the 29th which will be great (providing she has booked her tickets, of course!).

Take care, lots of hugs & more next time. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – February 2008

Hi all,

Wow, the last few weeks have just flown past. I hope all is going well for all of you :-)

Jan had a great time at the Rugby Sevens, and didn't get too wet in the rain on Friday night. He was very tired when he got home though! We also went to the Sarau fair at Upper Moutere on Sunday, but didn't stay that long as it was soooo hot that we were wilting. We did swing by the land, as our neighbour - who has been grazing his rams on our place - had left the water tap on in the trough and had drained 25,000 litres of water down the hill. Needless to say, we were dropping over a few litres of water to water the trees.

Luckily we have since had a wee bit of rain, so the tank is now 100mm full from the bottom, which means that the irrigation system will now work. And at least autumn is coming!

On Waitangi Day a group of us went up Mount Arthur, which was great. I took the new camera, and then on our return, discovered a funky little piece of freeware by two guys at the University of British Columbia called Autostitch which painlessly created some wonderful panoramas for us from the photos we had taken.

We had Karen, Merrill & Colin all staying with us for Sealord Opera in the Park with Dame Kiri this past weekend. We had a great night out. Karen, Jan & I sold programmes for the Cancer Society in the gold seating area. The sound system was great, people were really well behaved, the weather couldn't have been better, the fireworks were fab. However, for those who were picnicking, I understand that the infrastructure needed some more work; they needed more toilets and food stalls, and the existing access to what there was of both was inadequate. There's always something that can be improved in all these events :-)

Hui-Ping stayed with Julie & Murray, so we all caught up for breakfast on Sunday morning at our place - and Jan's waffles; yum. We also had breakfast out on Thursday for Karen's birthday & caught up with Nicki, Dawn, Tiffany, Julie, Gilbert & his wee boys.

Karen & I had a great time together and it was wonderful to see her. She is thinking about working her way up to competing in a half Ironman. That will be a fantastic thing for her to do. She is coming down to Nelson again for the Taylor's Triathlon at the end of March, so we will get a good catch up then too.

Thanks for those of you who have sponsored either Jan or myself for the NZ Cancer Society's Relay for Life. We really appreciate it. I had a mammogram done in January, and just got called back for a more in-depth set of x-rays and ultrasound as they had found a mass which they felt needed further investigation. Luckily the mass in question is purely a cyst. However, in going through the ultrasound, they have also discovered a much larger cyst which hadn't shown up at all on the mammogram, so that is now documented as well.

Jan & I had a chat last week about our lack of progress on building plans. We thought that the road block was partly that we thought that we wanted to build a house somewhat like the house we currently have, but then all the designs that we liked were very modern. It made it very hard to work out what we wanted to do.

Then last week we went to an open home on Kina Peninsular, at PureStyle, and we think we might now have house plans. Amazing, I know. We got some very basic floor plans from the developers, and now have to investigate price; ie how much to (a) buy the plans from PureStyle & get a draughtsperson to make the changes we want and contract a builder to build it (b) get a quote from PureStyle to make the changes we want, build it it using our timber & project manage the build for us (c) get a quote from PureStyle for the plans, get a draughtsperson to make the changes we want & find out how much it would cost to use their builders/sub-contractors to do the work for us using our timber. It is all double-glazed, wool block insulated etc etc. The developer, Alan Trent, said that he has doubled the required code on all aspects of the build, which we both liked. So anyway, we will see where we get to on negotiation. The house we liked cost $700,000 to build. Ouch. If you are interested in the over-indulgence of it all, check out http://www.purestyle.com (however, I find these photos a bit too much of a 'production' - I would never have gone to see the place if we had seen these beforehand).

This weekend we are heading over to Marlborough to see where Magda is living. It will be good to catch up with her. We also plan to get a day over at the land to do some spraying now we have some water again, and to see how the eucalypts have cut up & how many railway sleepers and floorboards we now have.

Take care, lots of hugs & more next time. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan