News from Nelson - September 2010

Hi everyone,

I hope you are all fit and well.

Jan's Greenhill Orchestra in the Golden Bay and the Nelson Symphony Solo Spotlight concerts both went really well. We just drove over for the day for the Golden Bay concert, to find that the dinner on the Saturday night before the concert was being co-ordinated by Fleur, at Neil's folks new house just down the road from their place. Awesome! I caught up with them both at a hockey match during the day, and acted as a very rusty ball boy for those that got away.

Jan's next concert is in November with 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/). I think that is the last one for the year.

Jan's study is going well, with the major chunk of his work due in three weeks time. He will be busy for a wee while.

I have completed three case studies, just delivered my interim project report (my supervisor is very happy), and have had feedback on the case studies from two senior Lecturers at AUT - both asking if they can use the cases in their teaching next year. I am feeling very pleased about that. One of the AUT Lecturers has passed on to me a couple of case study publishers' details, along with the publishers' style guides. I will have a look at whether I think I can tear my work apart and rewrite it enough to fit the mould after I get over my interim glow of self-congratulation!

I have also pre-enrolled in my next qualification (Diploma in Career Guidance), so I don't get lazy & put it off. Should be relatively easy though - just formalising some aspects of my work that I have been doing for the past fifteen years.

Wow, it has really been wet here recently. Rained and rained and rained. Amazing. So we still haven't sealed our plasterwork. Our garage is looking emptier as Fleur & Neil came over last weekend and called in for coffee on their way home. When they left they also took a rimu bookshelf home with them. With that gone and loads of cartons of books gone, I can see that our garage only needs another day's work of emptying out tools into the workshop to fit my car into it. Now that would be cool - actually having two cars in the garage!

Our house worklist is remains pretty much the same. It all has to be done - outside lights to install, hob stainless steel backing, sealing the plasterwork, fixing our gas bottle, installing smoke alarms, getting our underfloor heating man's producer statement - before our CoC can be applied for. Then there are the things that we want to get finished - installing kitchen extractor fan cowling; installing the house water pump & building a pump shed; build the wine rack in the cellar; buying & installing the lounge string lights; buying & installing the lounge speakers; getting the builder to finish the battery box doors, fit the garage downpipe bracket, mend my wardrobe door roller and box in the top of the bookshelf; getting the legs cut & fitted to the spare bathroom basin; gluing up the mirror for the spare bathroom; and putting up some of our artwork.

We continue to generate more power than we are using; this last month we even netted off over half of our supply charge as well. Our power bill was $14. While I am pretty sure that the $21k that the solar power system cost will never pay for itself, there is a nice warm glow of social good that we are delivering to make us feel better!

This Saturday just gone we went to see Jenny L at her folk's place in Wakefield, which was really great. We heard all about the Christchurch quakes, and what has happened at the University. We caught up with John Fitz at the Golden Bear in Mapua for a burrito and a beer last Saturday avo, between the NSO practice and the concert. Jo is in Thailand doing a Vipassana course.

Adam is back from UK for a wedding, and we caught up for lunch yesterday. He has just finished his Cranfield MBA, and is set to relaunch himself on the work scene in London when he gets back. He is planning on getting back to NZ next February for his sister's wedding, so we will hopefully have a more targeted reunion then! It would be good to get Murray & Karen & Gilbert some of the old gang together to swap lies & tall tales.

Happy birthday all you Virgo babies - I hope you all have a wonderful time.

Tonight we are heading off to Scottish Country Dancing for a bit of a laugh, this weekend I think there is a party on Saturday night that we might go to as well. Justine will be back in Kiwiland from the end of September until mid-October, which will be great - she will be in Wellington for a chunk of time, but is planning to come down to us & see the house.

OK. I hope you all stay happy, healthy & keep in touch.

Take care & alles liebe!

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson - August 2 2010

Hi all,

I hope everyone is feeling fit & well - its a time of flux for all of us; either autumn or spring.

Jan will hopefully be at the Greenhill Orchestra rehearsal tonight, but he got a wasp sting on his hand yesterday - chopping wood in the shed - and his right hand has swollen up quite a bit. He has a concert this weekend with Greenhill, over in Golden Bay, so I hope he has no complications with it. To make sure, he is heading off to the Doctor this afternoon. After the Greenhill Orchestra his next concert is the NSO one on 18 September supporting the young soloists, then in November with 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/).

Jan's study & mine carries on; I have my first case study ready for review, and have started work on the second one.

We had a fantastically fine week, then it rained on the weekend, so we still can't seal our plasterwork. Our worklist still largely exists intact to be done before our CoC can be applied for, but I am ticking off small jobs inside. A couple of weeks ago I took Wednesday off and unpacked 24 cartons of books and sorted them all out. I have two fiction shelves (living area, spare room) and one non-fiction (hall). Lugging those cartons up the stairs, collapsing the boxes, sorting, dusting and shelving took all day from 7am until 4.30.

Jan has had a look at the new drawers that Michael Bender installed, and has made some small adjustments to them, so yesterday I sorted all our CDs and DVDs and put them all away. The drawers are fantastic - push them lightly and they spring open, push them again, and they close. Lovely! Amazingly we had four drawers free, so I have put our games & puzzles in those. Another couple of cartons emptied from the garage... inch by inch I am making the room to be able get my car in the garage! A couple of photos of progress for you to view :-)

This Saturday just gone we had Jenny L over, and on Sunday we had Tiff, Kevin & Sandra here for brunch. John Fitz is back from his travels and we caught up with him the weekend before. Last Wednesday night we went to hear the NZ String Quartet performing Schumann and Shostakovich, which was great. At the concert we caught up with Derek & Kate Sherwood, and hopefully Jan & Derek will get out on the bikes again soon.

Right, that's all for now. I had better get back to work.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - August 2010

Hi everyone,

Amazingly, we have been back from holiday for nearly a month. The time has gone by so fast! The weather is crisp & cool in the mornings, with lovely fine days. It rained on the weekend, but we seemed to miss the cold snap that the rest of the country got. Nice to have a micro-climate :-)

Jan turns in the first of his assignments tomorrow, and is feeling a bit under pressure. However, he is at the Symphony Orchestra practice tonight, and was at the Greenhill rehearsal on Monday night, so he is not under so much pressure that he feels he has to pull out of other things, which is good. I have finished my last CAT assessment for my second to last unit and am now working on my management case studies. So it is all study-study-study around here at the moment.

Jan's next concert is on 18 September with the NSO supporting the young soloists (Solo Spotlight), then at the end of September a Greenhill concert, largely repeating pieces they played last year (a bit of info at http://www.nsom.ac.nz/classes.html), then again in November the NSO play 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/). He will be busy with that lot, and study.

We still aren't much closer to getting organised for our CoC from the council, and our mutual study won't get that done much faster either (but equally, there's no rush). It keeps raining a bit on the weekends, so we can't seal our plasterwork. Until we have sealed our plasterwork, Jan doesn't want to install the outside lights. We still have yet to permanently fix the gas bottle outside, finish all the exterior lighting and hook up the other 23,000 litre water tank. Our builder has ducted in the range hood, but hasn't yet installed the stainless steel backing for kitchen hob or completed the cowling for the range hood. However, my louvres are installed in my office.

In some ways the water tank is probably the most important thing for us to get done now - so we have the space on-stream to store an extra 23,000 litres before the rain stops in September/early November.

However, this weekend won't be all study, as we have Michael Bender coming to install our big bookshelf. At the moment our living area looks like a furniture shop with all the bookshelf components in pieces everywhere... and the spare room is full of drawers. I am really looking forward to taking some photos this weekend of the whole thing being assembled. It will be really great to finally unpack all our books - and get rid of another 20 cartons from the cellar.

Work is carrying on as normal for both of us at present, nothing out of the ordinary, so that's all good.

This Saturday night we have our friends Gary & Nick over for dinner, with their two teenagers. It will be great to see them as we haven't really caught up of late. Kathleen & Frits are off on their European journey at the moment, and John Fitzwater is still in the US. On 25 August we are going to listen to the NZ String Quartet performing Schumann and Shostakovich, which will be fantastic, and one day next week we are getting taken out to dinner as a thank you for some voluntary work I did for a fellow Rotarian - the President of the NZ chapter of the International Fellowship of Cricketing Rotarians; yes, there really is such a beast. It is an international organisation with loads of international trips for cricket-bunnies to play cricket, talk cricket, watch cricket and critique cricket. There is truly something for everyone out there, and now they have a lovely newsletter entitled "Extra Innings" :-)

Speaking of Rotary, I have just had one of my past students come along to our Rotary club with a view to joining. She is really keen to do some community work that is aligned with youth projects. Our club's focus is youth, sport & literacy, so she will fit right in. I am hoping that her involvement will bring in of her colleagues and contacts, so we start getting some more younger people joining. I am very conscious that, while our club is younger than almost all NZ clubs, unless we keep attracting younger people each year, as time ticks inexorably onwards we too will grow too old to be relevant.

Right, that's all for now. I had better get back to the study.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - July 2010

Hi all,

Wow - I can't believe the last month went by so fast!

We had a fantastic time on holiday. Paris was fab - we would definitely recommend the tiny apartment we had to anyone. Close to the Louvre, 200m from the Chatalet metro hub, well supported by a neighbourhood supermarket, greengrocer, patisseries, great restaurants; just perfect. We walked pretty much everywhere. Hot, but not too hot, and lovely fine weather.

Germany. Wow - how do you pack three weeks of holiday into a paragraph... Kenzigen, Freiburg, Ulm, Eppingen, Polheim, Treysa, Edersee, Langen, Frankfurt - all fantastic. Jan got to spend some time with both of his grandmothers, who were both very, very pleased to see him. There is so much to thank everyone for - our stay was made so easy by the efforts of the whole family. It was wonderful to catch up; we were so well hosted by everyone, starting with Rainer & Regina, by Eberhard, Uta, Oli & Katrin & the Paechs, by Andreas and Katrin, by Holger, Katalin, Achim and Katrin (ably assisted by Heidi, Buddy & Julia), by Eberhard, Thomas and Bettina, by Simone and Michael. Eberhard organised a wonderful hosted three day family weekend at Edersee starting with Thomas' birthday party on the Friday night at Waldeck, followed by a gathering at Thomas & Bettina's house at the Edersee on Saturday night and completed by a trip to Peterskopf on Sunday. Most of the family was there, so we got to see everyone we hadn't seen already, and some of those whom we had seen, again (we also got to see Gerhard & Claudia at Oma Friedel's). I got some targeted shopping in, thanks to Uta, Andreas and Justine and Gareth! We had a good catch up with Justine & Gareth - and I got to have a play on Gareth's new iPad (very styley!). Freiburg was a really interesting city to visit, and Justine & Gareth had made a great choice of hotel. However, Germany was boiling. Four to ten degrees hotter than Paris - and it got hotter as time went on... that didn't encourage us to be too active, though we tried.

I was trying to think if there were a few highlights of the trip - and I can't settle on a few. The whole holiday was just great - if anything, my overwhelming impression is one of warmth. Warmth from everyone we spent time with, all of whom hosted us so wonderfully, took care of us and treated us as though we were special people. It was pretty humbling.

So; thank you ALL for making our holiday such a wonderful experience. We had the very best time, and would dearly love to host you in return in New Zealand, if and when you come.

So we got back after a long but uneventful flight - a bit longer than it should have been as we first made up time, then seemed to have a new delay on every leg; thunderstorm at Frankfurt, reboarding through a different gate in Dubai, someone in our park in Bangkok, something else in Sydney. We missed our connecting flight to Nelson, but we were booked on the next one easily enough. We were met at Christchurch by Tracey & Erica to take any luggage we were overweight on, but AirNZ was kind to us & pushed everything through. So we had coffee instead!

We got home to 3 degrees, hot pumpkin soup, and the fire going. Magda had done a great job of literally keeping the home fires burning while we were away :-)

And now we are back into the swing of things again. Jan is still battling tiredness, but I have slotted back in quite well (surprisingly).

Our current project is to get our Code of Compliance from the Council, so we had a meeting with the builder & the architect this week. The builders still have to duct in the range hood and install the stainless steel backing for kitchen hob, and fix another couple of things that the architect has flagged. We still have to permanently fix the gas bottle outside, finish the exterior lighting and hook up the other 23,000 litre water tank.

Kathleen & Frits came out to visit us last weekend, which was great. They brought lunch, and we had a very relaxing afternoon in their company. They are off on holiday soon - flying to Melbourne for a few days with their daughter Amy, then onto Rome, then taking the train to Vienna, and on to Amsterdam. It sounds as though they will have a wonderful time too.

Jan is now one of my students (his work is being marked by another tutor). He told one of his colleagues at work that "She seems to know what she is talking about". Nice recommendation! For my CAT qualification I will be completing my last assessment on one unit next week (review panel participation), and I have had my proposal approved for my management case studies, which I have started pulling together.

Today I chair the first of my Founders Heritage Park Committee meetings, which will be good. It is a strategic planning workshop which will be really useful.

Jan's cousin Oli has the whole photo thing sorted. He has a great website that he uploads photos to for sharing, and has such a good eye and camera that his images are as good as they need to be right after the click. I have already downloaded some of Oli's great shots of the weekend at Edersee. I have been trying to edit and stitch all our photos from our trip, but I simply have not had enough time. I have done some of them, but still need to spend another whole day going through them. Not sure when I will have time for that. As soon as I do, I need to send a CD to Justine & Gareth as they have sent me one of their shots... as well as post a couple here every newsletter of the good ones.

We are expecting our next weekend to be full of house-oriented things... a change is as good as a rest, they say :-)

Take care & alles liebe!

Sam & Jan