News from Nelson - May 2 2013

Hi everyone,

Wow - I cannot believe where the year has vanished to so quickly.

It has been a while since I updated everyone on what we have been doing: that is partly to do with the fact that we were away for a fortnight on the North Island tour, and then came home with colds. I am now finally getting over it, over a month later. However I will do a condensed version!

North Island tour was great - lovely weather, and the stand outs for me were Cape Reinga and Waitangi, once more. Even Jan said he would like to spend a few hours at the Cape, just soaking up the atmosphere. It really feels like a special place.

I have just finished putting together the photobook - which you can view at http://momento.co.nz/gallery?cpid=10281&auth=51a346aa4bccd3.10433652. Ana, another exchange student from Brazil, who lives about an hour away from Camila, came to stay last weekend and helped me finish it. The book will hopefully be printed and will get to all the Northern Hemisphere students in time for them winging their way home at the end of June or beginning of July. Karin, who spent lots of time here with Camila, is going home to Sweden, as is Kazu - to Japan. I think they both have had a very full year!

We won't be taking the tour next year: we will need our holidays for my brother's & Donna's wedding in Rarotonga, and for going to Brazil. That will keep us busy. Then the year after is Oma Friedel's 100th birthday in Germany - in the midst of the German winter. That will probably be a holiday where we don't have a free suitcase to bring chocolate back in!

Last weekend, as well as Ana, we had my folks, Mike, Donna and some of their friends - eighteen of us in total - here to help celebrate my Father's birthday. We had a BBQ with loads of food. I also had a wine for you, John! We had a lovely afternoon, and Graeme & Julie offered to housesit for us, if we end up needing someone - and if Amy isn't available, of course!

Speaking of Amy, she is now working at NMIT and studying online. I think she is really enjoying being back in Nelson too. Jan & I will hopefully catch up with Frits & Kathleen as well, the weekend after next.

Jenny came to stay a couple of weeks ago, which was great. I picked her up from the airport & we went home, drank wine, ate crisps and talked. Jan had orchestra practice so had to catch up later. We dropped her back out to Bunty & Donald's house - and stayed for hours, catching up with the whole family's news. 

Last weekend I was doing some washing, only to have the machine shudder to a halt. Wouldn't go, ended up with an error message. Jan thought that perhaps there might be something stopping the pump draining, so opened the hatch to manually drain the pump... to find that the pump drain wouldn't open. So he juggled it around and managed to unstick it. To find the following cache of extras! And the really amazing thing is that we don't own any hairclips!

This coming weekend we have the Founders Book Fair. I am organising volunteers from our Rotary club: we have traditionally handled the security on the first Saturday. It runs for a week here in Nelson, one of the largest second hand book sales in the country. We will get the chance in our breaks to stroll about & buy. Last year I picked up some antique management books; the year before a Bill Bryson hardback (the ‘Short History’ one). Jan got a matched set of Neville Schutes, and some old engineering “how to” books which are hilarious. Surprises every year. I have just started slumming on Vernon Coleman – totally escapist lite ‘mystery’ rubbish – but hopefully someone will have de-dunged their bookshelf and I will benefit from their purge.

I still love my iPod! I have just been reading - listening to - 1421 and 1434 by Gavin Menzies, about the Chinese exploration of the world. They are both very interesting books, and followed well on me re-listening to Simon Winchester's The Man Who Loved China, biography about Joseph Needham who created, wrote, researched and project managed the Science and Civilisation in China volumes (which runs to something like twenty seven thumping great tomes). 

Jan might be going to the US to a conference in November, and I might be going to Queenstown for one - in the same week, if you can believe it!

Dogs are in general OK, though Flissy is getting very frail, and wobbly in her back legs. We have bought little boots for her to help keep her more stable on the polished floors.

Right, that will do for now. More later.

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 - April 2013

Hi all,

So, that was Easter, disappearing in the rearview mirror of life!

We are still having lovely weather, and the Easter break was pretty good. We had a nice time doing lots of relaxing, socialising and even prepping our accounts ready for the tax man (hey, I wonder why tax collection is still a gender-oriented profession?!).

On Saturday night, Jan & I went to Krauts German restaurant for my birthday, ably assisted in celebration by my folks, Uncle Norman, Kathleen, Frits, Amy, Dawn, Janet (who had come down from Auckland for Easter) and Julie & Murray. Several foolish souls ordered schweinshax’n (pork shanks) and took home doggie bags for the next day :-O

 

Jeanette & Jake vdB were at Krauts while we were there too, and say hello to Magda, Gea & Tjibbe. All is going well with them.

Murray, Julie & Janet came out for a BBQ on Sunday, with Murray’s very grown up daughter Amy & her boyfriend. After lunch, Janet, Julie & I tackled Christian’s hill with Coco & Bonnie in some very light mist (only day without lots of sunshine all Easter), leaving Flissy behind dozing on the couch with Murray & Jan! 

 

With regard to our next trip away - the Rotary exchange student NI Tour - Jan hopes to catch up with Beth D on the 23rd of April when he is in Waitomo in sole-charge of 11 teenagers (as I will be in Auckland presenting at the International Leadership Conference). I catch up with Jan again in Rotovegas on the night of the 24th. Then we hope to see DJ & Dilani on our way through Tauranga on our way around the Coromandel. If anyone else is around and would like to catch up, please get in touch!

I will be in Auckland on Monday 22 to the afternoon of Weds 24, staying at the Stamford. Days I will be at Auckland Uni’s business school (http://nzli.co.nz/64/conference).

On the 16th we had the first concert of the NSO 2013 Concert season, with a tribute to the Steinway. It was a very professionally delivered concert, and the audience seemed to really enjoy it. I loved Rhapsody in Blue – that is such a lovely piece. The applause went on for some time. The NSO had its AGM last week, and Jan found – somewhat to his surprise – that he is now Chair of the NSO committee. He will do a fine job. I guess that also means that I will carry on doing the PR for the orchestra as well :-)

The weekend before Easter we went out to a friend’s orchard & traded some ‘grape juice’ for fifty plus kilos of royal gala apples. We juiced the apples, loaded the juice into jars, sealed and ran them through the Agee preserver, and now have 40 lovely litres of apple juice in the cellar alongside with our tomatoes, apple purée, pear halves, rhubarb and plums. It is a lovely feeling, making and storing food. Mark C from NMIT came out & he & Jan chainsawed wood. We still have a trailer full in the shed that we don’t know where to store it! Kathleen, Frits & Amy have been out to visit too – and we have given Amy the guided tour so she knows where everything is for when she is here and we are away.

Tonight Jan is going to permanently wire in our pump, so we can push a button in the laundry to fill the tank up the hill. All these little jobs are slowly getting done. It takes time, but we get there in the end. It will also make Amy’s life easier!

 

Since Janet left, Jan has been practicing pool diligently, as Janet nearly beat him twice and he is feeling his manhood has been challenged ;-)

Thanks for all the kind birthday wishes via email, Skype, text, phone and Facebook. We had a great chat to the Martins in Brazil and John in the UK. Very kind of everyone! On Monday we went in to see Murray B about the North Island tour. We are now pretty much all sorted for the trip, and leave on the 20th of April. Amy H is going to house & dog sit for us.

We leave Nelson for Welly on Saturday 20th, Auckland on Monday 22; Waitomo on 23, Rotovegas on 24-25; Tauranga Coromandel on the 26th; Whangarei on the 27th; Paihia on the 29th; Kauri coast on the 1st; Orewa on the 2nd; home on the 3rd. 

This Weds nite we are going for dinner at NMIT’s Rata Room (the chef training school) with Sandra & Kevin which will be fun. This coming weekend we have nothing booked at all, which will be just lovely.

I have my next CDANZ meeting in Welly on May 12-13; then June 30-July 1; Sept 9-10. Jan is in Auckland on Sept 10-12.

We will both be in Chch in October – myself for a CDANZ Career Symposium and AGM, and Jan on an NZIM residential course. We were both going to stay the weekend afterwards to hopefully catch up with everyone (Oct 19 & 20). Will confirm dates etc later. Then the last trip away for this year should be November to Queenstown.

Jan’s Oma Lieselotte is not expected to last much longer. Over Easter she has become bed-bound. She is now not eating, and is unable to drink without choking. Aunt Uta is looking after her, with Thomas, Bettina and Simone there to help and Uta’s home physio/nurse friend. Hopefully Omi will have a peaceful end to what has been a full and busy life. It is a rare privilege these days to be able to die quietly - with dignity - at home, amongst people who care for you. Our thoughts are with you all in Neu-Ulm and please tell Omi we love her.

Tanja – I hope your knee comes right. Take lots of sunshine, rest, good company and recreation to help it along :-)

I am sure that I have forgotten heaps, but that will do for now.


Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - March 2013

Hi all,
Just a quick update again as we are both still flat out... yeah, yeah, I know!

We are getting ready to take all the Rotary Exchange students around the NI: Murray B who does all the planning for the event has organised our flights already, and we get into Wellington at 10.45 on the 20th of April, spend the weekend there, then on to Auckland and all points north. Karin, who came to stay with us before Camila left in January, will hopefully be able to organise the local exchange students whom we haven't yet met, to come out to our place for a weekend so we can get to know them before the trip.

The weather has been staggeringly fine for what seems like months. I awoke this morning to a very light drizzle and mist (in fact, I had to double check that it was actually raining). It will be good as the ground is quite parched and a blasted rabbit keeps finding its way into the vege garden, despite our rabbit-proof fence (ha ha - obviously a misnomer!).

The NSO concert last night was really great - not only were the pieces at the right standard of complexity for the skill of the orchestra, but they finished with Rhapsody in Blue which was an incredibly upbeat way to end the first concert of the year.

Last weekend we had a great time: we went to the Suter Gallery fund raiser on Friday night and bought a Craig Potton print of the Ureweras. Haunting. We were on a very fun table with lots of acid asides about various things which was highly entertaining. Saturday Jan had orchestra practice and sectionals. On the Sunday we trucked off into Nelson very bright & early - arriving at 20 to 6 in the pitch dark: thank goodness for headlight torches - to volunteer for the Weet-bix Kids "Tryathlon". I have organised the cycle steward volunteers for the past three years, and the team assembled was just great. Aside from a few tears and a few grazes, it was pretty much a trouble-free cycle leg with 1779 kids completing the course. We zoomed off from that to the Kahurangi Long Lunch in the Vineyard to celebrate the 2012 vintages which had just gone into the bottle. We caught up with lots of people and had a really great time sitting outside under a lovely soft canopy enjoying lovely food & wine.

We had the 10 year dinner for Whakatu Rotary Club, which Jan came along to. I volunteered to drive, but of course, by the end of the night he was sober anyway, and drove home. It was a good night with several awards given to long serving and charter members. I used the night to recruit - or re-recruit - my cycle stewards. My next project will be the team for the Founders Book Fair which is another community event which raises project funds for Founders Heritage Park.

Jan & I both went to the Nelson Tasman Chamber of Commerce's first lunch of the year, to hear Glidepath's Sir Ken Stevens talk about his business experiences. He was most interesting in answering the questions that were asked: I wished it had only been a Q&A session because the short annecdotes and answers were fascinating.

Frits & Kathleen's daughter Amy has just returned from 4 years in Australia, in order to do some prereq papers before starting her second degree (Engineering this time). We think she will dog sit for us while we are away in the NI, which is fantastic.

We were supposed to be chainsawing today: one of my colleagues from NMIT & his wife - Mark & Nicky - were going to come out & cut wood this morning, but the rain will make it too slippery. Better to be safe! Postponements work just fine.

I have two great classes this semester - both fairly small in number, but both very active and interactive. It is such a pleasure to teach motivated and engaged students! One of my papers is video linked to Marlborough, and I have six students who 'beam in' for each class. I had a new NMIT lecturer sitting in on one of my classes to see how to manage video link etiquette. Like all things, it easier both watched and modelled as well as explained in theory then practiced.

Jan has been asked if he will take on role of the Chair of the NSO Committee, and thinks he probably will for a year and see how he likes it. I think it will be good for the committee and for Jan. Another thing to learn :-)

I am busy recording lectures for a paper that I am not actually teaching this semester, but that four students have asked if they can take early, as they want to attend another institution in the second semester. I am OK with it, but it does mean that work I had postponed until the second half of the year has to be done now.

As a result my own study has been postponed... and I am procrastinating on writing my conference presentation RFP because I am so over-faced by the quality of audience. Ah well.

We have been working in the vege garden: we had good cherry tomatoes, cucumber, sugar snap peas, spinach, lettuce, garlic and courgettes. We have some peppers just coming on now. A few potatoes earlier (we didn't plant any: they just came up from where we had them the winter before last). Sadly our pumpkins got bacterial wilt & died: our larger tomatoes didn't thrive. They have just effectively stalled. So we picked 60 kilos of tomatoes from a local market garden (they grow the vines outside in mounded rows) and bottled them over the last couple of weeks. We have 60 1 litre jars of preserved tomatoes downstairs now, ready for soups, sauce and anything else we fancy this coming winter :-)

Still going to do some apple juice... probably next weekend. 

I will be up in Welly again in May, in Chch in Oct, and might well be in Queenstown in November (Jan will probably come to the last one too). The CDANZ meetings this year are all over the place, driven by conferences where we need to have a presence, largely. Will be a fun year, though I have a lot of projects I am juggling for it: leading a finance system overhaul, audit committee, website committee, communications director and magazine editor. Phew. At least the finance thing will be done soon. And the website not too far - couple of months - afterward, I hope.

Everyone is as well as expected, health-wise, here. Tessa & her girlfriend have split up, which is very sad, but Tessa seems to be coping as well as can be expected from such a meaningful relationship break up.

Brother Mike is getting married on 10th April 2014 in Rarotonga, so that will be our next trip offshore. Then there are Jan's Oma's 100th birthdays the year afterward. Sometime in there we have to squeeze in a Brazil trip too to see the Martins.

Justine, there's a wee buzzy bee print heading your way next week to say thank you for being my postal staging house!  I hope the colour is OK, but it was the VERY last one, so Hobson's choice...

Right - that's it for now. Going to loll about & watch movies and play ladies today, I think. There has been rather too much high-life :-)

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 - February 2013

Hi all,
Wow. Dunno where the year has gone already!

We have been watching the rain pass us by for some time now. While we have plenty of water still (the advantage of having three huge tanks), it is not so good for the garden - nor the neighbour's pasture!

We are now firmly into firewood mode, and have had some old tracks cleared by Jimmy Sagar so we could fell some trees close to our power line, and get at some trees which had fallen a while ago.

Jan is happy as a sandboy with his chainsaw... and I have discovered that acetone-free nail polish remover gets pine sap out of clothing, so I am happy too :-D

Hartmut sent us three beautiful bowls that he made (not the one that discorporated and hit his forehead, needless to say):

I have published my first issue of the CDANZ  magazine, which has been quite intense, along with all the other things I am trying to do at the moment. Now I get a breather until late March, when the next one will be in the starting blocks.

Jan is busy at work still, but seems happy enough with how things are going.

Montrose Drive still hasn't sold, so we have decided to keep it on the market & rent it out. We are meeting some potential tenants there today.

Kathleen & Frits are coming to stay for the weekend, and we have a full-on programme planned, including the Sarau Festival on Sunday. Additionally we may well see Andrew, Jennie & their family today, on their way to the Neudorf concert.

Next week I am in Tauranga (Thursday & Friday), the week after I am in Wellington (Sunday & Monday) and Jan is in Auckland (Monday & Tuesday). Things will also crank up for Semester 1  from the 25th (though I need to be in for orientation week before that).

The Masters work is coming along painfully at the moment as I am still writing a RFP for a presentation at the International Leadership Association conference in Auckland in Anzac week. But it is coming along. So we will see.

In Anzac week we also take off on the North Island Tour with the Rotary International exchange students for twelve days. They will leave me in Auckland for the conference and go on to Hobbiton etc. I will then fly into Rotovegas to catch them up (and miss Hobbiton!). Should work out just fine. We CAN do everything! And Jan will have his trusted lieutenants in Timo, Kazu and Karin.

Camila is back at school, after a lovely holiday at the beach (pictured here with Beto (her Dad), Célia (her Mum) and Ana Silvia:

Tessa got engaged to Sandra last Saturday in Nelson, at a family gathering at Mike's place. I don't have any photos yet, but when I do get some, I will post them. 

Simone has sent some photos of Andreas with Michael, and herself and Michael:

It is my folks' wedding anniversary on the 13th, so hopefully we will get to celebrate with them the weekend before.

Right: I know I haven't covered everything, but this will do for now. Will add more when I get time!

Jan & Sam