News from Nelson - October 2016

Hi everyone,
Another month has ticked by - so fast! - and, as usual, we have been busy.

Jan has been doing an international certificate in Health & Safety, so has been down in Chch twice for the NEBOSH courses related to the qualification, and again for his final exam. Now he just has the assessment to submit tomorrow night, and hopefully he will be complete. He caught up with a few people while he was down in Christchurch, including Gary and Karen, Megan, Bertie, Jenny (who stayed with), Dan and Rochelle, Tory, Pat and Marjie, Murray and Leigh and Julie and Murray:

 
I went down to Christchurch to present some of my research at the Career Development Association conference at Ara at the beginning of the month. I also stayed with Jenny, and we went shopping! We also tried a couple of different restaurants (Moroccan, and Thai), which was really good. My conference presentation seemed to go pretty well.  

In the middle of the month I reprised it with the Nelson Marlborough Branch of the Association. 

Jan and I went to the reopening of the Suter Gallery on 2 October. Boy, that building upgrade was a long time in the making: somewhere around a decade. But worth it, as the place looks fantastic. We got a tour of the facility, and a preview of the latest exhibitions. And found our names on the wall as benefactors, which was quite cool.

We caught up with Magda & David at Ambrosia in Richmond, which was great. And, at long last, I've put together a photo album for their wedding. It's their wedding anniversary on 28 November, so is rather timely, as the poor guys have been waiting for almost a whole year for me to get my act together!

Jan & I have been watching the US series, Mr Robot. While I enjoyed the first series, series two proved quite a disappointment. By episode three it had lost me, though Jan persevered to the end. The other interesting watch has been the two Morse series prequels: entitled "Endeavour". Not bad.

The Stanton migraine protocol that I have been (roughly) following since May seems to be working. No migraines now for 150 days and counting. This has been achieved by cutting out pretty much all carbs - except potatoes - and having as little sugar as possible. So limited alcohol, and next to no bread, crackers, oats and seeds. Only one coffee per day, and no tea. It was pretty hard at first, but I just had to ask myself what I would rather have: a lolly/cup of tea/dessert or a migraine. No choice, really. The bonus is you can have lots more fat and salt. If you are interested in knowing more about it, read Angela's book here, or apply to join the FB page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/219182458276615/

We caught up with Gary and Karen in Nelson - they came up for Gary to compete in the Abel Tasman Challenge. Karen went coffee drinking ;-D

Justine came to stay for a few days. We went shopping. I bought new boots (which I love) from Whitwells. So did Justine: bright red suede boots - gorgeous! Justine, Betty, Peter & I had lunch at Toad Hall, and Justine captured a piece of Motueka toilet wisdom:

We did quite a lot of shopping, 'did' the market, had breakfast at Panama, had fish and chips at the Smokehouse and a beer at the Golden Bear, BBQd, visited Dawn, and enjoyed the coming of summer. We had a lovely time, and it was over all too soon. The best thing is that she is likely to be back in our neck of the woods next March or April, so we will be able to catch up again then :-)

One of Justine's purchases: a Jill Main Pohutukawa & Wild Rose cuff

I took Tracey & Warren's daughter Erica to make a necklace for her birthday at the Bead Gallery. I suspect that I might have had more fun than she had! Warren has been biking in Vietnam:

Kim and Geoff came up to Nelson for Kim's birthday. They came to stay for a couple of days - with Baxter - which was lovely:

 

I am still waiting to hear whether there are any changes needed for my PhD application. One of my referees had trouble uploading their referee report, so that has stalled the process.

Mid-month, Jan & I caught up with Sharon & Ian at Jellyfish in Mapua for lunch to talk about putting together an album to celebrate the Nullarbor train trip. I had made a video of the trip which I showed them... and filmed their expressions as they watched:
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Happy birthdays to Marjie, Sandra, Amy, Uncle Norman, Dawnie, Lara, Justine, Jeremy, Donna, and Neil this month!
 

 Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - September 2016

Hello all,
We have had yet another busy month. Jan has been studying flat out, and I have been trying to find time to get my PhD application prepared and into Griffith University. It is now submitted, and I only need to wait to hear whether I will be accepted, or what changes need to be made.

Jan and I went to the Gecko Theatre for a movie a few weeks ago, and watched "A Month of Sundays", which was a really nice movie. OK, it was largely focused on death, but it had dignity and gentle humour. I liked it. And we had a nice view of the moon, Mars and - I think - Jupiter on the way:

 
We went to Jellyfish at Mapua for lunch on Jan's birthday, which was really nice. Max and Karen, Erica and Tracey, Mike and Donna, my folks, Dawn, Kathleen, Frits and Amy all came. We had a very good time.

One Friday night we caught up with the Cools's for dinner - easy-care fish and chips from the Upper Moutere Takeaway straight over the road. Fabulous. But Renate still made a fantastically delicious birthday cake for Jan that we all ate far too much of.

Getting some nice sunrises now:

The Subaru has been in and out of the garage with a steering pump issue... which turned out to be a blocked hose, in the end. That was after a reconditioned pump had been fitted. Ouch.

Jan has been down to Christchurch for the first half of a health and safety certification course, and has caught up with quite a few of the Cantabrians. He has been staying with Jenny, and goes back down in a couple of weeks for the next half, followed by an exam the day after Labour Day. 

I go down to Christchurch next week for a conference (I am presenting on some research that myself and a colleague have been doing on employer use of cybervetting), and I too am staying at 'Hotel Ladley' :-)

Speaking of Jenny, she, Tracey & Erica have done the Abel Tasman track. Jan & I picked them up at Marahau, after they had walked down from Wainui Inlet. They had had a great - and, despite the rain over Nelson-way this week, a dry - time. Well: maybe from Jen's point of view, an "OK" time!

Luckily, in the last week of the month, I had study break, which has enabled me to do some of that research for the CDANZ conference (to be delivered next week), and get on top of the administration tasks. Both my research and Sports PR students are now mostly well on the way with their projects, and I have finished with lectures on those papers, so now only student mentoring and marking remains. While lectures still continue for my Leadership paper, the load-lightening on the other papers helps to gain a bit of free (well... free-er!) time.

Our road has been graded, and, although the weather has not been that dry, our driveway is now looking pretty good.
  

Jan, my Mum and I went to the Nelson Symphony Orchestra's "Solo Spotlight" concert, where eight very talented young performers entertained us. It reinforces that here are some very committed young musicians and singers out there, and it was a privilege to be able to listen.

Happy birthday to Bertie, Robert, Becks, Jenny, Uta, KT, Ana Silvia, Guy, Barb, Kelly, Erica, Julie, Tracey, and Hartmut. 

We are really looking forward in November to seeing Holger, Dieter and Gudrun: can't wait!

More next month :-)


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - August 2016

Hi All,

A few of you have been mentioning of late that you miss our news updates.

My workload has significantly increased over the past two years, which is why - I think - some things have had to slip. However, family connections should not be one of those things, because I think it's important.

But at the same time, I have have been doing a bit of research on what helps people get through the PhDs, and funnily enough, a key thing is simply writing. So in order to hone my writing muscles, last November I signed up to a website kept by a couple of Californians, called 750words. The idea behind Buster and Kellianne's website is that you write 750 words every day, and that kickstarts your creativity and builds your writing habit.

So since 11 November last year I have kept a daily dairy, and have written lots of my business blog posts through this mechanism. iin other words, I have been writing up what Jan and I have been doing, but I just haven't been posting it to our family blog.

I have given myself a metaphorical kick in the backside, and am going to aim to upload our news every two months as two short 'monthly' written updates write updates rather than creating videos or posting images (because it takes less thinking time, and is therefore 'easier'). I will, as usual, send out the email links to you once more as soon as I've uploaded.

So. What follows is a link to each month which you can click through to all that we have done this year since I caught you all up last in January, with August's news below these links:

• February: Westport to spectate at the Buller Half Marathon, PhD derail, Frits's birthday celebration
• March: harvest time and Taupo
• April: mega-migraine, visitors, puppy yearnings and movies
• May: Concert, friends, dogs and nature
• June: Wrist surgery, lunches, lakes and Uncle Eddie
• July: Victoria leadership lecture trip, driving, mid-winter Xmas, orchestra, new Uni

This month Jan played in the Stabat Mater, a mass for peace, with the Nelson Civic Choir:

Jan caught up with Gary and Karen when they did the Queen Charlotte track in Marlborough recently, along with Max and Karen, Tracey and Erica:

Towards the end of the month we flew to Sydney, then hopped on a train, and travelled four days across the Nullarbor to Perth. Why would we do that? A friend of ours, Ian, was having a pretty significant birthday, and had always wanted to do the trip. Ian and Sharon were going, and had asked a few other people if they wanted to go. Jan had always wanted to do a longer train trip, and I was reasonably keen, so we teed it up.

The timing meant I had to miss a week of lectures, but I had planned that week in back in May, so there was no problem. I set tests and tutorial work for the week so the students weren't disadvantaged.

We started in Sydney with a delicious birthday dinner for Ian at Essen, a German restaurant close by UTS (and just down the road from the Mercure, where we stayed overnight).

The next day, Sharon's cousin Glenn took us out for lunch to the Sydney Fish Market, where we ate far too much gorgeous fish, and I finally tried Barramundi. A bit too soft in texture for me, but Jan loved it. 

At 2pm we rocked up at the train station, and were shown to our berths. Despite being small, the cabins contained all you needed, and were more spacious than I thought they would be. We had four days of enforced idleness, looking at the world going past. Jan had some study to do, and I spent a couple of hours each day reading and writing my PhD research methodology. The rest of the time we were playing games, walking up and down the train, talking to people, taking photos, and listening to books and music... and eating.

Man alive, they fed you well. Everything was included: snack food, morning and afternoon tea, coffee, teas, cocktails, bubbly... wow.

We stopped at Broken Hills for three hours on the first full day, the next day for the afternoon and evening in Adelaide, then Cook on the third day for half an hour, followed by dinner under the stars for a couple of freezing hours at Rawlinna (and pretty much only sitting down), then no stops on the last day until we hit Perth. 

We were supposed to do a walking tour in Adelaide, but we found that they were going to take an hour and a half to walk a couple of kilometres, so we cut out of the tour and did our own walking tour through the CBD, just meeting up with the rest of the company at the Adelaide Wine Centre, in time for dinner.

The  age of most of the passengers looked to be 60s to 80s, so I felt rather too young. They were all nice enough people, but it did feel a bit like a retirement village.

For me it was an OK experience. Jan really enjoyed it. I found it a bit too confining, as there was not enough opportunity to walk around on the third and fourth day; although I had really thought that it would be Jan who felt that way, not myself.

One of my work colleagues, Sue, has done the Trans-Siberian, and said that that was a great trip. That might be worth doing. She and Steve had stayed at Lake Baikal in the middle of the trip, which I think saved them from going stir crazy from the confinement.

When we got to Perth, we met up with Robyn, one of the Nayland old girls. Robyn used to work with my father at MAF, and used to play hockey for Waimai. She hosted us, toured us around Perth, and had us to stay at her place. We got to see Kings Park, South Perth, Fremantle, Victoria city and up the coast to Woodvale. We had a lovely walk along the new waterfront development in the CBD. It is going to be quite spectacular when it is finished. The bell tower on the waterfront has used bells imported from St Martin’s in the Fields in London for its carillon. It is also going to cast a new ANZAC bell as a ‘great bell’ shortly, which will be quite cool. 

It is a very picturesque place, with lots of green areas, and some really interesting development. It has been hit by the mining downturn, but I think that is something that is affecting all of Australia at present. 

I will create a movie from the trip photos and video sometime soon, and will post it below. For now though, just a few key photos:

Our flight home was pretty uneventful - aside from neither of us being able to sleep. Oh, and the movie that Jeremy was in - A Letter for Hope - was on the AirNZ film list on plane when we flew home (I was so excited)!

I will be down in Christchurch in October, as I am presenting some research that a colleague and I at NMIT are doing on employer cybervetting. Staying with Jenny.

Jan too is in Chch in September and October - a week each month for his NEBOSH course. I am sure he would love to catch up with as many Cantabrians as he can :-)

My sister is, I think, heading off to America in November, and I assume that sometime soon after that we will get a date for the wedding... with hopefully enough time to arrange good flights to Maryland to help celebrate.


Sam (& Jan).