News from Nelson - August 2019

Hello again,

Another month has rolled around, and it is now September, and time to recount the happenings of August. 

I caught up with Bridget, Warren, Tracey, and Erica; Warren and Erica; Kathleen and Frits, at Jellyfish in Mapua; WOW in Stoke; and Toad Hall respectively.

Erica's new (second-hand) bike

There were no human illnesses this month, but Boo got very sick, and spent a week in and out of the vets, and was on a drip for a day. They think that she ate something horrible which badly upset her stomach. She seems relatively OK now, but I was quite worried for a while. She had to come to work for a day with me during her recovery as she needed feeding in tiny amounts several times during the day. She was quite unsettled, though the doggy people in the office were great about keeping her distracted while I had student supervision meetings, and delivered lectures.

Boo with her drip-bandage still on

The semester is well underway and everything has settled down. Assignment work is coming in, the usual conversations are being had. As usual, I have some challenging students and some superb ones: and, as usual, if I wasn't vigilant, the superb ones would only get 20% of my attention while the challenging ones would be the time-sucks. I set 15 minute appointments, which helps to ring-fence those who are not doing the work.

I have another Master's supervisee just starting, as my current one is about to finish. I will have a second one starting soon as well: my first supervisee didn't pass the thesis the first time around, but has reapplied and is coming back for a second bite at it later in September. What is surprising is that they have requested to have me as a supervisor again. 

There is a new Master's Co-ordinator in the school who seems really onto it, and I am hoping that they will lead a thorough review of systems and materials. The trouble with new programmes like NMIT's Masters is that the development has been somewhat piecemeal, and it now needs a systemic review. What I have seen thus far seems to be identifying the type of inconsistencies which I have noted... which is reassuring. 

While I am enjoying the Master's supervision, I am comfortable teaching at under-grad. However, I am getting more requests to teach at post-grad, and I have the feeling that I need to start making some strategic choices. I am just not yet sure what those choices should be... so I have some thinking to do.

I had a couple of very, very cold days after rain where the rain froze in slippery puddles on the deck. Warren came out and drilled some drain holes in the timbers to prevent the water pooling where the planks have completely closed up with the rain, which was great. It should reduce the risk of falls, hopefully. 

Sheet ice on the decking

I have had a half-truck load of kiln-dried timber delivered by another friend, Kevin, which was great. I was a bit worried about running out of dry timber, but a week after the wood was delivered, it suddenly started getting warm enough to not need the fire. Still, better to be safe than sorry.

I discovered the documentaries of curator Lucy Worsley, and have watched everything I can find on YouTube. While I have watched documentaries created by her - for BBC or Channel 4 - in the past, I didn't realise quite how much of a body of work she had put together. It was rather educational.

A friend of mine is making jewellery from recycled souvenir teaspoons, and I have been going around the second-hand and charity shops finding interesting souvenir samples for her. In return she has made me several sterling silver pieces, which has been lovely. I am very lucky: 

Tina De Suza's lovely creations from https://www.tinadesuza.com/

The views remain great from here, and dawn is arriving earlier and earlier with each passing week.

With regard to location, Jan is still in North America. I am still in Nelson. It will be nearly three months this time that he will have been away for by the time I see him next. He will be back at the end of October for his Dad's 80th birthday celebrations. While this is a good reason to be coming home later, it is a long time for him to have been away. There is - of course - a huge pile of work on the land for him to get through on his return. He will only be here for a week though, so not much will get done, I suspect. We will have to pay builders, fencers or general contractors to bridge the gap, which will be expensive. 

Jan has gone out twice on the weekend since he has been in Rock Hill. He found some good coffee at a French-style cafe, and walked around a water treatment plant:

Jan & his colleagues have been eating out, Jan has been using the pool at the hotel, and they are all encouraged to use the BBQ outside rather than cooking in their rooms. The pool facilities are pretty good, but the place looks like a concrete industrial park, as you can see from the photos below. 

We are off to Germany, Hungary and Croatia in November/December for the Danube cruise. Actual plans to come. Will update you all in another month... hopefully with our plans for 2020.

Sam

Panasonic HDC-SD20 Video Camera

The cable on my video camera has died, but I am not sure where it has failed. There are a number of sections, including three parts as per the photo immediately below: the power to adaptor cable; the adaptor (brick) and the adaptor to camera cable. This cable which plugs into the back of the camera has a rectangular end with three holes (next image). 

Below are all the elements with the exception of the camera itself (HDC-SD20)

News from Nelson - July 2019

Hi everyone!
I hope you have all had a good month.

This month has been both quiet and busy, with Jan arriving home at the end of the first week, us going to Fiji for a week in the middle, the NMIT semester starting, and him leaving again in the last week of the month.

I have had some problems with tennis elbow. I initially thought that it was due to computing, so decided to swap mouse hands, and see what happened. The result: absolutely no change. The tennis elbow continues unabated. I have told the Doctor - my first visit in two years - but have no clear idea of what is causing it. I will probably need to visit the physio and see what they suggest.

Interestingly, I have also taken the dogs off all wheat products. Finn was getting inflamed ears and feet (a skin yeast goes pathogenic at coat-change times), so I thought that taking him off simple carbohydrates might possibly have an impact. I decided to do an experiment: take them both off wheat and white rice, substituting brown rice, and see if there was any appreciable difference. Well, it staggered me that Boo, who has been going to the canine physiotherapist for exercises on her lower spine as she has the early signs of Ankylosing spondylitis, appears to have had the greatest benefit. Her arthritis symptoms have largely disappeared. The idea with the canine physio visits is that the exercises that we set up will postpone the progression of arthritic decomposition for as long as possible. It was totally unexpected - after six months of visits - that in one month many the symptoms would have vanished. We were all gob-smacked. Additionally, Finn's itchy ears have not recurred, but I will only consider the brown-rice-shift a success if he does not get a recurrence in spring.

My sister and I were talking about Good Omens, the Amazon series based on the book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. She decided to get a subscription to Amazon - bless her - so we could both watch the series. Then I had to wait until Jan got home so we could watch it together. That was a VERY difficult few days. Jan arrived in the first week of the month, and each night we watched an episode or two of Good Omens. The music for the series is haunting, and I am still hearing it in my head now, a month later (listen here, watch the credits here). Damn, that was/is a good series. For P'Terry fans, this works. No higher praise can be levelled. However, I can see how others may be a bit 'meh' about it. If you don't know the book, and the nearly thirty years it has taken to get this to the small screen, you might be a bit bewildered by the fuss.

For the first week, Jan was reunited with his chainsaw, and used it almost daily. He has tidied up some trees, cut firewood, and we have reorganised the wood storage in the shed so we know what is newly cut and what is ready for use. A lot of tidying up. White plastic caps now cover the unused speaker wires in the ceiling, I have an in-floor plug under the couch for my lamp, and a number of other small jobs were completed. We also ordered a tunnel house, which we will put up in September when Jan is back next, so I can get the spring veges started and not susceptible to late frosts. In his last week, Jan prepared the base for the foundation to install the tunnel house on, and I will get a truckload of gravel in for the foundation before Jan gets back. Steve, one of our neighbours, and Jan put in the posts for the fence around the house. Steve is planning on coming up to knock the waratahs in over the coming few weeks.

I am still selling off stuff that we have too many of: it is amazing how many corners we have surplus to requirements kit stashed in. Every time I open a cupboard and think "Why do we have three of these?" I put one or two aside to sell or donate.

Our "50th in Fiji" trip did not start auspiciously: our flight from Nelson was cancelled due to an engineering problem. We could not get to Auckland in time to connect to our Fiji trip. We put our travel back a day, and left the next day, earlier. This time we got to Auckland, to Nadi and to our connecting ferry at Denarau - after an apéritif stop over at the Gateway Hotel - and onto Plantation Island via the Malolo Cat. We were greeted at the jetty on the island by Sam and Moose, Mike and Birthe, Tias, Louis and Noah, which was unexpected, and wonderful. Mike thrust a bubbly into my hands, and I was suddenly on holiday. Doug, Morv, Katie, Callum, Lorna, Gav, Tris, Helen and Kish arrived the next day, followed the day after by the McLarins. Each day we convened for breakfast at 8.30 for a two hour breakfast - or longer - in the main buffet restaurant. There was a great array of food, including more than enough for someone on keto. Great, un-tinkered with food. Each night we either ate in the buffet restaurant, or in the posher, Black Coral restaurant (which, as there were 23 of us, we had to book). The resort had no TV, to the horror of the cricket fans amongst us, as the match between NZ and the UK was scheduled during our stay. It was enough for those intrepid fans to walk to one of the watering holes at the next resort along, to have a little something for the journey, and to watch the game until chucking out time. There were some fans who got lost on the return journey, and who have tales of many and varied security guard encounters. We slept on, oblivious.

The water was relatively warm, and the weather pretty good. There was much kayaking, Hobie catting, swimming and snorkelling, even from yours truly, despite my deep and abiding loathing of water. I even managed to get bitten by sea lice. We chartered a boat and went out as a group, with the more intrepid amongst us snorkelling outside the reef - read "not me" - and a safer dive around an island in a marine reserve. We visited Castaway Island Resort (an island close to where Tom Hanks filmed Castaway) which was rather posh; and walked a 15 k round-trip to Solevu village which was not posh, but was very interesting.

There was a lot of catching up done by the Hutties, and many old tales retold. Some gin went west, there were not too many sore heads, and the poker night was cancelled due to a desire for early bed-times on the part of some of the players. If someone had suggested that this might even be a thing ten years ago, I would have wet my pants laughing.

The offspring did dive courses and managed to entertain themselves wisely, seeming remarkably sober and sensible. Noah had a birthday on the island and we sang happy birthday to him in public, and no doubt embarrassed him roundly.

I woke early and walked each day before it got hot, usually going out for three ks or so before 7.30am. It was really nice having been active early in the day, as I could then justify being as lazy as all get out later if I felt like it. The week was over before we knew it, and were returned via Christchurch, to grey, rainy skies. No more 29 degrees.

The second semester has started, and I have the usual chaos that is the beginning of the next cohort. NMIT is asking me to do more Masters supervision and some 800 course teaching, so I am trying to decide between work and study. If I want to push on with my PhD, I must make the time to research. Hmm. Do I want to earn more, or learn more? Now there is a philosophical question.

After our return from Fiji it seemed like the matter of moments before I was dropping Jan off at the airport to return to the USA for his next stint, this time in South Carolina, at a place called Rock Hill.

Jan caught up with a number of people while he was here, but it was impossible to fit everyone in. This way of being is not so much living as 'waiting room'. Jan is enjoying his work. I am enjoying my work. The tricky part is that I am not enjoying Jan's work. What we do about it remains to be seen, but here we are, 7 months down the track, with him still spending 80%+ of his time off-shore.

I will catch up with you all again in a month. Take care


Sam (& Jan on another continent)