News from Nelson – November 2 2007

Hi All,

I hope this finds you all feeling fit and well.

Our holiday in Sydney was fine. We went to the Technology & Maritime museums, had a day out on the ferries, went to Manly, went to the Opera House & the Botanical Gardens, watched fireworks & a Regimental band concert, visited the Museum of Contemporary Art & the Art Gallery NSW, and did a tiny bit of shopping.

We went on board the replica HMB Endeavour - specifically commissioned by the Australian Maritime Museum - which was really interesting. We hadn't realised that the original vessel had been converted from a coal cat collier to a South Pacific exploration vessel; 96 officers & crew lived on board with very, very tight space below decks. Jan was walking almost bent double in many places. Lots of opportunity for head-cracking! Cook's original vessel went down off Rhode Island USA in 1778 blockading the French, and the replica Bark was finally commissioned in 1994. The only structural differences between the replica and the original are the timbers and the metals used. If you are interested, go to http://www.anmm.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=439.

We saw a camera that we will think about buying (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18), but we decided we could buy it more cheaply in New Zealand. Once we get a chance to catch our breath we will start having a look around.

We walked at least 5k each day - and some days were double that, which was great.

However, we both came back from Sydney feeling tired! It was fairly hot over there, but we came home to the same temperatures here. It was 29 degrees inside here on Sunday evening, in the hall (one of the cooler parts of the house), with all the curtains having been closed against the sun and the windows open all day. Summer is apparently with us.

This week we are back into Xmas function mode; tonight we had a Catamaran harbour cruise for the Business Development Company (whose Board I chair), which was just lovely. Tomorrow night we are meeting Jenny L at the airport for a coffee & then have my brother's partner Donna's birthday party. Then Thursday night we have Dawn coming around for drinkies & a catch up. Saturday night we have "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" night organised with the Rotary club - goodness knows where we are going! - and next Tuesday night we have the Chamber of Commerce Xmas do. Next Weds is the Career Practitioner Association Xmas do; Thursday is Rotary's Xmas do and Friday we have been invited to the Independent Electrical Merchants' Xmas dinner. So far, the week starting the 10th we have nothing on aside from coming to Wllg on the Friday!

I am flat out at present preparing for delivering a semester's study in just eight weeks. At least it looks like I will only have a dozen students, which will be nice. Jan is busy at work commissioning some new machinery so that is keeping him busy too.

We would love to catch up with any of you who are in Wllg on Saturday December 15th at Clarks in the Library for lunch at 12.30pm. We were going to try & organise a BBQ at Sonia & Guy's new house, but we simply don't have enough time as we have to be at a ballet recital somewhere in central Wllg for Lara by 4pm. Let us know if you can make it! We would love to see you all.

There are no other trips away planned for this year - we will have to get down to Chch sometime before Easter, but we will leave organising that until after the silly season.

Take care, all of you. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson – November 2007

Hi all,

I hope you are all feeling fit and healthy!

As I said last time, we had started looking at house plans, and are going to put together a creative brief & go to an architect. But we haven't done it yet! Maybe during our holiday in Oz next week.

We had a great night at Woollaston Estates listening to Viva, accompanied by a fantastic Russian trumpet player; they were just fabulous. What a great night that was.

The wind up to the silly season seems to come a little earlier each year - we had something on every night last week and this week is the same. Thank goodness we are away for a large chunk of the rest of the month!

Congrats to Yi & Paula who have a brand spanking new wee girl called Zofia. I think they are all coping with life!

Hui-Ping was in Nelson a couple of weekends ago, and we took both her & Cornish out to the land. Jan was all set to do some spraying, but got stymied by the weather - it rained. So we abandoned all thought of work and slid off to the Mot Valley Café, which is run by a German guy who grows lots of his own produce and bakes his own bread. We had a great lunch there, the sun came out & we drank pinot gris in the sun. Lovely.

And after talking about all this hedonism, this is a real recycling and environmental footprint awareness year for us. Truly! While we aren't getting really green, we are consciously trying to lessen our impacts. Aside from the usual (hanging the washing on the clothesline, vege garden and compost), we have been trying a bit harder.

I have been using the library very regularly, borrowing books from other people and buying second-hand books where I really want to own something. Our local library has also added in a DVD loan service which has been great, as they have movies that you don't get at mainstream video shops (for only $2 hire, as well).

Jan is taking his motorbike to work when the weather is fine, to keep our car use down, and I am trying very hard to make only one trip into town each day - if I can't avoid using the car altogether, that is.

Despite recycling cardboard and glass, we haven't managed to make a significant impact on reducing our plastic rubbish. I use cloth bags & avoid plastic grocery bags, but I can't see my way around all the plastic milk bottles and things. We try to buy larger items so we use less plastic - or refills, although they are often not very economical. The plastic pile, while not enormous, is still there and is very annoying. However, we will keep working on it :-)

We are trying to decide whether we should buy a soda stream to make sparkling mineral water or soda water to help cut down on plastic. I would ideally like to get one on the Fly Buys points. I email & ecard... wherever possible go electronic; bills, payments, invoices, pdfs rather than hardcopy. I have bought an online subscription to the newspaper so I am not consuming trees for my daily media fix. We have a 'no circulars' sign on the letterbox. We start the fire with ancient client files and our paper rubbish.

We have gone through all our old videos and DVDs, our old electronics and computer stuff, trying to get rid of things that we haven't used, or that we have left over from old systems. I am amazed how much has been 'recycled' on TradeMe. We still have lots of cabling to go through & get rid of, but I need Jan's expertise on exactly what the specs are for each of those, so that can wait until after we get back from Oz.

I have also helped some friends from just down the street load all sorts of furniture & household stuff like chests, lamps and glasses onto TradeMe for sale, and they sold all but two items. They are about to move into a new house, so getting some $ and clearing out was excellent for them.

Jan has brought a little up from the garage and sold it, but hasn't really had the time to go through and really decide what really is surplus to requirements (the garage is so full you can hardly get in there as well!). Also something to tackle after his exam & our trip to Oz.

TradeMe doesn't work well for selling books, in our experience. However, we have another outlet for recycling books & magazines in Nelson; Founders Park houses a load of old Nelson buildings & heritage displays which they keep in part maintained via an annual book fair. So while we wouldn't part with most of our books, I do have a load of out-of-date business studies text books that will become donations for the next book fair. The fair - staffed by volunteers - runs for a week at Queen's Birthday weekend, and usually raises $100,000.

Another thing that's happened recently is that the Tasman District Council has bought into a website called terranova.org.nz, which is sort of a message board for people with recyclable items to hook up with people who want things, NZ-wide. A very good idea, and I am wondering if we could find a use for our plastics there... !

If any of you have any ideas or solutions about what else we can do to lessen our environmental impacts, please let us know. I have started a list that you can access (if you are interested) via the link underneath the photos on this page.

Well, next week we are away to Sydney. Our Wellington trip is on December 14-16, which will be a good family catch up for Tina's birthday, and everyone else we can possibly fit in... maybe a lunch at Clarks on Saturday?

Take care, everyone. Alles liebe :-)

Sam & Jan