News from Nelson - July 2018

Hi everyone,

Well: we pick up from where we left off last time: we are still busy.

The funeral home who arranged my Father and Uncle's donation to Otago Medical School arranged a tree planting, so we all turned up at Saxton's Field one cold July day to plant some natives. We planted a Rimu for my Uncle, and a Tawai Whero (Red Beech) for my father. Well, Mike and Jan did the planting, and Donna, Mother and myself offered moral support. And paid for coffee across the road at Zinc afterwards :-)

Finn is growing up quickly, and is now larger and taller than Boo:

We had a lovely time with Lara and Otto during the school holidays when they came down to visit us for a week. My bedside tables turned up, so they put them together, which was great, along with Lexi from further down the road:

 

We went out for breakfast a couple of times:

 Walked up to visit Simon's new house on the ridge:

 And Lara went Op Shopping at the Sallies:

And we went to visit Dawnie, the cats, and her boarders from Germany & France:

Lambretta's opened again after earthquake strengthening. They have been closed for about six months, so it has been wonderful to go back there for wonderful coffee again! Hui-Ping and Mae came down for a weekend, and we caught up at Lambretta's, then went up to see Bill and Cornish:

Semester 2 has double the workload expected (we had 25 enrollments on my capstone paper one week out: then in the first week of the new semester I suddenly had 50 students). We have no ability to predict these numbers, and in the school itself have no idea how many enrolments are in progress. The unpredictability of the workflow is very, very frustrating. I have heard though that Deakin Uni in Oz are working with IBM's Watson AI programme to create a student management system. It would be great if the Ministry of Education here could licence that... it would certainly reduce of a whole load of planning and scheduling headaches.

I am struggling to get any work done on my PhD, and am having a bit of a panic about it. I think I might have to make some difficult decisions as my PhD defense is looming in October, and my workload at NMIT is significant. A colleague has been diagnosed with a brain tumour - picked up during a routine eye exam - so was suddenly whisked away for radiation therapy, and I and two of my other colleages have picked up her teaching load. We have absolutely no fat in the system, so any further crises, like people having a cold, become serious HR problems very quickly.

Jan is still finding his workload is not decreasing, nor is he managing to get rid of the collosal pile of admin that it generates. The job is not what it was advertised, and he is not happy about it. I think there is likely to be another job change earlier than expected. He has started the next paper for his Post-Grad Cert, having passed the first one for the year (which is great). However, he is also not enjoying the new paper, which is on Safety Ethics.

However, at least we have had some lovely sunrises and sunsets:

And we hope to catch up with you all again soon


Sam (& Jan)