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

News from Nelson - August 2018

Hello again everyone,
And welcome to our family news update.

I don't think anything has calmed down for us since our last update. We are both still too busy. Jan is currently actively looking for another engineering job, which will probably end up being either overseas or outside Nelson. This will mean either an international commute' or a weekly commute: neither of which I am that happy about, but he is not happy where he is, so something has to change.W

Hopefully there will be an update about his next professional move soon... and with luck, it won't take him too far away.

And there is change for me too. After a lot of discussion I have made the difficult decision to withdraw from my PhD. On the last day of the month, I wrote my resignation letter to Griffith. This is a soft-close, however. I will keep working on my confirmation document quietly on my own, then, either in February or in July next year, I will reapply. 

In the meantime I have two other research projects to complete. I will finish both of those, and will not take anything else on. If I have only teaching and my PhD to do, I will re-enrol. If not, I will postpone until that is the case. Well: that's the theory, anyhow!

Jan is heading to Brisbane next month for a few days at a Safety workshop with Worksafe Australia, hosted by Sidney Dekker from Griffith. He is looking forward to catching up with Tania - and possibly Tina, too. I am still trying to decide whether I can go along as well, but I don't know yet if we can get someone to dog-sit... I have an Australia flight that I have cancelled from my PhD confirmation defense which I have to use before February. 

Jan's old school mates from Naenae are all heading off to Fiji for a joint 50th birthday party in July next year. Planning has already started, and Jan is really looking forward to it. I am more conflicted: not because of going with the Hutties (which will be great!) but because we will be putting money into a dictatorship ...which I am unhappy about. However, as Jan points out, at least we can find out from Tina the best places to go!!

Our next-door neighbour, Simon, has nearly got a completed house. It will now be a matter of weeks before his place is finished. 

And further down the valley, the land and house formerly belonging to Suzie and Kevin has been bought by a couple from Murchison - Alan and Adina - who used to run a boarding kennel. They seem very nice, and have horses. It is lovely to walk down the road and have an equine chat over the fence. Finn was freaked out the first time, but is thoroughly enjoying having nose to nose sniffs now.

Jan got part-way through getting his experimental speakers installed... and stalled. If he gets more time by having more leave in a new job, it will be good to get these finished off.

The days are getting noticably longer, with the sun still being up as we are heading home. It has got a lot warmer now, and we have stopped having a fire at night.

We are both in good health, and our immediate families here are in good health.

Hope to catch up with you all soon!


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - August 2017

Hi everyone,
I hope you are all in good health.

As I mentioned last month, my semester started well, and the students are now well underway with their projects. I have a great team of supervisors, and we are all only directly supervising 9 students each. Whew: it is like night and day compared to the beginning of previous semesters. Some students will still struggle, but I hope that we can get them all to 'competent' level. We have good library and mentor support for the international students, and enough of the mentors are coming to our weekly supervisor meetings to share the knowledge around about exactly what the expectations are. 

In addition to the FutureLearn courses I told you about last month, I started another MOOC this month which ran for four weeks through Berkley on Academic and Business Writing. It was an OK course, and I did learn some new things. This is all in support of getting a couple of academic publications submitted toward the end of this year... though I am running out of time, rather!

My family celebrated my brother's birthday at Nahm, a Vietnamese restaurant along the waterfront. They do lovely food - and there are good options for people with all the restrictions I now have in order to avoid migraines (and the migraine avoidance is going very well).

I was at the hairdressers when Katherine and Craig walked in, on a spur of the moment weekend trip to Nelson. We caught up with them for dinner at E-Street (East Street), a local vegetarian restaurant. A serendipidous meeting and a lovely night out.

Jan is starting to need a bit more focus... and is borrowing my magifying glasses! He suits them better than I do though :-(

As usual this month, although the mornings were crisp we had some gorgeous clear days. Lovely. And easy for Bonnie to cope with a good long walk. The cancerous tumour on her leg has been very slow growing (thank goodness) and it is not yet impeding her at all, nor is it causing her any pain. As Jan keeps saying, "She doesn't know she has it, and we aren't telling her"! Boo has been taking herself off for walks during the day. She doesn't seem to have been getting herself into trouble, but it does remind me that there is an element of "Well, if you don't take me for a walk, I will have to take myself" which is spurring me to take them both for a walk morning and evening, regardless of the weather.
 

Jan is going to sell his motorbike and get a BMW later this year. John is in charge of the advertising, sale and new purchase. The BMW should be here early December, but will depend on what John manages to find in Europe between now and then.

It has taken us a while, but we have started to buy Oaklands milk. This is A2 milk (read more on this here), locally produced, and we self-fill our own bottles in a Latreria machine (very cute!). It has cut our plastic recycling down significantly... the best plastic being the plastic you don't buy or use. You get a wee 'token' - like a key fob - which you slide into the machine and the chip holds your balance. You load funds onto it by putting notes into a slot. The milk is very nice: not homogenised, and doesn't go off as quickly as the supermarket milk does.

We had afternoon tea with my Mother a couple of times, and visited Uncle Norman as much as we could in the nursing home - Kensington Court in Stoke. He is continuing to be plagued by ulcers and is steadily growing more frail. My Mother has not managed to visit him very often as she has had a couple of colds, following on from her pneumonia in June. 

While Jan is enjoying only working three days a week, I am sensing quite a bit of edginess in him. He has started to play in a quartet on Monday mornings, but whether that will be enough to structure his week will remain to be seen!

Until next time

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).