News from Nelson - October 2019

Hi everyone,
Another month has rolled around already - and suddenly the end of the year is rushing toward us.

This month has been relatively quiet for me. We had two weeks of study break so I was mainly playing catch-ups on administration, marking and planning for next year. I have planned a new Leadership course for Semester 2 of 2020, and set up a new Moodle site for some students who need to complete the old version - which is now retired - over summer school. The break arrived just at the right time to do that work.

Jenny and Tracey came out to Rose Road for a night of debauchery, celebrating Tracey's and Jennie's birthdays. There were nearly hangovers in the morning, but we did do a lot of talking, a lot of laughing and even managed to avoid too much smartphone time while we were together!

Jan's work in the US has appeared to become pretty much routine, and - being without a car - he pretty much only went to work and back to the accommodation for the month. However, he had taken a couple of photos:

Jan was back in Kiwiland briefly in the last week of October, mainly to attend Hartmut's 80th birthday. To get as many of the jobs that had piled up at Rose Road done as we could, we flew up to Wellington and back on the one day. Tina had booked the Tugboat Restaurant by the Freyberg Pool on Oriental Parade and everyone had a lovely time. There were no gifts to be given, so people made things: cards were made using old photographs; Lara played guitar and sang one of her own songs; Otto played violin; and we made marzipan and almond chocolates. Tina had a slideshow of many of the old family photos. Joerg made a very moving speech about the gifts that Hartmut had given him. Jan spoke about bringing the family on an adventure to New Zealand which gave the entire family opportunities that may well have been closed to them if they had stayed in Germany. A very nice afternoon, ended by kaffee und kuchen.

I was surprised on our way back to Nelson from Hartmut's birthday party to see that Wellington airport had only been established in 1959. Perhaps it had been named something else, or been an aeroclub ground before that.

The travel agents who are organising the Danube Cruise tour group from NZ got the group together for another event, luckily held while Jan was home. Everyone except our friends Sharon & Ian were able to attend. We got our packs of materials, and now know what is going to be available each day. We will start planning what exactly we want to do and see closer to time, next month.

Jan has dropped some more trees so that we have a few down and drying ready to saw up into rounds over summer, when I hope he will be home for a couple of months (though this time off has not yet been confirmed - sigh). With spring being well advanced, the weather was good enough to get out and have coffee at a couple of local cafes, even with the dogs.

Thanks to Warren, and with Jan being home, the tunnel house is almost complete. The gravel base was laid, the frame has been secured to tar-painted railway sleepers, and those have been fixed to the ground using reinforcing steel rods.

I say almost because unfortunately the glass louvres for the window at the back arrived broken. The company is re-sending them, and they should be here this week coming. At least I will be able to fit these on my own!

My old office desk has been re-purposed as a planting table, but I need to find some old plastic drums or mussel buoys which we can (a) have off the ground to avoid too much bending, and (b) fill with compost and use for planters. But I need to have the irrigation system worked out before we start that, and, realistically - as we are going to be in Europe for a month - all that is best to wait until we get back at Christmas.

While Jan was here he put up a fence around the vege garden which is HOPEFULLY dog proof. I have planted out Lebanese cucumbers, courgette, Rapunzel, spinach and tomatoes. The silver beet has bolted already, so I am busy converting that into dog veges and freezing it for our house-sitter to feed the dogs while we are away.

It was great to have Jan home, but also horrible to have him go again so quickly. It seemed like five minutes before I was saying goodbye to him at the airport again.

As usual, the weather and the views have been lovely:

Our Europe trip is now organised, and we both arrive into Munchen on 23 November, then catch the train to Ulm, arriving late afternoon. We leave Ulm for Budapest on the evening of 26 November, then - after much Christmas Market river cruising - we end the organised part of our tour in Prague on the morning of 10 December when we meet Justine. We have a few days in Prague seeing the sights, then head off to Stuttgart where Jan has a training course on the 13th.  We leave from Munchen to return to New Zealand on the 21st.

As we will not have a car, we hope to see as many of you who can get to Ulm or Stuttgart to see us. Please get in touch if you can make time to come to us: we would love to see you.

Back to you all with the next update in another month.


Sam (& Jan who is back in the US)

News from Nelson - October 2018

Hi everyone,
The beginning of October brought the study break with it, and some warmer weather. Unfortunately Jan has had to work, but I have been at home writing and catching up on marking; and on writing up some research I did last year to present at a CDANZ conference at the end of the month.

Barb was up in Nelson briefly with some of the Trust beneficiaries on a camp. My brother had organised a fishing charter for them to go on, which was great, and I got to catch up with them all at the Anchor Bar & Grill for lunch.

Magda arrived back in NZ for a brief visit, before she starts her new nursing job. We caught up with Jules and the twins, which was really nice: and reminds you that life goes very fast, so we need to make the most of it while we are here!

We picked up some kiln dried wood through Kevin - and used his truck to deliver it to Tracey, H & Erica now that they are out at their new place in Hira. On the way back to drop the truck off, we stopped at the Mudcastle and had a bottle and a half of bubbly with Glenys & Kevin. Boy, they do the host thing well. It was nice to see them.

Jan finished his assignment (essay), which completes this course for him. Now he gets a break until sometime next year... and he resigned from the Port Company. As he has to give two months notice, his last day will be the 30th of November.

The conference I presented at went well, and I had a good audience. Despite a very full programme, I caught up briefly with Tina; Brigitte and John; Jeremy, Otto and Lara. I even got to see Otto playing hockey (AstroTurf) although I was too under-dressed to watch outside!

The Faulkners had a 'mid-winter' shindig at their place, in the middle of spring (these things can slide a bit!). It was a good night of catching up with all the Rose Road peeps, including Zig & Lib who were just back from 6 months in Europe.

Finn is continuing to grow. He is turning into a monster...

We got the fence line on the wetland between us and the Le Gros's place cleaned up by Xaver's remote control machine. It cut through the gorse, blackberry and old man's beard in no time. This will help us to be better neighbours, by not having noxious plants right against their lovely native planting.

I got a new phone this month as my old one was continually running out of space, and I kept running out of battery charge (all the apps I use are battery hogs). I went for a Galaxy Note 9, having heard good things about it. It was a nice upgrade: a Note 4 to a Note 9 all in one go. Nice phone though!

We will go to Germany in the first week of December, and that will allow Jan to go to visit his new - potential - employer to get the detailed hammered out about the new job. We are thinking of starting in Ulm, then working up through the country. I am keen to go to Berlin, and to stay in Germany for Christmas, but Jan is not keen on either of those ideas. We will see as the planning progresses.

In July next year several of Jan's buddies are going to Fiji for a cheap, mass birthday celebration in the sun (or as sunny as it gets in Fiji in July). The planning for this event has been going since August, but we are now getting more of an idea about costs: ouch. Not very cheap, but will be very enjoyable, I am sure. We will be spending a week on Plantation Island. Flights are paid, room deposits are paid. Done.

That should all keep us out of trouble for a while.


Sam (& Jan)

News from Nelson - October 2017

Hello again!
I hope you are all fighting fit? This month was a bit smoother for us than last month: thank goodness. Everyone has stayed well.

I have been clearing out my wardrobe a little: I have gotten rid of some unworn scarves, pants, jewellery, shoes and accessories... and even a very old laptop. While that has not made a huge difference to the space consumed, getting rid of stuff seems to make a difference mentally.

Doing yet another FutureLearn MOOC on “An Intermediate Guide to Writing” from the University of Reading. This is a two part course, which should be interesting.

Lara came for a week while Otto was up in Auckland at a hockey tournament, which was lovely. I took her for a leg wax and a facial... and she stealth shot me while having a haircut. Totally at my best!

Lara spent lots of time on with Lexie, walking, talking, playing pool, and even inner-tubing down the creek. She had a few baths with a bath bombs, and we did some cooking and watched a few movies. The dogs got walked a lot, which was great. We went Op Shopping to get her some gumboots, as her feet are now larger than mine, but had to give up. We bought some at the Warehouse instead. We have caught up with Dawn - Lara and I went to visit while she was here. She now has Pekin ducks - and a couple of those have cowlicks!

Our new couch has arrived (weeks ahead of schedule), and we have taken one of our old two seaters - the least worn one - to my Mother for her lounge. Now we are hoping that the L-shaped couch arrives too... but they did say the ETA on that one was the end of January. A while to go yet.

Boo and Bonnie are quite relaxed at home: and both have found good places in the sun, now that it has finally decided to stop raining.

Smudge, Scott's bulldog, adores tummy scratches. She trails around after Jan panting at him until he does his duty. 

The sunrises continue to delight:

Jan went down to Christchurch for a two day course in October and brought home a cold, bless him. That led to me having my first cold in 18 months, and ended up in bed for a few days. I missed Anabelle's birthday because of it, so Jan went on his own, as he had recovered!

I managed to strain my medical cruciate ligament, and thought that I could walk it off - and no you can't do that, as I have found - and now have it strapped. It seems to be very slow in healing, so instead of doing my 12,000 steps per day, I am just getting to whatever distance I get to without pushing it. One of my sport & rec students showed me how to strap it properly, so hopefully it will come right.

Jan has been approached by another organisation to see if he would be interested in working for them as a safety coach, and so he is exploring options. We will see how it shapes up.

We headed off to Auckland for a few brief days at the end of the month: I had a conference to go to, and we managed to squeeze in a couple of lunches with friends (one with Morv at Mojo, one with Doug at Bird on a Wire in Takapuna) and a night out with Janet & Shells at "Pleasuredome, the musical", out in Avondale. My advice on Pleasuredome: don't bother. It is pretty fragmented, and it took me quite a long time to work out where the songs came from. Most of them were pretty hard to recognise, and the storyline was very, very weak. The highpoint was the recreated New York street scene outside, which was pretty cool, however the prices for drinks and food was pretty steep. However, if you do go, and if you value your hearing, take earplugs. It was deafeningly loud. I stuffed chewed up tissues in my ears!

We booked an apartment in Lorne Street. It was very central, and - although it was getting quite worn - it had everything we needed. We did a lot of walking. Janet was awesome, picked us up from the airport and dropped us back again, as well as ferrying us to the Pleasuredome. We also did a spot of shopping at Sylvia Park (H&M). It was really lovely to catch up: it has been so long! 

The whole show was disappointing. Never mind: I am glad we went, because going is important. The songs included the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’; Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m on Fire’; Frankie Goes To Hollywood, ‘The Pleasuredome’; Diana Ross, ‘I’m coming out’; Lou Reed ‘You’re a slick little girl’; Luther Vandross ‘The Night I Fell in Love’; Grandmaster Flash, ‘White Lines’; Hall & Oates, ‘I Can’t Go For That’; George Clinton, ‘Tweakin’; Tears for Fears, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’; Simple Minds “Don’t you forget about me'... I am sure there were more, but I didn't recognise them.

We caught the Devonport ferry on a bit of a day trip, and I visited the Anna Stretton outlet shop ;-D

Everything was going swimmingly at work, when a colleague from the IT degree died suddenly. She had leukaemia, but went downhill very quickly. One of my supervisory team was covering for the IT courses, and suddenly found herself with our colleague's entire workload. My supervisor is now off on stress leave, having tried to do it all without outside help. However, the rest of us have managed to pick up the slack, and to start the process of getting in an outside marker for the end of year reports. Thank goodness for having written up all the instructions last semester: it should make it reasonably easy for me to brief someone new. I have also been asked if I would be interested in developing and teaching a Master's course on Leadership. Oh, yes!

We caught up with Magda and David before they left for Aussie - QLD - to live. I hope to catch up with them when I am over for supervisory meetings. They don't go until the end of November, but this was their last trip to Nelson. Julie came out with Sterl and Siobhan as well. We had a great time, and though it is sad to see Magda move so far away, I am sure the move will be great for both of them.

Graeme and Julie, and my mother, have been out to Rose Road for lunch as well.  Allan and Sarah are getting married in Dunedin in January, so the family are planning a road trip south to help them celebrate.

More next month!


Sam (& Jan)