News from Nelson - August 2 2010

Hi all,

I hope everyone is feeling fit & well - its a time of flux for all of us; either autumn or spring.

Jan will hopefully be at the Greenhill Orchestra rehearsal tonight, but he got a wasp sting on his hand yesterday - chopping wood in the shed - and his right hand has swollen up quite a bit. He has a concert this weekend with Greenhill, over in Golden Bay, so I hope he has no complications with it. To make sure, he is heading off to the Doctor this afternoon. After the Greenhill Orchestra his next concert is the NSO one on 18 September supporting the young soloists, then in November with 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/).

Jan's study & mine carries on; I have my first case study ready for review, and have started work on the second one.

We had a fantastically fine week, then it rained on the weekend, so we still can't seal our plasterwork. Our worklist still largely exists intact to be done before our CoC can be applied for, but I am ticking off small jobs inside. A couple of weeks ago I took Wednesday off and unpacked 24 cartons of books and sorted them all out. I have two fiction shelves (living area, spare room) and one non-fiction (hall). Lugging those cartons up the stairs, collapsing the boxes, sorting, dusting and shelving took all day from 7am until 4.30.

Jan has had a look at the new drawers that Michael Bender installed, and has made some small adjustments to them, so yesterday I sorted all our CDs and DVDs and put them all away. The drawers are fantastic - push them lightly and they spring open, push them again, and they close. Lovely! Amazingly we had four drawers free, so I have put our games & puzzles in those. Another couple of cartons emptied from the garage... inch by inch I am making the room to be able get my car in the garage! A couple of photos of progress for you to view :-)

This Saturday just gone we had Jenny L over, and on Sunday we had Tiff, Kevin & Sandra here for brunch. John Fitz is back from his travels and we caught up with him the weekend before. Last Wednesday night we went to hear the NZ String Quartet performing Schumann and Shostakovich, which was great. At the concert we caught up with Derek & Kate Sherwood, and hopefully Jan & Derek will get out on the bikes again soon.

Right, that's all for now. I had better get back to work.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - August 2010

Hi everyone,

Amazingly, we have been back from holiday for nearly a month. The time has gone by so fast! The weather is crisp & cool in the mornings, with lovely fine days. It rained on the weekend, but we seemed to miss the cold snap that the rest of the country got. Nice to have a micro-climate :-)

Jan turns in the first of his assignments tomorrow, and is feeling a bit under pressure. However, he is at the Symphony Orchestra practice tonight, and was at the Greenhill rehearsal on Monday night, so he is not under so much pressure that he feels he has to pull out of other things, which is good. I have finished my last CAT assessment for my second to last unit and am now working on my management case studies. So it is all study-study-study around here at the moment.

Jan's next concert is on 18 September with the NSO supporting the young soloists (Solo Spotlight), then at the end of September a Greenhill concert, largely repeating pieces they played last year (a bit of info at http://www.nsom.ac.nz/classes.html), then again in November the NSO play 'Scottish Connections' (http://www.nso.org.nz/). He will be busy with that lot, and study.

We still aren't much closer to getting organised for our CoC from the council, and our mutual study won't get that done much faster either (but equally, there's no rush). It keeps raining a bit on the weekends, so we can't seal our plasterwork. Until we have sealed our plasterwork, Jan doesn't want to install the outside lights. We still have yet to permanently fix the gas bottle outside, finish all the exterior lighting and hook up the other 23,000 litre water tank. Our builder has ducted in the range hood, but hasn't yet installed the stainless steel backing for kitchen hob or completed the cowling for the range hood. However, my louvres are installed in my office.

In some ways the water tank is probably the most important thing for us to get done now - so we have the space on-stream to store an extra 23,000 litres before the rain stops in September/early November.

However, this weekend won't be all study, as we have Michael Bender coming to install our big bookshelf. At the moment our living area looks like a furniture shop with all the bookshelf components in pieces everywhere... and the spare room is full of drawers. I am really looking forward to taking some photos this weekend of the whole thing being assembled. It will be really great to finally unpack all our books - and get rid of another 20 cartons from the cellar.

Work is carrying on as normal for both of us at present, nothing out of the ordinary, so that's all good.

This Saturday night we have our friends Gary & Nick over for dinner, with their two teenagers. It will be great to see them as we haven't really caught up of late. Kathleen & Frits are off on their European journey at the moment, and John Fitzwater is still in the US. On 25 August we are going to listen to the NZ String Quartet performing Schumann and Shostakovich, which will be fantastic, and one day next week we are getting taken out to dinner as a thank you for some voluntary work I did for a fellow Rotarian - the President of the NZ chapter of the International Fellowship of Cricketing Rotarians; yes, there really is such a beast. It is an international organisation with loads of international trips for cricket-bunnies to play cricket, talk cricket, watch cricket and critique cricket. There is truly something for everyone out there, and now they have a lovely newsletter entitled "Extra Innings" :-)

Speaking of Rotary, I have just had one of my past students come along to our Rotary club with a view to joining. She is really keen to do some community work that is aligned with youth projects. Our club's focus is youth, sport & literacy, so she will fit right in. I am hoping that her involvement will bring in of her colleagues and contacts, so we start getting some more younger people joining. I am very conscious that, while our club is younger than almost all NZ clubs, unless we keep attracting younger people each year, as time ticks inexorably onwards we too will grow too old to be relevant.

Right, that's all for now. I had better get back to the study.

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - July 2010

Hi all,

Wow - I can't believe the last month went by so fast!

We had a fantastic time on holiday. Paris was fab - we would definitely recommend the tiny apartment we had to anyone. Close to the Louvre, 200m from the Chatalet metro hub, well supported by a neighbourhood supermarket, greengrocer, patisseries, great restaurants; just perfect. We walked pretty much everywhere. Hot, but not too hot, and lovely fine weather.

Germany. Wow - how do you pack three weeks of holiday into a paragraph... Kenzigen, Freiburg, Ulm, Eppingen, Polheim, Treysa, Edersee, Langen, Frankfurt - all fantastic. Jan got to spend some time with both of his grandmothers, who were both very, very pleased to see him. There is so much to thank everyone for - our stay was made so easy by the efforts of the whole family. It was wonderful to catch up; we were so well hosted by everyone, starting with Rainer & Regina, by Eberhard, Uta, Oli & Katrin & the Paechs, by Andreas and Katrin, by Holger, Katalin, Achim and Katrin (ably assisted by Heidi, Buddy & Julia), by Eberhard, Thomas and Bettina, by Simone and Michael. Eberhard organised a wonderful hosted three day family weekend at Edersee starting with Thomas' birthday party on the Friday night at Waldeck, followed by a gathering at Thomas & Bettina's house at the Edersee on Saturday night and completed by a trip to Peterskopf on Sunday. Most of the family was there, so we got to see everyone we hadn't seen already, and some of those whom we had seen, again (we also got to see Gerhard & Claudia at Oma Friedel's). I got some targeted shopping in, thanks to Uta, Andreas and Justine and Gareth! We had a good catch up with Justine & Gareth - and I got to have a play on Gareth's new iPad (very styley!). Freiburg was a really interesting city to visit, and Justine & Gareth had made a great choice of hotel. However, Germany was boiling. Four to ten degrees hotter than Paris - and it got hotter as time went on... that didn't encourage us to be too active, though we tried.

I was trying to think if there were a few highlights of the trip - and I can't settle on a few. The whole holiday was just great - if anything, my overwhelming impression is one of warmth. Warmth from everyone we spent time with, all of whom hosted us so wonderfully, took care of us and treated us as though we were special people. It was pretty humbling.

So; thank you ALL for making our holiday such a wonderful experience. We had the very best time, and would dearly love to host you in return in New Zealand, if and when you come.

So we got back after a long but uneventful flight - a bit longer than it should have been as we first made up time, then seemed to have a new delay on every leg; thunderstorm at Frankfurt, reboarding through a different gate in Dubai, someone in our park in Bangkok, something else in Sydney. We missed our connecting flight to Nelson, but we were booked on the next one easily enough. We were met at Christchurch by Tracey & Erica to take any luggage we were overweight on, but AirNZ was kind to us & pushed everything through. So we had coffee instead!

We got home to 3 degrees, hot pumpkin soup, and the fire going. Magda had done a great job of literally keeping the home fires burning while we were away :-)

And now we are back into the swing of things again. Jan is still battling tiredness, but I have slotted back in quite well (surprisingly).

Our current project is to get our Code of Compliance from the Council, so we had a meeting with the builder & the architect this week. The builders still have to duct in the range hood and install the stainless steel backing for kitchen hob, and fix another couple of things that the architect has flagged. We still have to permanently fix the gas bottle outside, finish the exterior lighting and hook up the other 23,000 litre water tank.

Kathleen & Frits came out to visit us last weekend, which was great. They brought lunch, and we had a very relaxing afternoon in their company. They are off on holiday soon - flying to Melbourne for a few days with their daughter Amy, then onto Rome, then taking the train to Vienna, and on to Amsterdam. It sounds as though they will have a wonderful time too.

Jan is now one of my students (his work is being marked by another tutor). He told one of his colleagues at work that "She seems to know what she is talking about". Nice recommendation! For my CAT qualification I will be completing my last assessment on one unit next week (review panel participation), and I have had my proposal approved for my management case studies, which I have started pulling together.

Today I chair the first of my Founders Heritage Park Committee meetings, which will be good. It is a strategic planning workshop which will be really useful.

Jan's cousin Oli has the whole photo thing sorted. He has a great website that he uploads photos to for sharing, and has such a good eye and camera that his images are as good as they need to be right after the click. I have already downloaded some of Oli's great shots of the weekend at Edersee. I have been trying to edit and stitch all our photos from our trip, but I simply have not had enough time. I have done some of them, but still need to spend another whole day going through them. Not sure when I will have time for that. As soon as I do, I need to send a CD to Justine & Gareth as they have sent me one of their shots... as well as post a couple here every newsletter of the good ones.

We are expecting our next weekend to be full of house-oriented things... a change is as good as a rest, they say :-)

Take care & alles liebe!

Sam & Jan

News from Nelson - June 2010

Hi all,

I think we are nearly in the same state of unpacking as we were last time I wrote; we still can't get our cars in the garage and have a bit under half our stuff still in cartons in the cellar & garage. That's because the wiring in the office still isn't finished, which is holding up putting the rest of the furniture in place (so there are still a few cartons of office gear in the garage not yet unpacked), and we still need some shelves in the linen cupboard (so the linen remains unpacked), and, while Michael Bender is about to get the bookshelf completed - so I can unpack the 20-odd cartons of books in the garage - we won't have time to take delivery of it before we leave for our holiday. When we get back from and have a dry weekend, we will move Jan's workshop gear out of the garage & seal the plasterwork outside the garage & in the entrance way. Unfortunately, every weekend there has been rain at night, so the plaster is too damp to seal.

Because we haven't managed to seal our plasterwork, we have decided to flag trying to get our Code of Compliance from the Council until we get back. The builders are going to duct in the range hood and install the stainless steel backing for kitchen hob while we are away. Jan has nearly finished installing the stair tread covering, and we still have to permanently fix the gas bottle for the hob outside. And I found out today that Jan will have to get the exterior lighting installed for our CoC as well. Trying to get that done this week when Jan has orchestra practice tonight & Underwater Hockey tomorrow night would just be madness.

However, the photo voltaics are working well. Despite rainy winter weather, we are currently shipping power back into the grid, and are generating as much power as we are using. It will be really interesting to see how much we generate in summer when we get sun for over fourteen hours each day! If we are going to feed back more than we consume, we may not add any more cells on the roof. Not until NZ gets a much better attitude towards paying for private generation, anyway. There is still a bit of a wait on getting a meter - we are using a borrowed one until our real one arrives.

The dogs love the fireplace! Snuggled up close by each night & cooking in the heat :-)

I have had a couple of trips to the Salvation Army and passed unneeded things onwards for recycling, the next trip is tomorrow. I have sold quite a bit of stuff on TradeMe, and still have a pile of saleable items in my office, waiting now until we get home from holiday.

We are still getting a few visitors (we thought no one would visit us, 40 mins out of town), but Magda has come three times, Dawn & Martin, my folks, Graeme & Julie Pahl, John & Jo, and Neil Murray have all called in. Jan's NSO concert went really well, and was very well received by the audience - nice write up in the Nelson Mail (see image).

We had a stormy day on Saturday & I took some photos east & west of the sky (see photos). We get some lovely views up here.

It will be a busy week for us both still, but we are both working hard to get everything done so we can head away with clear consciences. Jan is still very busy at work. He has no idea what will happen to his projects while he is away, but suspects that things will just not get done. I just sent my moderation pack off for my Leadership paper, and, once my Applied Management marking is finished, need to prepare materials for moderation. My Applied Management paper for next semester has already been set up & sent for printing (phew). However, I still have to get my report written for the Results Committee, as I won't be at the results meeting, and get the first two topics reviewed & printed for my Comms paper, next semester. We get back on the afternoon of Friday the 16th, and I start lecturing the next Tuesday. Not much time to organise anything in between!

I have nearly completed my second-to-last CAT unit; getting some really nice feedback from the tutor, and being told at the end of my presentation that I had passed (being told straight after the end of an assessment is a rarity, he told me). The review panel also gave me some great feedback. I have one more assessment to do, and that is to sit in on an academic review panel, but I can't do that until I am back from Europe. I have one more unit to do, and have just negotiated an independent learning contract for that, to research, write and publish some management case studies (which I was going to do anyway, so get some credit for it). All good, then I will be finished - probably at the end of this year. Yay!

Last Friday my year as Rotary President ended, and I handed over to my successor, Paul Rosanowski. So that is one reasonably big thing off my responsibilities list, which is just fantastic. However, the Chair of the Founders Heritage Park Committee stepped down last week, and nominated me as his successor, which I have accepted and the remainder of the Committee has endorsed (which is a much smaller thing!). I am currently looking for another board appointment, but haven't seen anything that really does it for me yet, and that I can add value to.

We leave for Europe next Monday, for a few days in Paris, where we have an apartment near Le Louvre. In Germany we have 5 days in Freiburg, three with Rainer & Regina, then to Ulm to see Uta and Oma Lieselotte, then Andreas & Katrin, then Holger and family, then to the Edersee for the Schütte family celebrations, Treysa, and lastly Simone & Michael before we fly out. We will catch up with most of the German contingent at the Edersee, which will be fantastic :-)

Magda is house-sitting for us the entire time we are away (awesome person that she is).

Take care & alles liebe!

 

Sam & Jan