The Latest

1. The house is gutted and they've installed new windows. We submitted the plans to the local council and now await their word. In the meantime we've been apartment hunting. The goal is to find a place in this neighborhood that's close to the bus, affordable, and also close to the new house. We naively toyed with the idea of using this opportunity to rent a really nice place with a pool on the beach or something awesome like that, but those places are like $3,000/month and besides, do we really want to rent a place that's nicer than the house we're currently building? We're having some difficulty locating a place that meets this criteria that also doesn't expect a year lease. I hope we find something soon, since we have to move out of our house in four weeks.

2. Work is going well -- there's really nothing interesting to report. I get to leave at 5pm every day which is a major plus. I don't think I've EVER had a job that let me leave on time! My coworkers seem nice -- I was expecting that by now I might have a few stories about Pretentious Art Director Dude or Passive-Aggressive Marketing Chick, but so far everyone's been really professional. I'll say this, though: my daily bus rides are so much better than when I was in school. Taking the bus at 10am with other kids was pure hell. Taking the bus at 7am with adults who are showered, quiet, and polite is a whole other experience.

3. We've been renting the BBC show Skins. It's a great show. We also rented The Wrestler (fell asleep halfway through it) and Revolutionary Road (not bad), and The Chumscrubber (good). We also rented Ten Ways to Rob A Bank with acting dynamos Nick Stahl, Erika Christensen and...... Gavin Rossdale. We turned it off after 20 minutes - it was that bad.

4. The weather has been really mild this winter, so we've been getting out as much as possible on the weekends. Unfortunately, the last two weekends were a bit of a loss. First, I had my annual crappy cold which took me out of commission for a week (but of course I had to go to work, since it was only my second week!).

Then the following week I suffered a horrendous pinched nerve in my back. Figuring it was due to the lack of exercise (I didn't exercise during my cold), I thought I'd walk it off with a two hour hike, but it got worse. I took acetominophen with codeine and tried all sorts of different positions (Sitting Upright with Heating Pad, Lying on Side with Pillow Between Legs, etc.). By Sunday night, I couldn't take it anymore, so off we went to the ER. Good times: 8:30pm in a room filled with crying, sick, sniffly children. One little girl walked into the ER and threw up right on the floor while her poor mom was filling out paperwork. Yuck. We left two hours later with some prescriptions for some strong pain medication (which didn't work) , and a recommendation to see a chiropractor and a doctor.

Three chiro visits, two doctor visits, a deep-tissue massage and a set of xrays later, the diagnosis is that I'm totally misaligned and need to resume yoga and walking. Fun activities like crossing my legs or sitting Indian style on the sofa hunched over my laptop are now forbidden. I'm blaming all of this on going to grade and high school in the days when you wore your backpack (or Kenya bag) on one shoulder, no matter how lopsided or uncomfortable.

5. Last night we organized a happy hour for our New Kiwis group which was a huge success. At least 20 people showed up. It was loads of fun, and nice to get out again.

I have some recent house photos which I'll post once I download them!

Congratulations Danielle & Nam!!

Introducing Emory Ki Hoon Nam, born Sat 8/22/09 @ 3:54PM. He weighs in at 7 lbs 13oz and was 21 inches long.

Kiwis Can't Do Pizza

This is why I miss simple Italian-American food.

Excerpt from a local pizza menu:

Italiano
Char-grilled vegetable relish, cheese, mushrooms, pepperoni, olives, capers & anchovies
Greek
Char-grilled vegetable relish, cheese, olives, capsicums, sun-dried tomatoes, red onion, tomato, feta & grapes
Chicken Satay
Satay sauce, cheese, marinated chicken, sliced red onion, baby spinach, cashews & aioli
Diablo
Spiced beef with plum sauce, pepperoni, onion and tomato finished with smoked havarti and honey mustard aioli
Lamborghini
Marinated lamb strips, plum sauce, cheese, pastrami, havarti & spinach with
caramelised red onion & roast garlic aioli

Weird

I was getting a manicure, and while sitting with my nails underneath that light that's supposed to dry your nails quickly, I glanced up to see this framed picture.

Notes From a Small Island

I finally got a chance to write about our vacation 10 days ago!

Rarotonga was really fun, but as I've mentioned, the weather was less than desirable. We were seriously expecting hot days sitting on the beach with warm, turquoise blue water a few feet away. Instead, it was a little like Auckland in the spring -- you can go swimming but you need to get used to the temp, and once the sun disappears behind a cloud it gets chilly.

It was raining and hot when we arrived at 2:30am. The flights into and out of Rarotonga are at the worst times. I guess it works in their favor -- you're half awake and less likely to argue when the Cook Island Immigration Officer tells you your New Zealand Residence Visa is expired and you might have trouble re-entering the country (which happened on our way home and had to get sorted when we arrived in NZ at 5:00am).

We should've known the vacation was slightly doomed when we arrived and were told that the flower lei's for our resort hadn't arrived, so we weren't given the traditional island greeting. The lei's arrived the next day, left to wilt miserably in a plastic bag tied to our cottage door.


Most days, we hopped on our rented scooter and explored. The entire island is only about 35 kilometers / 21 miles. There's one main road, and then a secondary road used by the locals. We decided to get a feel for the "real" Rarotonga and wandered around the backroads. There were chickens and dogs everywhere, plus a few goats, cows, and cats. The homes were extremely modest but mostly well-maintained. There weren't signs of extreme poverty, like we saw on our honeymoon or in the Virgin Islands. What's interesting is the tradition of having large, flat marble gravestones in people's yards. These are usually decorated with flowers and some have chairs around them, for people to sit and pray? Hang out?

We found a great beachfront bar that looked straight out of a movie set, but we were the only ones there, so we left.

Because of the bad weather, the fishermen had trouble catching anything, so there we were on this beautiful South Pacific island and there was virtually no fish, except frozen albacore. We made do with pasta dishes, which were surprisingly good. Honestly, I had better pasta in Raro than I've had in Auckland.

Our resort featured Island Night which was supposed to give us a sample of genuine island food. Instead, it was a bunch of rather gross picnic items like egg salad and mushy potatoes alongside the most overdone steak EVER. The chicken was good, though. That was the worst meail of the trip, thankfully. We had some great meals during the rest of the week. There was a grocery store, so we bought steak, bread, pate, salad, etc. and enjoyed dinner inside two nights.

The beaches are all public, so there's no pretentious rules like "This beach is reserved for guests of the Little Polynesian ONLY." We made sure to check out all of the resorts and their beaches, deciding that our beach was one of the better ones. A few days into the trip, we discovered the lovely and quiet Muri Beach Club - an adults only resort that was slightly our of our price range when we booked the trip months ago. Muri Beach Club had a beautiful pool that was sheltered from the wind, so we hung out there for two straight days, paying rent for our loungers by ordering food and booze from the bar.

On our last night, we splurged and had dinner at the Little Polynesian -- another resort with beachfront bures, only theirs cost $900 a night. Chumps!

Overall, it was a nice time, but the next "tropical" holiday we take, we'll make sure to do some MAJOR investigating beforehand to determine which island (Fiji? Samoa? Tahiti?) has the best weather. We'll also look into renting a house -- there were quite a few that were right on the beach, and at $150/$200 a night, it really made you wonder why you'd bother staying in a resort.

Best part: "Captaim Tama's Lagoon Cruizes". We didn't actually go on one of these, but we loved the name, of course.

A million pictures are below:

House Update

Here's some pictures of the house. The inside is totally gutted, we submit our plans to the council on Friday, then we wait for approval before proceeding.

All work and no play

Please be patient with the lack of blog posts -- my job is getting in the way of my blogging, Facebooking, and emailing!
I hope to catch up soon.

South Pacific!

We arrived home yesterday and I begin my new job today, so this will be a short post.

Here are a few things to note about Rarotonga:

1. It was slightly colder than we expected. Turns out they were having a little cold spell.

2. There were dogs EVERYWHERE. Mostly well taken care of dogs, which was nice, but for every cat, there must've been 5 dogs.

3. It's not resort-y at all. In fact, if we ever go back, we'll rent a house instead. Resorts are nice but totally unnecessary since all of the beaches are public, and there's grocery stores for food and booze.

Ok. Here are some pictures. All of these and more are already posted on Facebook.

Preparation.

We leave this afternoon for Rarotonga. The cats stay home.

A week ago, Tama escaped AGAIN, and we found him wandering the neighbor's driveway, scared and meowing. What took place after that was an annoying chase around the driveway as Tama ran under the neighbor's car, then back out again -- all of this in the pouring rain at 9pm. I was on my stomach, half under the car, with a bag of treats. Eventually I got a hold of Tama's back leg and dragged him out. We were both soaking wet and filthy. Not a good time.

Subsequently, both cats will be locked inside for the duration of our trip -- our vacation would be RUINED if we got a call from the cat sitter saying that Tama had gotten out again. Yesterday, we locked and covered up the cat door with a big piece of cardboard, but Tama sat beside it and howled for most of the day. Too bad, kitty!!

We've got our passports, library books, sunscreen, and snorkeling equipment. I'm mostly packed, Iain still needs to pack. I checked the weather and Rarotonga is averaging 76F / 24C, which is slightly nicer than Auckland, which had frost this morning.

Coworkers

I met my coworkers yesterday!

Here's what I was afraid of:

1. There'd only be 2 of them, or 200. You don't want a TINY office, but you also don't want to be surrounded by strangers.

2. They'd be my classmates all over again. Young or just weird.

3. They'd be ridiculously well-dressed and professional looking.

4. There'd be no cubicles or offices - just a big open-plan.

I was elated that Fears 1-3 were totally unfounded. Yeah, it's a big open plan, but I can get a set of headphones if I need to. And have I mentioned that we're all on Macs? Yeah. That was seriously my BIGGEST fear -- working in an office on a PC.

The creative department houses about 7-8 people, and everyone looked to be my age. And in jeans. I'm glad I went shopping for new clothes but relieved that I didn't go TOO nuts. It looks like a few of my more casual items will work just fine.

I was only there for a few minutes, so while everyone SEEMS friendly and glad to have me on-board, I'm sure more interesting personalities will emerge.

Builders Builders Builders

We received the revised architectural plans for our house -- Blue was especially interested.

Here's a few pictures of what will be our new home in hopefully less than 4 months. I'm sure I just totally jinxed us by writing that.

HOLIDAY!

Countdown to Rarotonga: 3 days! Rarotonga is in the Cook Islands between Fiji and Tahiti.

The time difference is minus 22 hours. I'm having the worst time trying to wrap my head around it. The flight from Auckland is under 4 hours but with the time difference, we leave at 7:15pm Sunday and arrive at 1:05am Sunday. Bizarre.

I contacted the resort to find out what their internet policy is, and stopped by Vodaphone to find out what the deal is with cell phone coverage. Unfortunately, it's impossible right now to completely cut ourselves off for a week, but hopefully Stan the builder won't need to call us too much.

We're staying in a beachfront buré at the Palm Grove Resort. Our friends recommended it, saying it's quiet, reasonably priced with few or no children, and has a great bar. Perfect.

Our friend Kevin (originally from Buffalo NY!) is also going to be in Rarotonga, so we're hoping to hook up with him for a few drinks one lazy afternoon when we're sick of sitting on the beach doing nothing.

Kitchen Layout

We finally decided on a kitchen layout. If interested, click on the image and it'll enlarge. "F/S" means freestanding and "MW" is microwave. Our biggest issue was what to do with the left hand corner. After an insane amount of deliberation, we decided that instead of a counter-top cabinet or appliance garage or anything fancy, we're just going to have a cabinet over the counter. Sometimes the simplest things are the best. Although I was excited to be able to get the pantry with pullout shelf/drawers underneath. We'll investigate cabinetry near the rangehood at a later date.

We'll be able to have a big kitchen window and a set of French doors. The builders keep talking about the amazing amount of light that streams in, so I'm glad we won't be loosing any of that.

For those not from NZ:
bench = counter
cooker = stove (obvious)

And some metric conversions:
900mm = 2.95 feet
600 mm = 1.96 feet
3000mm = 9.8 feet

Preparation

1. Bought new clothes -- check.
2. Timed how long it takes me to blow dry and do my hair in the morning -- check.
3. Rearranged wardrobe to separate old crap from work clothes -- check.
4. Driven to work in rush hour to determine whether the bus is faster - check.
5. Attempted to get in as much slacker sleeping in / watching TV / hanging out with the cats time as possible before re-entering the workforce grind -- not really.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IAIN!

Much to my dismay, Iain doesn't like to make a big deal out of his birthday. Out of respect, instead of a celebratory picture of Iain or the cats, I've chosen a photo of a sink we were looking at a few weeks ago. It's a beauty!