First Quarter

Looking back my last few blog posts, I can see that I have left some pretty big gaps in my activities so here is what I’ve been up to the last few months.

The first was the Big Day Out where we saw some awesome bands. I particularly enjoyed Rammstein and Wolf Mother. Iggy Pop and the Stooges were good and had loads of energy and I also enjoyed Lupe Fiasco.

I was sad to have missed Steriogram and I think it was mostly laziness that meant I missed their gig at a local venue too. I’m bad :( Walkie Talkie Man is an awesome song.

A week after the Big Day Out our container arrived from the UK and it was unboxing time. Finally I was reunited with the football inflator adapters, lint rollers, a couple of screws and the bubbles I was given in Pisa. I don’t know how I coped all those months without them :\

Then we decided it was time to be more sociable so we joined up with a local sci-fi group and met some cool people.

At the start of the month we went to the opera Xerxes which was awesome, very colourful and quite funny. This was held in the Civic theatre which is a very pretty theatre. Inside the main auditorium looks like an ancient greek amphitheatre and the ceiling above has glistening stars. People get very dressed up for the opera here and I saw more than a few tuxedos and even someone with opera glasses! I’ve got tickets for a couple of ballets and I’m wondering if they will be as dressy.

We’ve been to a couple of Blues super rugby games which have been really good – helped by the Blues winning both times! I like the whole experience of going to the rugby games. There is usually some kind of show before hand with competitions and cheerleaders that actually do cheerleading. There’s more of the same at half time with opportunities to win stuff or get freebies like t-shirts and mini rugby balls.

a few weeks ago we went to a friends house for his birthday and ate cake and watched movies. From Dusk to Dawn was not what I expected!

I particularly liked his shelving unit make out of cardboard and styrofoam. We don’t need IKEA with kiwi ingenuity like this!

And that brings us to last weekend when we went to the Stone Temple Pilots gig. This was brilliant and they played all their best songs.

So that’s more or less the first quarter of the year!

Nothing to Wear

The nights are fair drawing in :)
It has started to be a bit chilly in the mornings when I wake up and it’s a bit dark too, but the clocks change at the end of the week and I have to try and figure out what time it is in the UK, has the clocks changed there already?
Despite the chilliness in the mornings, the afternoons are bright and warm and similar to a normal Scottish summer’s day, with that little hint of coolness in the air and it’s an easy 20 degC when I’m heading home at 5pm. This confuses me, and I usually end up over dressed for work in boots and jumpers and scarves. Even Kane, who has only worn shorts for the past 5 months, has taken to wearing jeans on the odd evening.
Selecting the appropriate clothing does require a re-education. Even though the mornings are cool to begin with, it gets warmer and it’s still not yet jacket weather. It does rain though and my goodness it rains! I’ve never seen so much rain all at once! Last Saturday I was out and about quite early in the CBD, I elected to wear my uniform of converse trainers, jeans, t-shirt and a jumper because it was raining and looked cold. My jeans got totally soaked at the cuffs and was drawing the water up while the jumper was causing me to over heat! I saw a good few people wearing vests, shorts and boots carrying umbrellas and this is now making sense to me!
I’ve fallen in with a decent crowd and I might ask them for some advice on how to dress myself but it’s likely they’ll tell me to wear my Star Trek TNG uniform or something!
One of the main reasons for moving to New Zealand was to do more, to get out of the rut and do some living and I can honestly say that I have done more in the last few months here than I had in the last few years in Edinburgh. Even with the scary earthquakes in the South Island and the tsunami warnings closer to home, I’m glad I live here.