New Blog

I've finally moved my blog over to my new domain! I hope you like it :)

You'll find it at: blog.groat.net.nz

Mobile blogging

I'm trying out mobile blogging on my iPhone 4S using my voice, it's very cool but it has its ups and downs. I think for the most part it seems to understand what I'm saying and translate accordingly but there has been some issues. I'm not sure if this is any faster.

It's certainly fun to use your voice to make notes and create reminders and the Siri feature is also a great source of amusement but the functionality in New Zealand is severely limited.

I'm not sure if I would use this long-term but it certainly is good fun playing with it!

Hopefully having this new device will mean I can do more mobile blogging in the future :)

One Year In

Today is my one year anniversary of arriving in New Zealand. In fact I got a text message from my mobile carrier telling me I have been with them for 1 year and saying thank you.

In many ways it doesn’t feel like it’s been a year already. It certainly doesn’t seem like a year ago since I last saw my family and friends, but then I suppose that’s the beauty of the modern age where I keep up-to-date on the gossip through Facebook and Twitter and I see and chat to people on Skype.

When I think about all the things that we’ve done and achieved in this last year it feels like there is a few years worth of activity in there!

We’ve settled in really well here, we have some awesome friends, regular activities that we do, plenty of R&R, and lots of future plans. We like our jobs but we’re thinking ahead, we love where we live but we still want to buy a house at some point.

Auckland is a great place to live, there is so much to do here! There’s shopping, beaches, theatres, galleries, sports, music – everything. In fact, yesterday it was brought to my attention that in the last year I have not left Auckland once. Even Waiheke Island is part of Auckland (a very nice part it is too!). Perhaps in this next year I will venture further a field, but there is still many, many parts of Auckland I haven’t seen and explored yet. Kane (who’s been to Wellington twice on business) mocks me, calling me a JAFA and saying that I think nothing exists beyond Auckland. I’ve been up to Dairy Flats, there really doesn’t seem to be much out there!! :P

Barbequing

I love barbeques! Barbeques and al fresco dining have always been a key part of summer for as long as I can remember. They were usually large affairs with family and friends turning up with lots of food to share. Most of the time they were unplanned and most of time they went on all day until we had squeezed the last rays from the sun (and in Scotland this is about 10pm in summer) then we’d eventually drift indoors and carry on partying.

I was too young to drink and therefore probably the only person to remember a particular barbecue where my parents had just returned from holidaying in Spain and brought with them the recipe for making Sangria!!

The actual barbequing area was the domain of the male head of household so that was my Dad at my house and my sister husbands if it was their houses. It was ok for one or two other males to be present in the barbequing area but only in a supporting role and the males and females were happy to drink and chat or provide a beer delivery service to the barbequing area.

So my own and my husbands knowledge and skill of operating and cooking on a barbeque is very limited to what we have observed.

We purchased a barbeque along with other things from the previous tenants of our rental home and the beautiful weather of the long labour weekend meant we would finally get a chance to try our hands at barbequing. I opened the barbeque prepared with heavy duty cleaning materials and rubber gloves only to discover that it had rusted through and one of the gas pipes had a large rust cavity and fissure (I was going to write hole and crack but that just sounds rude doesn’t it?). Not to be dissuaded from my plans that easily, I talked Kane into shopping for another barbeque and then phoned up Stuff2Go, a company that picks up junk and recycles it.

We weren’t sure how we would get a barbeque home in our small car and were contemplating wheeling it home in shopping trolleys, but happily it fitted (very) snuggly in the car.

Once we got home Kane set to building the barbeque with the cats playing on the deck in the sunshine beside him. Then we raided our cupboards to find things to barbeque!

The first night we barbequed:

• Vegan sausages
• Vegan burger
• Burger buns (mmm toasty buns!)
• Capsicum
• Red onion
• Pineapple
• Mushrooms
• Courgette

And served with salad and Tuimato sauce.

The next night we barbequed:

• Vegan Schnitzel
• Corn on the cob (parboiled)
• Capsicum
• Red onion
• Pineapple
• Mushroom
• Garlic cloves
• Carrots (parboiled)
• Tomatoes

And served with salad.

So far my favourite barbequed thing is garlic. I barbequed some peeled and some unpeeled and I didn’t notice any difference, both kinds were oh-so-tasty! I haven’t yet found anything that doesn’t taste good barbequed.

Spiders

I can’t remember why I have a paint brush in my car, but anyway, I was driving down the motorway when I decided that Wing-mirror Spider had outdone himself and the massive web that covered half my wing mirror had collected far too much debris and had to be removed, so I reached into the glovebox and pulled out the paintbrush and brushed the web away and popped the paintbrush back in the glovebox. That’s when I started to get really paranoid that I now had spiders in the glovebox. It took about 40 minutes before I got stopped at traffic lights and finally could check for spiders. I’m not even afraid of spiders!

Birthday Weekend

I’ve had a lovely long weekend for my birthday and it’s been great!

I started Birthday weekend on Wednesday evening by wearing the birthday tiara and drinking some lovely strawberry Cruiser Wine Bubbles.

There was no long lie in for me on my birthday, I was up and ready to open pressies that had been sitting on the dining table for a several days tormenting me! I got some clothes from Zara (so I can show off here!), some Ortak earrings, a scarf, mascara, a moneygram, perfume, some chocolate bars and strangely a packet of Doritos chilli heat wave crisps. I then put up my cards and headed to get the bus to the ferry.

We grabbed some brekkie and ate it on the ferry over to Waiheke island. We then got a bus tour of the island and walked along the beach before we headed to the vineyards. There are over 20 vineyards on the island and there are olive groves as well. We headed to Stonyridge vineyard and ordered tasting glasses of all the red wines. Seven glasses of different wines were then put in front of us and we started working our way through them. We then ordered 2 glasses of the ones we liked the best and had those with a light lunch. The next winery we headed to was closed and the bus was heading along the road so we took that as a sign to head for home.

The next day we had a much needed long lie and then we headed into town. We had some lunch at the Mexican cafe and then we went to find the pub I had heard about that serves pints of Tetley's and John Smiths. After wandering up and down Wyndham Street we eventually found the doorway for the Spitting Feathers. We stayed there for a few before heading over to the Auckland SciFi meetup.

Saturday was relatively quiet and we chilled out with the cats (I have cats now) before heading out to Monsoon Poon for Hamish’s birthday. We had a lovely meal and chatted with some nice people who had been to a wedding in Crieff and had toured some of Scotland.

On Sunday I spent some quality time with my Sims and enjoyed my last day of freedom before work the next day.

A very enjoyable weekend!

Neglected Blog

Ah my poor blog. It has been getting a little neglected lately and I must remedy that. The point of starting a blog in the first place was so I could store my thoughts and memories for when I forgot them and it's not going to do that if I leave it empty!

As I remember things from the last few months I will post them up here as well as keeping up-to-date with stuff.

This week I have mostly been: eating hot chips, skating, getting freaked out by meditation podcasts, snug under a blanket, wearing a scarf.

I also: went to an ice hockey game, watched the movie RED.