Settling Down and my Birthday
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2007
1
45
55
Trip End
Aug 2008
Wellington, New Zealand
Monday, January 14, 2008
I went to the zoo...oh hang on.
Yes i am writing this on my birthday, and yes that does make me ever so slightly sad (in the geek sense, by the way!).
You see we've just come back from a lovely weekend away and preparing for a nasty shock......work (shudder).
Since we last wrote we've been rather busy. We're all moved in to our new home and loving it. Neither of us have owned/rented a spare bedroom before, and having a duplex (a two floor flat for the uninitiated) makes it feel really spacious. We're still getting used to going downstairs to bed, managing to keep the place clean (ish) and have even got broadband installed so that we can play on our new toy, a laptop.
Wellington really closed down over the festive period and so our job hunting could only begin this week, and even then most consultants aren't back yet so getting on an agency's books has proved a bit of an issue. But we persevered and used pester power to get in through the doors. Whilst traveling we had discussed that we would have to help the other person out when looking for work, be grounded and impartial so that we didn't jump at the first thing offered to us and get something that will be interesting or good for our CV.
Well, the good news is that we're both starting work this week, the slightly more expected news is that they were both the very first roles offered to us. Kat is leaving the screaming brats behind and working for the government in the Ministry of Health on a big project. I'm going in to NZ Telecom to help them create a brand new finance team/process for a new company created by splitting the existing company due to government regulations.
With work and a home sorted it was time that we could do some more fun things. We've visited some other areas of the city, went to the races (where I ended up a bookie-breaking $3, take that William Hill!!) and this weekend drove out of the city to the wine region of Martinborough. We stayed in "the cube", a small 4 metre cube with a bedroom and a bathroom, no doubt had this been in Cuba would be considered a torture cell but was actually really quite a luxurious holiday home.
The weather has been glorious so on Friday afternoon we did what any self-respecting Englishman would do, and went to the pub. I'm now sure I don't have an educated palette, in fact my palette probably dropped out of school before the age of 16, does drugs and got his 14 year-old girlfriend pregnant. We had a taster set of white wines with notes on the flavours. I was pretty sure they all tasted like white wines but ....well that was about it.
The following day, after satiating kat's desire to shop, we did a fantastic walk along a tight chasm. After climbing down the ladders strapped together, we walked along the stream bed in water that went up, in places, high enough to wet our pants! Only after getting through that point did we see the 4-5 foot eels swimming in the water and send a shiver down our spines.
Today has been a wonderfully relaxed day, doing crosswords in a cafe, eating great food and generally doing a lot of not alot. Kat has gone to a great effort to make sure it's been a special day including cake and candles...and song.
So I'm off to iron shirts ready for next week (I only own 2 at the moment and am trying to work out how I can try and eke them out without looking scabby). Hope all is well back home with everybody and let us know how your Christmases, New Years and start of 2008 are going.
Nick & Kat
