halloween

Jane’s book copies – 94 cartons of them! – arrived from Auckland this afternoon. I helped move them into the house, but missed out on the book party because I had plans with Sabrina and her friends.

It was great to see Sabrina again, and we decided to recycle our construction worker costume idea from 3 years ago, except this time it only took us 2 hours to make them instead of three weeks. We missed Heather, our traditional third partner in crime – the three of us have had the same costumes for the past three years, including the year we celebrated Halloween twice with two sets of costumes.

Sabrina is staying at the Paradiso hostel in Nelson with her friends Lex (England) and Ann (Ireland) from the hostel in Wellington. They’re planning to get a flat in Nelson for 6 months or so. The hostel is great – it has a pool and spa, and little ‘cabanas’ for rooms. The hostel had a costume party until around 10 pm, and then ordered taxis so they could ship all of us off to town and prevent neighborhood noise complaints.

I haven’t been out in Nelson before, and I don’t think I’ve been missing much – it wouldn’t have been much fun to go out with just one or two people, but we had a good time since everybody from the hostel was there.

homecoming

I’m back at the Pujjis after a long day of traveling. I had a blast on the road trip, but it feels good to be ‘home.’ I’m excited about seeing Sabrina, too – it’s been so long since I’ve seen her that it’ll be like having another visitor from the States! Tomorrow’s mission: get through the giant pile of laundry I generated in the past 10 days.

fox glacier

The next stop was Fox glacier, maybe an hour or so away from Franz Joseph. After hiking the main trail to the glacier look-out (10 minutes return), I decided to follow the signs to Peter’s Pool, another 10 minute hike. I’m glad I did – the main look-out was impressive, but the placid pool made a great reflecting surface for the glacier and surrounding mountains.

After the glacier, I stopped in Hokitika for an early dinner, but was turned off by the busloads of tourists shopping for jade and bone carvings. Next stop: Greymouth, where I enjoyed a huge roast pork, pumpkin and kumara sandwich on the water before hitting the road again.

franz joseph

All the cafes in the glacier regions seemed too touristy, so I settled on trail mix for lunch and decided to do a few shorts hikes to the glaciers. Franz Joseph was the first stop, and I was rewarded with this view after just a 3-minute walk from the parking lot just off the highway. I was as impressed by the clear blue mineral water pools and waterfalls next to the parking lot as by the glacier itself, but I know that you need to do the longer guides hikes to really appreciate the beauty of the glaciers – it’s on my list!

camping

I awoke to a great view this morning – I had no idea what the place looked like when I pulled in last night, but it turns out my campsite was pretty nice. I set off in search of breakfast, but unfortunately there was absolutely nothing along the road, including petrol stations. I found one at just above a quarter tank, though, filled up and grabbed water, and then tried to follow the directions to the café the cashier had recommended. I guess his estimate of 200m down the road was an exaggeration, because after passing the café that in hindsight must have been it even though it was practically across the street from the gas station, there was nothing else for miles.

blue pools

I’m driving back to Nelson by way of the West Coast so I can see some different sights. Graham and Gayleen told me about the Blue Pools, a short walk from the highway. It stays light pretty late around here, so even though it was pushing 8 pm when I found the turn-off for them, I was able to do the 20-minute return hike before dark. There was a swinging bridge that reminded me of the one at Lenhok’sin right before the pools. The sign on the bridge warned of the strict 5-person limit, but no one else was around.

The photo doesn’t do the colors justice – the pools are pretty deep, but because the water is so clear and cold they’re a brilliant blue, and you can see to the bottom. They were beautiful, and I enjoyed being the only visitor at that time.

leaving marama

Uploading the new Marama Farm website didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped, so I got a late start. Since I was already late, I decided to go for another quadbike adventure to see the calves. Graham took me out to one of the far paddocks, and we got pretty close to a herd with 3 little calves. Then we went up to the airstrip, and I got to see the gorgeous 360-degree view of the farm – and three giant containers of seaweed, which will be sprayed on the farm in the next few days as a natural fertilizer.

Graham generously sent me off with a big bag of avocados and a full tank of petrol. I had a great time here, and am determined to get this website working soon as a thank-you. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to come back and visit later in the year, too!

lambchop

The only thing left on my farm to-do list was holding a lamb. After watching the sheep for a few days, I’d decided I should probably take this item off the list – these guys didn’t seem any more willing to let me come close to them than any of the others I’ve seen along the way. I’d noticed that one little lamb didn’t even get up while all the others ran past to get away from us when we were chasing the pregnant ewe. Upon further inspection, we discovered that the lamb’s front legs weren’t working because of an infection it got when its mother bit its tail off. So…I got my wish to hold a lamb. Not under the best of circumstances, though - a few minutes later, Farmer Graham had to expedite the lamb’s trip to the Endless Green Pastures in the Sky.

birthday

After the excitement of cow herding, I was looking forward to a nice dinner. We’d gotten all the stuff to make Arvind’s meat curry when we were in town, so I set to work cutting up chicken. Graham, looking out the window, pointed to a sheep in the paddock closest to the house. “See that one? She’s about to give birth.” “Really?” I asked, thinking all the sheep looked the same, with the exception of lambs attached to some of them. “Yeah. Looks like she might need some help.” Dinner dropped in priority. After all, lambs were what I’d come to see – and my guess was that newborn lambs were among the cutest stages.

We all went out into the paddock, and applied our herding skills (or, in my case, lack thereof) again. The difference from cows is that sheep are smaller – so, less scary, but also faster and they tend to slip through holes in ‘human chains.’ We didn’t want to disturb the pregnant ewe too much, so Wag stayed behind. Our first attempt at herding the sheep into a corner didn’t work out – most likely my fault, but Graham was nice about it. We got them into another corner, and let some of them slip past on purpose while watching to make sure the pregnant one was still in the corner. At the end, it felt like some sort of guerilla exercise – all of us advancing, using trees to our advantage, waving our arms, Graham whispering directions. When we got close enough, Graham dove in and tackled the ewe. It’s not really a stretch when people surmise that Kiwis are good at rugby because they have practice tackling sheep, it looked much the same at least to the untrained eye.

So now comes the fun part. I retrieved my camera and started snapping away while Miva held the ewe. Graham pulled on the visible paws, and then the head appeared. More pulling, and then the whole lamb, which he placed on the mother so she’d get used to it. After making sure there was only one guy in there, Graham put the little one on the mother’s nose and we all ran away so she could bond. It all looked promising when we left – the little lamb was standing and the mother was cleaning it up.

wag the dog

One of the dairy cows has pink eye, so the plan for this afternoon was to herd the cows into a paddock with a squeeze chute, single the cow out, and rub medicine onto its eyeball. It’s harder than it sounds, even if it sounds relatively hard.

Here’s our team: Graham, Miva, me, Gayleen (Graham’s partner whom I’d met at Pujjis last month) and Wag, the huntaway dog. Huntaway dogs are herding dogs which control animals by barking rather than with eye contact like border collies.
The relevant herd was over in a far paddock. Graham asked Miva and Gayleen to stand over in the direction we wanted the cows to move, and keep them from going the wrong direction by moving around if the cows started to go astray (they apparently don’t like things, including people, in front of them) and making sure the right gates were open. Being a complete novice, my only job at the beginning was to follow Graham around and get pictures of the process, and move very quickly if he shouted any directions at me.

Lessons Learned: Cows, even small dairy cows, are very big, and big is scary when it appears to be coming straight at you. Cows can jump fences. Cows are loud. Cows are pretty smelly, especially when they are nervous. Cow herding requires a lot of trust in whoever is in charge, because otherwise there is no other reason to turn around, face oncoming cows, and stay still when, up until the last second, it doesn’t look like they’ll change their mind about where they’re going.

We got the medicine in the right cow (there was a little bit of a nervous moment for me when we thought the cow might not have been in this herd, and we’d have to do it all over again), and then moved all the cows back to their original paddock. I decided it had been a fun time after it was over and the cows were safely inside the paddock with no obvious reasons to jump the fence.

quadbiking

After we finished up the raised-bed gardens, the three of us headed into town for another Blaze visit and a trip to the coffee house to finish up the website, which Miva and I had worked on a little more last night.

Fueled by a few cups of coffee and a wonderful double chocolate cake, we made good work of all the pages on the website and I’m pretty pleased with it. Now comes the big challenge of putting it up – there’s already a very basic Marama site up, and we’re not sure if the password’s still around or not.

Back on the farm, I asked Graham if I could take him up on the quadbiking offer he’d made earlier in the week. With a farm the size of Marama, quadbikes (ATVs, I think) are the best way to get around. You can get by on foot on smaller farms, and a lot of the really big stations use helicopters. Graham gave me a quick lesson, then sent Miva out to supervise me on my first trip. So much fun, in case you can’t tell from the picture!

baldwin street

We weren’t quite done with Dunedin even though the weather was pretty crappy. The next stop was Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world according to the Guiness Book of World Records. Both Miva and I had independently wanted to see it, but when we got there we decided that we probably shouldn’t drive a borrowed car up the street in the rain! It was pretty scary even walking up and down it in the rain, because it was so slippery, and the few cars we saw attempting it looked like they were having a hard time.

The picture doesn’t really do it justice…it is very, very steep.

albatross centre

After the aquarium, we drove a little farther down the peninsula to find the penguins and albatross. We never did find the penguin place, and although we found the albatross place we didn’t see any, but we did see seals and nesting shags. And then we decided it was too windy to be outside!

seaweed

Graham made a pretty bold decision to go organic a few years back after attending a lecture by Dr. Arden Anderson, an American proponent of organic principles. There aren’t a lot of organic farms in the far south, and Graham’s story is unusual in other ways – when an injury he’d been unsuccessfully trying to treat through conventional medicine for 14 years was healed in a few visits to an alternative health provider, he began questioning some of his practices, including his use of chemicals on the farm. Ever since then, he’s been reading all the organic farming, nutrition and alternative medicine materials he can get his hands on and attending lectures and conferences, and he found out about a presentation on seaweed from one of the mailing lists he’s on.

Miva was already planning on going to the presentation in Dunedin, and I decided to tag along for the day. After a morning swim and another visit to Blaze to deliver some blenderized food, we headed east.

The aquarium was not in the middle of the city as we’d expected, instead it was 18km down along a windy peninsula. The aquarium itself was less than impressive, but the program was a lot of fun. We got to taste about 10 different kinds of fresh seaweeds…served from the touch tanks, which was a little weird since they were floating in amongst starfish, crabs and anemones. Then we went back upstairs and grazed from three big tables full of food made with seaweed – everything from a sea lettuce and lentil salsa to popcorn with chili wakame seasoning, kelp chips and sea grapes on crackers with cream cheese. Some of the stuff tasted a little too much like the smell of low tide, but some of it was really good.

eye of a hawk

We did some more work on the raised beds, started designing a Marama webpage, visited Blaze and picked up Wag, Graham’s ‘huntaway’ dog who was staying with neighbors while he was in Nelson.

After all that, we went for a drive around the farm so I could see the farther paddocks and the river. As we were driving around near the river, we saw an injured hawk struggling to fly. It crash-landed in the water and didn’t look too happy there, so Miva waded in and threw Graham’s jersey over the hawk to bring it back on land. We got it back on land for a few seconds, then it tipsily flew back in the river and we figured it must have decided it was time to die.

It was pretty crazy seeing such a powerful bird so close up and in such a vulnerable position. We think it broke a leg and a wing in the wind & hail storm yesterday.

swimming and a shepherd

We started off the day with swimming at the Gore multi-sport centre, a new complex that’s been the subject of several newspaper articles on environmentally-friendly heat pump technology – the heat from cooling the ice rink is used to warm the pool and spa building.

The place was overrun with school children, and we almost didn’t even go in, but it turns out they were confined to one lane of the pool so we were still able to swim. I taught Miva how to aquajog and we had some fun with that, but the highlight was definitely the spa!

After swimming, we went to visit Graham’s black lab Blaze, who’s staying at the vet’s while fighting stomach cancer, and then had coffee at a cute little café in Gore.

I was feeling a little guilty about not contributing anything in terms of work, so I was glad when Miva told me about her plans to build raised-bed vegetable gardens to grow stuff for home consumption. Graham had driven posts in earlier, so we just had to select somewhat-matching boards from an old treehouse and nail them onto the posts. All three of us were out working on the beds when a huge hail storm came up, so we ran inside….so much for helping out!

Turns out I did have something to contribute – since the weather wasn’t cooperating, we decided to come up with a business plan for the farm. We got out a white board (oh, the memories!) and started brainstorming. I even made a PowerPoint slide when we were done – more memories of cubicle life! Then I wrote an ad for a shepherd – now that was something new and different!

“A full-time position is available on Marama Farm in South Otago, a 1,200ha organic property with 6,600 ewes and 400 cattle.

A 3-bedroom house is provided for accommodation. Hunting and fishing on the doorstep, skiing nearby. Single or couple applicants welcome – potential opportunities available for partner.

Ideal applicants will have good working dogs, excellent stock skills and a cheery disposition.

For further information contact: ___________________"

marama farm

When I arrived at Marama, Graham was still on his way back from Nelson, so Miva, his long-term WWOOFer, showed me around. The place is great – rolling hills and lot of sheep, including tons of little lambs, the reason for my visit.

I was expecting to roll up my sleeves and get to work right as soon as I got there, but I just ended up helping out a little bit with dinner.

Both Graham and Miva have always wanted to go to Antarctica, and Graham’s into dSLR photography too, so we had a little slide show after dinner.

for the dems

I ended up getting a little lost using the directions Graham (the farmer) had sent via text – it turns out I was supposed to be coming from a different highway, so the turns were off. The first time I saw this highway sign, I thought it was just something someone had put up, and didn’t make the connection that I was in the middle of a stretch of highway between the cities of Gore (“Brown Trout Fishing Capital of the World”) and Clinton (“Our Three-Horse Town”). As Graham said later when I mentioned my amusement, “I don’t think we’ll be seeing one named after your current president anytime soon.” Maybe it’s just the circles I’m running in, but I haven’t met a supporter of the current administration yet…I don’t bring up politics, but the topic rears its head often.

Photo: me doing my best Home Shopping Network impression at the Presidential Highway sign on RD1 in Waipahi

wanaka

Mark’s group was leaving Queenstown today to head to Milford Sound, so I said goodbye to him this morning and headed north to Wanaka. I’d been toying with the idea of WWOOFing at a sheep farm in South Otago, owned by the partner of a guest who was at Pujjis last month, so I gave the farmer a call when I was halfway to Wanaka to see if he needed any help. Ironically, he was up in Nelson when I called and had just visited Jane, but he has room for one more WWOOFer in addition to the long-term one he already has.

I’d heard Wanaka was kind of Queenstown for Kiwis (I hardly ran into any ‘natives’ in Qtown) and that most prefer it there. It was really gorgeous, and didn’t have as much of a commercial feel to it, so I can see why. It was also really windy, though, so I ate my lunch in the car and headed to the farm.

roaring meg

Last night’s festivities made the 45-minute drive out to the river boarding place a little bit rough, but I made it in one piece. The drop-off point for river boarding is at an old gold mining center, and we got dressed in our 3-piece wetsuits (long johns, jackets and a ‘kidney belt’ since the water was so cold), fins and helmets, and were given body boards. We trekked down to the river, jumped in to the icy cold water, and had a quick lesson on river boarding survival skills, then we were off.

We were going down a section of rapids in the Kawarau River known as Roaring Meg, named after a brothel owner in the mining days who’d allegedly throw misbehaving patrons into the river. I feel sorry for them, since they didn’t have our guides (side note: one was a younger, blonde, Australian version of Pierce Brosnan, which did not help me absorb the important details of the safety lecture) to pull them back to safety whenever they got caught by the current. We went down 5 km of rapids – that’s what I’m told, at least, but I really have no idea because I was concentrating very hard on not dying. Then we had 2 km of still water to relax a little, and also to realize that water was, in fact, still icy cold even though we didn’t notice it so much when we were kicking through the rapids.

Right about when I was wondering how they manage to get a steady stream of people to pay money to do this rather than the other way around, they brought out the jetski for playtime. Now that was fun. Then we got to jump off big rocks into the river – fun, except that the height sent the water shooting straight up my nose – and go down this huge waterslide, where you’d pick up so much speed that you skim halfway across the water on the board before the current picked you up & the jetsii guy had to intervene.

I would have done the slide a few more times if it didn’t involved hauling myself out of the water and walking back up the hill – both were tough since I was pretty much numb from the cold, and I headed up to the hot showers early. It took me a good 15 minutes to get out of my life jacket, wetsuit, fins, etc. – my fingers were so cold that they couldn’t handle clips & zippers, and once they thawed out my arms were too sore to peel the layers off.

Today was Labour Day, and apparently pretty much everything closes for it, so after we got back to town it took ages to find a restaurant that was open, but we found a Thai place and Mark and I had dinner with another guy from his group who was still buzzing from his bungy jump and skydive that afternoon.

queenstown

After a night out, I decided I wanted a good hamburger for lunch (it was past breakfast by the time I woke up…). On the recommendation of the Contiki tour driver, we went to Fergburger and I bypassed Sweet Bambi and Little Lamby (venison and lamb burgers, respectively) for the Southern Style, with real American-style streaky bacon, avocado and added cheese.

The burgers were huge, but I still finished mine. Afterwards, we went to look into river boarding - white-water rafting without the safety of a raft – and decided to sign up after a bit more activity-shopping and a visit to the ‘Underwater Encounter,’ literally a window into Lake Wakatipu. In the afternoon, Mark was off to his Canyon Swing – bungy with a little extra excitement, and I caught up with Trish from the Lemon Tree backpacker’s in Blenheim. She’s been working at Speight’s Ale House in Qtown since around the time we all left Blenheim.

It was great to catch up with Trish, and I got to see the new flat she’d moved into that very morning. I met back up with Mark and the Contiki crew after a late dinner with Trish – first stop was the ice bar. I’d been to the ice bar in Auckland and it wasn’t on my short list of things to do again, but the tour group had gotten a reasonable deal and I figured it would be fun with a big group. This one was actually a little different than the Auckland one even though it was the same franchise – no professional photographer, so there wasn’t a no-cameras policy, although we didn’t know that ahead of time, so I don’t have any pics. Also, we got to smash our ice glasses at the end, whereas you get fined in the Auckland one if you break yours. Ok, so there was a hole in the ice wall at this one, and it just felt a little shabbier overall, but it was still a good time.

After our allotted 30 minutes in the ice bar, Trish met up with us at a bar across the way and then we all headed to Winnie’s, a gourmet pizza place where Trish’s boyfriend works as a bartender (incidentally in lederhosen tonight, as it was their Oktoberfest). We had an excellent time dancing, playing video games, and eating delicious pizza which may or may not have actually belonged to us.

hydro power

I’d planned to leave Briar’s place bright and early, but, as usual, was slow in getting packed up and ready to leave. After getting some planning tips from Briar and her flatmates for my return to Christchurch next month, I headed out to the Saturday market at the Arts Center in the middle of the city. I was hoping to find some food, but unless delicious homemade fudge counts as food, I didn’t find any. No matter – had a nice time wandering around the market and the arts center and talking to a couple of photographers who were selling their work there.

I stopped at a couple of dams along the way – I hear hydroelectric power makes up a decent percentage of NZ energy, and it’s easy to believe from what I’ve seen. The water’s crazy-blue…something about the minerals, maybe from the glaciers in the area? Other than that, I was mostly driving, and made it in to Queenstown around 8 pm, where I drove around lost for a while before finding Mark at his hotel.

We went out for Indian food (my choice…I’m not really branching out!) and then met up with Mark’s tour group at a bar downtown. I’ve been living a completely dry & fairly quiet existence at the Pujjis for the past 2 months, so I decided to take it easy for my first night out…

homecoming 2

Arvind arrived home today, so Jane and I spent the morning getting the house ‘Arvind-Spotless’ – this is a standard of clean & neat almost at the Grandma Lepple level, so it took until about 2 pm even though the house looked pretty good to start with. I did the grocery shopping and picked up some garden statues from Black Market in town.

Sabrina and I are in the same city again, so I texted her on my way in but she was in a suburb – Richmond, interestingly enough, which confused me for a split second when I read the text – so we could meet up. ‘Richmond’ is the ‘Springfield’ of New Zealand, I lost count a while back. We made plans to meet up tomorrow to go out for Halloween, and then I revised the plans to allow 2 hours of planning/shopping. Since we usually spend a couple of months planning for Halloween, it’ll be interesting to see if we can come up with something in that short of a time!

A new WWOOFer arrived from Maruia Springs today, her name is Tomimo. Arnaud left while I was on my roadtrip, so I reclaimed the big caravan and am very excited about it – it’s not as nice inside from a stylistic point of view, but I like having all the space and the mattress is a lot better too.

christchurch

I drove ‘down the middle’ today, through the hot springs area and Lewis Pass and on down to Christchurch.

I stayed with Jane’s oldest daughter Briar, who’s finishing up her finance and marketing degrees at Canterbury. I didn’t realized I’d arrived on the last day of classes, but when Briar told me it explained some strange behavior I’d seen when I was sitting in a mall parking lot waiting for her to come get me (it was the easiest meeting place) – apparently the drinking starts at 6 am on the last day of classes. I think Cville and Christchurch might be sister cities…

I’d arrived in the city around 5, and planned to meet up with Briar to get a key and then do some more exploring, but decided to just stay in and rest. We ordered Hell Pizza – pretty damn good! It’s a big chain here and I’ve seen it in pretty much every city, now I know why.

Briar wasn’t feeling well, so I played pool with one of her flatmates for an hour or two. I guess my Blenheim practice paid off a little, because I wasn’t as bad as I usually am, and actually won the last game!

Photo: A stream in downtown Christchurch

gettin' ready

Tomorrow’s my big road trip, so I did a little bit of shopping in preparation for it – windshield wiper fluid, AA roadside assistance membership, and healthy snacks for the car.

The basic plan for the road trip is to spend 1.5 – 2 days getting down to Queenstown, where I’ll meet up with Mark Chawla, a Capital One co-worker and kickball teammate. I’m heading ‘down the middle’ by way of Christchurch, where I’ll stay with Jane’s oldest daughter, Briar. I’m not sure exactly how long I’ll be gone, or where I’ll be going after Queenstown, so packing was an interesting exercise – at least I’ve got the car so I can just throw a bunch of stuff in the back and not worry about packing light!

fit for a king

I finished the reversible blanket for the massage room today – it’s tan on one side, burgundy on the other, with the same jacquard pattern on both sides and gold cording around the edges.

As you may know, I can be something of a perfectionist, so I wasn’t satisfied with the machine stitching of the blanket and spent another several hours hand-finishing the seams so they’d lie completely flush up against the cording.

The blanket’s a bit dramatic – Arnaud and I agree it would look at home in a medieval castle – but it should also look decent in the massage room, since that’s a bit over the top but still works.

no ice cream for dinner

I had ice cream for dinner last night. A big huge bowl of white chocolate and raspberry ice cream.

You’d think I’d know better, especially with all my time at the Pujjis. But I’m a slow learner when it comes to some subjects, especially when there’s an incentive not to learn.
So today wasn’t really the best day – I got up early to drive Jamie to the airport as a small thank-you for his car-buying help, then fell asleep on the couch for a few hours because I was feeling kind of crappy after the ice cream diet.

In the afternoon, I washed the second half of the material for the blanket I’m making to match the redecorated massage room, and as I was putting it in the machine a bar of chocolate fell on the floor. I leaned over to pick it up, thinking it had fallen off some shelf in the laundry room or it had mistakenly gotten mixed up in the material in the massage room closet, then noticed a card ad fallen on the floor too. “A little treasure for the little treasure. With gratitude for the help you give so generously.” the note read. The chocolate bar and card had been folded up in the material for me to find when I worked on the blanket – good thing I didn’t procrastinate too long on that project!

ihaveacar,ihaveacar!

I bought a car today!!! It’s a 1988 5-speed red Toyota Corolla liftback. Yes, it’s older than my first-ever car (a 1989 Dodge Spirit, in case you didn’t memorize the ‘Baby Jetta’ post ;) ). And no, it doesn’t have power steering, central locks, electric windows, air conditioning, ABS, or any of that fancy stuff (oh – and the stereo didn’t convey). But it’s exactly what I wanted: something solid, safe and basic, economical, with 4 doors and lots of room for people and luggage on roadtrips. It’s a low mileage car that passed the NZ warrant of fitness, the car-expert-guest’s tests, and Spike’s, from Spike’s Mechanic, inspection.

I’m very excited. I have a list of car-related things to do tomorrow (make spare key(s), get 3rd-party insurance, check out AA membership, fill up petrol, buy washer fluid, etc.) but I did cross of one of the top items, ‘Find the perfect keychain,’ when I was searching through my backpack for something else and realized I’d packed my little oval you-won’t-believe-it’s-a-Leatherman thingie.

Oh…and did I mention my expert negotiation team got it for me at 33% off? No, I wasn’t a part of this team. Strength: recognizing & acknowledging own weaknesses. A major weakness: bargaining/negotiation.

The car is actually the very first one I ever looked at here, from the Car Company Cheapies lot in Nelson proper. I’d originally written it off as beyond my budget, but this before I knew there was so much wiggle room on sticker price.

HOORAY FOR ROADTRIPS!!!

indulgences

We had Indian takeaways (including my favorite, butter chicken) for dinner, heavenly chocolate cake w/icing (incidentally, from an organic & wheat free mix) for dessert, and after another board game together by the fire, I had a spa by myself under the stars. Life is good.

I made it through half the mending pile today, and the working guest and I went into town for a little while – time to make another car payment withdrawal since the amount I can take out per day is limited and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be coming home with a car tomorrow!

operations manual

Spring weather in Nelson is crazy! It’s been raining a ton lately, and the river’s up a lot higher than I’m used to. Today started out beautiful, but the rain started in the afternoon, and as I’m writing this now, it’s still beating down on my caravan roof.

I spent the day working on an operations manual for the retreat business – everything from household duties to use of the planned software for booking, enquiries, billing, etc. I only got about halfway through, switching between writing and doing mending so I wasn’t staring at the computer screen all day.

We had a gorgeous organic lamb roast for dinner tonight. The meat was from a guest who has a farm in South Otago. I’d planned to go there later this month to help out with lambing as a WWOOFer, but I’m not sure whether or not I’ll make it down there since the car shopping hasn’t been successful yet and it would be really tough to get there without one.

One guest left today, but we still had enough people to play a game after dinner. We played Settlers, sort of a board game. It reminded me a little bit of Civilization, the computer game I wasted half of my middle-school-era free time on…I have a hazy memory of having played Settlers before –in Austin, TX on the cross-country road trip, maybe?

kiwi blokes

I had an early start this morning – Jane had a meeting in town, so I’d offered to pick up our ‘working guest’ from the airport at 8 am. I use my cell phone as an alarm clock, but since there’s no reception here the battery drains quickly, so the fasting guest who always gets up super early was my back-up alarm – by request, he threw rocks at my caravan door at 7:30 this morning to make sure I was up in time!

While Jane was out, I went through the business requirements with the working guest and started putting together the database design and process flow diagrams with her.
After lunch, I headed out to Stoke to go look at a reasonably priced Corolla, one of the ones that our fasting car expert guest had picked out of the local trade paper for me. He offered to come with me to check it out and do the bargaining, so between the two of us we navigated our way to the seller’s house with only minor directional errors.

At the seller’s place, the guest started poking inspecting the car –which looked like it’d had a hard life – while I went to find the front door. I didn’t find that, but I did find an open garage with a a ‘Disturbed Motorz’ sign on it, and two youngish guys in coveralls clattering tools among the shells and guts of 4 or 5 cars. I sensed Justin, the guy who’d listed the car, sizing me up as I introduced myself. I could tell he thought it’d be an easy sale to an unsuspecting customer, and I was wary of the car first because it seemed to good to be true, and second because of the boy-racer operation they had going in the garage.

Figuring the car sale was out of the question, I decided I might as well have some fun since we’d driven all the way out there, and put on my best wide-eyed, innocent, ‘i-know-nothing-about-cars-or-anything-else-for-that-matter’ act. After a few minutes of chatting, we headed out to see the car. The guest was poking around underneath the hood, and Justin was surprised to see him. Smiling sweetly, I indicated toward the solidly-built guest, towering over the car in his GT Falcon Club polo. “This is Jamie. He knows more about cars than I do, so I thought I’d bring him along!” I could see this disappointment flash across Justin’s face, and I thought to myself that bringing Jamie along was probably just as good as a full pre-sale inspection even if he didn’t so much as open the hood of the car – I could just observe the reaction of the seller to see if they were trying to pass something off.

We actually took the car for a test drive anyway so Jamie could help me learn more about how to identify bad cars in case I don’t find one to buy before he leaves. On the way back, we looked at cars parked along the used-car-sale roads, and stopped by the cheap car dealer in town. There are two Corolla liftbacks there that could be good options if they’ll drop the price a little.
Our car expedition took longer than expected, and I ended up missing the photoshoot I was supposed to help out with for Jane’s book launch, but they knew ahead of time I wouldn’t be able to make it.

We watched ‘Kenny,’ an Australian comedy about a porta-loo plumber, after dinner, but the first copy of the DVD was faulty so I had to run back into town to get a new one. I guess maybe some of the airheadedness from earlier in the day was still clinging to me, because the guy at the DVD store asked me very patiently if perhaps the reason the DVD had not worked was because I had tried to watch it in a CD player.

buy-sell-swap

I ran into town today to do some grocery shopping and pick up Buy Sell Swap, the local weekly trade paper, but when I got home the fasting guest had already bought it for me, and circled the cars he thought would be good. This place attracts the nicest people – I’ve already had a ton of offers of places to stay all around both islands.

A couple of weeks ago, a return guest who’d recently started a business systems consulting company came to stay. The Pujjis are in the middle of expanding their businesses, and Jane worked out a swap with the guest – a weekend stay in exchange for help setting up improved business systems.

After lunch, I helped Jane document her business processes and draw up the business requirements for custom business software that they’ll have built through Rent-A-Coder after the guest comes. I thought this was the kind of stuff I’d want to avoid on my ‘year off,’ but it’s totally different when it’s for a small business and you feel like you are really making an impact.

cheese-making

I made cheese today!! It was really easy, actually – I told Arvind I wanted to learn how to make palak paneer – literally translated, spinach & cheese. I thought it involved pre-made cheese, but apparently you make your own. Since it was raining today, I couldn’t hang the cheese out on the clothesline to dry, so I hung the cheesecloth bundle on the bathtub faucet to drain, and then squished it between two plates with a vase full of water on top for weight.

The paneer turned out like a hard cottage cheese, and the dish turned out well, although it was a distinctly healthier version than the (yummy) greasy ones I’m used to at Indian restaurants. Still tasted good, though.

Arvind left for India by way of Thailand today, with only a miniature suitcase so he can have room to bring back everything he’s buying!

Sarah had two days off from the hotel today, and I was running some fun errands (bead store, Spotlight and grocery shopping) so I invited her along for company and then she came back for dinner and got to see the place for the first time and meet Jane.

three desserts

I’m feeling a little better about the car search because the Pujjis have offered to ‘rent’ me one of their cars so I can feel like I can use it anytime I want. They’ve been great about letting me use their cars, but I don’t feel comfortable just taking them whenever, but this way I’ll pay for petrol and a percentage toward some repairs they’d already had planned depending on how much I use it. So, I don’t have to worry about finding one before Arvind leaves – I can use it for the Queenstown roadtrip.

There’s a guest here who knows a lot about cars, though, so he’s offered to take me car-shopping…so I’ll keep looking.
Jane got back from her trip to Wellington yesterday, and Arvind’s off to India tomorrow, so it’s been pretty busy today. We finished hanging the curtains upstairs, and I taught Arvind how to use hotmail so he’ll have email while he’s in India.

The big news of the day is that the advance copies of Jane’s book arrived! It’s been about 3 years in the making, so it’s pretty exciting. To celebrate that, and as a farewell to Arvind, we had three courses of dessert – fresh berry ice cream, Indian sweets, and Mini Magnums. I like this health resort!

antarctic elephant

One of the cars we went to go see yesterday was a Toyota Celica we’d noticed for sale along the side of the road. Initially, we’d thought the car was great – while it didn’t fit my original wish list (2 doors instead of 4, auto not manual, bigger engine than necessary), it was newer, sportier, cheaper and more fun to drive than most of the others. According to the sign, it was for sale because it’s owner is in Antarctica for a year as a chef at Scott Base…I’m embarrassed to admit now that that might be the main reason I even looked twice at it. I don’t think I was the only one who liked it for a silly reason, though – Arvind had already laid claim to the Indian elephant key chain before we even started negotiating.

Anyway, when we went to go see it yesterday we asked for a mechanical check and said we’d buy it if it checked out. We got the report today…and it was pretty much a mile long. I guess we should have known when the owner’s father said his son had thought it was a 4WD, and taken it off-roading. Soo…long story short, that one’s out of the picture. And this time, I’m going to stick to my original wish-list.

cars, curtains & clairvoyants

Arnaud, Arvind and I organized the upstairs office today and made storage areas on both sides of the sloped ceiling by sewing and hanging curtains. I also made a big batch of chick pea curry to take to Anna and Roger, who had a baby boy on Wednesday night.

We visited a couple of cars today – a Honda Accord, Toyota Starlet and Subaru Legacy, but each one had something wrong with it…200K more kilometers than stated, no acceleration, body rust, etc. I’m not in a rush, so I’m not going to settle – I won’t be able to get anything great in my price range, but I can be a little choosy. We did find some excellent real-fruit ice cream along the way, though.

Arvind was asked to speak at a Spiritualist Church of New Zealand service this evening, and he invited us along for ‘a real Kiwi experience.’ I thought it would be a good chance to pick back up the mini-tradition Sabrina and I started in the Cook Islands of going to a new religious service each Sunday, so I went along without any convincing. Arnaud needed a lot more, but ended up coming too. After a crazy trip down to town in Arvind’s convertible, blasting Indian music and singing and dancing along the way again, we got to the church. Half the people there looked pretty New Age-y, the other half looked just like the older generation at my childhood church. The service was an experience – instead of a sermon, a clairvoyant went through and spoke to about 1/5 of the congregation about what he saw going on. I sort of felt like I was missing out on Kool-Aid or something – everything he said to each person could have applied to anyone anytime (“You’re making a decision this week” or “Something’s on your mind, right?”) yet everyone he spoke responded with surprise at the clarity with which he saw their individual situation. Ok, everyone except poor Arnaud, who got singled out for a ‘reading’ even though he’d been hunching his 6’4” frame over in his seat so he didn’t get called on. Something else I found interesting: instead of saying ‘please stand’ for hymns, they said ‘Let’s be upstanding’ – took me a while to figure it out, I was thinking of being upstanding as involving more than getting out of my chair.

Just to cap the night off on a completely bizarre note, when we stopped at the video store after church I recommended 40-year-old-virgin. What I didn’t realize then – but certainly realized about 50 f-bombs and 5-6 very uncomfortable scenes later – was that we accidentally got the unrated version. I felt responsible, but Arvind and Arnaud both ended up loving the movie, not only finding it hilarious but also picking out a not-all-that-far-out-there message from it.

legoland

Arvind helped me go through the weekly trade paper today to look for potential cars. It’s doubly tough car shopping here because I don’t recognize a lot of the car models or even makes. Also, people tend to keep cars a lot longer here (and take care of them better to keep them running longer), so cars I wouldn’t even look at in the States are actually fairly good here.

I have a couple of car-viewings lined up for tomorrow, but unfortunately the paper covers a pretty wide range of locations so some tempting ones are too far away to be worthwhile.
We came back from a shopping outing into town expecting a quiet evening, but then Arvind got a call from friends and we ended up having a bunch of people over for dinner. Arvind’s friends brought a delicious goat curry, and we tossed some more veggies and fish in the laksa we were making so it would serve more people.

I had a great time playing with the 3-year-old daughter of two of the guests – she was pretty shy at first, but after half an hour or so we were knee-deep in Lego creations and she had to be literally pried away when they all left three hours later.

dance like nobody's watching

Arnaud, Arvind and I spent the better part of today ‘renovating’ Jane’s upstairs office – using curtains to create ‘closets’ for storing copies of her book when it arrives on one side, and ironing and sewing projects on the other.

The three of us went to a World Dance event thing in town tonight – Donna organizes it monthly, and Arvind had been promising her he’d go, so we all went. Arnaud needed a lot of convincing – in fact, we practically had to drag him along. Anyway, Donna rents out a hall, sets up kind lighting, and makes a ‘wave’ playlist – different kinds of music with each track leading into the next, and the highest energy music at the middle. The idea is that anyone can come and dance in a ‘safe place’ – no audience, no pressure, no technique.

I’m not a dancer. I was a little scared to go, but actually had a good time. It probably helped that we were all a little punch-drunk from working all day, so we had a hilarious ride down to town in Arvind’s convertible, top down and blaring bhangra music on the top volume setting, with Arnaud grabbing the wheel whenever Arvind’s dancing started interfering with driving.

carrom board

Jane left today for a long weekend in Wellington, and we don’t have any guests for the weekend so we’ll be working on ‘Arvind Projects’ for a few days.

One of the projects we’ll be working on is finding me a car. I wasn’t originally planning on getting a car, but I was also thinking I’d be spending a lot of time outside New Zealand, just working here to earn money to travel to other places. Then I discovered I loved New Zealand, and have been having a great time WWOOFing, which is much easier with a car since many hosts live pretty far out. Also, it’s nice to be able to stop places where buses don’t stop, and not to be held to a schedule.

I didn’t get around to getting the local weekly trade paper today, but hopefully the cars don’t move too fast!

We all played carrom board tonight, which I’m told is sort of an Indian version of pool. There’s a square board dusted with talcum powder or something similar, lots of little discs, and a ‘cue disc’ which you flick at your pieces from a line on your side of the board. We were all pretty bad at it – Arvind wasn’t around, but apparently he’s really good. My team won, but I had really sore fingertips from playing!

sushi redux

Yuki, who WWOOFed for the Pujjis in June of this year, arrived yesterday for a visit. When she was here the first time, she taught Jane and Arvind how to make ‘lazy sushi,’ which we had the other night. Instead of rolling sushi ahead of time and guessing what people want, and potentially having to waste the ones that don’t roll neatly, you just set out all the ingredients and cut sheets of nori into quarters, and everybody assembles their own real-time.

I made two trips into town today, both including Fresh Choice stops…the cashiers there pretty much know me by now, and I think they all hpe I’m not going to choose them – today the guy got really excited when he found pre-packaged salad greens on the belt – “I love bar codes!” Usually pretty much everything I buy is from the organic produce section, so nothing’s labeled even with stickers, and they have to look up the SKU and type it in. I had to educate one cashier about the identity of celery last week – kids these days! ;)

bathing buddha

I should have a lot of luck coming up – I spent over an hour today cleaning and polishing the brass Buddha statue in the kitchen. The Pujjis aren’t Buddhist – their library contains volumes on most of the major world religions, and a crucifix and images of various Hindu deities keep the kitchen Buddha company.

My main WWOOFing assignment today was one of my favorite kinds – a photoshoot, this time of Donna for her sleep & stress therapy marketing tools. We were set up in the big yoga room, and got some great shots of Donna on her own, and also some ‘action shots’ of her, with Jane’s daughter standing in as a client model.

the muesli portraits

I went back to Bin Inn today to get the missing muesli ingredients, and had a nice wander around town too. Jane and I are thinking of doing a cookbook with recipes from the retreat and a healthy dose of ‘cooking is not scary’ coaching. I’ve taken over the cooking now, and about ½ the meal planning and am really enjoying it.

Anyway, the plan is to do the layout for 1-2 recipes first to see how it looks and if we both want to go through with it – it’ll be a lot of work, but rewarding, if we do. We already have 5 advance orders from guests!

After making a vegetarian ‘meat’ball dinner tonight, I made the breakfast muesli and photographed the process. Starting with the muesli was a conscious decision – I’ve never been a big fan of breakfast food and used to skip the meal a lot even knowing that was bad, but I looove Jane’s muesli and even look forward to breakfast now.