Archive for the ‘New Zealand’ Category

From US to NZ

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

I just got back from a week in the US for Foo Camp, where I had a great time shopping two ideas around: New Zealand can be a hub of innovation, and Kids aren't being turned onto science and technology as careers Re: the ...

Jesus Christ

Friday, August 11th, 2006

Before I left for my last trip to the US, I went to a school board meeting where a program called Super Kids was discussed. It's a kids Christian program that wanted to use the House Of Learning (aka "library") at our local primary school after school hours. ...

House Under Contract

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

Great news! The house in Colorado is under contract, they inspect tomorrow morning, and then hopefully it's smooth sailing to closure. This is it: if it falls through, I'm renting it out. But if it sells (even if for much less than we were hoping to get) it's ...

Home Sweet Home

Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006

Back in New Zealand after nearly three months away. What a lot of culture shock there was, both in leaving and returning. Leaving: it's so easy to return to the US, yet so hard. The traffic was incredible: it takes as long for us to get from ...

NZ Expanding Immigration

Friday, June 30th, 2006

NZ Herald reports the government wants at least 47,000 skilled immigrants and will recognize skills in applicants from India and China for the first time. I love that the desired professions include "IT professionals, plumbers, and engineers."

Budget

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

Six months back in the country, I've formed some opinions about where NZ is lacking. I was interested to see how the budget would address what I've identified as the country's shortcomings. Now the budget's out, I give them 1/2 marks. I only had two priorities. ...

School Update

Thursday, April 13th, 2006

In the past month or more I've been working hard on making sure William had a good experience at school. I talked to his teachers to make sure that they were keeping their eyes open for bullying (and to ensure that they knew I had very high standards for ...

NZ Internet Use

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

There were 1.24 million active internet subscribers in New Zealand between March and September 2005 (NZ pop = 4M, remember) 70%, or 869,300, were modem users Total residential internet penetration was around 30% Business uptake of internet connections increased by 17% 66 ISPs compete for the 1.24 million customers Dial-up ...

What Makes a Good Day

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Today was unsatisfactory. I worked a solid 8 hours, packed in the email, made a coworker laugh, and made significant progress towards a goal. So why, at the end, do I feel blah? I was so knackered after the day of full on email and phone ...

Valentine’s Day

Monday, February 13th, 2006

We took William out of school for the day, drove down to Auckland, and went to Kelly Tarlton's World (like the Monterey Aquarium) and then to a buffet for lunch. Very luxurious, but you have to be on the ball when it's the missus's birthday and Valentine's Day. The kids had fun, ...