Ti Point Tork

House Under Contract

August 8, 2006 – 10:43 pm
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 the end of monthly nightmares (the financial monthly nightmares, anyway!) for us. Kids are doing great. Tonight Jenine had a meeting of the preschool board, so I was Daddy alone. We played poker with a bag of the 10c coins that New Zealand is removing from circulation. Raley's getting the hang of how much you should bid for each type of hand—it's amazing to see her able to identify pairs and threes-of-a-kind by herself now, because a year ago she was struggling to do that. Now she's figuring out when to bet 2 and when ...

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House Under Contract

August 8, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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 the end of monthly nightmares (the financial monthly nightmares, anyway!) for us. Kids are doing great. Tonight Jenine had a meeting of the preschool board, so I was Daddy alone. We played poker with a bag of the 10c coins that New Zealand is removing from circulation. Raley's getting the hang of how much you should bid for each type of hand—it's amazing to see her able to identify pairs and threes-of-a-kind by herself now, because a year ago she was struggling to do that. Now she's figuring out when to bet 2 and ...

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Home Sweet Home

August 2, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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 our US house to Old Town Fort Collins as it takes us to get from our NZ house to Warkworth. The difference is that one is 5 miles away, the other 20km. Our illusions about the wonderful children in the US were shattered when, as W returned to say "hello" to his US schoolfriends at a movie night, he was teased on the playground there. Little bastards are, apparently, universal. We stayed in a friend's house and enjoyed their big American mansion while they were in Europe. It was amazing to come back to such ...

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NZ Expanding Immigration

June 30, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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."

Posted in Business, New Zealand | No Comments »

Budget

May 17, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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. They hit the first one out of the park: broadband. We are, as one commentator pointed out, a small country at the arse end of the world. We have a great opportunity to compete through products that don't have to be shipped across an ocean. But while Telecom gives us a broadband stream worse than that of a geriatric with a swollen prostate, we're as competitive as the Natural Law Party. My other priority was education. Our local school is poor as dirt. The teachers do their best, but there's no way that our ...

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School Update

April 13, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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 them and for the school). I got involved in the schoool board's charter discussion, doing the bulk of the writing of the new vision and mission statements. And I spent a lot of time at the school. Every interval (recess) and lunch time, I would be at the school with a frisbee or pack of cards. I got to see the kids, make a few friends among them (and the teachers), and to watch W. During that time, I also slept out with him in the tent at the school camp, and lead the kids ...

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NZ Internet Use

April 12, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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 access increased 4% from March to September Figures from Statistics New Zealand quoted by Computerworld, found via a blog post by Mr Dee.

Posted in New Zealand, Technology | No Comments »

What Makes a Good Day

February 15, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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 calls that I had no energy for the kids. And I realized, as I was doing the dishes, that a day when I don't connect with the kids, is a day that I feel I've wasted. Or, to put it another way, I've never regretted a day when I played with the kids. I've regretted a lot of days I spent with my nose in email. I've moved to a country with a healthier attitude to life, now I just have to modify my behaviour so I can enjoy it.

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Valentine’s Day

February 13, 2006 – 7:00 pm
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, but all that driving (90m down, 90m back) took it out of them. I realize it's been a while since I blogged. We had a bit of family drama over Christmas, when Dad's business burned down in Colorado. Lots of stress there, and ongoing visits to America for Dad to pick up the pieces. I've had to think hard about what I want to do in August when I stop working on conferences fulltime--I may have a lot of dependents! The fire brought on the lowest low we've had since we got here, but around my birthday (Jan 18) we picked up and I started to ...

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Tuis

January 11, 2006 – 7:00 pm
The tuis (TOO-ees) sing outside my office window and it's fantastic. Here are some pointers to tui sites: Kiwi Wildlife Tours audio of birdsongs, White Heron Tours tui sounds, Wikipedia entry on tuis.

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