Well another week’s nearly over. Auckland was rocked (I use the term loosely) by an earthquake on Wednesday night that probably barely rated a mention anywhere in the rest of the world, but was newsworthy here. Apparently it’s pretty rare in this part of the country, and all the people further south laughed at the Aucklanders for making such a fuss. It rated 4.5 on the Richter scale. Surely there’s got to be a better expression than “on the Richter scale”, but I don’t know it and I’ve never head of it. Yes I know it’s a dimensionless logarithmic scale, but it lacks a bit of presence in the same way that “deciBels” has it. 4.5 Ooohyeahs would sound more impressive. Someone fill me in if I’m missing a vital piece of jargon here…
Anyway, 4.5 isn’t really much to feel. Imagine driving down the freeway and your car goes over a few small, gentle undulations. Except replace “car” with “14 storey concrete apartment block”. It was enough to freak Jo out mildly.
As for “being rocked” in another sense, it’s O-Week this week. And our apartment is halfway between Auckland Uni campus and O’Rourke House (a college, based on the repeated chants). Nightly concerts at the uni campus are the norm, and fresh faced students are everywhere. So sleep is optional at the moment.
Things are slowly coming together for the house. Some of the bargains on Trademe have made up for the cost of the dial-up calls. We have a bed and a couch and a fridge and several other bits of furniture, and are hoping that we can synchronise with the outgoing tenants and the delivery services and a rental truck to get into the house before I start work.
Implicit in that last sentence is that I was finally offered a job and will be starting on Monday 5th March. Back to the daily grind, I’ve kind of enjoyed not being tied to a desk, though we’ve been so hectic lately that it will probably be a nice change of pace (except for the early starts). We picked up our excess baggage from the airport today (another “go here, get this form, go there, get form approved, drive 2km up the road, fill out another form, etc….” task that they seem to be fond of. It’s as if they’re trying to prevent contraband from getting in or something.) Thanks for organising that Liz, now I finally have some shorts to wear (the weather has been about 25-28 here every day, very nice!)
Jo starts work next Monday so I’ll have a week to run around and complete a few more tasks before we move house. God I hate moving house. At least this time we don’t have very much stuff to start with. Thanks to all the boys who helped move everything out of Morton Rd, it was much appreciated.
Top of the list of tasks is to find a new car. I’ve checked out a couple of NBs, very different to say the least. One imported white rustbucket, and one very clean gold one (**Warning, car geek content ahead**). I will point out that all Jap import 1.8 NBs have 6-speed manuals in them, from ’98 on, many have ABS, Bose stereos, and Torsens were an option (though hard to identify). The gold one has a few mods which is good if you want them (intake, exhaust, Bilstein coilovers, wheels, swaybar), but the mods seem to make insurance premiums double based in a few quotes I’ve had… The guy is asking $16K neg, I’m sure I could haggle it a bit, so to the MX boys, how does a modded NB for ~AUD12-13K sound? J. There’s a couple more I want to check out first though, including one 10AE, but for some reason it’s on 14’s. Odd.
I’ve attached a couple of pictures of the current car and the cats (in their temporary home) and the new house, so that everyone can see a bit of what we’re up to.
Hope all is well across the pond (and elsewhere).
all the best,
Matt and Jo.
Anyway, 4.5 isn’t really much to feel. Imagine driving down the freeway and your car goes over a few small, gentle undulations. Except replace “car” with “14 storey concrete apartment block”. It was enough to freak Jo out mildly.
As for “being rocked” in another sense, it’s O-Week this week. And our apartment is halfway between Auckland Uni campus and O’Rourke House (a college, based on the repeated chants). Nightly concerts at the uni campus are the norm, and fresh faced students are everywhere. So sleep is optional at the moment.
Things are slowly coming together for the house. Some of the bargains on Trademe have made up for the cost of the dial-up calls. We have a bed and a couch and a fridge and several other bits of furniture, and are hoping that we can synchronise with the outgoing tenants and the delivery services and a rental truck to get into the house before I start work.
Implicit in that last sentence is that I was finally offered a job and will be starting on Monday 5th March. Back to the daily grind, I’ve kind of enjoyed not being tied to a desk, though we’ve been so hectic lately that it will probably be a nice change of pace (except for the early starts). We picked up our excess baggage from the airport today (another “go here, get this form, go there, get form approved, drive 2km up the road, fill out another form, etc….” task that they seem to be fond of. It’s as if they’re trying to prevent contraband from getting in or something.) Thanks for organising that Liz, now I finally have some shorts to wear (the weather has been about 25-28 here every day, very nice!)
Jo starts work next Monday so I’ll have a week to run around and complete a few more tasks before we move house. God I hate moving house. At least this time we don’t have very much stuff to start with. Thanks to all the boys who helped move everything out of Morton Rd, it was much appreciated.
Top of the list of tasks is to find a new car. I’ve checked out a couple of NBs, very different to say the least. One imported white rustbucket, and one very clean gold one (**Warning, car geek content ahead**). I will point out that all Jap import 1.8 NBs have 6-speed manuals in them, from ’98 on, many have ABS, Bose stereos, and Torsens were an option (though hard to identify). The gold one has a few mods which is good if you want them (intake, exhaust, Bilstein coilovers, wheels, swaybar), but the mods seem to make insurance premiums double based in a few quotes I’ve had… The guy is asking $16K neg, I’m sure I could haggle it a bit, so to the MX boys, how does a modded NB for ~AUD12-13K sound? J. There’s a couple more I want to check out first though, including one 10AE, but for some reason it’s on 14’s. Odd.
I’ve attached a couple of pictures of the current car and the cats (in their temporary home) and the new house, so that everyone can see a bit of what we’re up to.
Hope all is well across the pond (and elsewhere).
all the best,
Matt and Jo.
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