Coromandel v2.0

Liz (that's Jo's mum for those playing at home) arrived in Auckland last Friday night and we made our second effort to get around to the Coromandel Peninsula (to the east of Auckland). Fortunately this time we successfully reached our destination with no dramas. The villa at the campground in Hahei was very pleasant, but (since we arrived in the dark) the true charm of the place wasn't revealed until the next morning.

This was the view from our bedroom window...
And a 30 second walk to the beach...

Despite forecasts to the contrary, Saturday was sunny and warm. We went out to Cathedral Cove, which is only accessible via a 45 minute walk. It seems longer, but once you finally drop down onto the sand it feels like you've stepped into a postcard. It really is as pretty as it looks in the photos.

With the unexpected sun came the usual consequences - aka sunburn. Three days later I was already peeling. Oh well. We spent the afternoon watching the family channel on the giant visi-screen (aka looking out the villa window at the neighbours chase their children and get drunk.)

On Sunday morning I was itching to go for a drive, so I nabbed the keys to the 330i and headed out. The road between Whenuakite and Tairua is awesome: smooth, and twisty like a breakdancing snake. So what else to do but dump the car into sporty shift mode, and spank it like a red-headed step-child? This is the first good chance I've had to thrash the Bimmer, and it turns out to be a bit of a lead-tipped arrow. Well, not bad overall, but the 3.0 up front is a little heavy and makes the nose push wide at the limit, and the lack of decent (electronic) throttle response, and auto, makes it hard to be precise.

By mid morning, the visi-screen was stuck on the weather channel, and the forceast was bleak. We drove around to Whitianga, which is the nearest town of more reasonable size, though not a very exciting place on the whole. Perhaps the rain and lack of seasonal holidaymakers took the edge off it.

By Monday the weather was even worse. We had planned to spend some time at Hotwater Beach, and we did go for a looksee and to dip the toes, but we weren't as keen as the small number who were mad enough to strip off to their cossies and lie in the warm (sometimes very hot) pools. The thought of spending a couple of hours in wet togs for the drive home wasn't that appealing either.

Monday was also Guy Fawkes Night, and sadly we hadn't bought any fireworks. Fortunately, everyone else in Auckland had, so we were treated to the joy of about 3 hours of pyrotechnics, and the suburbs sounding like a minor warzone. What a great way to celebrate a convicted terrorist. I wonder if in a few hundred years we'll be partying up for bin Laden Night, and introducing young children to the joy of coloured sparklers and third-degree burns? Despite some 800 tonnes of fireworks being delivered, apparently this was the quietest Night in several years... Fireworks have still been popping occasionally every night since.

Tuesday - ah, Cup Day! Sadly not a public holiday, though they are pretentious enough over here to call it "The Race That Stops Two Nations", and try to claim the winning horse as their own (via breeding, ownership, training, or whatever desperate connection they can manage to find. It would seem that if the jockey's cousin's boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's sister once stopped over at Auckland airport on her way to LAX, then a winning horse can be regarded as a true Kiwi.)

Love to all, please stay in touch! (oh, and we're under "drjoking" on Skype if you want to talk...)

Visitors!

Well it's only taken what, 9 months for our first visitors to come over and see us!

First things first though, we have email up and running again. But until I can get someone at work to try working out the laptop troubles, our email archive and contacts list is gone, so please just send us a quick hello email and we can gather your email addresses again!

Jacqui and James turned up for a few days with us before continuing on to Rarotonga. Though cramped with 4 people in our little house we managed to survive! And either they're very polite or the spare bed we have is tolerable to sleep on, so that means the rest of you have no excuse to come stay.

Anyway, they being who they are, we managed to cram lots of activities with them into the short time thy were here. Restaurants, cafes, penguins, karting, driving around to the usual touristy places in town... not to mention plenty of the usual crude jokes, smut, and discussions of bodily functions, that defines our friendship.

Naturally, this coincided with a week of dismal weather... On Sunday we went to Kelly Tarltons Antarctic Experience, where they have a flock (?) of penguins crammed into a small fridge, and a few giant stingrays (cue Steve Irwin jokes) and miniature seahorses.

Tuesday night James and I went karting at what is apparently the fastest (rental) karting place in Auckland. Lots of fun ripping it up and getting sideways, though after half an hour straight I was in pain, and James still beat me by half a second. No excuses, I just wasn't fast enough. My shoulders and wrists are still feeling it several days later.

It's almost a relief to be back to just two of us now. We've got a long weekend here to recover, which also means that I'll have to make friends with someone who has Sky and visit them on Monday morning to watch the F1...

love to all.

postscript - wow to my parents, they just sold their big farm today for... lets just say... rather a lot of money. It will be a shame to see it go (and we need to clear out our stuff from the cottage), but it's gratifying to see all their hard work on the infrastructure of the property pay off.

Windoze

Well the computer decided to crack the shits with us on Sunday. I've mostly got it back to normal, but email is a bit of a mess due to Outlook. My regular ihug address isn't working, but my gmail one is so you can contact me there. Jo's email is still OK. I think.

miscellaneous

Just some random thoughts, too disjointed to make a regular post out of...


Good: Daylight savings has started here. We're an extra hour ahead.
Bad: But we're still 10 years behind...

Bad: Spring may be here, but it's wetter than ever.


Good: Casey Stoner
Bad: Sebastien Vettel (F%&@ YOU!)
Ugly: Neither are on free to air TV in NZ...


Good: Every single shop in NZ has eftpos, and no minimum transaction. Parking meters take credit cards. I haven't carried cash in 6 months.

Bad: Rugby. World Cup, League, local, etc. Bloody endless. Wake up NZ, there are other sports in the world!
Good: No AFL, ever. (though missing out on Adelaide getting pumped is always a shame. we still streamed Roy & HG's call live)

Good: More TV channels launched.
Bad: more crap that's not worth watching.

Good: Monteith's Zesty Radler Bier.

beans, beans the musical fruit

I mentioned a while ago that I had a breadmaker being geared up for something other than breadmaking...

Here's the teardown and modification session - I pulled out all the electronics and fitted a switch to run the motor continuously.

Then fill it with some green coffee beans, and whack a heat gun in there. Here's some decaf, so it starts quite brown rather than green in colour.

The cool down. A day or two's rest and it should be perfect for brewing. Yum, fresh coffee!

Napier and Taupo

Well it's been a few weeks since I've posted, mostly due to a lack of interesting things to report on: "Went to work, worked, came home, had dinner, went to bed" isn't exactly exciting news...

But anyway, we spent last week down in Napier, which is in the south east of the North Island, on Hawkes Bay. We stopped off in Taupo to break up the drive there and back. Down into Hawkes Bay is a very pretty drive (well, once you get past the endless pine plantations) - lots of windy roads (that I didn't get to drive, but Jo hustled along on pretty well), ever-changing scenery and mountains, spring lambs, and green, green hills everywhere.

Taupo has some interesting geothermal sites, including a hot spring that gets some use for bathing, and a weird valley of steaming holes, called "Craters of the Moon". Huka falls also run from Lake Taupo, cutting through a narrow gorge.

Down at Napier, we arrived to a couple of days of bleak wet weather, but it cleared up for a few fine days. Plenty of Art-Deco-ness to see around town, plus we drove around checking out some wider scenery (a daffodil farm with supposed views of the mountains, and a few wineries to gather supplies from, and sample a few along the way...). In all a nice little getaway, beats working for a week that's for sure!

Apart from overlooking the beach (and a carpark that hosted New Zealand's Crappiest Sunday Market), the apartment we stayed at in Napier was home to the World's Worst TV. Not that there was anything wrong with it once operational and set correctly, but I've never come across a TV before that:

• takes over 30 seconds to "boot up".
• Occasionally jams up and won't respond to the remote, if you try to do more than one command a second.
• responds to a volume change command by going all the way to minimum (or worse, maximum) volume.
• has a remote that also controls the heater (volume minus lowered the thermostat, channel 4 made it oscillate...)

Well, back to the excitement of work this week, so it may be a bit longer before the next update... here's some photos.

Love to all,

matt.

More random stuff

Hey all, what's been happening? It would be great if you could drop us a line or email and keep in touch! By the way, if you want to keep in contact with Jo, as a few of you have discovered already she now has a Facebook site. Her contact is via the drjoking@gmail.com address, but as I have no idea how to use facebook I can't give you more help than that...

Not much to report since my last post. Jo got really sick last week with a strep. infection and spent several days in bed and a week off work. Slowly recovering, but the best cure is apparently lots of rest.

We went down to the Viaduct (just west of the city) on Sunday to check out the New Zealand Coffee Festival. Not that I need another machine, but it was interesting to see what was on the market, and who some of the vendors and bean suppliers were. Free coffees are always welcome too.

The highlight for the day was a trans-Tasman barista competition between NZ and Australia, which involved several rounds of the teams producing copious drinks of high quality and artistic appearance in minimal time. Naturaly the Aussies dominated, much to the chagrin of the crowd (Kiwis don't like losing, particularly to Australians).

Since it was a clear day, we followed that up with a walk around the Viaduct harbour. After a several weeks of not getting out much, it was good to see some new ground for once, and get some sunshine.

We're planning on revisiting our Coromandel vacation in a few months, but in a few week's time we're heading to Napier for a week's holiday. More stories to follow I'm sure, hopefully not so dramatic as last time... (note to self: get car serviced soon!)