5 Years

It was five years ago today that, groggy and stupefied after a 30 hour flight, I first set foot upon New Zealand soil. I almost immediately set about blogging about it, and haven't really stopped since. A lot has happened in those five years, including acquisition of a resident's visa, job, and house. I've also recently started on my course, Winemaking and Grapegrowing, completing the first subject, Microbiology, in June this year.

So if you've forgotten what I've done over the last five years, go back to the beginning and read it all over again! here's a picture from 5 years ago:

100 Not Out

Yes, amazing as it may seem, this is my 100^th blog!

On Saturday we drove out to a school hall in Lower Hutt for Nicola to take her silver medal social dance, as she’d been unable to take it earlier when the rest of the class did, due to a Wellington City Chorus singing commitment. There were only a handful of us there, taking various different levels of medals (we only recognised one other person from our class) – most of them at a more advanced standard than we’re at!

Nicola was ably led by our dance instructor, Michael, and rock’n’rolled, cha-cha-cha’d and waltzed around the floor. She’ll get the results and commentary when we go to our usual Thursday class later this week.

Afterwards we had a quick lunch at a restaurant in Lower Hutt, then headed back to Wellington to view some properties to rent in the afternoon. On Sunday we also went out, driving to Hataitai, Island Bay and Northland to look at three more houses. We were somewhat disappointed by the standard of the houses offered for rent, and have decided to look a bit more upmarket than we have been so far. The ones we’ve seen don’t appear to have been particularly well looked after – one in particular, where the owner proudly boasted that he’d lived there for 40 years. “And hasn’t seen fit to redecorate it in all that time” I said to myself, as we were put off by the mauve bath and avocado sink combination, both in a poor state of repair. It was unfortunate, as with a bit of modernisation these houses could be very desirable…but we’re not in the market for a “fixer-upper” at this stage. Anyway, we’ve identified some more to view that are better quality (we hope), and we’ll drive around to see those next weekend. All this is helping us get our bearings around Wellington and the suburbs, in particular the road systems where you have to plan which lane to be in two sets of lights from where you want to turn off!

We stopped off after viewing the Hataitai house and drove up to the summit of Mount Victoria – last time we went there we were on foot, and it was shortly after we’d arrived. It was a lovely sunny day so we took some more photos, and knew a bit more about what we were looking at this time.

Hataitai and Evans Bay

New Feature

I’ve added a new feature – voting buttons at the bottom of the blog. At the moment they say “funny”, "interesting” and “cool”, although I may change this once I have a better idea.

Please try using them so I can see how they work!

Advanced Beginners

We started a new term tonight at Supreme Dance http://www.supremedance.co.nz/#top and are now considered “advanced beginners”! Woohoo! I think this means that we know the basic steps of the four dances – waltz, foxtrot, rock’n’roll, and cha-cha-cha, and are supposedly able to execute these. Well, it’s coming along, and now that the weather’s getting a bit better, we may actually be able to practice outside on the only part of our flat that is actually amenable to dancing, the patio. We aim to astonish and amaze our neighbours, and the occasional passer-by, with our dancing chops. Repeat after me: side-tap, side-tap, rock rock.

Blogging Again

Following on from my “blog about blogging”, I thought I’d ask you, my readers, about how you use this blog. The questions that spring immediately to mind are:

• Do you ever click on the weather icon on the right-hand side? Did you know that you can?
• When I post a link (like the one to http://www.supremedance.co.nz/#top up above), do you click on it to see what it’s about?

Please leave me some comments in the comments!

A Blog About Blogging

We haven’t been up to much that’s new and exciting over the last few days, so I thought I’d write about the somewhat self-referential topic of blogging.

As many of you will know, this blog started out from a desire to keep friends and family informed about our progress in New Zealand when we first moved here. Initially, I sent out an email to a group of people, giving daily updates about our move; the purpose being to inform everyone, in one go, about what we were doing. As people replied individually to the email, I realised its shortcomings as a method of communication, and decided to explore the world of blogging instead. I should at this point acknowledge the example set by Sho on this blog , which set me off in the first place.

The system that I use to write this blog is called Blogger, and is provided by Google. It’s free, and anyone can use it. I find it very easy to set up and use – I don’t think it needs a great deal of computer knowledge to figure it out.

Amongst the features are statistics on which countries people who are reading my blog are from (or at least, which countries their internet servers are located in – not always the same thing). I find it interesting to see where my blog is being read, which includes the usual suspects of UK, Cyprus, New Zealand, Australia  and USA; but also several Nordic countries, lots of other European ones, Russia, North and South America, and (for a specific period) Namibia. Occasionally, countries pop up that I have no idea why people are reading: I guess random Google searches are bringing up my blog, probably helped by my subtly ambiguous headings.

When I write a blog, I send it out to fend for itself into the void of the internet; apart from some reporting statistics, the only way I know that it’s not a futile exercise are  comments from you, my readers, and my usage statistics. Unsurprisingly, most of my readers come via Facebook or h2g2. Some people who are actually looking for Wellington boots for their feet, via Google, may also get sucked in.

Recruitment Drive

So, why am I writing all this? What I’m basically saying is that blogging can be a lonely business. I fire off my posts into the internet, and they’re read by hundreds of people. OK, tens of people. So far, 6 people have decided to “follow” my blog. To do this, click the “Follow Me” label to the right of this post. And please feel free to add comments – you don’t need to be a member or sign up to anything to add a comment. just type it in the box, and click underneath, where it says “Comment As: Select profile”, choose “Name/URL” and type your name. There’s nothing more depressing than seeing “0 comments” when I’ve posted another thrilling instalment of our life here in Wellington Boots!

And finally…

Thank you for reading ;-)