Bouncing is serious business

... so no smiling allowed.

Gumboots

It's sad when the summer starts to gradually tail off, but it does present an excellent opportunity to try out your new welly boots.

Visitors from another world

Forgive me father, it has been 7 months since ... yada yada.

With the exception of all the mini milestones that Olive has been passing, it's been mostly uneventful for the 4 of the past 7 months, with a bit of a flurry of activity in the last 1.

First up was the arrival of Olives Grandad and Grannyma at the end of October. It was lovely to see them both after such a long time, and the first meeting with Olive was pretty awesome. She already knew who they were thanks to frequent webcam chats. We spent 3 weeks with them, generally relaxing and seeing the sights, including a short trip away to Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook.

Shortly after the grandparents arrival was Olives first birthday. It's pretty incredible how the year has flown by, and it was really great to look back at the fun (and sometimes stressful) times we've had so far. We celebrated with a picnic at the beach, the weather held off, the family and a few friends turned up, all in all it was a lovely day. The birthday girl got lots of lovely pressies, which as you can see went down very well!

After the relative drought of visitors over the past 6 months, we were graced with the company of the ever lovely Fred and Hels who stopped with us for a couple of days on arrival, and a couple of days before departing. We saw the New Year in sitting on the deck watching hedgehogs and drinking bubbly.

As most of you only tune in for news of the wee one, we'll give a bit more of an update. She's now very solid on her feet, as she's been walking since 10 months, something she inherited from Mum. She has a full repertoire of animal noises under her belt, and can now say Mama and Dada. A trip to the beach almost every day is turning her into a bit of a water babe, expect her to be surfing by next summer!

Will try and keep the updates coming a bit more often, as requested by Auntie Ivy! Take care all.

Groove IS in the heart

Wildlife Week

It's been a week for strange wildlife here in Christchurch.

First, one morning this week I had to double take when I saw a Royal Spoonbill. Now, seeing one of these in Christchurch is not unheard of, usually on the estuary tidal flats. But this fella was standing on someones back patio, being fed by an old dear in a dressing gown.

The next morning, he was there again, waiting patiently outside the same house for the occupiers to get up. I managed to get this dodgy snap in the early morning light.

A little further down the river, a New Zealand fur seal has taken up residence, causing the local paper to go into cheesy pun overdrive.

And finally, recently spotted in the wild, Malc's workmate and coffee cartel wingman Luci has earned herself the accolade of Christchurch's biggest geek. Sadly for her, the prospect of being the first person in the world to own the new iPhone looks unlikely due to those damn Jafas insisting on their store opening 5 minutes earlier. Awww .. shame.

Lights .. camera ..

Over the weekend of May 16th - 18th, most of the staff at Malcs work got together to participate in the 48 Hours film festival.

On the Friday night, each team is given a random genre for their film. Along with this, every team gets the same featured character with character trait, line of dialog and prop that they must shoehorn in. You then have 48 hours to make a film of no more than 7 minutes length. We were given Animal movie as our genre, and this year the required character was Kerry Post, perfectionist, the prop was a brush and the line of dialog was 'wait a minute'.

The next 2 days were pretty hectic, with some of the team up until late at night writing and editing. Malc was already penciled in as sound man, but for some reason was called in to play the part of Homeless Man at the last minute when the leading man fell ill. After all the hard work by everyone, the final cut was delivered to the finish line with 10 minutes to spare.

A couple of weeks later we got to see the film on the big screen at a local cinema, which was really good fun. We also got to see some of our fellow competitors films, with wildly varying quality. Sadly, we did not make it on to the Christchurch finals, but the whole experience was really good fun. The quality of some of the films is astounding, just check out last years national winner.

So now we are out of the running, we are allowed to publish our film. Here it is for your viewing pleasure, I think you'll agree that Homeless Man pretty much steals the show. The sound is, at best, awful. Which is what you can expect when you get a homeless man to do it.

The future is here ... the future is ...

Ear warmers
Originally uploaded by malclocke

Woolen bike helmet ear warmers. Lovingly hand crafted by Nana Industries. Reversible to match the seasons fasion. Air temperature 2 deg C, ear temperature tropical!

6 months plus and Bicycle Business

Well, we have reached and exceeded our first major landmark, Olive's first semiverssary. The peace and tranquility of our hitherto idyllic lifestyle was shattered a week before 'happy six month day' with the onset of independent baby locomotion.



With her new found freedom, Olive is finally able to make a beeline for all the things that *she* wants. These of course are not the brightly coloured, non-toxic toys provided by her parents, but things like electrical cables, cups of tea (and any other spillable liquid), razorblades, chainsaws, etc. It's all downhill from here ...

As all the pommies begin to bask in the May sunshine, we are starting to hunker down for winter. However, the first showings of snow have begun to appear on the mountains, and our thoughts turn to sliding again. Malc and Annie have both acquired new snowboards in the pre-season sale and are looking forward to a season of extreme-tag-team babysitting / snowboarding.

For coming up to 2 years now, Malc has been commuting by bike to work and trying to find a way to share some of the excitement with you, loyal blogees. In the end, he came up with this.



The movie is at roughly 10 times normal speed, depicting the 9 kilometer ride from home by the sea to the city centre, which normally takes around 35 minutes. Filming was extremely low tech, with a small bendy leg tripod sellotaped to the handlebars. Also, because the camera doesn't have a time lapse function and a small memory card the ride had to be recorded over 4 mornings, then sliced and diced afterwards. Hopefully the end result gives you a feel of what cycle-commuting in Christchurch is like.

As most of you know, we've been avid cyclists for a long time. Having lived in Holland for a short while, the situation for cyclists here in Christchurch is a little frustrating. We have a city ripe for a cycling explosion. Apart from some of the southern suburbs, the city is flat as a pancake, the streets are wide and the climate is mostly favorable. But the car is still king, and dedicated, segregated cycle lanes are basically non-existent. We are left to fight with the traffic. Recreational biking, both road and mountain biking, are massive here, and 25% of school children bike to school (watch closely and you'll see them in the video).

Yet only 2% of adults commute to work. Those that do are generally of the Lycra clad, shaven legged, carbon fibre underpants variety. For most people, the reason that cycling is not considered as a transport option is simple ... it doesn't feel safe. Biking through the city most days, it's hard to disagree. The hope is that the city planners have the foresight to create a segregated cycling infrastructure. To quote the excellent copenhagenize blog's comments about recent improvements in Paris:


... there are many places that have segregated and dedicated bike lanes. This is, of course, the key to developing bike culture. If there was a book called Bike Culture for Dummies, this would be on the first page.


Here's hoping that the powers that be can fulfill their vision to make Christchurch a cycle friendly city for all of us to enjoy.

Happy 5 month day

img_0201.jpg
Originally uploaded by malclocke

A quick wee status report on our dear daughter. She is still doing great, and seems to be a dab hand at attracting attention whilst out and about, exhibiting a wealth of cute smiles reserved solely for complete strangers.

Her alertness has been noted by the Plunket nurse, and she also seems to have a thirst for literature, seemingly wanting to digest book after book. Unfortunately, she wants to digest books in the literal sense, and the thirst for knowledge manifests itself as a puddle of drool all over the cover of 'All aboard with Maisy'.

Major breakthroughs of late noted by her oh-so-easily-impressed parents include blowing raspberries, rolling over, grabbing absolutely everything within reach and a frantic, breakdance like cacophony of limb motion that would be called crawling were it not for the complete lack of any forward progress.

A quick thank you needs to be added to Chris, Jo and Dylan for coming to visit us and showing great patience creeping around the house while Olive was asleep. Of course, we could never provide hospitality comparable to that on offer in West Bergholt, where even Fererro Rocher seem mundane, but hope you enjoyed your stay!

Keep an eye on flickr for more pics. Adios for now.

Bam ... and the dirt is gone!

I'm sure many of you in the UK have questions about living in NZ, what are the cultural differences, the good points, the bad points. But probably top of the list is 'can you get Cillit Bang?'

Well loyal readers, I'm afraid the answer is no! But into the fold comes a new contender, the only slightly less inconceivably named 'Easy Off Bam'. There are many similarities between the two, the garish packaging, exceptional ability at cleaning coins, etc. But the real difference lies, not in the product, but in it's champion. For where Cillit Bang has Barry Scott, on the other side of the world we are blessed with his evil twin, Martin Grelis. Sadly, the internet seems completely devoid of pictures of Martin fulfilling his role as Bambassador, so those of you on the top part of the world map will have to use your imagination.

The obvious question that arises from all this is who's better? The answer is, of course, Martin for two reasons:

1. Martin could beat Barry in a fight


2. Martin is a real actor, he was even in The Matrix. Barry is just made up, although he does have an interesting life story