It's been a busy few weeks, with quite a lot going on compared to recent months. Biggest news is the arrival of 'Nana' aka Carol, Annies mum. Our new lodger has been mostly well behaved, and it seems that since she arrived the washing up and laundry fairies have started visiting during the day, which is great news! Nana's first impressions of NZ seem really good, even though the weather has taken a bit of a turn since her arrival, changeable being the word. Now, if only she'd tidy her room ...

We took a week off work and went on a 'tiki-tour' of the south of the South Island. The first two days were a bit of a washout, we had to look at the postcards at Lake Tekapo and imagine what the view of the lake and mountains would be like without a solid blanket of cloud 50 ft above our heads. From there things picked up, and by the time we reached Queenstown the weather was fantastic. We took a ride up the cable car, and Nana even ventured on to the chair lift and luge cart track at the top. Go Nana!! We then took the outrageously beautiful road up to Milford Sound, and a boat trip out onto the sound. We also lucked out with bottlenose dolphins coming up to check the boat out, a first for Annie and Malc. After Milford we travelled down to the wonderfully wild Catlins coast, where we saw lots of sea lions, seals and yellow-eyed penguins. We spent our last night on the Otago peninsula before chugging back up the coast to our humble abode.

Last weekend was Malc's work christmas do. This was a surprise trip on the 'Fox II', an old wooden sailing ketch. We chugged out of Lyttleton harbour, on the other side of the Port Hills from Christchurch, and then sailed over to Diamond harbour. The worlds campest captain then dropped anchor and fired up the BBQ. After that we did a bit more sailing around the harbour, where we were lucky enough to have some Hectors Dolphins come and check out the boat. These are the worlds smallest dolphin, only just over a metre long, and one of the rarest being endemic to the NZ coast. It was a real bonus to see them, we have been hoping to see some for ages. All in all it was a great evening, with much heaving-to, reefing of the mizzen and similar nautical shannanigans.

This weekend we're off to Hanmer and Kaikoura, will send news in the next update. Take care all, M, A & C.

All's quiet on the southern front. Things are settling into something like a normal pattern here now, no major news or adventure to report, just day to day stuff. We've been biking into work for a few weeks now, it's a pretty nice ride along the river bank for most of the way, avoiding the traffic. Malc's work is really well equipped for it, with a bike lockup just round the corner and a shower in the office.

The weather is behaving a bit like a typical English spring, with wild swings from boiling hot to pouring rain. One thing that is really starting to kick in is the infamous Canturbury 'Nor-wester' wind. This is a foehn wind, like the Chinook wind in the US. As the wind comes accross the Alps from the west it looses all it's moisture, and heats up as it descends down to Canterbury. It's hard to describe what its like, the wind is very strong and gusty but really warm and dry. We found ourselves sat outside in it at 9.30pm the other night with shorts and t-shirts on.

Last weekend was pretty good fun. We had a surprise visit from Dan and Clare on Sunday as they had decided to go on a last minute trip to LA to see Dan's mum. They flew from Nelson to Christchurch and then had all day to wait for their international flight, so we took them around a few of the sights and then dropped them back at the airport. Then Sunday night was the city fireworks display off the New Brighton pier. It was another of these surreal, out of season experiences, sitting on the beach in a t-shirt watching the fireworks. Pretty awesome display, and we were really gratefull to be locals and not have to sit in the traffic for 2 hours aftwerwards.

The arrival of Annies mum (or 'Nana-geddon' as it has become known) is on us this weekend, and the week after we are taking a week off to do some travelling, looking forward to being tourists again.

Thanks for reading, check back soon!

Spring has arrived, the clocks have gone forward, and right on cue the weathers turned to poo. 3 cloudy days in a row is a new record! Temperatures were supposedly a record high in September so I guess it's payback.

Weekend before last we took big Al for his first camping experience. Got a double mattress which just fits in the back, very cosy. We spent the night at Hanmer Springs, taking a night time dip in the hot pools which was pretty nice.

The next morning we pootled across Lewis Pass to the west coast, and up to Nelson to see Dan and Clare. They were both well, and pretty settled into their new pad (pictured), with nice views out across the hillside. All too soon we had to head back, this time going around the top of the island and back to Christchurch down the east coast. We were merrily bouncing along with about 120km left to go when Annie pointed out how the diesel was almost on empty. We turned around to go back to the last town (Cheviot) to fill up, but at 8pm on Sunday night the place was a ghost town, with everything shut. We decided not to risk driving the last stretch on fumes and settled down for the night in a layby, with a 7am rise to be outside the petrol station for opening time ready for the blast to Christchurch and straight into work. Not the best start to the week.

We had to have medicals (again) for our residency applications, as the ones we had for our work permits have expired. Annie asked the doctor if she should worry about her finger that has been wonky since falling over on the nutcracker lift at Hanmer ski-field. He booked her an x-ray, and it turns out she has 'mallet finger'. It is basically broken, and she has to wear an attractive plastic splint for 6 weeks. Not a happy bunny.

The ski season seems to be over, with many of the fields now shut for the season. So now it's surfing time. Malc has finally purchased a board and has been out a couple of times. The water is still only 10 degrees C, but pretty bearable in a wetsuit. It's an easy walk to the beach with the board, and with the clocks going forward last weekend, hopefully much evening floundering should ensue ...

This weeks top purchase was a second hand laz-e-boy rocking / reclining chair. After sitting on them at Dan and Clare's we decided we had to have one. In a nutshell ... it rocks!

Very exciting goings on over Canterbury yesterday afternoon. Just before 3pm, the whole office shook with what felt like an explosion. Everybody looked at each other, and I said 'what in heavens name was that?' ... or something similar. I questioned whether it could of been an earthquake, but this was instantly discounted (apparently I will *know* when it's an earthquake). A bit of discussion ensued, then news reports started coming in on the web about a 'huge explosion being heard over the east of the south island'.

As reports started to become more concrete, it turns out it was the shockwave from a meteorite exploding in the atmosphere. Annie heard it even louder as she was working at the shop with the door open, and it even looks like someone may have found a piece of it.

Now, all we need is an earthquake for comparison...

After what seems like an eternity, our 'effects' have arrived from the UK. Kind of like Christmas come early, opening all the boxes to see all the forgotten stuff inside. Malc can now start wrecking things now his tools have arrived.

We have decided on a 'shoes off' policy in the house, Hawaiian style, so I ordered a couple of painted tiles to go by the front and back doors for a little bit of aloha.

Annie was working last Saturday, but Malc took up the 7am offer from Darren of a lift up to Porter Heights for some boarding. Sadly, the snow looks like its on its way out, but theres still plenty of good riding to be had for a few weeks yet.

September 1st is NZ's official first day of spring. To celebrate, after boarding on Saturday, Malc went for his first surf on Sunday. Looking forward to walking down the road after work for a dip now the evenings are starting to get longer, keep an eye out for him on the New Brighton Surfcam
This weeks exciting household purchase .... a 'Nils Lofgren' hoover!

In a bid to get myself some cameraman work on the next Peter Jackson epic, I am sharing with you all (well, those with broadband anyway) a couple of movies.

First up is Annie showing off her mad snowboard skills at Mt Dobson (15mb):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0gfXjYysr8

And next up is a quick tour around the house (54mb, may take a while to download):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zcLLLKbkMw

At long last, moving day has come and gone and we have finally got into the house. It is a little weird, still feels like we shouldn't be there, but very cool. We have to keep pinching ourselves as we can't quite believe it's real. We've managed to acquire the essentials as far as furniture goes, bed, 2 sofas, washing machine, fridge, TV , dining room table and chairs. The wood burner is fantastic, it's a 'Magnum P100', which with a little doctoring will become 'Magnum PI'.

Darren and Nicole helped us on the first night with a fush, chups and champagne housewarming. We'll hopefully gradually fill the place up with more furniture as and when we see it over the next few months. After the house at Borley we don't know what to do with all the space, but I'm pretty sure in science at school we did something about 'mess expanding to fill an available vacuum'.

Sunday we had a pretty fun day. Heathers friends Ros and Rich were in Christchurch before they fly home after spending 5 weeks on the South Island. We took them up to Amuri ski field just outside Hanmer for the day. The access road was quite exciting, basically a ledge hewn out of the side of the mountain for 7km, but Big Al handled it with ease. We got our first taste of the fabled 'nutcracker' rope tow lifts. I would say these date from around the time that handlebar moustaches were in fashion and are popular in the smaller ski fields in NZ. For folks like us pampered with a European snowboarding education they are a shock to the system.

The lift consists of a rope. Thats it, just a rope. The rope rests on top of rollers positioned at about waist height at intervals along its length to stop it dragging along the ground. The victim of the lift wears a belt around their waist with a device attached to it by a short length of rope that looks a bit like a nutcracker. The victim clamps this onto the rope and then allows themselves to be pulled up the hill from their waist via the belt.

Here's a theoretical depiction of this operation. A more realistic description of a typical encounter with the beast goes like this.

1. Victim shimmies up to the lift. Being a regular footed snowboarder, the victim realises that the rope must run behind their back and starts to ponder how they are going to even stay upright.
2. After grabbing the rope, the victim realises that how they are going to stay upright is 'not at all'
3. Victim repeats step 1
4. Victim manages to hang onto rope this time with the grace of a swan ... on water skis. Victim then flounders trying to get the nutcracker attached to the rope for a few seconds before repeating step 2. At this point the victim is free to start expressing profanities.
5. On the 3rd attempt, the victim manages to get the nutcracker attached and get relatively comfortable. At this point, the victim finds themselves hurtling towards the first roller. The literature has instructed the victim to 'keep hands, loose clothing and long hair well clear of the roller'. The victim would love to, but is having enough trouble staying upright. Thankfully, only the nutcracker takes a spanking as it travels over the roller.
6. On approaching the second roller, the victim accidently pulls the rope off the roller and falls off again. This causes the rope to drag along the ground and all the folk behind the victim to have to squat down to reach the dragging rope. Most of them teach the victim some new profanities as they pass.

This continues in a similar vein for the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully there was also a button lift which offered a slightly less punishing ride up the hill.

After this, we were gratefull for a soak in the Hanmer Springs thermal pools on the way back to Christchurch.

A rough guide to Kiwi speak.

As an outsider, Kiwi's and Ozzies sound pretty much identical. Now we've been here for a while, we are beginning to pick up on the subtleties that make them different. To the natives the differences are blindingly obvious, to the point where a member of one nation will sometimes have to fight off tears of laughter listening to the accent of the other. Here is a field guide to the song of the Kiwi.

Pronunciation - Somewhere along the line, the Kiwi's have got mixed up with which vowel is which.

• 'i' becomes 'uh'. The classic way to identify a Kiwi is to get them to say 'Fish and chips'. If it comes out 'Fush and Chups' ... bullseye!
• 'e' becomes 'i'. The 'e' sound, as in 'ten', becomes 'i', as in 'tin'. Central Surf surf shop is currently offering 'Tin persint off in the sintral surf sale'.
• Rolled 'r's, just with a single roll, like Shaun Connery would.

Words - Heres a few choice words and phrases.

• Choice - Exceptionally good. 'Thats choice bro'
• Bro - as 'mate' in the UK. Females can also be, and often are, bro's.
  
• Sweet as - Perfect, marvelous, jolly good. The '.. as' suffix is often used, 'that's funny as.' or 'it was hard as, getting up that hill'. The only time anything seems to follow 'as' is with the much used 'good as gold'.
  
• Eh? - Perpetually added to the end of sentances. 'Reckon it was hard as getting up that hill eh?'
• Togs - Swimming kit.
• Jandals - Flip-flops, 'thongs' in Aussie.
• Pants - As in the US, are trousers. Pants are called undies. The potential for embarrasing mix ups with thongs, undies and pants are almost endless.
• Thanks Driver - Always say this when getting off the bus.
• Bach - 'Bachelor pad', traditionally little more than a shed out in the country somewhere. Seem to have been used in the same way as sheds in the UK, i.e. as a refuge from 'her indoors', except for the whole weekend, so with a bed, cooker, heater etc. Now more likely to be a million dollar home somewhere in the Marlborough Sounds with boat only access.
• Manchester - for some bizzarre reason, bedding, towels, etc is collectively known as 'manchester'.
• Rudeness - The 'rude word' threshhold seems to be considerably higher than in the UK. There are anti litter campaign's requesting that you 'Don't be a tosser', and milder beepable words feature heavily on the TV. Parliament / polititians offer up regular ammusement as arguments deteriorate into f'ing and blinding contests. The news recently featured footage of one MP 'giving the bird' to another out of sight of the speaker.
• Hoon - Boy racer
• Tramping - Walking / hiking.

Got anything to add to the lexicon? Leave a comment!

The past couple of weeks have been fairly eventfull. First off, a weekend snowboarding trip to Mt. Dobson a few hours drive south of Christchurch ended rather abruptly when Darren busted his foot. After a snowmobile trip off the slope and the long drive back to Christchurch and x-ray revealed there was nothing broken, just a severly sprained ankle. He is still hobbling a week later but went back to work today.

Overall it was a good weekend, we stayed in a really nice cottage just outside Fairlie which only cost $85 for the night. It was lovely to wake up in the middle of nowhere with just the sound of the birds outside. Until Darrens little misshap Mt Dobson had been fantastic, with the luxury of a chairlift, hardly any people and beautiful weather.

Sadly the weekend just gone was not such great weather and we didn't make it up the mountain. Most of saturday was spent hunting for clothes for Malc's mid-winter christmas meal, a 50's themed murder mystery. Malc was a mafia bodyguard and Annie the hosts maid. A pretty fun evening in all, sadly neither of us was the perpetrator or the victim.

Its now less than 2 weeks till moving in day and we still don't have any furniture! We spent Sunday looking around and fainting at the price of stuff. We have put priority on a bed and sofas, other stuff may have to wait!

Stay tuned, the next installment may well be from our new surf shack.

Sold! Well, thankfully the house sale has finally completed. We had a couple of issues to sort out but nothing major. Our posession date will be the 25th August, just over 3 weeks from now ... woohoo! Got plenty of spare rooms for any pommie visitors.

Now there is just the small matter of getting furniture, a bed, fridge, washing machine ...

Introducing ... Big Al!

Well as promised, here's a bit of info about our new (hopefully trusty) steed, 'Big Al'. Despite his mild mannered appearance he is a fully equiped Mitsubishi Delica Exceed 2.5l diesel 4wd monster with 7 seats. These can be folded flat and have a mattress chucked on top for weekend outings. We bought him off an English backpacker who had his surfboard strapped inside on the ceiling and said he just drove right up to the surf across the beach without any problems.

We went up to Porter Heights ski field on Sunday and blasted past all the 2wd's fitting snow chains at the bottom of the hill. Stuck him in '4L' and didn't have a slip the whole way. Hopefully there'll be more big of Big Al's adventures soon.

Now the dust has settled a little, its time for a little info on how we're getting on.

The 36 hour journey now seems like a distant (repressed) memory, I recommend checking flight schedules thouroughly and ensuring there no potential hiccups, like 14 hour stopovers in Singapore for example.

We arrived to an unusually cold snap in Christchurch. I feel at this point I should comment on the kiwi notion of heating. They seem to be under the impression that heating is an optional extra in a house. They are wrong. On a morning in Chez Darren, you can barely see through your own breath-mist to chip the frostbite off your toes. What all this cold weather does mean is that there is loads of snow. We have already visited Porter Heights and the man eating T-bar lifts of Mt Cheeseman (pronounced 'Mt Cheese, man').

We started house hunting pretty much on arrival, and have put an offer in on a place. You can get a sneaky-peeky at http://www.homesell.co.nz/new_zealand_real_estate/5299.phpKeep watching this space for more updates on how that goes.

After being confined to the house and bus routes for a while, we have also finally bought our own monster truck, nicknamed 'Al'. Pictures will follow after our first weekend excursion.

There are a few photos from around New Brighton and the ski-fields at http://bollo.hoodee.co.uk/~malc/gallery/nz/ , more to follow soon.

Thanks for reading,

Malc