Oh No KitchenAid...

It's broken. Won't mix soft butter broken.

I was making a cake to take to share with my knitting peeps tonight, and I broke it. On the front of a KitchenAid stand mixer there is a plug that goes over the hole where other attachments can attach. This is held in place with a screw, which, as it turns out, can wear itself loose with a lot of vigorous mixing, and the plug can fall into the butter and sugar you are creaming, and jam the machine, and strip out something in the motor.

Thankfully there is a shop here in Wellington that repairs KitchenAid mixers, and invited me to drop it in on Tuesday, since we are just about to start an extended long weekend for Easter. You know, Easter, when all the baking happens? Yeah. I must have sounded sad on the phone since the repair shop lady kept calling me dear and not to blame myself, and to be reassured that it can and will be fixed. Or maybe she just understands what it is like to bust a mixer that you love very much. And kept calling me "Dear".

So, tonight, no cake. This weekend, no Easter baking. But I'm feeling grateful that there is a repairer not 5 km from where we are living, and I doubt I will ever forget to tighten that bloody screw every time I use the mixer.

It's taking a lot of restraint to not eat the butter and sugar that was going to be an orange cake, though.

 

Road kill WUT

Last night I was driving us home from the Airshow (which as excellent), driving on unknown roads, tired, and in the late dusk. My Australian mind expected a kangaroo to jump out and whack into our car at any second, but I had to adjust my head to New Zealand hazards. We figured that the only thing I was likely to find on the road were introduced possums, foxes or rabbits, and squashing them would really be doing the local ecology a favour.

Keep driving, LOOK WHAT IS THAT SMALL FURRY THING. It's a bird, it's a plane, no its a WEASEL. WHAT THE? Yep, it was a weasel. I asked Mr Google in the seat next to me to use his google fu to identify the creature, and it was a weasel. Turns out that weasels were introduced to NZ by some complete tools against good scientific advice (haters of evidence and reason, even then...) and now they are a big problem. Weasels and stoats.

I had no idea that this year I would see feral weasels or stoats. I learn something new every day. Apparently there are wild hedgehogs here too.

By the way, I did not run over the weasel, it was too weasley quick and got away. Next time, weasel, next time...

 

The rain has cleared up and it's a beautiful, sunny day in Wellington today. We walked from Thorndon down to the docks and along the waterfront to check out the markets that we were told are on Sundays on Cable Street, next to Te Papa (New Zealand's national museum iirc). Well, Kate and I walked, the big kids rode their scooters and our youngest rode in the stroller. One great thing about living this close to the city is that the kids can get more opportunity to scoot than we had in Canberra. The kids scoot to school every day, which is much more fun than sitting in the car.

There was a P&O cruise ship in town and the weather was fine, so there were lots of people on the waterfront walkway and the tourist helicopters were flying in and out, so there was lots to see. The market was pretty cool, full of lovely smells and tasty things to eat. Our brunch was something I can only describe as an Indian kebab - butter chicken and some veggies rolled up in a pan-fried roti. It was pretty good.

We also picked up some tasty cheeses, including a Roquefort. I've never had it since you can't really get it in Aus, so I am looking forward to trying that.

Brain dump

OK, so I'm finally ready to start blogging this experience. Firstly, it's a great opportunity and great example of the sort of global experience that working at Initech can can offer. At the same time, dealing with the bureaucracy at Initech has been one of the most bizarre and frustrating experiences of my life. Buy me a beer some day and I'll tell you about it.

Speaking of beer, this is a great country for beer. New Zealand has more craft breweries than sheep, and it's got a lot of sheep. Seriously, my local supermarket has a beer fridge the length of a cricket pitch stocked with some of the finest beers known to New Zealand, and Tui as well. I will be working my way down the beer aisle, you can be sure of that. Follow my facebook photos if you care to. I have joined untappd as well. Untappd is like FourSquare for beer.

So we've made it through our first month here. Half of that month was spent in hotel rooms. Pro-tip: always tell the person you're booking the hotel with the day you intend to check out, because if you tell them the day that you think should be your last night, they will think it is your checkout day and you may find yourself hurriedly packing everything you own and trying to find somewhere, anywhere to stay that night ... ask me how I know. Serendipitously, I had just picked up a 7-seater van so we had somewhere for our stuff to go when we booked out of our hotel.

We had the hire car because we were heading out to go car shopping. Car shopping with four children who had been cooped up in hotel rooms for a week is about as much fun as you'd think. To give them their credit, the kids were really good. The first car place we checked out we had to watch them closely because it was a lot where people were driving cars through. We checked out the Chrysler Voyager, but it turns out to have a seat folding mechanism that we think could eat careless fingers. We checked out Toyota Estimas (Taragos in Aus), but the seat arrangement wasn't really good. We compared everything to our beloved Volkswagen Caravelle and they all came up short. We checked out a lot of smaller people movers, like the Toyota Ipsum. There's lots of car models in NZ that we don't see in Aus and the Ipsum is one of them.

We weren't thrilled with any of the cars, so we figured talking to a salesman might help. Strangely, we had to go looking for one. In my experience, car salesmen are usually onto you like flies on ... um ... trousers ... as soon as you walk onto the lot. Not the good folk at Car Giant. No, for them customers seemed to be unwelcome invaders who let the cold air into their office. It was like we'd arrived at a Seven Eleven and tried to buy a box of Tic Tacs, for all the guy could be interested.

So to the second car yard we went, and no sooner did we walk on the lot than a salesman dropped what he was doing and escorted us to the 'people mover' showroom, which was protected, off the street and child friendly. We let the kids free-range and to his credit the salesman was ok with that. Nell wanted the yellow car, of course. We were looking for a big people mover like we're used to and the showroom was full of people movers of all shapes and sizes, but the guy led us pretty quickly to a medium-sized car, a Mazda MPV. It may have had the bset profit margin for him or something, but I couldn't find a better option in the room.

One of the things that bugged me about almost every people mover was that the child seats would have had to go in the back row because the back row was only accessible by folding the middle seats. In our Caravelle, we can put the un-foldable car seats in the middle row and still have access to the back row for the big kids. Well the MPV has folding middle seats, but the big difference it he middle seat arrangement is that the 2 seats have an aisle in between them that's big enough for kids to get through to the back seat. Also the middle seats can slide sideways, so either way there's a gap to the rear seats that kids can get through. Sold.

I love the stereo - it has a massive collection of weird music on it from the previous owner, but it's all in Japanese. I figured I'd just google for how to change the language to English. Google the model number of this stereo and all the hits in English are "How do I change the language from Japanese to English?". Oh well, I'll chalk it up to cultural experience.

The MPV looked regular-car-sized in the showroom, but of course it was sitting next to other people-movers. Once we got it home I realised that it's actually a large car and only marginally smaller than a Tarago. It only just fits in the car port. Good thing we didn't get a van after all.

My life's work.

Now that the excitement of having to worry about removalists, passports and remembering my new phone number has passed, I have a new focus in my life.

The Washing.

Keeping a family of six in clean duds is never a small feat, but I'm having to get used to washing in Wellington. Firstly we all have fewer clothes than we used to thanks to aggressive culling of things that weren't worn often, and only bringing well loved and favourite things and staples. Staples like undies and jeans and t shirts, not staples for a stapler. Of course. So keeping the clothes going through the washing process quickly is important.

Secondly, this weather. Don't get me wrong, Wellington is a great city, I'm loving it here, and I love the wild weather. So far. But it feels a bit like Melbourne, take a sun hat, and umbrella, a jumper and a trolley to cart it all wherever you go. Four seasons in one day and all that. And it's damp. We haven't had so many torrenting with rain days, but lots of drizzly days, which gets in the way of getting stuff dry.

This is what it looks like out of my bedroom window this morning. Sunny right overhead but grey grey grey over the harbour. Blow over drizzle landing on my house. What's a washerwoman to do?

Today I'm taking my chances and hanging the stuff on the line. The sun will come out eventually, and rain wet is better than musty damp stink from sitting in the washing basket for days. This is my clothes line, and the greenery you can see around the line is the edge of the yard. Small yard, but big enough for the washing and that's enough for me.

Note the pegs. The hard core super spring industrial grabby pegs. I have the feeling that namby pamby cheap wooden pegs like I prefer in Canberra would last about 7 seconds when the wind comes up here, and pinch my undies even quicker than the Latham currawongs pinch socks.

I'm resisting buying a dryer, mostly because this is a big house with central heating, and we are paying to heat every bit of it, so we might as well not pay any more to dry the clothes, and double dip into the heat we have and dry the clothes inside. Tight arse hippy that I am.

Inside drying options are (1) the airer which gets parked near a heating vent

(2) the hangy thing over the kitchen sink

(3) the bannister at the top of the stairs (currently airing doonas) (and this is the view over my shoulder since I'm sitting on the stairs writing this).

The final challenge to my happiness and fulfilment in the washing is the machine. Top loaders suck arse. The ones with a go round thingy in the middle bash the clothes, and whack all the fuzzy bits off the towels. This one has an apparently self cleaning lint filter, but I think it saves the effort of self cleaning by just chucking all the lint all over the clothes. Do Not Like. So now I have to do clothes in one load, and fuzzy things like towels in another load. Inconvenient. And darks away from lights. WTF. And defying the laws of physics, it seems to simultaneously bash the fabric, but still leave globs of powder unrinsed. RAGE. I never realised I was taking my lovely gentle low water using low powder using front loader washer that does not bash my stuff or lint it all up so much for granted. I won't take it for granted again, mark my words.

Also the washing machine lives in the gloomy laundry which is in the basement. Down a flight of stairs, which are really slippery when it's wet. Which is three days out of four.

Love from Wellington,

Kate

 

some pics, finally

Packing 

 

 

 

See you later, Australia xxx

 

 

 

In flight entertainment is entertaining.

So many wheely bags...

 

 

 

What I could see from my hotel window.

“Even Big Ted is exhausted with hotel life.”

 

 

 

“Front page of this morning's paper. Kiwis are straight talkers.”

“Inventive kids using tourist brochures to make a school for Lego creations on the hotel room floor.”

“A quiet afternoon playing dolls on the hotel bed.”

“Gorgeous sunny Wellington day” 

 

“Moving from one hotel to another is no small undertaking.”

“View from my window this morning.”

“Wellington hot chocolate, with chocolate marshmallow fish.”

“Toddler Ghandi style protest on cafe floor”

 

 

 

“What I can see from my bedroom window.”

“Shiny new car in front of shiny new house.” 

 

 

“Is a dunny door still a dunny door if it isn't in Australia?”

“Wellington Harbour and full moon, from my bedroom window.”

We has a house!

normally I'm not too fussed about making my bed, but tonight ...

Thorndon New World has a stunning beer selection, and it's my local!

Home Sweet Home

Yesterday we moved into our home for 2012.  It is a gorgeous old house, more than 100 years old, in the suburb of Thorndon in Wellington.  It is a walk into the city, has a bus stop out the front, a short walk to school and the local stupidmarket, and the Italian Embassy is right over the road.  What is not to like?

Here are some photos that I have taken since our NZ journey has begun.  I have been putting them onto Instagram, and if you are an iPhone/iPad/iTouch user, you can follow me there, if you are an Android user you can wait a bit and then follow me once the Instagram app becomes available.  Also I post them on Twitter and facebook.

Dammit, it seems that I can't put the photos here on the blog without a lot of buggering around.  When I have energy for buggering around, I will do it.  For now, just follow me on Twitter or facebook.

Another awesome thing about this house is the view.  O my giddy aunt, the view. I can see over Wellington Harbour, up the Hutt Valley, across the city, the docks, the stadium, the mountains, the rain coming over the hills, the hills, the sky, the planes, the water, the yachts, the trains, the cruise ships, the tug boats, the cargo ships.  All from my bedroom.  I can even see all this when sitting on the bog in my ensuite. We have landed on our feet this year and no mistake.

Photos of all of this when I can.

xxx

Kate