Slightly slack in ye olde posts of late… just been really really busy with working and playing. Haven’t been getting tramping like I meant to… I think this year has somewhat got away on me.

Anyway, some of the time has been spent in the garden. Maaike has taken complete control (which is great) and I’ve been roped in to help with some of the heavy digging. Not quite sure how it’s all going to turn out – the ground was pretty solid and clay-ee… so we’ll see.

So definitely busy there. We’ve also been taking part in the evening rogaine series (3 hour events).. this year, for a change, we’ve pretty much run the whole thing.. which has been lots of fun. It is, (for me), pretty much down to Outward Bound and knowing that I can actually do these things. So good stuff there.

And we do get some pretty sunsets from our house :)

Murmuration

Worth watching in full screen… only 2 mins long

Well… today… Greece has decided to put its bailout terms to a referendum. This is either clever or insane … and either way I think things are going to get very interesting before they settle down.

If this spreads to Italy (already at 120% debt to GDP) and onwards? Some massive proportion of bonds are covered by Credit Default Swaps – basically insurance which is taken out to cover the “risk” of a country going bankrupt. Unfortunately, the numbers are so massive that the banks who are covering these contracts will, most likely, go bankrupt when the contracts are called in. Most of those banks are (apparently) American (and maybe British).

And after all that, China will probably swoop in and buy up all the distressed assets they like with their fat wadges of cash. Clever.

(other than this – last couple of weekends have been ChCh bound – being quite lazy which has been lovely. Also, my instructor at Outward Bound (Viv) was down – and it was really lovely seeing her again. Had a dinner for my watchmates – and definitely need to learn how to make cocktails from Mike)

Maaike had headed away for the week tramping with her friend Rachel. Feeling abandoned, I decided to find solace in digging holes (and filling in other ones) at Mike and Heathers.

Here is a picture of a post, newly ‘quikcreted’ (like concrete, only quicker).

I also helped out lagging the pipes. It gets down to around about -7?! or something, and so the pipes all need to have nice woolen jackets to keep them warm through the winter. Fair enough too I say. Who thinks of the pipes these days? Eh? Who stands up for them? Do you? Do you think of..

ok, enough about the right of pipes. Here’s a picture of my nicely wrapped ones.

Don’t they look happy?

I also had a lovely bath in their outside bath (before watching the Ozzies beat the Welsh). I might have to get me an outside bath at somepoint…

Ok, not musical.. but still, funny..

Off to Kaikoura to see Val & Dom. Val just back from another stint in the Arctic (guiding) and soon off again to Antarctica… Dom, soon to get his thousand hours in the helicopter and then presumably they’ll be off somewhere else (which will be a shame as we’ll miss them!).

Games were played, “Kinect” – that clever little add on for the X-Box which tracks your movements. While it may not look like it, this is me on my way to crushing Maaike in the 100m sprints.

On that note, I got my report card back from Outward Bound … and I quote:

They encouraged him to be more competitive so that he continues to gain as much as he can out of life

You read it here first folks, I’ve a green light to be *more* competitive. Hah.

Anyway, Kaikoura..

Lovely spot. Need to get a set of these wooden kiwi’s …

Then it was off to see Mike and Heather – and how their house is progressing. The last time we were there, there wasn’t a house. Now there is.

And a turkey (Romeo)

And a septic tank water cleaning tank system thingy..

It’s all very impressive. Heather’s Mum is over from the US and helping out for a while, and she is keeping an excellent blog on how the building is progressing.

Off to Akaroa after OB for a debrief ;) It’s always a lovely place to get away to. The slightly annoying thing was that, pretty much for the rugby world cup, legislation was passed so that you can’t just rock up anywhere in your camper van *unless* it has an installed toilet. Now, my little van doesn’t have one. I’m not sure how much it’s being enforced, and I *can* understand the reasoning… but still… I hate staying in parks like this one… (pretty ‘n all as it is)

I suspect if you’re out in the wilds then you’re very unlikely to be snared.. but I dunno.. it’s just the *fear* of being caught I suppose. Still, the fine is only $200 or something, so if you can get away with a ratio of 5:1 then you’re on the up ;)

Mostly the weekend was about the chatting eating and drinking.. Maaike trying to get accustomed to my attempt at a beard (here to stay for a while I think)

There was swinging too

We also went to see The Tree of Life. It recently won the Cannes Film Festival.. and I must say.. it was total pants. I’m sure it was entirely “clever”, “arty”, “thoughtful”, “deep”, “meaningful” etc. etc. ad nauseam. I’m quite possibly too dense to really “get it”, but I thought that while it was a pretty film with some nice images, the actual plot, storyline, charachters, y’know, something you might enjoy in a 2 hour long film might actually be there. Total rubbish in my opinion…. I’ll leave you with a couple of quips from imdb:

The Tree of Life wilts under the scrutiny of any audience not sitting in a museum or on hallucinogenics.

Basically it had no plot, a vague meaning, and seemed to be consciously attempting to be artsy. I suspect that Cannes critics praised it out of fear that they were the only ones who didn’t understand it, somewhat of a ‘king’s new clothes’ scenario.

Please email for the password if I haven’t already given it to you. The reason it’s protected is simply so that information about Outward Bound isn’t too easily accessible as it’d spoil the fun if people who were going to go on the course could get info on it toooo easily!

So.. I was listening to a podcast (This American Life – excellent).. and it was on gossip. During the podcast they played a snippet of music which I loved.

So.. downloaded Songza – which is an app which can discover what music you are listening to.. found out that it was “I heard, by the mills brothers”.

Put that into youtube.. and here’s the result.

It is quite ridiculous what you can do with computers these days. Really quite incredible. I remember ZX Spectrums and very slow modems (128bps?). Crazy. Really crazy