Surffest
Last week, the Wellington Amateur Surf Film Festival. Several local surfers submitted a short surf film and you can view 11 of them online. This is the contest’s winner, highlighting our local break:
iChat
iChat AV, Apple’s instant messaging and audio/video chat client, rocks. In terms of latency and quality it’s better than Skype, at least on our limited bandwidth NZ internet connection.
All technical aspects aside, it’s such an awesome tool to stay in touch with our friends and family in the Netherlands! Thanks uncle Steve!
But just now, we had the weirdest iChat experience ever… Normally, it takes about one or two seconds for a message to reach the other side (of the planet, that is). We’re used to it and it’s perfectly possible to have a conversation with this delay.
A few minutes ago however, we chatted with Gert’s sister in Amsterdam, and something strange was going on with the network over here. The delay varied between four and fifteen seconds. Try and have a conversation when both sides respond to what the others said fifteen seconds ago! It was surreal and confusing, but absolutely hilarious!
movin’ and shakin’
The house that is. There’s a strong and gusty northwesterly blowing and the whole house is shaking. Tomorrow, Willemijn’s coming home from Japan. She might experience one of those classic Wellington Airport landings…
i miss central heating
Houses in New Zeland are “different”, as in “completely unsuitable for the local climate”. You’ll find many beautiful, very characteristic and spacious houses, but virtually none have double glazing or central heating, and older (pre-1980s) houses are not required to have insulation.
Now, take a look at this week’s weather forecast (thanks to Metservice):
Yes, it’s winter. When I wake up in the morning and wander down to the living room to switch on the gas heater, it says it’s 10°C indoors.
People are beginning to realise that humidity and indoor temperatures of 6°C are probably not very healthy. Unfortunately, renovation is not affordable for everyone without help from organisations such as Habitat for Humanity.
z’n gangetje
z’n gangetje, a common dutch reply to the question “How’s it going?”, meaning everything’s ok, nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Although it’s hard to define “normal” for us, having been here for less than a year, enjoying our first winter here, while Willemijn is in Japan for work, more and more we get used to daily routine, normal life. We’re getting used to the weather, the people, the food and the houses. So today, I’ll show you a few pictures of normal everyday things. (Thanks to my dad who made these photos when he was over a while ago).
Our hill in the background with our house on it, and the street I walk every day to/from the bus stop. This is a fairly typical Island Bay street.
The Island Bay shops. We have a few dairies, a super market, video rental, some fish’n'chips places, a pizza place, several art galleries and Maleysian, Thai, Indian, Turkish and Chinese food.
Our local supermarket. Open 7 days a week until 10pm, very convenient.
My office on Willis Street in Wellington’s CBD (central business district). Catalyst (that’s the name of the company I work for) is in the black/white building to the right of that green building.
Victoria University. Willemijn’s office is in the building on top of the hill, right of the round building:
Willis Street, central Wellington. The art deco building partly visible at the left is one of my favourites:
winter
Only a few more weeks before it’s the shortest day here in New Zealand. On June 22, sunrise will occur at 7:47am and sunset at 4:58pm, which gives us 9 hours and 11 minutes of sunlight. In comparison, the shortest day in Holland is on December 22, when the sun rises at 8:46am and will set 4:30pm, giving 7 hours and 44 minutes of bleak sunlight, 1.5 hours less.
Another sign of winter in Wellington is the arrival of seals at Sinclair Head, a point on the south coast, west of Wellington, just around the corner from where we live - about an hour walk.
