mexirish...nz

So, it was a fairly normal Friday afternoon.  Seemed a little windy outside, but all in all, a fairly normal work day. Wind in Wellington is as normal as sand in the Sahara. We finished up at a normalish time, sometime after 4 and went home. As we approached the house,  I clicked the button so that the handy electric garage door would open and we could drive in and park, as normal. Nothing happened. Very strange, but we've had power cuts before so I thought it was probably just something like that.  I parked outside, and we went in to investigate.  Sure enough, there was no power.  I went to the switch board : two of the trips had been.... er... tripped? Anyway, I clicked them back, and the lights came back on.  Nice one! But our joy was short lived. As we made our way into the house we noticed a few things. The security system's little control panel was blank.  It's got a battery backup, so this was surprising.  In previous po...

Well, Jacqui's off to Mexico for a few weeks, or a month, or maybe longer.  Thursday night Jacqui spent packing and I spent sorting out her laptop.  Updated all the software and switched off automatic updates - Jacqui will be using the tethering function on her iPhone for internet and at $10 per megabyte, it could be very expensive!  We ended up going to bed sometime around 4. A few hours later, on Friday morning, we got up early and faffed about for exactly 7 minutes too long, and then battled our way through Friday Morning Traffic, moving at the exact same speed as Golden Syrup, before arriving at the airport exactly 7 minutes late. Damn. "Sorry sir, check-in is now closed." the lady told us. "Closed?" "Yes, but don't worry; you can get on the next flight for a $90 charge." "Excellent!  When's that then?" "In 6 hours" The lady was very nice though : not her fault we arrived late.  She suggested that we might ...

These days, Jacqui drags herself out of bed at about 6.30am to get out in time for the 7:25 bus. I'm an unemployed bum, so I stay in bed. So, this morning she managed to grab this outstanding photo of sunrise over the eastern hills. Breathtaking.

Saturday evening was spent at Neil Gaimans 's talk.  It was his part in the New Zealand International Arts Festival . We went with our friends Jen, Dom & Jordan.  The compere (she seemed nice) introduced him as the Amadaus Mozart of postmodernist literature.  Aside from the fact that I usually detest the term "postmodern" when assumed to mean anything (can you define it satisfactorily?), I thought it was quite a clever description. The talk itself was excellent - he read 3 short poems. I can't remember the order, but they were: 1) A story called "My Last Landlady" about a murderous landlady in an unnamed English seaside town.  Sounds like Brighton. 2) A story about the bones of Saint Odhrán buried under the church on the Island of Iona which is just of the west coast of Scotland.  Downpatrick , the town I went to school in, gets a breif mention :) 3) A beautiful poem (which he described as his credo) about reading Goldilocks to his daughter....

Well it's turning out to be an interesting time. As I discussed recently , contracting is turning out to be something of a pain in the ass. I recently started applying for suitable contracts in Auckland - a sprawling city in the North. Apparently. I managed to secure a phone interview with a Nameless Large Company, and they kindly informed me afterwards that I came "a close second".  This was cool, and usually that woud have been the end of it.  Us contractors have to be used to rejections - it's part of the job. But they have confused matters a bit - they told my agent that they might consider me for a perm role. Usually, I'd reject this straight away, but it's been nearly 5 months since I last secured a contract.  Also, it's a very well known company, and there are some excellent bribes, er, I mean benefits... I'll not mention what they are cuz you'll instantly know the company.  Suffice to say I'd be able to do the thing they do f...

This is the NZI Sevens weekend here in Sunny Wellington. Jacqui and I didn't manage to get tickets - by the time I'd remembered to log on to the website, they were all long sold out.  Apparently they were all gone within 3 minutes, so I don't feel so bad. It would have been great to have gone to the actual tournament, but since that wasn't possible, we went into the city to bask in the ambiance. And we're glad we did!  The whole city was out, and I don't think much work was done! The whole point of the Seven's weekend is, surprisingly, completely unrelated to rugby. Rather, it's about being seen in your outfit.  And every year, the outfits get a bit crazier. This year the costumes included, but where not limited to: Oompa-Loompas Avatars Fairies SWAT team members Cavemen (and cave women) Synchronised swimmers Baywatchers Blues Brothers Mexicans Also, everyone was either drunk or crazy.  Many were, in fact, both. Ja...