Asking, receiving

I complained just the other day about my forced Doritos fast.  You were all shocked and horrified, I'm sure, at the deprivation I've suffered.

But who heard my wailing and took pity on my plight?  Yes, my excellent spouse, he of the good observation skills.  It turns out that they actually started selling Doritos in this country LAST WEEK and I hadn't even noticed it.  But he'd seen them on the shelf, and upon reading my desperate blog post he surprised me.

Nacho Cheese flavor is called Supreme Cheese here, but the recipe is the same.  Let me tell you, they were SO GOOD.

Cake time!

I think Amiri has been paying attention in school.  At least during the birthday parties, that is.  He has a new favorite game at home.

He uses one of his puzzle boards as a tray, and lays out his wooden blocks on it in neat rows or stacks.  Then he carefully balances the tray and carries it around to each of us, announcing, 'Cake time!  Cake time!  Take a piece of cake and eat it!  Yum!'  And so we dutifully take a piece of cake and pretend-eat it, to much glee on Amiri's part.  Then we remove the blocks from Arram's mouth, since he doesn't grasp the concept of pretend-eating.  And Amiri re-arranges the cake on his tray and starts again, this time singing 'Happy Birthday.'

Things I miss

I've already mentioned that there are some things you just can't get here.  Five months on, here are things I miss.

Non-oatmeal hot cereals

Doritos, or any corn chips, really

Taco Bell

Morningstar veggie burgers

Health-food stores

Non-roll-on deodorants

The Food Network: Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, and Guy Fieri

The Discovery Channel:  Mythbusters


(Note, I did not post this in a passive-aggressive attempt to solicit gifts.  It is for compare-contrast purposes only.  Do not send stuff.  I'll tell you up-front when I want some gifts. :-)

In the States you'd probably have to crash a White House party to do that...

So my work mate went to a gala event for her brother the other day.  He was getting an award for being a top NZ scientist.  The presenter of the award?  John Key.  The Prime Minister.  Ann said that she chatted with him for five minutes after the ceremony and he was very personable.  She sounded a bit starstruck.  I was thoroughly impressed as well, that a regular person got to meet the Prime Minister. 

But then Adnan reminded me that in a country of just four million, well, it's kind of like getting to meet the mayor of LA. 

Not so much a story... but, since a picture tells a thousand words...

I was waving to him from behind the camera.  Notice that he is wearing a 'Property of Kindercare' loaner shirt after being the messiest little boy in the world at school today and having gone through all three backup outfits we'd brought for him.  Also, if you listen carefully, you may be able to hear Amiri's triumphant announcements from the bathroom.




This one is kind of self-explanatory.  He still crawls funny, but he's fast now.

Excuses, excuses

I wrote 19 pages of SCIENCE! today.  So, I am typed out and my brain is smoking.  I will tell you a story tomorrow.

Arram gets a post all his own

Arram waves and plays peek a boo now, covering up his eyes, and then laughing.  He loves to hug and clings to our necks.  He even likes to hug his brother.  He's so sweet.  And he's juuuuuust about to walk, I can feel it...

Hot Water Beach

Here's a place I want to visit, once the boys are a little older.  Out on the Coromandel Peninsula (the Door County of the North Island), is Hot Water Beach. 

New Zealand has lots of natural geothermal hot springs.  Hot Water Beach is one of them.  Hot mineral water bubbles up from the ground, percolates up through the sand, and then seeps out into the ocean. 

Here's how you enjoy Hot Water Beach.  Go when it's a little cool so that you can see the sand steaming.  Pick a spot right at the edge of the waves.  Use your little sand spade and your hands to dig a hole big enough to sit in.  It will fill up from below with hot water.  Be careful not to burn your hands.  Use your bucket to add cool ocean water until you have the perfect temperature.  Climb in and enjoy your natural hot tub.

Here are more things that are different about New Zealand

The clouds move really fast overhead.

There's no such thing as a water shortage.  So carry on power-washing your sidewalk.

There are fewer multi-national chains, and more mom-and-pop shops.

If you want to say 'this and that' to indicate a vague variety of things, you say, 'odds and bods'.  Or, 'rats and mice'.

There is no Taco Bell.  This is both a blessing and a curse for me, personally.

What's an injury lawyer?  And why would you waste your money on health insurance?  And what do you mean that your summer jobs didn't come with vacation time?  And what's it like to travel more than 100 miles from home?

You don't have enough money?  It's OK, take it anyway.  I know you'll come back next week and pay me.

'This strikes me a bit odd...', instead of, 'No no no, this is all wrong.'

Houses are small.

Dress codes are significantly less formal.  Apparently bare feet are acceptable in the workplace as well.

Who needs a contract when we can just shake hands?

I photoshopped a road crew sign ha ha i'm so funny

The kitchen sink special

It was a beautiful day today.  Sunny, but not too hot.  I wanted to take advantage of the nice day and get out of the office for lunch.  A few days ago, Adnan and Google Earth had helped me find a takeaway place not too far away.  It's not all residential near my work, after all!

 

It doesn't really look like much, does it.  Just a standard little row of storefronts in a lower-middle class neighborhood.  Inside, the shops are perfectly nice and have a friendly greasy-spoon atmosphere, as they should.  Next time I'll have to try the chicken place next door, and then the Savoury Bakery on the other side.

I asked the owner what the best item on the menu was.  We had some language difficulties.  I ended up ordering the house special hamburger without really understanding what it was.  The paper-wrapped parcel he handed me a few minutes later was big, heavy, and hot.  I felt like an adventurer unwrapping it to discover what it could be.  It turned out to be a beef mince patty, with Tasty cheese (a NZ favorite!), pineapple, grilled onions, tomato, sweet chili sauce (of course...another NZ favorite), and... a fried egg.

Tsunami warning

As a result of the big earthquake in Chile, we were under a 'nondestructive' tsunami warning this morning.  It was predicted to be only 1-2 meters high, but could go quite a way inland and cause trouble.  They warned people away from beaches and low-lying areas, and cancelled some waterfront activities, like a bike race.  The Princess cruise ship that was docked at Prince's Wharf departed about an hour before the wave was due.

And what happened at 10:22, when the first swell was supposed to roll in?  Nothing.  The water level didn't seem to rise at all, and the surface remained just as still and calm as ever.  And no one seemed very concerned... there were sailboats in the harbor, as usual.  Ferries continued running.  Sightseers strolled the waterfront.  Well, Auckland IS on a protected harbor.  Apparently, along the exposed east coast, tsunami sensors detected surges of 0.4-1.0 meters, but the waves weren't visibly unusual.

Quick video of happy brothers playing

Blimey, they're loud, aren't they?

By watching where the schoolkids were going, I found a shortcut for walking to work from the train station.  It cuts through some trees. 

There's not really much to watch in this video.  I just turned on my camera so that you could hear the buzzing.


When I arrived at the office I was completely sure I had just run a gauntlet lined with screeching wetas.  I shared my anxieties with the English guy down the hall who has on more than one occasion shivered and squealed at the thought of a weta dropping on him from above.   (I guess us new arrivals to NZ have something in common.)  But he assured me that he'd done an investigation, since he lives in the country and had encountered the buzzing in the trees too, and that I was safe.  They are just cicadas.  Big and creepy, yes, but not Big And Creepy.

Views from the train

Here's a self-portrait of shadows through the station glass.

Mostly the traintracks run through unpretty parts of town, but there are a few points of interest, like the estuaries in the west.

And the imposing Mount Eden prison on Boston Road, with its turrets and barred windows and all.

And there's graffiti everywhere.  Graffiti is pretty much the most common crime in Auckland.  I guess when it faces the tracks, no one bothers to try to remove it.  Some of it is just scribbles, but this building in New Lynn nearly has a complete mural.

And then when I get to work, I can put the urban grit of my commute behind me and just watch the cows in the field next door.

 

Or the ducks when they come quacking under my office window.

Happy birthday, dear Amiri

Birthdays mean balloons.  Apparently they play a Balloon Game at school, which readily transitions to home use.

Amiri decimated his Fish Market dinner (on our picnic towel).  He'd asked for pizza a few days ago, but this afternoon was quite adamant that Schutz Mommie was what he wanted.  Birthday boy gets to pick, so daddy got it for him.  After that came the birthday cake.

He was quite entranced with the flames, and liked counting the candles.

He blew them all out like a champ.  Surely he got his wish.

 

Then he got three presents from mom and dad:  Go-Fish cards, a Sponge Bob pencil, and a wooden alligator. 

Happy birthday, three year old!  Thanks for making me a mom.

I'm going to drool on you

Ride em, cowboy

At the Farmer's Market on Saturday, we had big business to conduct with the pita bread lady.  While we were buying our load of bread and our backs were turned, Amiri dashed off and found delight with the rocking horse that had again appeared after a few months' hiatus.  

 

He was so intent, so focused on having fun.  All business, with his grocery-getting backpack on.  Daddy took a picture with his phone.  We saw two other people doing the same thing.

Appletastic

Here's how Amiri eats an apple.  He rotates it around and around in his hand, looking for the largest expanse of unbroken red skin.  And then he bites right in the middle of it.

It amuses Arram, who got a few bites of apple too.

Neighborhood watch

I had to call 111 last night.  Some drunk people started fighting downstairs after the bars closed.  From the aggressive sound of them (they woke me up, and we're on the fifth floor!), I thought someone was going to get hurt.

The dispatcher answered the phone with, "111 Emergency, what blah blah blah*?"  I said, 'Some people are fighting in the street outside!'  She said, 'I see you're on blah blah blah Street, is this the disturbance that's just outside of the Viaduct Harbor restaurants?'  I said yes, and she said, 'We're already aware of that disturbance, someone is on the way right now.'

Sure enough, a properly officious yet non-threateningly small and fuel-efficient police car arrived less than a minute later.  The brawlers continued to holler for a while even after the cops showed up, but eventually they all were presumably hauled off somewhere secure to sleep it off.  No ambulances came, so everyone must have been OK. 


*Unintelligible Kiwi-speak