Another day in paradise…

Hi Everyone...

We survived our first 2 and someodd weeks of working. My job is going well, the first project I’m on is a pretty big one and there’s not a lot of time allocated to finish it so it’s been stressful trying to get it done on budget. I’m hoping after this project the next ones will run smoothly. The group I’m working with is a lot of fun; there’s only about 12 of us, but, it’s a good mix of people from different countries and backgrounds. Some of them are a bunch of nutcases. Gay’s job is going well, I think. She says she’s been washing a lot of dishes and that’s mostly because they just opened and there aren’t a lot of customers yet.

Let’s have a party, we’ll all dance the haka…
The owner of the company tries really hard to make the atmosphere at work as fun as possible. In fact last Thursday I got home from work and Gay had had a stressful day because it was the first day of operation for the cafe. After she talked about her day she asked me about mine and I said ..”well., I did some work, then I got a massage, then I had a glass of wine, then I got a squash lesson.” Gay rolled her eyes.
So we had our year-end meeting/party last week. Part of it was a celebration of Thomas’ recent New Zealand residency. So Niki, the owner, thought it would be cool for everyone to perform the haka for Thomas during the meeting. For those that don’t know what the haka is; it’s an intense and angry Maori war dance, which is now performed by the All Blacks before their rugby games. If you want more info on the haka, this is a great site. So Niki made arrangements for us to meet on a marae which is a Maori meeting house and we got about an hour long lesson on the haka by the director of the local marae. It was a really cool experience.

Meanwhile Gay and I have taken up racquet-based sporting activities. I’ve been playing squash at least twice a week with work-mates and Gay has planted herself firmly into the Nelson tennis scene. She’s ended up subbing for 2 teams in 3 separate matches and has also gotten herself a coaching gig on the side.

Videos of Life in New Zealand…
If you happened to read the comments of the previous post, my brother said something that stuck with me. No, not the part about my “…becoming a real bisexually Jack Hanna…” (whatever that means). But the part about showing how New Zealanders live and not what they live on. So here is a short video clip of Gay showing us how real New Zealanders live. Enjoy.

In addition to that here is a video clip, taken from Thomas’ mobile phone of the company doing the haka. The quality is horrible, and if you looks close you get see me make a brief appearance on the far left side. It’s a .3gp file and it opens in QuickTime for me, so you may need that installed. If you don’t then just watch the video on the haka site, it’s much better.