You might recall that last week I mentioned that my new job wasn't exactly rockin' my world. Well, after some thought, I gave my notice in on Thursday. A brief discussion followed and it was mutually agreed that instead of my working the statutory one month's notice (seemed a little pointless as I'd only worked there for 10 days) I would depart from their shores at 1pm the next day. But, and you've gotta respect this, as it was a long weekend/bank holiday I still got holiday pay for today (Monday)!
So now I am all unemployed again. Though I have been informed that there is someone teaching history over here at tertiary level who not only is merely educated to BA level (unlike me with my mighty MA), but whose degree is from Reading! God, they should be falling over themselves to employ me...I am also thinking of trying my hand at writing, perhaps I should expand the blog into a book? Or perhaps simply I should try to find someone fool enough to pay me to write articles - I mean Julie Burchill manages to make money out of it, how hard can it be? One interesting issue that has arisen is that, as we are training Gertie to be cool about being at home on her own all day, I will have to spend a few days hiding in the house and pretending that I am not here. Good excuse to lock myself upstairs slaving over a hot keyboard.
We are still waiting to find out if our cable company are prepared to pay for the pavement outside our house to be dug up and let us have broadband/cable tv etc, so you'll just have to wait for photos. If you're lucky that will give me to get a bit of a tan and lose the belly, so I'll look all foxy.
Other news. Jo is enjoying work, bonus! Amy is furiously rehearsing for a play - this would not normally inspire a reference, but she's been bringing home a lot of very nice "excess" food from work, so I thought an honourable mention was in order. We are planning our 1st BBQ next week, low key 'cos we now have a puppy to train (real reason = we don't know many people yet) & because it's halloween I've invested in a pair of inflatable batwings to wear from the $2 shop. They are very cool, though could inhibit my BBQing with their potential for going bang if they get too close to a naked flame. I'll keep you updated.
Au revoir for now! Oh, and Mrs Clarke is winning the phone call competition, though she really needs to find a cheapo calling centre online so she can phone for 1p a minute. Or sign up for Skype and get free broadband calls.
S
xxx
Monday, October 24, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Gertie Grot of Green Street
Afraid this is going to have to be brief as we haven't yet got our internet connection set up at home and my new job isn't exactly the kind of place where you get enough freedom to actually use the internet for blogging. In fact, so far the job isn't too exciting, but I think it would be rather indiscreet to go into further detail here. Suffice to say I'm hoping it improves significantly in the next few weeks or I might be back on the job market. If you want any more gory details you'll have to email - but don't expect a quick response 'cos there's a long weekend coming up and we're probably going to head up to the beach for a couple of days, show the dog the sea for the first time.
Ah yes, the dog. So far (and fingers crossed) she's fantastic! We haven't been able to do too much with her because she has stitches from having her ladyparts chopped, but once they take the stitches out on Saturday she'll be able to let rip. She's getting very comfortable around the house and seems to have settled quite quickly into understanding that indoors is not for looning about and that she isn't allowed on the sofa (but if you sit on the floor she does sit on your lap, literally, which could be an issue when she's fully grown). She even happily sleeps in a kennel outside the back door! Today we took her for her proper first walk and the great big outdoors kind of freaked her out when it got a bit noisy (traffic, cars starting, noisy shops etc), but she seems to get a bit more confident each time we go out. Once we are broadbanded we will publish photos so you can see what kind of trouble we've got into and quite why I am so determined she will be well behaved - cos she's going to be big. They think she is a NZ Huntaway crossbreed, a type of sheepdog, but I have taken to describing her as 'Pacific Fusion'. She is gorgeous though and doesn't even stink too badly - amazing!
Sod all else to report. I got squiffy on Saturday night and ended up having a long conversation with a bloke who plays one of the main characters in a soap opera over here about how he should give his older sister chinese burns more often. If you can think of a reason why I would think that was an interesting topic of conversation please feel free to let me know.
Adios for now!
S
So that's us committed for the next 12-14 years.
Ah yes, the dog. So far (and fingers crossed) she's fantastic! We haven't been able to do too much with her because she has stitches from having her ladyparts chopped, but once they take the stitches out on Saturday she'll be able to let rip. She's getting very comfortable around the house and seems to have settled quite quickly into understanding that indoors is not for looning about and that she isn't allowed on the sofa (but if you sit on the floor she does sit on your lap, literally, which could be an issue when she's fully grown). She even happily sleeps in a kennel outside the back door! Today we took her for her proper first walk and the great big outdoors kind of freaked her out when it got a bit noisy (traffic, cars starting, noisy shops etc), but she seems to get a bit more confident each time we go out. Once we are broadbanded we will publish photos so you can see what kind of trouble we've got into and quite why I am so determined she will be well behaved - cos she's going to be big. They think she is a NZ Huntaway crossbreed, a type of sheepdog, but I have taken to describing her as 'Pacific Fusion'. She is gorgeous though and doesn't even stink too badly - amazing!
Sod all else to report. I got squiffy on Saturday night and ended up having a long conversation with a bloke who plays one of the main characters in a soap opera over here about how he should give his older sister chinese burns more often. If you can think of a reason why I would think that was an interesting topic of conversation please feel free to let me know.
Adios for now!
S
So that's us committed for the next 12-14 years.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
My first earthquake.
I'm guessing that you can figure out what our big news is this week - yup, I've started work! And we're in the process of adopting a 15 week old puppy from the local SPCA...oh yeah, and I got to experience my first earthquake. Obviously, in light of the goings on in Islamabad our earthquake was extremely piddly and small, in fact Jo didn't even notice it 'cos she was almost asleep, but I was quite weirded out. I have got used to our swaying in the wind house, I just think of it as being on an old boat on a slightly choppy sea, but the earthquake was more like someone making the house doing a giant shimmy. Quite fun, in a screwed up way.
But, more fun news. Jo is now getting settled into her new job at Telstra and I have just finished my second day at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. The weather has been bloody awful, which has buggered my plan to walk to and from work each day, so we've been driving (the price of a car park ticket is cheaper than 2 return bus fares) as Jo's office & mine are about the same distance away from the railway station, just on opposite sides of the tracks. For those of you who have lots of time to spare and who might want to see where this is on a map of Wellington, just find the Westpac Stadium and I am to the west right next door to Old St Paul's whilst Jo is to the east near the waterfront. My lack of walking and constant spare tyre inspired me to head to the gym behind work ('Bodyworks'), where Jessica (a very sprightly Sara Cox-esque 26 year old from Stoke on Trent) talked me out of $72 a month and into membership. I'm even considering spending some of my soon to be hard-earned cash on a series personal trainer sessions to turn me into a bronzed and buffed Cameron Diaz-a-likee...it could be the only way...
I did manage to put the fear into Jessica though after we checked our respective weights on the scales by pointing out to her that she only weighed 0.5kg more than I did at her age...though I think that 0.5kg might explain her bosom advantage.
So I need to take my PE kit to work with me tomorrow.
The ministry (MWA) is pretty cool, though tiny. I think there are only about 35 staff and I am in a team of 4 (no change there then), and there are only 6 blokes. So far it's all very civilised - as a team we actually stop for tea at 10.30am and 3pm (!?!?!?!) - and if your baby is suffering from the lurgy and can't go to childcare guess what? Yup, bring em to work and let them crash out in their pram! Actually the baby in question, who must be all of 6 months old, was doing some quite rockin' burps in the policy meeting this morning and almost managed to distract me from the huge muffin I was trying to shovel down my gob. The shocking news, aside from being told that I've apparently been employed for my intellectual capacity, is that I am having to skip my first office drinks on Friday afternoon 'cos (with luck) we'll be off collecting our new dog. If any of you would like ot contact the SPCA and tell them quite how much commitment this clearly demonstrates, feel free. I'm not allowed to tell you sod all about my work though except that its kind of a recruitment service for all the statutory boards in NZ.
And now I shall tell you about the dog. As some of you know, Jo & I had agreed that we would get a dog when we got settled, and I came to the conclusion that having our own house and proper jobs was pretty settled, so it was time to start dog searching. I really had made my mind up that I wanted a Weimaraner, but we did some research & decided that we might be rather over extending our dog capabilities. Seeing as we are only about a 10 minute walk from the SPCA we headed down there to see what dogs they had available for adoption and were swept off our feet by a 15 week old female terrier cross. All we are waiting for now is their agreement that our place is okay for a dog and then we should be able to bring her home. Hooray!
Guess what I'll be blogging about next week...
love
S
xxx
But, more fun news. Jo is now getting settled into her new job at Telstra and I have just finished my second day at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. The weather has been bloody awful, which has buggered my plan to walk to and from work each day, so we've been driving (the price of a car park ticket is cheaper than 2 return bus fares) as Jo's office & mine are about the same distance away from the railway station, just on opposite sides of the tracks. For those of you who have lots of time to spare and who might want to see where this is on a map of Wellington, just find the Westpac Stadium and I am to the west right next door to Old St Paul's whilst Jo is to the east near the waterfront. My lack of walking and constant spare tyre inspired me to head to the gym behind work ('Bodyworks'), where Jessica (a very sprightly Sara Cox-esque 26 year old from Stoke on Trent) talked me out of $72 a month and into membership. I'm even considering spending some of my soon to be hard-earned cash on a series personal trainer sessions to turn me into a bronzed and buffed Cameron Diaz-a-likee...it could be the only way...
I did manage to put the fear into Jessica though after we checked our respective weights on the scales by pointing out to her that she only weighed 0.5kg more than I did at her age...though I think that 0.5kg might explain her bosom advantage.
So I need to take my PE kit to work with me tomorrow.
The ministry (MWA) is pretty cool, though tiny. I think there are only about 35 staff and I am in a team of 4 (no change there then), and there are only 6 blokes. So far it's all very civilised - as a team we actually stop for tea at 10.30am and 3pm (!?!?!?!) - and if your baby is suffering from the lurgy and can't go to childcare guess what? Yup, bring em to work and let them crash out in their pram! Actually the baby in question, who must be all of 6 months old, was doing some quite rockin' burps in the policy meeting this morning and almost managed to distract me from the huge muffin I was trying to shovel down my gob. The shocking news, aside from being told that I've apparently been employed for my intellectual capacity, is that I am having to skip my first office drinks on Friday afternoon 'cos (with luck) we'll be off collecting our new dog. If any of you would like ot contact the SPCA and tell them quite how much commitment this clearly demonstrates, feel free. I'm not allowed to tell you sod all about my work though except that its kind of a recruitment service for all the statutory boards in NZ.
And now I shall tell you about the dog. As some of you know, Jo & I had agreed that we would get a dog when we got settled, and I came to the conclusion that having our own house and proper jobs was pretty settled, so it was time to start dog searching. I really had made my mind up that I wanted a Weimaraner, but we did some research & decided that we might be rather over extending our dog capabilities. Seeing as we are only about a 10 minute walk from the SPCA we headed down there to see what dogs they had available for adoption and were swept off our feet by a 15 week old female terrier cross. All we are waiting for now is their agreement that our place is okay for a dog and then we should be able to bring her home. Hooray!
Guess what I'll be blogging about next week...
love
S
xxx
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