Saturday, April 26, 2008
I did it!
Well, I finally did it - I drove fairly long distances from Hamilton. First to Rotorua (about one and a half hours) then to Pukehina Beach (about an hour). I drove our BMW with Joseph and Emily on board. Carrie drove the Honda minivan, with her mom and step-dad and Charlie. We rented a house that sat right on the beach - which was very lightly peopled this time of year (autumn here). Charlie had a great time running on the beach and into the water, chasing sea gulls and the occasional cat, but always returning to us (oh, well, guess I will have to figure out some other wayna to get rid of her). Emily had her usual great time standing or sitting in the water. Fortunately the house had a wood burning stove for it got down in the 50's at night (Farenheit) and grandma and grandpa with their thinner California blood got pretty chilled. I was pleased to find that I can drive on New Zealand highways with only a little fear - roads are definitely narrower and curvier than in Kansas, at least, sometimes very curvy though not on the route we took. Charlie's fur was well matted and dirty so we took her to a pet groomer who pretty much shaved her and she now looks much smaller - Carrie will be posting pictures. Emily laughed and laughed when she saw the new, littler Charlie, and poor dog now shivers in the morning chill. We have had a visit with the in-laws - yesterday went and saw some Kiwi birds at a center that incubates and hatches Kiwi eggs found in the wild and keeps them for six months before releasing them back to their home range - maybe Carrie will blog more about that. I hope everyone is well and having a good year. Take care. Manford
Monday, April 14, 2008
hot-diggity-dawg!
Hooray! We are getting rain as I write this around noon Monday (Sunday in the US). If it keeps up the drought will be broken. And the other positive news of note is that I passed my test and am the proud owner of a (temporary until the permanent one comes in the mail) New Zealand driver's license. I had to jump through some hoops to do this - earlier being evaluated by an occupational therapist and a driving instructor who had to pass me if I was to get the license - and they did and sent a report to my physician who did a physical and filled out a form - this I took to AA (the New Zealand equivalent of USA AAA) - and there took a written exam of 35 questions - you are allowed to get three wrong but I got them all right. You get instant feedback for each question because each of the three or four possible answers has a scratch off box before it - you choose the answer you like and scratch off that box and if it is the right answer you see a check mark and if the wrong one, a big old X. Oh, yes I had to have proof of having had a driver's license more than two years but could not use my current one because I got it last year so had to get documentation from Kansas regarding the initial date of licensure in that state. We got a reply from Kansas quite quickly - thanks to John for calling and getting the mailing address and other related information that allowed us to do that. On the downside my right arm is sore - but on the upside it is gradually getting better - healing does not go as fast once you hit the roaring sixties, I guess. Next adventure will hopefully be a cooking class - I can choose Japanese, Thai, Korean or Chinese, maybe a two day session learning about the Alexander technique and possibly a using your digital camera workshop. In-laws are coming later this week and we hope for fair weather this coming weekend so we can enjoy the beach at the beachhouse we are renting for three days. We attempted to go to a hot air ballon event Saturday but were late getting to the site and the crowd was much larger than we expected so we walked round the field and ambled back to our car generally going the opposite direction from most people and went and got takeout at the nearby KFC. Emily is making progress with her violin lessons. Joseph is going to a three day camp with his schoolmates who are in a particular class called JEEP (I don't know what that stands for but the class is for bright kids) in early May. Carrie stays busy at work. I stay busy at home. Well, thanks for your attention and I hope that all who read this are well and having a good year. Manford
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Laryngitis, McCafe, the Running of the Sheep, and other stuff
It is Sunday midday, and I am muted by laryngitis, which I exacerbated by lecturing and running a long meeting on Friday, so I am voiceless this weekend, and trying to rest. It seems my respiratory tract is about the same, whatever country we're in...it has been pretty good; this is the first bad cold in a year. They say that this area is particularly bad for asthma and allergies, but they've said that everywhere I've ever lived. They do have different (and fewer) drugs here, though...pharmacies are small affairs, without the bewildering rows of options that Walgreens has, but also without the options I used to thing helped...oh well. When I asked for Zinc lozenges, they mused, and gazed at their (small) shelf of remedies, and said vaguely that they used to have those, but hadn't seen them in a while...Bendryl has been banned for some reason. Sudafed has been adapted, as it is in the US, because of the meth potential. There is tea and honey. and codeine is readily available, over the counter, oddly enough. it stops the cough so I can sleep.
Our doctor here just had twins, and is working part time, so Joseph saw someone else to evaluate his wrist...story below--but we like the doctor, who is a 40-ish guy who wears jeans and running shoes, and has Simpsons stuff in his office. There are nurses around, but the doctor comes and gets you, and does not make you sit in a cold examining room and wait for him. His office is his examining room, and he does it all, and then you're done. There is a big doctor shortage here, as well as a nurse shortage, but at least the primary care docs don't seem overworked and overwhelmed. They see people of all ages--pediatricians are specialists for really sick kids--and some deliver babies. Most people (at least in Hamilton, which has more and better birth centres than most places) have a midwife as their primary provider for childbirth, and the midwife makes home visits before and after the baby is born. If you use a midwife or GP, or if you have complications that require an OB (they are generally reserved for complications), all your maternity care is paid for by the government. I visited the hospital's maternity wards this week, and they are awfully hospitalish, but are being remodelled to be more user-friendly--but the birthing centres are "posh," as they say here, and very pleasant. NO, I'm not thinking of having another baby--don't worry--just trying to understand the childbirth and parental support systems here. I may do some research on the women in the antenatal ward, who are at high risk of perinatal anxiety and depression.
McCafe: I had successfully avoided going to McDonald's (or Burger King) for the many months we've been here, but one day last month found myself late and hungry (it was 2:00) and near a McDonald's with this "McCafe" thing--someone had said it wasn't bad. So I went in, not expecting much, and was pleasantly shocked. I sat in a big leather chair, drank my organic lemonaide, and had a chicken and plum sauce panini (deciding against the risotto). It was not the best panini I ever had, but it was the best McDonald's I ever had. As I sat in my comfy chair and sipped, I could see through an opening to the regular McDonald's, complete with Playspace, just like every other McDonald's in the world--well, not fancy like the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's on Wanamaker, or the Jungle McDonald's on Gage, just ordinary McD. And I was grateful. I haven't been back--I prefer the multicultural sushi I can grab on the run--but I'd consider it.
Joseph's wrist: He fell out of a tree at the Wanganui Quaker Settlement--or, he might arge, the tree dropped him, when the branch broke under the weight of this boy, who is taller and taller every time I look, and was playing "Spotlight," a tradition and highlight of these Easter Family gatherings, a version of hide and seek, played after dark with "torches" (flashlights). Emily got spooked the first night, so she and I were in our room reading peacefully when Joseph crashed to the ground, scratching up one arm, and landing on his wrist. One of the people there was an osteopath, and he said he might have broken some little bone in the wrist, but it doesn't show up on an x-ray for at least a week, so he nursed it (except when he was playing cricket in PE, even after we wrote a note excusing him...) and it seems to be better.
We all had a good time in Wanganui, a nice small city about five hours south of here, where the Whanganui river meets the ocean. The Quaker Settlement has 16 houses, and a conference center, and "bush" and gardens and chickens. Some very nice people, from all over the world (e.g., Northern Ireland, South Africa, England, Massachusetts. And New Zealand). We drove back up a slightly different way, seeing a bit more of the coast, and spending the night in New Plymouth, in the shadow of Mount Taranaki, a Fuji-like mountain/volcano that Manford read has a 50% chance of erupting in the next some-number of years...don't tell Emily. On the way down we saw Mount Ruapehu, with snow on the ragged peak--last winter, it did erupt, in a relatively minor way, injuring one skier who was spending the night in a cottage on the mountainside. That's our local ski-run.
And then, last weekend, Manford and Emily and I went to the Running of the Sheep (Joseph declined). It was a moderately amusing small-town event, where the main street was blocked off, and there were various booths and rides, and then at the appointed time, 1900 sheep came running through town, and then we went home. No one ran in front of the sheep. Well, there were people on four-wheelers. kind of unfair, really. We got to sit on the cart, pulled by Clydesdales, to watch, because we were the last group before the big event.
And this weekend, I am resting, and Manford spent the day yesterday at a photography workshop in Tauranga (an hour and a half East, on the coast).
Carrie
Our doctor here just had twins, and is working part time, so Joseph saw someone else to evaluate his wrist...story below--but we like the doctor, who is a 40-ish guy who wears jeans and running shoes, and has Simpsons stuff in his office. There are nurses around, but the doctor comes and gets you, and does not make you sit in a cold examining room and wait for him. His office is his examining room, and he does it all, and then you're done. There is a big doctor shortage here, as well as a nurse shortage, but at least the primary care docs don't seem overworked and overwhelmed. They see people of all ages--pediatricians are specialists for really sick kids--and some deliver babies. Most people (at least in Hamilton, which has more and better birth centres than most places) have a midwife as their primary provider for childbirth, and the midwife makes home visits before and after the baby is born. If you use a midwife or GP, or if you have complications that require an OB (they are generally reserved for complications), all your maternity care is paid for by the government. I visited the hospital's maternity wards this week, and they are awfully hospitalish, but are being remodelled to be more user-friendly--but the birthing centres are "posh," as they say here, and very pleasant. NO, I'm not thinking of having another baby--don't worry--just trying to understand the childbirth and parental support systems here. I may do some research on the women in the antenatal ward, who are at high risk of perinatal anxiety and depression.
McCafe: I had successfully avoided going to McDonald's (or Burger King) for the many months we've been here, but one day last month found myself late and hungry (it was 2:00) and near a McDonald's with this "McCafe" thing--someone had said it wasn't bad. So I went in, not expecting much, and was pleasantly shocked. I sat in a big leather chair, drank my organic lemonaide, and had a chicken and plum sauce panini (deciding against the risotto). It was not the best panini I ever had, but it was the best McDonald's I ever had. As I sat in my comfy chair and sipped, I could see through an opening to the regular McDonald's, complete with Playspace, just like every other McDonald's in the world--well, not fancy like the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's on Wanamaker, or the Jungle McDonald's on Gage, just ordinary McD. And I was grateful. I haven't been back--I prefer the multicultural sushi I can grab on the run--but I'd consider it.
Joseph's wrist: He fell out of a tree at the Wanganui Quaker Settlement--or, he might arge, the tree dropped him, when the branch broke under the weight of this boy, who is taller and taller every time I look, and was playing "Spotlight," a tradition and highlight of these Easter Family gatherings, a version of hide and seek, played after dark with "torches" (flashlights). Emily got spooked the first night, so she and I were in our room reading peacefully when Joseph crashed to the ground, scratching up one arm, and landing on his wrist. One of the people there was an osteopath, and he said he might have broken some little bone in the wrist, but it doesn't show up on an x-ray for at least a week, so he nursed it (except when he was playing cricket in PE, even after we wrote a note excusing him...) and it seems to be better.
We all had a good time in Wanganui, a nice small city about five hours south of here, where the Whanganui river meets the ocean. The Quaker Settlement has 16 houses, and a conference center, and "bush" and gardens and chickens. Some very nice people, from all over the world (e.g., Northern Ireland, South Africa, England, Massachusetts. And New Zealand). We drove back up a slightly different way, seeing a bit more of the coast, and spending the night in New Plymouth, in the shadow of Mount Taranaki, a Fuji-like mountain/volcano that Manford read has a 50% chance of erupting in the next some-number of years...don't tell Emily. On the way down we saw Mount Ruapehu, with snow on the ragged peak--last winter, it did erupt, in a relatively minor way, injuring one skier who was spending the night in a cottage on the mountainside. That's our local ski-run.
And then, last weekend, Manford and Emily and I went to the Running of the Sheep (Joseph declined). It was a moderately amusing small-town event, where the main street was blocked off, and there were various booths and rides, and then at the appointed time, 1900 sheep came running through town, and then we went home. No one ran in front of the sheep. Well, there were people on four-wheelers. kind of unfair, really. We got to sit on the cart, pulled by Clydesdales, to watch, because we were the last group before the big event.
And this weekend, I am resting, and Manford spent the day yesterday at a photography workshop in Tauranga (an hour and a half East, on the coast).
Carrie
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