A couple of nights ago a big 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck around 170km northwest of wellington. We all rushed downstairs wondering what to do. We decided that in case of an earthquake that was near us the safest things to do would be to go under the dining room table or to go outside. Luckily nobody was harmed in Nelson and it was 230km deep so it wasn't nearly as bad as anything that happened in Christchurch, no damage was done apart from the occasional item falling off the shelves in the grocery store. With the big 7.0 nobody even realized that there was an aftershock, it was a measly 4.6 magnitude at the same depth 70km south of Opunake. To find out more visit
                                                                                                                                                       http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/7214948/7-0-earthquake-felt-in-Wellington

By Andrew

This term break we fairly spur-of-the-moment took off for the Otago rail trail. Again. Last time was a couple of years ago in the spring. We got hit by some fierce wind and, well, we didn't make it. This time we are older, wiser, fitter? and we are going the full monty from Clyde to Middlemarch. Highly recommended outing for kiwis and visitors alike.

Otago rail trail

First night at the Lauder Hotel. Good to get day one under our belts, saddles, whatever, and practice our cup stacking in the local pub where Andrew holds the record for holding his hands on the frozen beer tap. He's a polar bear. And it's a good thing, because the mornings are a bit cold.

That be frost on those saddlebags. It's all good. We'll warm up pedaling, and before long Mr. Sun will be along. Here are a few pics of the local wildlife.

Glad this one was off the trail and on the wall at the Chatto Creek tavern.

Now it's back to school, work, basketball, soccer, and this term we'll be leading the contingent for FPS at Broadgreen intermediate.

hello.
Last week we went up mount Arthur with Aunt Sue and Uncle Lee. It was a four day tramp and we stayed at a couple of huts. I got sick on the second night so it wasn't great for me but it was a really nice place to go and here are some photos.There was some tough climbing
We saw some keas for the first time.

Going to School in New Zealand

Yesterday I dropped Dean off for a week long "ropes styled" sailing trip where he'll learn to sail, gain some leadership skills and hopefully have an awesome time in the Marlborough Sounds. Last week I had the pleasure of joining Andrew's class as they spent the week at Abel Tasman Park. And, a month ago Dean spent a week in the Nelson Lakes District hiking and really roughing it in the backcountry where they practically slept under the starts. School in New Zealand is fun.

I am ambivalent about a lot of things as far as living in New Zealand goes. But, I have no doubt that Dean and Andrew are having an amazing school experience. I am loath to compare the US system with NZ. It's just not fair; it's apples to oranges. The mantra I always invoke is 4.3 versus 311 million people - that pretty much explains everything. Nonetheless, here I live on this little island in the middle of nowhere. And, because of the numbers and the natural beauty of this country, our kids get a school experience very different from the one they would have had in America.

Every other year New Zealand school children go on a camp. This begins as early as Year 4 (which is third grade) and continues through their "college" (high school) years. Andrew's camp was at a hut abutting Abel Tasman Park. Kids sleep in bunks, 4 to a room (probably a lot like US summer camp). The teacher, an administrator and some volunteer parents join the trip – we're in a separate bunkhouse and we even got our own rooms!

I had the pleasure of spending two nights with Andrew's class. Once we settled at Marahau the first thing the kids did was change into their togs (swimsuits) and throw themselves into the sea. It doesn't matter that the water is in the low 60s, air temperature mid 60s maybe. That's what they do. We spent the day swimming (even me) collecting sea creatures, building sand castles and just having fun. At night we played games, had a bonfire and made s'mores. Everyone went to bed happy and tired.

Next day we took the kids on a 14k hike (that's 8.4 miles). Not bad for 9 – 11 year olds. Now, don't think they are all gunning to go. Even though sport is a major focus here, for some kids this was the farthest they'd ever had to walk and it was hard work. It didn't help that it was raining. But, I thought it was really cool that we did it despite the rain. We took a water taxi back from Anchorage which made it all worth it, even for the most reluctant trampers.

What I saw in this camp was amazing. While there's lots of fun and games, there's also work and a building of personal responsibility and community. The kids help prepare meals, clean bathrooms, sweep floors and do their own dishes. They are expected to keep their rooms tidy. But, they also get to laugh and run around freely. They see their teacher, their principal and some lucky parents in a new environment. I had the pleasure of getting to know kids I might not otherwise meet (especially the girls).

As I reflect on school here, I sometimes worry that it's not rigorous enough, that there's not enough homework. Too much play and not enough work! I wonder whether our boys will be adequately prepared for university and the big, bad world. I am assured that capable Kiwis leave the system and thrive as adults. And, when I go to Andrew's school and see all the kids outside laughing and playing; when I think maybe they are getting to be kids just a little bit longer than they would have in Texas, when I have the assurance that they are happy, I feel good. I know that they will be just fine.

Go Dynamo!!!!!

Remember these beds prepped here on June 26:

The soil could have used longer to set up, but we had a trip planned so I went ahead and popped in seed potatoes on Sept 4. Here we are Nov 20, some 2.5 months later.

I have added dirt twice to keep decent mounds, but that's about all the care and feeding these guys get. I'm thinking we're going to be fetching a lot of spuds, and we may not wait till xmas to start. I went with Ilam Hardy, which are supposed to be early growing. We'll post on taste and yields in the future. Fishing season looms, and here's looking forward to some homemade fish n chips.

At Knott's Berry Farm we rode a range of rides. At the start we didn't want to go on a lot of the rides so we decided to ride one of the less scary ''coasters'' called the Sierra Sidewinder which is where you spin on a roller coaster, It was quick and easy.
After that all the rides were closed off until 11:00 so mum and I rode the screamin' swing one of the scariest we rode.Then we
rode the classic log flume.After that I can't really remember what we did but I will explain some pictures below.
Sierra Sidewinder

Screamin' Swing

The ultimate rocket powered swing
''Life as a hotdog''

Andrew Franklet

we also rode the following Pony express, Silver bullet, Dragon swing, La Revolucion, Waveswinger, Bigfoot rapids, Boomerang, Windseeker, Jaguar and we watched a cowboy stunt show.
Andrew

Quick trip to the LA county museum. Beautiful day and large crowds. The museum is alive and well. We saw lamp posts

billiards




turtles



dishes

Burton people

and my favorite, the big blue dog

what does it all mean?

Me riding on a tiny bike at a cafe in Wellington





Also for school I did a project on Japanese school lunches, or bentos. I had to find a lot of information about them and I even had to make one myself that looked like a Japanese cartoon character.
Here is the information:

1. Where does the word bento come from?

The word bento originated from the people who lived at the castle of 16^th century military commander Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582). He fed the people at his castle by handing out individual meals to each person. People began to call these small meals bentos.

2. What is an ekiben? Where are they sold?

An ekiben is a bento sold at a train station, usually containing the specialty foods of the region the ekibens are being sold in.

3. What is an umeboshi and what is its purpose in the bento?

An umeboshi is a pickled Japanese apricot and its purpose in the bento is that it was believed to keep rice from going bad.

4. When were the first bentos made and who were they made for?

The first bentos (though not called bento at the time) were made in around the fifth century in Japan and they were made for people going out to hunt, farm, or battle.

5. What kind of people like bento?

Basically everyone in Japan likes bento.

6. What is a makunochi bento?

Makunochi bentos contain small rice balls sprinkled with sesame seeds and an assortment of side dishes.

7. What are some of the most important considerations that the maker of the bento must keep in mind when making the bento?

They are visual presentation, making sure that the cooked foods are well done to prevent changes in the flavour or color, items that go bad easily should not be used, excess liquid should be eliminated, rice and side dishes should be in a 1:1 ratio, and the ratio of meat dishes to vegetables should be 1:2.

8. What sort of food was used in early bento?

The earliest bentos were made of primarily dried rice, but in the 15^th century they were made of white rice, the rice mixed with millet, or potatoes, depending on the region.

9. What is in a typical modern bento?

The first thing is that the person who makes the bento, such as the mother, often prepares the bentos as she is cooking the side dishes for the family's regular meals. She decides what foods will not spoil and sets them aside for the next days bentos. Meals are often planned around what food would be good for the next day's bentos. Another thing typical of a modern bento is that it will often contain sausages. Many Japanese people very much enjoy the taste of sausages. The sausages can be interestingly cut to make little creatures or other creations, making the meal fun and enjoyable.

10. Name six places/shops where you can purchase a bento these days.

Places you can purchase bentos these days are department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, shops specializing in bentos, restaurants, and train stations.

11. From the above six place, choose three to write in Japanese.

(I wrote them in pen)

12. How have bento boxes (the containers) changed over time? What sort of boxes are used today?

In the beginning of bento, the lunches were wrapped in different leaves or plant material. Then wooden boxes evolved, followed by crafted bento boxes, woven or made of bent wood. Now bento coxes can be traditionally shaped as things such as a half-moon. The most modern bentos are made out of wood, metal, or plastic. They can be rectangular, oval, or circular in shape. They can also have popular characters on them, such as Mrs. Arai's favorite, Hello Kitty

Here is my bento, based off of snorlax:

Expanding the potato patch

What have we been up to over the past month? ... rain. Rain and more rain. Every weekend has been incredibly wet. We've played soccer in the rain, like wet rats on the field and the sideline. We've canceled soccer. We've gone to the indoor swimming pool. We've played cards, mostly hearts, with a little 500 mixed in. But today the SUN came out and we got out in the garden.

We have previously posted about our potato patch, which was first planted this past September, with Snippy Ritchie the resident potato sage declaring "potatoes by Christmas!" Well we got them, and they were marvelous. I have been asked (by my mother) why go to such effort - preparing the bed, composting, planting - in order to grow potatotes?

But the fact is, it's exceptionally nice to not worry about whether or not there are potatoes in the pantry, to wander out to the yard and dig up a few and roast them up in the oven. Easy, tasty and no tending for the few months they are incubating. Plus, if you're not ready for them, you just leave 'em in the ground until you are.

So here is an aerial shot of the original fifty square feet or so we carved out at the top of the hill that slopes down below our car park. In fact the plant in the middle is a re-growth of some baby spuds that must have been left in after harvesting. It's winter, and slow growing, so we'll just have to see what happens.

The day's project, two days really, has been to clear the adjoining raised bed which was producing all manner of growth going about eight feet up to the parking area. First clearing, then a bit of prep for next planting season. The contents of one disc from the worm farm went in, along with many families of worms and some kitchen compost, grass clippings from the lawn, and sheep pellets scattered about like (the icing on the cake?).

Hard to see at this angle, but the new bed is considerably higher than the first, which is at ground level. So the end of the top bed required some shoring up (new post and retaining plank), and you really have to climb up in it to work over the whole area. Note to self: plan the rows of plants with a path down the middle for easy access.

Close to ready. Because we happen to have a bale of hay for the guinea pig, I'll spread a layer of hay over the whole area. Most of this plan by the way came from a local "no-dig" garden workshop. All the ingredients go onto the soil, cover it up, and wait for a few months. We'll be waiting about 3 months, till mid September.

Here's what it looks like at ground level. Yes I'll do a better job of spreading. On the ground below the bed is a section of scrap carpeting. That'll go over the bed for the next 3 months, to keep everyone underneath warm, dark and happy.

That's all folks. Come round in six months for fresh potatoes.

Time for a geeky post, just because we wound up getting experimental and had a bit of fun with copying files around, though I admit that probably doesn't sound like much fun.

So you've got a bunch of digital pictures to transfer from one computer to another, movies, a pile of music, anything like that. In our case it was 21.7GB and so the question arose of whether to transfer via hard wired ethernet or via file copy to USB external drive. If you like a trivia game, you can answer now ____ and then read on for the result. My initial thought was USB, except that we would need to copy twice, once to get it onto the external HD and then again to get it off, and the two operations combined might exceed ethernet speed.

First up was to try via the network, and in this case that is with fast ethernet or 100Mbit/s. We will also have a go with gigabit because a spare switch happens to be at hand.100Mbit ethernet we took 32 Minutes at a transfer speed that fluctuated very little between 11.1-11.2 MB/sec.

Next up we snapped in a gigabit switch and did it again. This time we copied the files across in 8 min! at a speed that fluctuated between 40.9 - 47.6 Mbit/sec. It was interesting that the speed varied so much more over gigabit. I put this down to the hardware being fully able to keep up with the fast ethernet connection, so the ethernet speed itself was the limiting factor. Whereas with gigabit, there is enough capacity that the transfer is affected by other hardware components inside the PC. Dell Precision workstation on both ends, btw. Notice that the fast ethernet transfer takes place very close to the theoretical maximum transfer speed of approx 12 MB/sec whereas the gigabit transfer is considerably lower than than its max transfer speed of some 120MB/sec.

And then for the USB...

While the initial file copy dialog popped up with an eye popping 105MB/sec this would prove well too optimistic. After the transfer settled down, this would eventually decline to a much steadier 26.7MB/sec and we would finish out with all files copied at the 15 min mark. That's copied once, with a duplicate needed on the other end.

During this 15 min I had enough time to consider that not all USB ports are equal, and I learned something here, and that is that by drilling down into the device manager, you can go into the Properties on each USB port, on the Advanced tab, and actually see if you are transferring at "high speed" or the not-so-delightful "full speed." Indeed this PC has an abundance of ports both front and back, and it did have some of each. But the one I was using was in fact high speed.




So the moral of this story, reader, if you have made it this far, is with gigabit ethernet you can dispense with the USB drive and just transfer your files across the network. And with fast ethernet it is going to be a close race, enter lots of caveats about network contention and YMMV, etc, but this was our outcome, on this day.

Yesterday my dad and I went fishing. We started off going in just before low tide, and we had a smooth start (unlike the time about 2 months ago when we went in and then the motor wouldn't start for thirty minutes and we drifted in to the marina). We started off fishing far away from the shore, trying to go to the spot where we usually fish, but I don't think we quite got there because the big pole had been taken away for repairs. When we found a spot we liked, we started fishing. We didnt catch anything for 15 minutes and were many times on the verge of moving to a spot where a ton of fish were jumping around, creating a feeding frenzy for the birds. We stuck at it though, because we had a line out with pilchards on it that kept gtting nibbles. We knew that the only thing that would take that would be quite big. It paid off, because after a couple more inutes waiting, dad caught a big gurnard.

Gurnard's are interesting fish because they have these cool green wings and they make a croaking sound.

We tried that spot for another ten minutes, but there were no more nibbles so we tried to troll(have lines out while boat is moving at a very slow speed) using our new squid lure and some pilchards. After about ten minutes, the squid lure got it's first strike, and we saw a big fish ump out of the water. That one shook it off, but after another five minutes it had another strike. I reeled it in and it turned out to be a huge kawahai. We were really excited and we threw it back out and soon enough we caught another. This happened one more time until dad said we needed to stop to clean up the blood on the bottom of thee boat and fillet the fish.

We also tried it afterwards, and caught a little one(compared to these, that is) and dad said that he wasnt worried about these guys flopping off so he held it on the elevated cutting board, and right before he was gonna stab it in the head he loosened his grip and it flopped off in to the water. We got another one though, so it didn't really matter. It was a successful day fishing.

Recently I did the Weetbix triathlon, for the 3rd time! This year I was really looking forward to the prize giving, I really wanted a new bike but sadly I didn't get one :(, although I got a new bike a few weeks later =)! Alright back to the topic I started with a nice cup full of french fries.

But really, I started out with swimming . When I got there after riding my bike all the way to the tahuna fields I realized I had forgotten my swim shorts(0_0) although that wasn't to bad I just swam in the shorts I was wearing!

After that we were biking. My bike was so small compared to most peoples bikes that's why I really wanted a new bike. My bikes wheels were tiny and I didn't have gears , so I went like a meter an hour and I got stuck in transition trying to get my wet feet into my socks-_-




After that it was the running that's when I caught up to most people because by then everybody was so tired that they were all just walking, I was one of the only people to have enough stamina to run to the finish!=)


Once I had reached the the finish I was given a drink of water a water bottle and a medal. Once that was over I played a game to win a free foam rugby ball. After that it was prize giving I didn't get anything:(.Then we biked back home and I invited a friend over.

by Andrew

Last week before back to school. We headed out to the water. Some hiking, play in the shallows, and yes, fishing. I will be the first to say, With a setting like this, you could pretty much sit there and catch nothing, and you could do a lot worse.


But we did not catch nothing. Even tho we did not know what it was we caught.

The local shop has a poster of "NZ Fishes" and we at first thought we had hooked up a scorpionfish.

But upon later reflection and reading, these were much more likely sea perch or what are at least locally known as Jock Stewarts.

Here's a close up of our ones, gone into the smoker and into our bellies.

Back to the source.

There is a lovely swimming hole at the Riwaka resurgence. Here the water bubbles up out of the rock as sweet and clear as can be. Only problem is the water is cold. With a capital C.

One can contemplate swimming in thru the opening in the rock but....




nah, too scary really. I now learn that people do dive this place. But I reckon any diver would have a wetsuit and, as they say in the text, the water is more suitable for polar bears. A fairly constant temp in the low fifties apparently. The two D's decided yes on the toes, but no on the full swim. Not on this day.

B&A decided yes.




B describes the experience as somewhat painful, so one might ask why one does such things. Then again one might also ask, how does she keep her hair like that while swimming? Let's look closer.... but no, somehow it still holds up.

In case you were thinking this is a serene spot for a bit of solitude in the woods, not so. At the main pool, thrill seekers abound, egging one another on to make a quick jump and exit, scrambling out to the nearest rock. This makes for a good spectator sport, and provides a lesson in peer pressure. I guess there's worse things to get goaded into than jumping in the river.

Christmas this year was a nice mix of the old & the new. Leg of lamb. Pecan pie.

But first, the leg of lamb.

- As you can see, Christmas mid-morning Barbara is a blur of activity. That's because we are invited over to a friend's, and we are bringing a leg of lamb. One of two, so it I guess it wouldn't be a disaster if ours is a failed effort. But still... nothing like some good turkey-cooking stress, and never having cooked a leg of lamb before this holiday season ... I will confess that we chickened out and gave it a trial run earlier in the week. Based on that experience, I'd have to say that the cooking is perhaps easier than the carving. Our first attempt at carving left us with what looked like a pile of table scraps, alongside a bone the dog had worked over. If only we had a dog to blame it on.

But even unschooled north americans can be taught, and our second attempt at carving would go much better, with the help of a little shoulder surfing from a native trained in the art. You will also notice that it helps to cook in a scarf, regardless of temperature in the kitchen, or outside. It just helps.

What the discerning will notice in this picture, is the importance under the tree of staples from the old world: Dr. Pepper, ramen, 100 grand bar, to pick out a few. But now I will give you something new... fresh 'taters.

I planted two rows of Rocket potatoes on Sept 25, and my barber Snippy Ritchie, who is knowledgeable about such things, told me with any luck I would have "potatoes for Christmas."

So this shows what 3 months in the ground will do for you. This is what I dug out beneath one plant, so I reckon I have a couple hundred potatoes out there. Barbara says she is going to chronicle our urban garden elsewhere, but suffice to say that I did absolutely NOTHING to grow these little beauties. I dug a bit of a trench and chucked in a potato every foot or so, covered it back up.

The last thing I will tell you is that alongside a good old Texas pecan pie, made with corn syrup from the asian grocery, was a big bowl of trifle and a pavlova.

It's light. It's fluffy, Go to the House of Pies and order a merengue pie with the biggest tallest topping you can find. When it gets to your table, take it in hand and flip it straight over on the table. Tell the waiter that you are now in New Zealand. And, if it is not a fruit pie, can you please have some berries to put on top.

That's the news folks. Happy holidays, on all sides of the ocean.