It's Tuesday 29th June 2010. We arrived here in Christchurch on Tuesday 30th June 2009. So kind of an anniversary, or maybe that's tomorrow? And what a year of adventure!
Chris has managed to obtain and hold down a job at McDonalds for most of the year. He doesn't have much to show for his efforts, mind you, with the exception of an old Subaru that is currently sitting in Hammonds Panelbeaters waiting to have a new rear drivers side door fitted after yet another demonstration of Newton's 3rd Law. His alternative transport at the moment is an old BMX bike - you can no doubt imagine how he looks on that - all 6ft 4in of him! He's been getting a bit wet going to and from work this last week or so! I think he's keen to get up to the snow fields quite soon for some snowbaording - there's lots of snow on those mountains - but I'm not sure that he has the means with which to fund that particular hobby.
He has talked about making some enquiries at the Christchurch Polytechnic again - to resume some sort of study next February - but we will see.
Sarah has settled into Christchurch life like a duck takes to water. She has a great group of school friends and actually reckons that the best thing about the year so far has been her new school - Christchurch Girls High School - great praise indeed! She continues to take part in a number of sporting activities, including cycling, basketball, indoor-football and dance/acrobatics. Her main pastime, however, seems to be developing into visiting the Westfield Mall with her pals! She also has a boyfriend - which we are obviously monitoring closely!! It's winter school holidays next week - so 2 weeks off - time to recharge the batteries - which have showed signs of running a bit low with a few days under the weather recently.
Maria continues to plug away at making the places of work in Christchurch a safer place to be. She's still doing a day and a half at Solid Energy (The NZ Coal Board) and recently helped them relocate their HQ into some rather swish premises. She's off to the West Coast - Hokitiki - in a week or so to a Solid Energy Occ Health Nursing meeting which she's looking forward to.
I've had a busy few weeks culminating in a week's consultancy down in Dunedin at Hillside Engineering with Simply Lean. It was an interesting week looking at the Foundry operations and it reminded me back to some of the places that I had experienced during my time at R-R - in particular some of the forging suppliers I visited as an auditor. My big news is that I have been offered the position of Quality Manager with Fulton Hogan here in Christchurch - starting tomorrow! So there's going to be a bit of change around here. I'm hoping to keep up the work with the Football Academy - as that's mostly weekend stuff anyway, plus I've recently piloted the i2i course in a single day - which seemed to work well - so hopefully they will continue to run on selected weekends throughout the year. I'm really looking forward to starting at Fulton Hogan - they have a really wide product/service mix which should keep me on my toes for quite some time!
I guess that one of the main benefits of taking on the Fulton Hogan role will be that it should help us to get some finance for purchasing a house if we spot somewhere that we like. Desmond Street has been a great place for us - particularly during Summer when we were hosting family - but it's probably too large for us in the longer term. It's been particularly noticeable during winter when we've found it difficult to heat the place up! No immediate plans to move out, but we'll be keeping an eye open for suitable places coming on to the market.
We'd been contemplating a trip over to Sydney at the start of July but a combination of no cheap flights left plus Maria's work commitments meant that we have shelved those plans for now. We'll probably look to get something planned for a future school break and book the flights in good time to get the good deal. We are discussing the possibilities of a long weekend down at Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo instead - which will be a lot different to sunny Oz! Though hopefully we might be able to hit one of the local ski-fields whilst we are there.
The FIFA World Cup has been interesting from the point of view of seeing the reaction in NZ of the 'success' of the All Whites. Despite not qualifying to the knock-out stages, they are being heralded as heros and a parade in Wellington has been mentioned. Quite a difference to what has been going on back in the UK, no doubt! We still have not subscribed to Sky, so have been at the mercy of TVNZ 1 & 7's schedules regarding which matches were on live, etc. The time difference also meant that we had to get up at 2am last Monday morning to watch England get thumped by the Germans! Fortunately neither Maria nor I had any work commitments that day so we did at least get a lie-in. England exiting also means that I am no longer likely to have to get up at that time again! I may just need to negotiate a late arrival at work should I want to watch the semi's and final.
That's about it for now. Quite a year. Not sure if it's gone fast or slow?! A lot of water under the bridge, to be sure, and a lot of personal development for all of us. Looking forward to the next chapter and what milestones that will bring.
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