Old and cold!

 Although the days are becoming shorter and there is definitely more rain about, winter hasn't hit Wanganui with any kind of ferocity yet.
There are two places where the 'winter-meter' can be seen close to where we live - Mount Taranaki is one of them but it is not too often that we get to see the 'volcano' since there is usually so much cloud about.
A gentle dusting of snow just to cool things down a wee bit.
By mid-winter, the snow reaches 'ground level' most nights and covers the surrounding countryside too.

I have a few students who are contemplating the Royal Schools of Music pianoforte examinations this year - in the search for suitable preparatory music (in the pile marked "graded piano"), I came across this book of Studies and Pieces for the University of South Africa. Although I always enjoy using music that my grandmother used in her teaching, this one is all the more special because of the date on the front - hard to believe that I have music in my collection that is almost a hundred years old!
Dotted about in the various pieces in the book, are notes which Gangy wrote for her students - things like "more carefully", "fingering!" "practise", "mind thumb" "LH arp" -  (left hand arpeggio) - and so on. I often smile when I come across her notes to her pupils - my advice to my students is usually exactly the same!!
Dis al!

Wellywood??

The capital city of New Zealand is Wellington - I honestly didn't know that until we actually moved here! - in any event, there are loads of things that happen in and around Wellington, not least of which is not altogether marvellous weather. Be that as it may, the powers that be, in and around this city, have in their wisdom, decided that this signage (pictured below, and taken from the national newspaper report) shall be erected forthwith on the 'koppie' alongside Wellington airport. The subsequent uproar has been quite something to behold - even the Prime Minister saying on National Television that he was 'not crazy about it, I just think that I..N..G...T..O...N would be better after the W..E..L...L actually' - or words to that effect.

Now since most of the folks interviewed on the streets in and around Wellington sort of laughed about it or where quite adamant it was just going to cost money, was somewhat tacky and a sad rip-off of the Hollywood and Bollywood ideas, needless to say, barring some sort of major change of heart, this sign, whatever anyone thinks about it, will be erected and will be pretty much the first thing visitors to Wellington will see on their arrival at the airport!
We reserve the right to decline to comment!

Dis al!

Wasgij

Puzzles have something new here- we tackled this one since we have neither of us been feeling too much like swanning about outdoors.
The picture on the box lid, is not the picture of the completed puzzle - in this case, the final 'product' as it were, depicts what it is that the seagull (seen floating in the top left hand corner of the box-lid picture) can see!
Puzzles are what one does when one is not feeling like doing 'anything' - or when one is keeping someone else (who is preparing dinner or similar) company! Music students waiting for a lesson have been known to fit a piece or two too!
I know it's probably an idiotic thing to mention, but the name of the puzzle is 'jigsaw' backwards!
There are apparently similar puzzles available which are 'what happens next' ones - maybe we'll do one of those too.
All of these options are 'small fry' compared to the one my oldest girlfriend (meaning friends since about 1966 and nothing else!) Rozanne in the USA, is doing - she'll have to remind me exactly how many pieces it involves, but it's in the tens of thousands! Now that's a challenge.
Dis al!

Johann Henri Botha jnr.

Johann Henri Botha - Born 19th May 2011

 We have no details as yet, but here are a couple of the photographs gleaned from the social networking site Facebook, of the new Grandson - and named for his granddad!

Ons het nog geen verdere inligting op hierdie stadium nie,maar hier is 'n paar fotos wat ons van die netwerk Facebook afgekry het, van Johann Henri Botha wat veilig in Suid Afrika gister die 19de Mei gebore was! Ons kan nie eers beskryf hoe opgewonde en in sy noppies die nuwe oupa met hierdie klein pienkvoet is nie! Baie geluk Boetie en Barbara met die veilige geboorte van julle eersteling - ons dink hy's pragtig en ons hoop julle gaan elke oomblik van hierdie groot avontuur geniet. Ons sal ons getroue blog lesers op datum hou met al die inligting soos wat dit beskikbaar word!  Al wat ek kan se is, "ag jinne mamma, kyk daardie ou klein bekkie - mens wil hom net soentjies gee! Is dit nie die pragtigste seuntjie in die wereld nie?" Ons weet ten hierdie tyd al dat Matilda die mooiste dogtertjie in ons wereld is en nou hier het ons die seuntjie om daarby te pas!!   Dis al




Trivia

The beautiful 'pampas grass' that we are kind of accustomed to, is not indiginous to New Zealand. The one that 'belongs' here, looks like these photographed for you  - these are particularly healthy and full-looking specimens. For the most part, they are sparse and straggly looking and not anything to write home about!
Limp and sad-looking with moth-eaten edges!


Found a 'World's best Trivia' book at the library today - all sorts of useless information to add to the plethora which we already have!
On a kiwi note - "Taumatawhakatangihangakauauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu" is the name of a hill in New Zealand that boasts the longest name still in use and means: 'The hill where Tamatea, the great warrior, climbed over after returning from a long voyage abroad and played the flute to his beloved upon arrival' or words to that effect! 

" Young and impoverished  Pablo Picasso is known to have kept warm by burning his own paintings" - Having not ever acquired the finesse or expertise to fully appreciate all of the above-mentioned artists' paintings, I can only say that it was a smart move on his part! Clearly, art-plebs are we!

I am also glad that we are not Chinese - "Half the population of China is  myopic (short-sighted) and a further thirty percent require some sort of vision correction"
 "The average Chinese family has three bicycles and no car"

CANADA is an Indian word meaning "big village"

"The first computer bug was found by Admiral Grace Hopper, a legend in her own time, in a naval computer. It was a moth, caught in the computer relay switch that was giving rise to errors. This is the etymology of the word bug as used to describe problems related to computer hardware and software."

"The Spanish word esposa has two meanings - wife and handcuff."

Dis al!

Sculptures - divine and man-made

This spectacular 'double rainbow' was snapped from our kitchen window - although it was pretty special, we were surprised to see it again on the front page of the local newspaper the next day. Maybe there wasn't that much in the way of newsworthy stuff happening in Wanganui last week!

I promised to photograph two of our Wanganui sculptures. Here is the aforementioned 'sphere' - I would be interested to hear your opinions of it - we haven't been able to ascertain if there is a particular message or meaning connected with it. It just appeared - maybe it's designed to promote dialogue and discussion!!!

And here are the large pencils - a little further along the walkway beside the Whanganui river. I wondered if there was a reason why all of them are marked HB - just a thought.

Dis al!

Houseboat to die for!

There is a dam on the Patea river - quite a way inland and very much 'off the beaten track' - on Sunday afternoon, with the weather a tad chilly and not too bike conducive, we ambled over to have a little look-see and found this houseboat moored on the dam itself, not too terribly far from the dam wall!

I have to say that this is the first time that we have seen such a dwelling and we wondered what sort of 'permission' would be required to set up a home like this one. There is a campsite not too far away, but for the most part, this is an extremely remote part of the world. 

Beside the dam, set a little back from the water and under a clump of trees, is this 'extention' to the houseboat (we imagine).  Everything your heart could desire in the way of ablutions! The sign up on the top left of the structure mentioned something about being 'Orsome' - I guess it's a matter of opinion! Dis al!

Wildlife on our doorstep! (remember the duck and her chicks?)

We happened to see a bit of movement beside the pathway outside our house and lo and behold a little 'krimpvarkie' -(isn't that just the best word for a hedgehog you ever heard?) was heading who knows where! We have no idea where he came from or if he happens to belong to anyone in the vicinity. The more we crouched down looking at him, the more 'frozen' he became. We don't know where he went or if he ever got there!

Snippets of interest (to us anyway!)

Our blog is hopefully going to change a wee bit - less about our no-longer-so-fascinating-lives-now-that-we-have-our-residency, and more about things that we find interesting or different about life and living in New Zealand - maybe even our thoughts on kiwis and kiwiland (for what those thoughts could be worth!) Hope you will continue to enjoy our adventure with us!

For those of you who didn't know -' facebook connects people.'

You can buy Ouma buttermilk rusks (on the Countdown supermarket's International shelf on a good day) but they are enormously expensive and in our humble opinion, not as good as the homemade variety!

Your's truly makes these fairly regularly and they always go down a treat with locals and naturally the other ex-South Africans who happen to visit around tea time - not to be confused with 'tea' which is supper here. As in -" I have to go home to get the tea on, we're having bangers and mash tonight" or "What's for tea?"

Once they are baked and chopped up into bits, they spend the night in the oven to dry out - this is a batch which generally doesn't last anything near what one would expect it to!

We did a 'bring and share' lunch at the holiday park last month - the weather was admittedly a bit gloomy, but look at that magnificent rainbow - had to rummage around for the camera but managed to just catch it for you to see before it vanished as quickly as it had arrived!

Most places in New Zealand have spots where interesting sculpture is on display - this 'knot' is perched beside the Information site in Nelson. Our little town of Wanganui has recently acquired a very interesting piece - set on a large concrete block beside the Whanganui river, it is basically a huge stainless steel sphere with an uneven 'crack' running right around the middle of the ball. We will try and remember to take a picture of it next time we are in the vicinity - and you can judge for yourselves. Also fairly new in Wanganui is the 'pencil' piece - larger than life 'pencils' beside the river - we will post these for you to see as soon as we have them on film.

If you page down through this blog, you will no doubt come across more than one other one of these old 'trap orreltjies' - they are really quite common - when we think about the early pioneers coming to New Zealand and setting up churches for the 'heathen savages' who were living here, they no doubt had neither the money nor the wherewithal to import large, impressive pipe organs for their parishes. These little guys are much easier to transport and do the job quite adequately.

This one caught my eye at the Church of the Good Shepherd (beside the beautiful lake on the South Island) because someone decided that perching a large bible on the music stand would suffice. Couldn't they find any sheet music anywhere? Perhaps I should offer to donate something from the same era as that of this little organ - I'm sure I have plenty stashed away and which I am not likely to really need to use.

A teeny tiny little town in New Zealand can be literally in the middle of nowhere and have little in the way of anything really - the sort of 'one main high street' kind of place with a couple of shops, a church or two and one petrol station, a hotel of sorts and maybe a children's' playground. This one, pictured here has a 'Mitre 10' - hardware store (some of which in NZ are the size of two rugby fields, not this one though!) and there, tucked away is this town's tourist attraction! A working windmill!

What fascinated me too about this little town of Foxton, was the plethora of mural artwork - a couple of which are in this picture - you can see them literally all around this town. And the artwork is not bad either. Did someone pay the artist to do these? Or did they pop up anonymously out of nowhere and cause confusion in the halls of the local council as to whether they were to be classed 'graffiti'! Perhaps we should do some research about all these paintings depicting early Pioneer life in New Zealand

Dis al!