Swimming class, day two ...

Today was the second day of the total immersion swim class. We dropped the kids off at the babysitter's place at 7:30 am before heading down to the pool. Its quite cold in Nelson in the morning (0 c / 32 f), so we were all bundled up and ready to go.

The first hour or so we spent watching video from yesterday and saw a few good things we did and a few things we needed to focus on and improve for the next session. Watching an underwater video is an awesome thing, gives u a much better perspective and idea on all the things that are happening and how you respond. I was quite surprised as to the many good things I do while watching the video. We hit the pool by 9:00 am and spent the first 30 minutes warming up and doing the drills from yesterday (relaxed back float and kick, fish, switch, zipper stich and linked zipper). Lionel was also kind enough take me to the deep end and work with me a bit on my kicking technique. The good thing from the class is we've got lots of drills to do when we go swimming on our own. At the end of the session, we were filmed again so we could analyze and improve for the next session.

After a short break and a video session, we got back in the pool. We warmed up a bit and then started linking zipper switch strokes to complete our free style motion. Lionel also introduced a bit of breathing technique in this session. This was the only part of the class which felt a bit rushed, i.e. there was no nice smooth progression to introducing this. We did a few lengths in the pool and finally got a stroke count. My initial stroke count was 40, using the gliding technique I came out with a stroke count of 16!!. To be fair, it was not a valid stroke count, since I was still getting the breathing technique and hence was quite irregular with my strokes and did a fair amount of gliding.

Overall the class was awesome. Lionel is a great teacher and coach, and we hope to use him more in the next few months in Nelson. TI was all what I expected it to be and a bit more :) A few things I need to practice include:

• Relax more in the water and flow with it
• Keep the lead hand at a good 4:00, fingers lower than wrist lower than elbow
• Hand close to shoulder on zipper switch
• Work on my balance
• Work on my back float and comfort level
• Practice kicking in the deep end
  

I'd highly recommend a TI class to anyone (and everyone). We hope to teach maya and pj swimming using quite a few of these techniques :). I would recommend buying Terry's book and DVD as a good way of getting started. I'll post videos of all our swims when I get them from Lionel :)

Returning to San Francisco ..

but just for a visit :) We'll be in the Bay Area from June 20th to July 17th. The kids are quite excited to go back to their home and have been talking about it for a few days now. Mari and I are excited to meet all our friends and eat at some of our favorite places in the Bay Area (Shalimar, Sketch, Pizetta 211, Tartine, Good Luck Dim Sum, Noriega takeout chinese) and also try some new places (bi-rite ice-cream!)

We'll be visiting Seattle from June 27th - July 1 for Ryan and Julie's wedding. We are also planning on doing a couple of camping trips around the Bay Area / Sierra's

Total Immersion swimming ...

So this weekend mari and i are taking a 2 day swimming class at Riverside Pool in Nelson. The class is basically about how to swim efficiently using Total Immersion Techniques

We've been spending a fair amount of time in the water in Nelson. The kids love the pool and like to swim, so we figured we might as well become better and more efficient swimmers. I've been interested in the total immersion technique since it seems quite logical and scientific.

Today was day 1 of the class. It was a six hour class from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm. We managed to find a babysitter for Maya and PJ for these two days, so off we went bright and early to the pool. We met the other two students and our instructor Lionel. Lionel is quite an excellent instructor, very patient and works within your swimming ability (mine obviously being quite poor!)

We had two 90 minute sessions in the pool. Saw some video clips of our swimming and practiced balance on the water and how to move more efficiently. To some extent swimming is both a complicated sport since any movement / tension can cause drag and the goal is to minimize drag (and hence maximize speed). TI basically approaches swimming like skating, so the goal is for you to skate thru the water while minimizing drag.

We pratices skating and switch skating. Tommorrow we'll do the zipper switch and more fish like swimming strokes. Mari got a wee bit sea sick from all that time in the water (which is ironic considering that our yachting class we had much rougher water!). Personally I need to work on getting much more comfortable in deep water and learn how to thread water a bit more effortlessly. Overall the class is just awesome and highly recommeded

3 days in Christchurch.

Not so early in the morning, we headed for christchurch. On the way, we stopped in Blenheim for breakfast at the Golden Arches. We had our usual egg mcmuffin, hashbrow, coffee/orange juice. There is a very nice indoor play structure that M and P enjoyed playing in. There are even cubby holes for the children to put their shoes in before entering the play structure. P is 3 now and tall enough to climb up and down and return on her own.

While P and M were burning off their extra Mickey D calories, Lobo went to CPR to pick us up some real coffee-2 flat whites. We enjoyed our daily caffeine while M and P screamed (mostly laughing) and ran around in the playstructure. The coffee is worth it if you're going to be in Blenheim.

Back in the car and on the road. Before Kaikoura, we picked up some cooked crayfish at nin's bin (it's a permanent trailer that sells fresh crayfish. Our next stop was Kaikoura where we met up with Stephen, Ivy, Frei, Reia and Janaki, Venkat, Sarayu. They saw dolphines and whales. We had a bit of lunch at the dolphin encounter cafe. After lunch the crayfish eaters had some ok crayfish. It wasn't as tasty as some yummy crab i've eaten. The kids had fun throwing rocks in the water. The beach in Kaikoura is filled with smooth, soft round rocks from pure white to dark grey. We took some back to color

We started to head back to christchurch around 3pm. We arrived at our accomodation, addington motel in time for dinner. We ordered pizza and falafels from Souvlaki's. Their falafels were great and the pita is home made and tasty on it's own.

Early Saturday morning we headed for Lytleton Farmer's Market. I bought 3 jars of Rasberry Valrohna Jam. I've been looking forward to buying her Jam since the last time we were there. There's a shop in Nelson selling her Jam at double the price. She does phone orders : ) Other things we ate were stuffed olives, savory pies and coffee. I also bought 2 loaves of ginger bread. It's the best ginger bread that I've ever had. Last time I just bought one. Silly me.

Next stop - downtown Christchurch. The kids hung out at the museum in the botanical garden, while the adults went wandering around the arts centre and craft market. We also had lunch at the craft market - a variety of food - greek, chinese, thai, crepes, sausages. Later in the evening we went to QE2. It's an awesome swim centre with a wave pool, lap pool and large toddler pool that's warm. There's a jacuzzi too.

Sunday we had dimsum for lunch. It was our second time there and just as good as the first time. We hung out in Cathedral square and watched an entertaining street show under the sunshine. We also kept warm while listening to an oregon recital in the Cathedral.

I realize i enjoy visiting the big cities like Christchurch. I looked forward to the dim sum and the option of other ethnic foods to eat. There's more driving and more traffic, but also more things to do. Besides going swimming and to a playground, other things to do in Christchurch is go to the museum, walk around different neighborhoods, window shop, eat ethnic, try more cafes and explore different open spaces.

Into the bay we go (on a boat ..)

We took a 5 day Competent Crew Sailing Class from John Moore at Sail Nelson. John and his partner Woodi also run the fabulous boutique Wakefield Quay B&B. At the end of the course we would get our competent crew certification and if possible maybe even a day skipper certification.

Its fall in NZ, so the wind is not very reliable. The seas are also a bit calmer than the summer time. John was quite accommodating and tailored the course to our schedule. We split the course into a 3 day / 2 night session, a few days break and then a 2 day / 1 night class.

Maya and PJ were gracious enough to let us escape for that time. The grandparents were awesome and took great care of the kids. For the second part of the class, Maya and PJ were not too sad to see us go. They had a great time with both sets of grandparents and I suspect were quite spoiled also. Maya wanted to take them to Boathouse since we had not taken them there. Mari's dad did not know where it was, so Maya directed them there. They saw the door shut and thought it was closed so drove away (it was open, but since it was super windy they shut the doors and windows). Maya was very sad that they could not have a seafood meal. Instead she had to eat bad chinese at the food court in Richmond Mall.

Overall the course was quite nice. We got a lot of practice sailing in decent winds. We motored for a fair bit too. Handling a yacht is a bit easier than handling a small dinghy. The first trip we went and stayed opposite Adele island and we had penguins as our campsite mates. They are quite noisy at night, luckily we were exhausted both nights and fell asleep quite quickly. We learnt how to rig the boat, get the sails up, a bit of navigation and how to operate the VHF. We came in pretty late at night and it was quite challenging (and a bit scary) to get the boat into the marina at night. Overall the first part of the course was quite uneventful. I think we could have covered quite a bit of navigation, tides and anchoring while we were motoring. I normally dont like too much structure, but I suspect some planning and structure during the slow times would have made the course more informative and challenging.

The second part of the course turned out to be quite an adventure. The forecast was for gale force winds, and John gave us an option to delay the course till later. However due to various scheduling issues, we opted to sail under those conditions. We practiced some maneuvering in the morning and learnt how to tie the boat to the jetty before we took off towards Marlborough sounds and Crousells harbor. The wind was slow at first, but kicked in after an hour and we were flying at a good healthy speed of 7-8 knots.We got into the harbor at 4:00 pm or so and started making our way into the bay and past quite a few mussel farms. We were supposed to tie into a Nelson yacht club mooring far in, but could not find a mooring after a fair amount of searching in the dusk. We put down the anchor, hoped for the best and cooked a decent meal. At this point in time the rain was coming down quite nicely along with decent gusts of wind. Our anchor did not hold, so we had to lift it up and re-anchored the boat. We thought we had done a good job and were having a good time chatting and laughing, but 30 minutes later we ran aground after being pushed by the wind. We dressed up and went out into the horrendous weather and pulled up the anchor again. Its quite difficult to navigate in the night with only a little flashlight with no moon light or stars!. Not sure how John managed to pull it off, but we reanchored again. He was not too happy with it, so we pulled the anchor up again and attached the second anchor to the first one and put it down one more time. This time we seemed to be holding pretty good and managed to have a depth of 10m or so for most of the time. It was past midnight and we decided to sleep a bit. John was awake for most of the night making sure things were ok. He took a short nap just before daylight. When he woke up we were in the mussell beds and he tried to get us out of it with the little flashlight. Unfortunately he lost the light and gave up, decided to tackle the issue at daylight. Dawn came soon enough, we got out of the mussel mess and a few of us snoozed till 9:00 am. Mari and i were enjoying the scenic sounds :)

We searched the next day for the buoy again with no luck and headed back to Nelson. John was not his chipper self, a wee bit nervous, and the rest of is were quite low energy. We basically tried to get home at a reasonable hour and made it back by 5:00 pm. We then went over to the B&B where Woodi graciously fed us a few good snacks and a good wine. Overall we had an excellent time and learnt a fair amount. John did mention that the course felt quite disjointed because of the way we split it up. I would have liked to have gotten a bit more out of it and learn more advanced navigation, tides and anchoring. I guess we'll save that for summer and invite the grandparents over again :)

nelson's best restaurant

the cut, nelson nz

fish soup, mushroom risotto, double layer chocolate cake made w/ valrhona. complimentary chocolate truffles. martini

It was a cold night so sipping a martini warmed the body faster than the portable heater. I've never liked martini's but this one went down smooth, no after taste and kept you warm for awhile.

We shared the fish soup so that we could enjoy the valrhona double layer cake. The fish soup was tasty, savory. Bits of vegetables and very flavorful. It came with a couple thin sliced baguette pieces. We said that we'd share the soup so they went out of their way to split it into two bowls. "They care : )" A perfect choice for a rainy, wet and cold night. I ordered the mushroom risotto because i love risotto and haven't ate it in 6+ months. The portion was good - not too much and not too little. Plenty of mushrooms.

Dessert was excellent. Double layered chocolate made w/ valrhona. I was pretty happy with the whole meal, but get this, they gave complimentary truffles. They make them! The only negative thing about The Cut is that they're not open for lunch. They did say we could bring our daughters and just have dessert. : )

Some pictures ..

So lots of folks have complained that our blog is text heavy and picture light :(. Unfortunately we are not really photo people and dont take the time to clicks lots of snaps. I think our kids will cuss us when they grow up.

In the meantime, here are some photos from our friends who visited us recently

• Phu's photos
• Joonsuk's photos
• Jill's photos
• Some random stranger photos. (quite good photos)
  

Our parents rock ...

So Maya and PJ have both sets of grandparents visiting at the same time. They've been with us for a little more than a week and are in NZ for 4 more weeks. I suspect most of our non-asian readers are thinking: wow, thats a long time. Are the parents getting along nicely with each otehr? Are we getting along well with them and living in peace? Suffice to say, we are all having a very good time. I'm seeing a side of my parents i've never seen before and am quite dazzled by the experience. Here are some highlights and cute things they do ...

• Mari's dad is so so good with the kids. Maya will go upto him after dinner (or after school) and request in a cute voice: "Grandpa, can you please play with me?". She'll then drag him to the living room and they'll play for 30 mins - 3 hours. He took the energy and trouble to get a few things that they could play together with. Thanx grandpa tilos
• PJ likes to goto bed with my dad reading her stories. PJ tends to fall asleep on her own. So we read her a few stories and we leave the room. My dad is not aware of this and reads to her till she falls asleep
• In the morning the parents make an oatmeal breakfast for each other every day!. They then sit and plan their activities for the day (with some help/advice from us). They try to leave by 9:30 am or so and get back by 4:00 pm. They are way more adventurous than I expected them to be. A lot of the time they are outside they are on their feet walking around the town/beach/destination for the day!
• Sometimes they will come back home and complain about how tired and hungry they are. They will then cook some noodles or a sandwich and swallow it down while complaining all the time about how much they walked!
  
• They love to exercise! We have a set of 380 steps a block away from the house. Their evening walk consists of climbing all 380 of those steps. If its a bit late, they will try to go upto the half way point (where there is a nice bench!). The first time they did it, they struggled a bit. I suspect they race up it now. At the end of the day they are typically so tired they crash at 8:00 pm, a few mins after the kids!
  
• We (mari and me) get to go on bike rides and have some time to ourselves!. We went on a dinner date to "The Cut" last week. We had a wonderful time, the food was awesome, review coming soon
• They walked to the center of NZ. Its a pretty steep climb!
• I was really scared that my parents will be bored out of their mind, since we dont have TV or get any Indian channels. To prevent this, I called Andrew (our landlord) and asked him to subscribe us to the SkyTV package and the Indian channel (Star Plus). Once every other day, my parents will watch 30 mins of StarPlus. I expected to get way more usage, but considering the current pattern, we'll cancel SkyTV pretty soon!
• A few days after coming here, they realized that Nelson was too small a town for their wandering and they'll get bored quickly. So they started looking around and decided they wanted to visit another country (Fiji) since they are so close and might as well see a few more countries. (yes, they do believe in the germanic style of travel and ticking off places they've seen / driven by). They are off to Fiji next week for five days
  
• A few days after deciding on Fiji, they realized taking the ferry to wellington might be fun. So now they've started planning a trip to Wellington. I had to remind them that they were here to spend some time with the kids.
  

Feijoa

Feijoa facts - http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/feijoa.html
Common Names: Feijoa, Pineapple Guava, Guavasteen
Origin: The feijoa is a native to extreme southern Brazil, N. Argentina, W.Paraguay and Uruguay where it is common in the mountains.

I love going to the farmer's market. I look forward to buying cake, sampling the fresh fruit; (feijoas and apples right now), having savory breakfast crepes and browsing through the local craft stalls.

Wouldn't it be fun to sell something? At the Friday market they allow people to sell their excess fruit. And there's no charge to be a seller : ) I told my neighbor about it and she was happy to let me sell some of her feijoas. We (Maya, PJ and I ) sold 210 to be exact. It was fun. I chatted with my stall neighbors, cut up feijoas for people and Maya and PJ to sample and bought baked goods from my other stall neighbors. I was happy to sell the last bag after an hour or so.

You either love feijoas or not. I'd offer people passing to taste and some would say, " No thanks. I know what they taste like. "

Something to think about: What about feijoa zest with butter milk scones ....sounds YUM

Visitors, Visitors and more Visitors ...

We've had quite a steady stream of visitors starting late march and continuing into early June. We then return to the US for a few weeks before coming back here and the visitor stream continues.

Its really awesome to have folks visiting us. The kids are entertained, the parents get a break and in general everyone has a good time. There was a period of 3 days when we did not have anyone around, the the house was so quiet, that it was a wee bit depressing. Currently we have both sets of grand parents visiting us. Mari's dad plays a lot with the kids and the kids enjoy his company quite a bit. This gives us a fair amount of free time to go biking etc. We hope to take a fair bit of time off from the kids over the next month.

We've been doing a fair amount of cooking at home. I made my famous mussels in white wine sauce for lunch yesterday (Phu/Joon: this was way better than Spin Inns version). Mari's mom made a tasty filipino dish, arroz caldo, a chicken and rice dish. The kids had multiple helpings of the dish (and so did the adults). Mari has been doing a fair amount of baking from the Tartine book. She recently made gougiere, scones and banana bread. Maya and I are craving the taiwanese pork chop dish from spices, so we are planning to make it this week.

Winter is moving in at a bit too fast a rate. We've started using the propane heater and will start the wood burning stove this week. Just need to get a gate to prevent the kids from running into the fireplace. Its gets pretty chilly in the morning (single degree celsius) before warming up to the late teens in the afternoon.

back home - looking at pictures

we got home on Saturday afternoon Pacific time. Since we left Auckland Saturday evening and spent 12 hours in the air it was nice to gain a day coming home. Of course on our way to NZ we completely lost a saturday - so it all evens out. We are missing the lobos and so we are compensating by looking at pictures of them. here's a link to phu's photos on flckr. if you can stand the delay - they are fun to look out. http://flickr.com/photos/phuhoang

The kids are still going to bed late and trying to sleep late every morning. We drag them out of bed to go to school hoping they'll wake up on the car ride there and maybe eat some breakfast. Grace talks about all the things she did on the trip quite often..while Jason is still disappointed that our rental car didn't have a sliding door. He is now quite fascinated with mini-vans with sliding doors - don't know why. We are heading to Cape May in a week and he is looking forward to our rental.

This weekend I am hunting for fejoias! maybe one of the farmers markets here will have them..

swimming with dolphins

When we arrived in New Zealand and started talking to the lobos about what we wanted to do on our trip - I didn't have a clear idea of what we were going to do or where we were going for that matter. As each day went by, lobo and mari started to telling us that we should book a trip to swim with the dolphins. I told them it sounded fun but really had no idea what they were talking about. I pictured going to an aquarium or something and getting into a pool while dolphins did tricks and ate fish all around me. It didn't sound very good so everytime the lobos would bring it up I just pretended I didn't hear them.
So then they told me more about it and it turns out that you go out on a boat into the ocean and jump off the boat wearing a wetsuit and actually swim with wild dolphins in the ocean. This sounded better but as I looked at the ocean and the wind and the rain outside, it didn't seem much like boating and swimming weather - it was cold and raining. So I said, yea, we should do it. And hoped that it would keep raining. One day when we were in Russell phu actually called to book the trip and while I waited - listening to him talk to the tour operator - I was relieved to hear that no boats were leaving that day because of the weather.
Well we finally plotted out the rest of our trip from the day when we would leave the lobos in Nelson and we planned to stay one day in Kaikoura - just so we could go swimming with the dolphins. We booked a trip for Thursday morning at 8:00am that would return us 3 1/2 hours later. so it was done.
We arrived in Kaikoura on Wednesday night. We had a really good meal at a restaurant called 42 degrees on the main boulevard in town. Over dinner phu and chi mapped out the plan for the morning - we were leaving the kids with chi to watch while we went on the trip and so chi had to account for every minute between our departure and our return. She was equipped with 3 sets of legos, a dolphin video and various other paraphernalia to keep the kids occupied.
That morning we had breakfast at our bed and breakfast place (terrible spot that I can't remember the name of) and then headed out to Dolphin Encounter - the outfit running the dolphin trip.
Dolphin Encouters did a really good job. They have this dolphin stuff down to a science. When we arrived they had already done one trip that left at 5:30 in the morning. They reported good clear weather and dolphins at only 25 minutes from the shore (a good sign). We were called to go get "wetsuited" which meant getting into a wetsuit that fit snugly. I had no idea what that meant, but I wasn't about to go asking for help in the state I was in (a wetsuit that felt tight and not snug). Wetsuits are not not something I want to wear ever again unless I lose 20 pounds.
Anyway, we eventually got on a bus and into a boat and although I was anxious and nervous about the whole ordeal - like clockwork - they spotted a huge school of dolphins about 20 minutes after we left. The organizer on our boat explained that once they spotted the dolphins we were to sit on the edge of the boat and when they sounded the horn, we jump in the water and swim in the direction where they told us the dolphins were swimming. All the while we are wearing a scuba mask and snorkel - so you can only breathe through the snorkel - not your nose. I will admit this caused me some anxiety. I like to have all my breathing options open to me - especially when I don't know what I'm doing. But I figured I would give it a try - so I practiced with the mask and snorkel thingy on the boat before jumping in...breathe in ...breathe out..not from my nose. So once I had to jump in my heart was pounding a mile a minute. I didn't much care about seeing any dolphins at that point. I was just hoping to get back on the boat alive. Breathing was the main point. So I did a belly flop into the water and just to get the hang of it I swam around for a bit just kicking my fins and breathing. Then I saw some dolphins underneath me..just a flash. Then some more - swimming in circles two and three at a time around me. It was truly exhilarating. I was laughing under the water. Sometimes it seemed like they could hear me and were looking at me too. When I looked up I could see fins and sometimes you could see dolphins jump up and do flips.
After a few minutes I wasn't seeing dolphins anymore and the only thing I saw under the water was a lot of blue. So I tried to make my way back to the boat which felt like a long way away. Kicking and breathing hard I got back but at that point I felt like I was about to die. I pulled my tired body back onto the boat. When they spotted the dolphins again and told us to jump in, I went back and ending up going in for 4 more swims. After that the crew served us hot chocolate and cookies and once we got into warm clothes we just cruised around a bit so we could take pictures of the dolphins and watch them do their acrobatics from the boat. I was very tired and cold, but it was all worth it.
We got back into town and the kids were happy to see us. Jason ran into phu's arms and Grace ran towards me to give me a hug. Jason asked us, "so, how was the dolphins?"

See you tomorrow

We've had a lot of friends pass through these last few weeks. J.D., Lisa, Sophie, Matt for one weekend. Jill, Marley and their friend Lynn for one week and then Phu, Tamar, Jason, Grace, and Chi the next week. We were lucky to get a visit with Joon-Suk, Julie and Devin in Nelson, and for a couple days in Russell. It's been super fun to have good friends to talk with, laugh, and talk to again the next day and the day after, and after. If there's anything to miss, it's all our friends and family. After weeks of traveling, cooking, eating, talking, etc. with friends, the house was quiet. Maya said, "Why is it just us in the house?" PJ asked, "Where's Grace and Jason?" We told her they took a plane to San Francisco. The next thing we hear is PJ crying in the hallway. PJ and Maya are looking forward to the sleep over at Jason and Grace's house in June. We love you and to all the friends and family that have yet to visit, see you real soon. Totally looking forward to it.

Some cool things that we did and saw with our friends.

Lisa and I took a glass paper weight making class at the Hooglund Glass Blowing Gallery in Nelson. It was a one hour intense, and heated class. It was nerve racking for me because I didn't want to accidentally burn myself. Our teachers were calm, ready to lend a hand, easy to understand, and super friendly. They made sure that you didn't get burned. They teach you by example, so after you watch them, it's your turn. The second time I went there, we brought all the kids. Tamar was the only student and Maya and PJ and Jason enjoyed watching for 15 minutes or so. I also had a bag of fejoas (10) that they gobbled while watching tamar create her masterpiece. There is a large garden on the gallery grounds. There were two kinds of pear trees fillled w/ ripe pears. It was nearing lunch time so the kids were eager to eat the fresh fruit. I ate one too : ) Juicy. There's a little bridge thing for kids to walk around and balance on, a pet peacock wandering around. There was also a whole row of fejoa trees. The fejoas were still small but maybe in a week or two I can bring someone else to the gallery : )

On Jill, Marley and Lynn's last day we had lunch at Waimea Winery. I also had lunch with Cecile there on her last day. "Cecile is training for a marathon in June!" Can you tell I like the food. It's yum, and vegetarian friendly. Earlier that day, we went to the shop of Motueka Gold. They make tasty lip smacking jam. We got a fill and taste of most of their jams. If you have a sweet tooth, it's worth a visit if you're over there wine tasting anyway.

A surprise find was the doughnuts and fried banana fritters from our favorite fish and chips shop. Thanks Lynn, Jill and Joonsuk for ordering it. It was delicious.

We flew to the Bay of Islands/ Russell. It's a small little town- 2 blocks of shops. There was a library that entertained the kids for 45 minutes on one of the windy, cold days. It sold paperbacks for 50cents. The beach was rocky but clean. The kids were happy. A 10 min. ferry ride will take passengers to Pahia, the big Town. After roaming around Pahia, it had a little china town in one of the alleys. The playground by the beach was better than Russell.

If you would like to learn more about the maori culture/ new zealand, a trip to Waitangi Treaty Grounds is a must. The scenery from the site is breathtaking. If you watched the movie, "Whale Rider" , the scenes were taken from Waitangi. There is a cultural night show at Waitangi that's worth seeing.

While Jill, Lynn and Marley were here we cooked a lot. Jill is the master cook and so we had to make our best meal. Thank you for being inspired to make some tartine goodies while you were here as well as main course meals. Lynn introduced us to home made ice cream. She made honey lavender and it was the best ice cream in new zealand. I made a chocolate chip ice cream and used my stash of valrhona bars for the chips. It's really good.

leaving nelson

tomorrow morning we will head out from Nelson and continue our trip in New Zealand without the lobos. We have been here nearly 10 days traveling from Auckland to the Bay of Islands and then to Nelson. Our kids have had lots of fun hanging out with their new sisters Maya and PJ. Jason already looked at me with shock and disbelief when I told him that Maya wasn't coming with us to Koilhkara and Christchurch. I think he believed that the lobos adopted us and we were staying in New Zealand forever. Besides playing with Maya and PJ, I think the favorite parts of New Zealand so far for the kids are the beaches. From Auckland to Russell and now in Nelson, we have really been blow away by the beautiful beaches here. The kids love to run around and throw stones into the water and dig holes. And, argue over who gets which shovel. The kids also really enjoy the Kiwi steamed milk drink here called a "fluffy." Not only is it fun to do what all the other kids are doing, but a "fluffy" in New Zealand comes with a complimentary marshmallow. Of course the marshmallow is really the main reason why Jason and Grace are adopting this drink as their own.
Today Mari convinced me to do a glass blowing class in Nelson. So I went to a glass blowing studio with everyone and got scared to death while a very patient glass blower showed me how to make a paperweight. The paperweight turned out quite nice mostly because the teacher corrected all the work I did. Thankfully I was careful enough not to burn myself or the teacher. After I was done the teacher let the kids blow a glass bubble into a long tube. Jason blew a big bubble..PJ blew a tiny one..more like a big tear trop. and Maya didn't feel like blowing at all.
Lots of good food here in New Zealand as well. We have been having great meals with lots of snacks in-between. But if you stay at the lobos, just be careful of the coffee. Since you need to be a good guest, you can humor lobo a bit and congratulate him while he carefully whips up a batch of french press coffee.

Nelson is quite beautiful

We are in our second leg of our New Zealand trip, having flown from the Bay of Islands to Nelson. We will be staying here 3 days before driving south to Kaikoura and finally Christchurch. Nelson is a very cute town, with all the conveniences of a modern city, yet the weather and beach and views of the sea is simply breath-taking. We got here Saturday night late, and on Sunday, we set out west towards Motueka for a very nice farmer's market, and then off to a stunning golden sand beach called Kaiteriteri. The kids had a great time. The water was a bit chilly, but I jumped in and took a dip anyways. Today, the weather was a bit colder, so we stayed around Nelson. We visited the town center, went to Lobo's favorite coffee place, and just checked out the city. Later in the afternoon, we went down to the beach and playground, and the children had a blast. Chi decided to venture out on her own around town, and walked home around 5pm.

Still thinking through what we will do tomorrow.

Phu

Russell (Bay of Islands) trip report (part one)

We spent 5 days in Russell with Phu, Tamar, Jason, Grace and Chi. We were joined by Joonsuk, Julie and Devin for the final 2.5 days of this adventure. In our past visits to NZ, we had never ventured north of Auckland, so we figured we'd take advantage of the easter break and explore one of the few places we've not seen in NZ. Exploring a place with kids is very different from exploring a place with packs. With kids you get to spend quality time in playgrounds, beaches and just any open space.

We chose Russell based on wonderful reports from various books and our friends (the briggs family) who had lived here for 3 months a few years ago. We booked a four bedroom house with Russell Cottages. The house was a 5 minute walk from the beach and across from a school with a great playground. So it was indeed a great location. The house was quite modern with enough sleeping space for all of us (5 adults, 4 kids), a good swimming pool and very friendly and attentive hosts. I'd definitely recommend the place if you are looking for family accommodation in Russell. Russell is across the bay from Pahia. Its a short passenger ferry ride, and a relatively long car drive away (via okiata and opua). Staying in Russell is not a great idea if you want to see quite a few places by car primarily because it is a bit remote from the main route. However it is much less touristy and more laid back than Pahia.

We flew into KeriKeri and picked up the rental cars at the airport. We spent the afternoon at KeriKeri near the StoneHouse at a nice cafe next to the river. The kids had a blast running around and playing various games in and around the trees. They also mingled with some other kids present there. We then picked up some groceries at New World in KeriKeri before heading south into Russell. Chi made us a wonderful pork noodle soup and I cooked some fairly spicy grouper vindaloo which was only appreciated by Phu :) (it was a bit too spicy for everyone else)

The next day we lounged around Russell and visited the two beaches in Russell. We also spent some quality hours at the school playground. We had pretty good Atomic coffee at Waterfront. Tamar also purchased a local coffee blend (Tiger Mountain Coffee). We had a friendly wager as to who could make the best french press coffee. Being a participant and the judge, I declared myself the winner by a big margin. (the trick is to preheat the coffee carafe)

San Francisco food update from Lynne (Gialina pizza review)

Our friend Lynne has sent us another wonderful San Francisco food and restaurant review which is definitely worth a read :) Without further ado, here's lynne ...

hello! i was just checking in on your blog and reading all your talk about food and restaurants made me really miss you guys. i thought you would want to know about the new pizza restaurant in glen park and various other eating adventures back here in sf.

gialina opened recently, right across the street from the new canyon market in glen park (was this open before you left? the bi-rite folks have a stake in it, i think they do the produce/groceries, and the other partners do the deli/butcher shop. it's basically like a j.v. bi-rite). i went early on a friday night (5:30ish) with my friends graham and katrina and their toddler Elias (he's almost 2). gialina's nice inside, a long and narrow space made lighter with windows and light-colored walls and wood. the menu is all pizza with one special non-pizza item per day. everything sounded very delicious, but in the new-standard bay area pizza way, as in, now one expects to see wild nettles on a pizza menu and so they don't really stand out anymore. after some negotiation (graham doesn't like vegetables), we ordered the meatball pizza, a wild nettle-prosciutto pizza, and an asparagus-potato-truffled pecorino pizza. we tried to sell graham on the dandelion greens-italian sausage-fontina pizza, but he wouldn't go for it. the meatball pizza was very good, especially if you like spaghetti and meatballs. the crust is thin and crispy in the right places but with a nice chewy quality (not as good as pizzette or delfineria, but so much better than A16). sadly, the saltiness of the prosciutto totally overwhelmed the taste of the wild nettles and i considered it a waste of wild nettles, especially after we all know how good they can be a la pizzaiolo. what's the point of using wild nettles if you can't taste them? i thought the asparagus-potato-truffled pecorino was the best one, with the rich truffley flavor nicely offsetting the asparagus and pecorino, and the potatoes adding a little creamy counterpoint. service was a little over attentive in that anxious-new-restaurant way (i got the strong sense that the waiter was one of the owners, and i don't think anxiety about the success of a business needs to be so apparent to customers). they also seemed a little cheap, as in we asked for bread for elias, and they said they only made enough to go with the special of the day and they couldn't spare it. a pizza restaurant that can't spare a little bread for a baby? in a neighborhood filled with families?

if gialina was in cole valley, or if i lived in glen park, i would be very excited and would probably eat there a few times a week, but since it is in glen park and i live in cole valley, it's not really the kind of place i would go back to. on the bay area pizza scale, i give it a 6.5.

other pizzas of note: i had a great roasted cauliflower-fontina pizza at pauline's a few weeks ago. pauline's remains a very solid pizza institution. really you can't go wrong there.

in bi-rite creamery news: i'm only one punch away from a free ice cream on my bi-rite creamery punch card. i've also ventured out from the salted caramel (it's still my favorite). they have this amazing malted vanilla ice cream with vahlrona-chocolate covered crispies in it, and the mint chip is fantastic, especially when sandwiched between two dark chocolate cookies in one of their ice cream sandwiches. cookies and cream is appropriately creamy; roasted banana is good but very sweet, it's best cut with another flavor. hmmm. i had sworn off the creamery for a few days (i'm going to nyc tomorrow) but now i'm thinking i might need one last scoop before i go.

there's a new restaurant downtown on mission btwn 1st and 2nd by the town hall folks: the salt house, a kind of san francisco version of the gastropub. i ate there with thomas rogers recently. they have a great salty version of poutine, the montreal dish of french fries, cheese, and gravy. in their version, it's thick, wedge-cut fries, gruyere, and short rib gravy. very tasty indeed.

and finally, you will be happy to hear that i ventured out from yummy yummy and ate at dragonfly the other day. everything was good, but i did miss the pork bunh with imperial rolls.

Auckland: Day Two with the Hoangs

The Hoang / Fructman clan arrived pretty early in the morning from San Francisco (the flight lands at 5:30 am or so!). I was awake and ventured into the lobby to meet and greet them. The goal was to keep them on their feet for most of the day to avoid jet lag and fatigue. After a quick breakfast and coffee in the hotel bar, we headed out. We took a tour of the inner city on The Link bus and went through Parnell, Ponsoby, New Market, Newton before getting down at the quay. We walked around the quay and Viaduct harbor for some time before proceeding to a dim sum lunch. Our original choice was Ocean City dim sum which had received an excellent review in Cusine magazine. On our walk there, we saw Sunshine which had won Best Chinese Restaurant award in 2005 and 2006 and we saw quite a few folks entering this place. We decided to chance it which was an excellent decision. It was quite ironic that their first meal was yum-cha in NZ since the Bay area has got excellent dim sum also. The dim sum was quite good (our expecations in NZ are also a bit lower than SF), specifically the turnip cake, the beef ribs on squash, the shrimp dumplings, the scallop dumplings and the egg tart. This was definitely the best dim sum we've had in NZ (the other two were in Christchurch and Wellington).

We then took the ferry to Davenport to get a view of Auckland from the water. Davenport basically is the Sausalito of Auckland. We spent a few hours at the playground and beach while the adults took turns walking along the beach and upto North Head for some spectacular views of Auckland and the hauraki gulf. For dinner we decided to get fish and chips at FishMongers in Parnell. We had an excellent driver who managed to squeeze us all into his minivan cab. Unfortunately the Parnell location was closed for Easter Sunday so we went to their Remuera location. We ordered a sampling of various fish and chips, grilled salmon and tuna, and a thai fish cake. We also got some Kumara chips. Unfortunately it was late and there was not enough seating out there, so we did not enjoy the meal as much. The food was quite good and well worth a visit. The same cabbie came and picked us up an hour later.

Maya and PJ were quite excited to play with Jason. So the three of them stayed up pretty late playing with play dough. Tomorrow we leave for Keri Keri and the Bay of Islands. I reserved a super shuttle van to take us to the airport tomorrow. I did this online, but did not trust the reservation process, so I called them to double check. It was good that I called, since the online system had messed up both my name the pickup time.

Auckland: Day One ...

We decided to spend a couple of days in Auckland before going further up into Northland. We planned to spend a day with Jill and Marley in Auckland and then meet up with Phu, Tamar, Chi, Jason and Grace in Auckland. The kids were quite excited to go on a plane again. We had heard pretty good reviews of Kelly Tarlton from the Dierkings, so we decided to spend the afternoon at Kelly Tarlton's. We took the Super Shuttle from the airport to our hotel, The Quadrant near CBD. The one bedroom apartment was a wee bit too small compared to some of the other places we've stayed at. I guess, big city hotels also mean smaller rooms.

We took the shuttle from Sky City to Kelly Tarlton. The penguin encounter was quite cool and amazing, but the rest of the aquarium was quite mediocre. I would definitely not recommend it for a short visit to Auckland.

Being in the big city, we felt like ethnic food. Having dined at Wagamama in London 8 years ago, we decided to revisit this chain restaurant. In retrospect it was a big mistake, and definitely not recommended. Maya got the kids ramen with chicken noodles, PJ and Marley the chicken katsu curry, Mari the salmon miso ramen, Jill the Chilli Chicken Soba noodle and I got th spicy beef noodles. Except for Mari's dish the other dishes were disappointing to awful. In specific, Jill's noodle dish and PJ's curry were plain awful. The atmosphere however is quite excellent for kids, since its more a cafeteria style place with a high noise level. We walked back to the hotel and bid adieu to Jill and Marley since they were leaving for Brisbane early the next day

Some more sights and sounds around Nelson, NZ

We had lunch at Waterfront with Lynn, Jill and Marley before bidding farewell to Lynn and her wonderful icecream making abilities. We had the scallops, moroccan spiced turbot and the calamari. Waterfront lunch is definitely a good deal and great value for money. Jill and Lynn wanted to have the banana dessert from the fish and chip shop, but it is open for lunch just a few days of the week.

It is good to have folks in the house that like to eat food and also cook food. We spent quite a few hours talking about food and all the places we miss while we had visitors. This also made everyone hungry, so Jill decided to make scones from the Tartine recipe book. This decision was made at 9:00 pm. Unfortunately we did not have any lemons in the house, and the grocery stores were all closed. However, our neighbours across the street have a good lemon tree. We had borrowed a lemon from them in the past. Since it was too late, we decided to get a few lemons from them and inform them the next day morning. So Mari and Lynn crept up to their house with a flashlight, scaled the wall and grabbed a few of the exquisite Meyer Lemons which promptly went into the scone mixture.

We also decided to visit Nelson lakes with Jill and Marley. We stayed overnight at Nelson Lakes Motel (aka The yellow house). Nelson Lakes is a beautiful area with supposedly lots of wonderful hikes. However without a good adult / kid ratio its really hard to take advantage of the place and go on long hikes. We hope to do a few long hikes when mari's parents are in town. The kids spent hours at the lake throwing stones into the lake. There were quite a few ducks at the shore who seem to be very well trained for visitors and tourists. They would immediately swim to a new group of people as they approached the lake and try to look cute. Unfortunately a few people do feed them which reinforces this bad habit. Lake Rototiti also has these humoungous eel which are supposed to be the oldest eel's in NZ. They take 90 years to mature. Its illegal to fish them at the lake, so we saw a couple of them at the jetty. The kids were quite excited to see such big fish.

More adventures in NZ with visitors ...

On Friday evening, I picked Jill, Marley and Lynn from Nelson airport. They came in via Queenstown -> Christchurch -> Nelson. PJ and Maya were quite excited and awaited the arrival of their neighbour and friend Marley. We were waiting from the window of the house for their plane to land. Its so convenient to have the airport literally at your doorstep (a 5 min ride). We had a leftover dinner that night which includes some lamb, chicken adobo and rice.

The next day we went to the Nelson Saturday market and had our regular crepe breakfast from Kaffeys (8/10) along with Divine Coffee. Joonsuk, Julie and Devin arrived earlier in the morning from San Francisco, so I biked over to pick them up and get them to the market. It was so good to see and talk to familiar faces. We spent some time at Riverside playground, before walking down to Morrison Cafe for a late lunch. Morrison Cafe has so far met and exceeded expectations and has been a hit with all our visitors. We decided to cook a big meal at home that night. Jill made a fabulous moroccan lamb stew, Mari made a great big tray of veggie lasagna with yummy portabello mushrooms, Lynn made vanilla and honey icecream, while my contribution was yummy brown rice :) (actually Joonsuk and I took the kids to the playground for an hour to give the cooks some peace and quiet).

The next day we went to Motueka farmers market on our way to Kaiteriteri beach. Jill and Lynn took the scenic route and went half way to Murchison before turning back and coming to Motueka via Motueka Valley Road. Jill had some delicious muffins from the Muffin Madness in Motueka, while Joonsuk, Julie and Devin feasted on German sausage. The weather was nice and sunny (in contrast to our visit with JD where it was a bit cold and cloudy). Since we had a good adult / kid ratio ( 6 / 4 ), we decided to take advantage of the numbers and rented two double kayaks from Kaiteriteri Kayaks and kayaked a bit of Abel Tasman. Since Mari got her exercise doing some laps in Tasman Bay, I got to go on the kayak trip. Joonsuk and me were in one double, while Jill and Lynn were in the other double kayak. We headed towards Marahau Bay and it was good to be out paddling. Been quite a few years since I did it, and I suspect we'll want to do more of it, now that the kids are getting older. We had a good time in the water and headed back to the beach and the kids. Maya and PJ met some friends from school at the beach. The older kids found a couple of dead crabs and decided to hold a funeral and memorial service for the crabs. PJ and Marley were quite serious and grave faced at the service, while Maya was happy doing her own thing.

Since it was pretty late, we decided to have a fish and chips dinner and took the group to the Haven Fish and Chips place. We got an assortment of fish (Blue Cod, Blue Nose, Tarakihi, fish kebab, scallops, mussels, crab sticks) and chips. We also ventured into dessert this time and got fried bananas. Mari reprimanded me for not including this in our previous dinners. The weather was quite nice, so it was a good treat to be eating newspaper fish and chips overlooking tasman bay.

The next day Joonsuk and Julie drove to Havelock. They had the mussell platter at Slip Inn and also took the Green Mussell Cruise from Havelock.It was a good trip since they got to see a fair amount of Marlborough sounds and did not have to drive all the way into Picton. We offered to babysit Devin that night while they went and spent some quality time at a restaurant, but they were a bit too stuffed from the mussell trip. We had another good feast that night. We made Lamb tikka masala, rig fish in teriyaki sauce, and stir fried pumpkin and sweet onions (which were delicious). Lynn topped off the meal by making lavender icecream. We bid farewell to Joon and Julie and will meet them in 10 days in Russell (Northland)

Visitors galore ...

Apologies for the sporadic entries on the blog. We've had a lot of visitors from the San Francisco area the past couple of weeks and things have been very hectic between making them feel at home and getting some work done.

The first group of visitors were the Dierkings from Sonoma, CA. JD, Liza, Sophie (6 years) and Matt (4 years) visited us for 4 days a week and a half ago. It was awesome to have more kids in the house and the two sets of kids got along very well. Sophie played the big sister role and took care of the other kids very well. The Dierking's had a whirlwind trip, flying into Auckland on Friday morning. They spent the day visiting the Sky Tower and the Kelly Tarlton Aquarium before jetting down to Rotorua. Did a couple of cultural activities and the geysers in Rotorua on Saturday and stayed overnite there before driving to Wellington Sunday evening. Then on the Interislander Monday morning to Picton and drove into Nelson. We had a good dinner of a rocket, avocado, blue cheese and egg salad, lamb shank with roasted potatoes and carrots and mac and cheese. The food and wine (Neudorf Sauvignon Blanc and Rimu Grove Pinot Noir 2004) were quite delicious. The next day they went to Morrison Cafe in the morning and had lunch at the Smokehouse cafe in Mapua. They had stayed in Ruby Bay when they honeymooned here 9 years ago. So this was more of a flashback. We met them at the Richmond wave pool and had a blast before doing our customary Sushi dinner on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, Mari and Liza crafted a glass paper weight at Hogland glass factory and then all of us went to Kaiteriteri Beach. Its amazing that kids are just so happy to play with sand, water and rocks and can spend hours doing that. We headed back to Nelson and offered to take care of their kids for the evening.

They visited our current favorite restaurant Hopgood's and came back with rave reviews (JD mentioned the duck was quite excellent, and Liza liked her fish dish). We took the kids to Steffano's pizzeria (above the State cinema) and had pretty good pizza. We ordered the kids an individual child pizza which we assumed would be fairly small. However the child pizza was pretty close to size as the regular pizza (its a great deal at half the price and each kid can have their own taste catered for!). The pizza was quite good and definitely well worth a revisit. We met them at the Boat Shed for lunch before they continued their whirwind tour of Blenheim, Kaikoura and Christchurch. The food at Boat Shed was very good, though the service left a lot to be desired. Mari and I also came to the conclusion that we've OD'ed on mussels and need to stay away from them for the next few months. They also visited the Bead Factory in Nelson earlier that day and mentioned it was a good place for kids Sophie's age and older. You need to be aware of what beads you choose, else you can end up making a very expensive bead necklace.

Looking for a place to rent in Nelson, NZ (apr 15 - jun 1)

This post is targeted to folks local to Nelson. We have quite a few friends and family visiting us from April 15 - June 1. Our current place is quite large BUT has only one bathroom which limits the number of folks that we can host comforably. So if you know of a place in and around Tahuna hills, send me mail to lobo at yahoo dot com

The weather in NZ ...

Its been a crazy past weekend with regard to the weather in NZ. Luckily, Nelson was one of the few places that missed most of the excitement. The past weekend NZ experienced:

1. A lahar bursting from a crater. Apparently this is quite common and they have been more than 30 of such bursts in the past decade
2. Hail and torrential downpour in Christchurch and Canterbury
3. The heaviest downpour in decades in Westport on the West Coast of the South Island
   
4. A large fire in Blenheim scorching 700 hectares (yes, this is not weather)

We had gone swimming at the pool saturday evening, and put our swim gear to dry on the back porch. The next day we could not find PJ's gear and we assumed the wind gods made off with it. Monday is swimming day at the Nelson pool, so mari went looking for swimsuits for PJ. Well, its no longer summer, and she could not find her a swimming costume!. She came back and called a few stores and the local pools and did not find any. Joys of living in a small town!. She finally called the aquatic center to check if we had left PJ's costume at the pool by mistake. Fortunately we did, and we could continue with our regularly scheduled swimming fun

The girls are getting quite good in the water. They are very comfortable and operate at two different levels. Maya is cautious but keeps progressing at a nice pace that she controls. PJ is the energetic one who loves to jump and get dunked in the water. She's also very willing to try stuff (especially with Mari) and experiment. Maya likes to control the experiment and decides what she will do and when. Two very different attitudes to life ..

Top ten things to do in Wellington, NZ with kids

1. Visit Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand. Make sure you visit the kid store, discovery area, nature space and the bush walk.
   
2. Have a South Indian meal at Roti Chennai. Order roti and lassi for the kids
   
3. Take a walk along the quay and spend a couple of hours at Waitanga Park or some time at the beach a bit further down
   
4. Now walk in the opposite direction and spend more time at Frank Kipps Park
5. Take the cable car to the Botanic gardens and do a short hike to the playground in the gardens
6. Take the cable car back to downtown and stop at the University playground
7. Have Malaysian food at Roti
8. Visit Wellington Zoo in Newtown
9. Have some dimsum or yum-cha at Regal Chinese
10. Spend some time in one of the cafes at Courtney Place or Cuba

Windy Not

After 3 months of mellow yellow (sunshine) Nelson, off to NZ's capital we go. Also known as Windy Wellington. We lucked out big - weather was awesome - 24C. The main reason to go - canele, dimsum, indian/malaysian food : ) , Te Papa museum, cable car, different playgrounds, zoo, see more people (163,824; 2001 census)

fun fact: Wellington is the most "fully wired" city in the most "fully wired" country in the world.

The food was excellent. Roti had great roti's. The mango lassi was a hit with maya and pj. Lobo and I ordered the rose lassi and it was delicious. Petit Bordeux, the french bakery I found on the web was closed. Somehow Lobo managed to find another bakery, Bourdeux, that happened to be owned by petit bordeux as well. Thank goodness for the internet. It had good croissants, canele, and pastries. It was so yum, that we bought some to take home. After our fill of butter, we all walked down the street parallel to the train tracks. The girls ran up and down laughing and giggling.

The location of our one bedroom apartment on The Terrace allowed all of us to walk 15 minutes (maya and pj pace) down to to the waterfront, playground, cable car, roti chennai and roti restaurant. The waterfront was a great place to walk, and wander. Lots of people jogging, walking, and biking. Walking around Wellington, was like walking around San Francisco, many stairs and hills to climb. To keep PJ and Maya walking up, I made it fun to walk slow on their toes, run fast, then slow again.

I've been frequenting the $2 shops these days to keep Maya and PJ busy with interesting activities. There are a lot of craft things - glitter glue, paper, paint, little shiny things to glue, etc. During my wandering around Cuba Street I spotted a $2 shop and went in. Knowing that Maya will be awake when I return, I decide to buy some paper oval boxes and stickers. She keeps herself busy for 30 minutes. : ) She spent a lot of time cutting tiny bits of scrap paper to fill her box to the rim.

We could've easily spent a 4th night in Wellington eating and exploring. It's a great city to wander, and yum coffee to start everyday.

NZ weather report ..

We had fabulous weather in Wellington two days ago (25 degree C). Over the weekend a pretty strong weather front moved in and its drenching pretty much all of NZ currently. Its gotten quite cold and was 7 degrees C this morning. The kids had to be bundled up with jackets and beanies etc. Summer was quite short out here looks like :(. The radio station reported that there was a sprinkling of the white stuff (snow) on peaks of some mountains near takaka. Our fabuolous view is quite blurry right now, and no peaks are visible. Hey, might be a great winter ski season here!

Hopfully we'll have some good weather when all our friends start visiting later this month and into next month. Start praying to the weather gods folks ...

Wellington, NZ: Day Three

We had heard about a farmers / veggie market near Te Papa museum. We figured we might as well try to get some yummy food there. My previous night research on the web did not reveal much, so I was not very sure if we would find anything there. Wellington does not have a real farmers market. The one next to Te Papa is more like a commercial veggie market with a few producers with big veggie trucks. We did not find any interesting food, though we did purchase some good artisan bread. It was a windy wellington morning and we wandered over to the Dragon Boat races. Maya does not like speaker sounds, so she was a bit spooked at the announcements of the dragon race and insisted we go home. We compromised and went inside to Te Papa cafe where we had a mediocre flat white and some large fluffies. There was a fair amount of toys to keep the kids entertained while we waited for the museum to open at 10:00 am.

We are not big fans of museums (unless they are kid museums!), but Te Papa was definitely an amazing place and a must-visit attractions. Its well designed, spacious and has quite a few things for kids to do. We spent a fair amount of time at the Discovery Center and then at Nature Space exploring and checking out the birds and animals of NZ. The kids played with a few puzzles at Discovery Center (which we later purchased at the kids store). We then went on the short bush walk and ended up at the sandpit where the kids set up camp for an hour or so. By 11:30 am, the kids were quite tired and we headed to Wellington Market where we had head of a Maori stall. The stall unfortunately had closed down some time ago and the other stalls did not look too good. Roti Chennai has a presence there, but we were still stuffed with malaysian / indian food from our past meals. We had some decent mexican eggs and beans at Vive Mexico, the salsa was quite well spiced. I took the kids home for their afternoon siesta while Mari went exploring Courtney Place and Cuba St.

The evening program was more playtime and biking along the waterfront at Waitanga Park. We had dinner reservations at Bistro Breton in Kelburn and we headed there at 6:30 pm. We started off with an amuse bouche of good salmon pate on not very interesting bread. Mari had an excellent french onion soup as a starter and I ordered the smoked fish plate. Maya managed to scarf most of the smoked salmon and tuna while I got some more of the salmon pate and bread. The kids split the kids menu meal of an excellent pieced of grilled blue cod and some average thick cut french fries. They squeezed ketchup from a cute tomato shaped container. For the main course, Mari had the the Cotriade Breton. This is basically the bretonnese version of Bouilliabaise with musssels, shrimps, salmon and a white fish in a fish stock. The fish was a bit dry, the broth was quite flavorful and tasty. I picked the Potee Bretonne, which is also a traditional Breton Stew with pork sausages and bacon with green cabbage, turnips, carrots and potatoes. We thought the main courses were quite average. For dessert we ordered the Ile Flottante, which is creme anglaise and soft meringye, caramel sauce and grilled almonds. The kids split vanilla and cholcolate kapiti icecream (which was part of their kids meals). We also shared a bottle of French wine (basically I drank most of it, with mari the designated driver having an occasional sip). Overall I'd give the place a 6/10. It was good, but for that price range, your expectations are also much higher. Our meal cost us NZD $150.

Yet another excellent day spent in Wellington. We have a baby cot in the apartment (the playpen), and the kids take turns sleeping in it. We've nicknamed it The Cage. We had it when Maya was a kid and she refused to stay in it, but now they love sleeping on their own in it. The joys of seeing children grow and change :)

Wellington, NZ: Day Two

Mari got up bright and early Saturday morning and went off to explore Wellington. Her main goal was to goto a French Bakery and get some croissants home for breakfast along with some good coffee. Unfortunately the bakery she had selected (Le Petit Bordeaux) seemed to be closed and looking for a new chef. Her coffee shop of choice (Masi) was also closed down since that block was under renovation.

She came back empty handed, and we got the kids ready and headed for the zoo via Cafe L'Affare. The cafe was crowded and buzzing at 9:15 am in the morning (which is quite unusual in NZ). We had an excellent flat white, a good blueberry muffin and the kids had their fluffy with quite a few marshmallows. We then went to the Wellington Zoo in Newtown. The Zoo was not bad, and definitely a fun activity to do with kids. There was a fair amount of walking involved and we got to see a few interesting animals and birds. The view of the giraffes at eye level was definitely the best part. We spent some time at the Newtown playground after that before heading for lunch.

Lunch was excellent dim sum at Regal (5 Courtney Place). The place was quite packed just like Kon Tiang or Koi Palace in San Francisco. A 15 minute wait turned out to be more like 30 minutes before we were finally seated. We were quite hungry and ordered a fair amount of dim sum to satisfy our craving. The roast duck and spare ribs were quite good. The kids enjoyed the shrimp sui mai, eggplant and fish, egg tart. There was not as much of a seafood variety as I would have liked (or probably those plates never made it to our table!). Overall an excellent lunch, i'd give it a 7/10.

Headed back to the Terrace and put PJ down for her nap. We resumed our adventures at 4:00 pm or so and walked to Lambton Quay and the cable car terminus at the bottom of the hill. Took the cable car all the way to Wellington Botanic Gardens. The children's playground was a good 10 minutes walk away in the middle of the gardens and met our high playground standards. (most playgrounds in NZ are well built and quite new!) While one of us was hanging out at the playground with the kids the other one took a 30 min walk through the gardens. We then took the cable car back to town and stopped at a small playground on the way down. This one in contrast was quite old and run down. I suspect there are not too many small kids in that area since the playground was next to Victoria University hostels.

Dinner that night was at Roti Chennai (the original Roti place in wellington according to their menu). We ordered a vegetarian dosa, roti with mild chicken curry for the kids, fish veruval and seafood/chicken laksa. The food was really good. The sambhar had lots of flavor and the coconut and tomato chutney played a good supporting role. The roti was nice and flaky, the chicken curry was quite mild which the kids liked. We had too much food, so did not really eat the fish dish (though the bites we had were good). The only sour note was the laksa, which was really bad. The noodles seemed undercooked and did not taste great. We topped off the meal with a good glass of rose flavored lassi. Overall our best meal of the trip so far and gets the highest rating of 8/10.

We had a nice climb back up to the apartment hotel which walked off our dinner as well as made the kids tired :) Another exciting day in the big city ...

Wellington, NZ: Day One

We've been quite busy having a lot of fun in Wellington. Its nice to be back in a relatively big city, but to a large extent, I'm glad we are spending the year in a smaller place like Nelson.

We woke up fairly early at 4:00 am on Friday. Got the car packed, kids ready and were on the road by 5:30 am. NZ driving is significantly more difficult than US driving. The roads are curvier, fair amount of construction and its pretty much a 2 lane hwy into Picton. It took us a bit longer than expected and we had to skip coffee at the Picton Village Bakery (or Le Cafe) and headed straight to the BlueBridge ferry boat, Santa Regina. The Inter-Islander boats are a bit more comfortable and spread out, and have a few more activities for kids. Next time, we'll take the Inter-Islander between the two islands. We got into Wellington at 11:15, drove around the city in search of our apartment hotel (The Terraces). Its a good find. Its quite central to the city but a good step climb away and very spacious. The major drawback is its close to the Wellington freeway, but the noise level is quite tolerable

The ethnic food in Wellington has met or surpassed our expectations already. We started the trip with a good meal at Roti on Willis St. We had the Egg Roti with lamb, the veggie murtabak, mee goreng noodles, mango lassi and rose lassi. We polished most of it off quite nicely. It was significantly better than the local malaysian restaurant in nelson (spices). They also had thosai (which is the malaysian spelling for the south indian dosa!). Didn't know that before we ordered, so we unfortunately skipped it. (i used to be a dosa addict, still am!). Have not had good ethnic food is some time, so my ratings are a bit off. I'd probably give Roti a good solid 7/10.

We walked around downtown a bit. Wellington is a fairly compact city and all the popular areas are a few blocks from each other. We saw quite a few places that were on our list while we wandered around. PJ needed her afternoon nap, so we headed home to put her down. On the way home, I picked an excellent cup of coffee at Mojo (on Willis and Dixon).

In the evening we headed to the Frank Kipps playground along the waterfront. The kids were quite happy there and we go a good view of the harbor and the afternoon ferry coming in. The place was quite happening since it was a Friday evening. On our way home, we checked the cable car location for a potential trip the next day. Mari took the kids home, while I walked to Courtney Place to get some takeaway dinner. It was either Chinese food from The Beijing or Latin American food from sweet mother. I found Sweet Mother first and went there. We got the Fish PoBoy, Chicken Quesadillas (for PJ), Jambalaya and Kumara Mash. I had a pretty strong margarita while I was waiting and also read a pretty good review of the restaurant in the local Wellington magazine. (the praise was a bit too generous and flowing for all the restaurants there, which made it seem like an advertisement rather than a review). I was tired (and a bit drunk), and did not relish the prospect of a long walk back home. Figuring the kids might be a bit hungry, I jumped in a cab :). The food was quite good. In general takeaway food does not have the same taste/feeling as eating at the restaurant. The Poboy and the kumara mash were excellent. The jambalaya and the quesadilla were above average. I'd give it a 6/10

We were quite tired and slept early the first nite in the Big City :)

The web sites of NZ newspapers are pathetic

Someone please recommend a good web design company to the newspaper folks here. Its amazing as to how little content they have on their website. I've been trying to research the food and kid scene in Wellington, and the newspapers dont help. A few weeks ago, we thought about subscribing to the Christchurch Press, and it took me a fairly long time to find how to subscribe. Obviously, u cannot do it online. You send them email, they tell you to go buy the paper, cut and fill the subscription form and send it in. Can someone please pull them into the internet age

If you think I'm exaggerating, see for yourself the fine web sites of The Nelson Mail, The Christchurch Press and the Dominion Post. They don't have the restaurant reviews online, or stuff about the city / place. Please take a look at the SF Chronicle or the NY Times to see how a real newspaper's website should look like. Maybe the parent website Stuff should stop the practice of producing cookie cutter newspaper sites

Ok, enough venting for now ..

Wellington plans ...

We head out early tomorrow morning at 5:30 am or so to catch the 8:00 am Bluebridge ferry from Picton to Wellington. Its amazing the things you need to pack with kids :) We are taking their bike/tryke, books, helmets, swimming gear etc. Mari has come up with the Pillow Case (tm) packing scheme. Each of us gets a pillow cover and we stuff our clothes in it. The same for books and other items.

We spend a lot of time figuring out the place we'll eat and have coffee etc. All of us are quite excited to be going to the big city. So here' s a list of things we plan to do in Wellingon. If you are local to Wellington, feedback is appreciated.

• Malaysian / South Indian food at Roti
• Chinese dim-sum or yum-cha at Regal
• Coffee at Mojo
  
• Seafood at Shed5
• Chocolate at Schoc. This will involve a roadtrip to goto the original store in Greytown
• French at Bistro Breton
• Maori food at Kai in the City
• More coffee at Cafe L'affare
  

Most of the above places are within a 2km walk around our apartment hotel. I suspect we'll be walking a lot in Wellington. I suspect we'll entice the kids with fluffies and other yummy treats Thats just the eating part on my list. Mari is maintaining her own separate list. We'll definitely visit Te Papa, hang out along the waterfront, visit the Zoo and/or wildlife park, definitely check out the playgrounds. We'll also check out the local farmers market Seems like the next few days are gonna be packed with eating / playing and having a good time. The weather forecast looks good for now. Hopefully the wind factor does not kick in

We'll keep you updated. Feels so strange to be excited about going into the city. I'm so looking forward to eating some good chinese and malay food :)

Sushi tuesday's with the kids ...

We are starting to fall into a regular rhythm now :) Tuesday nite is Sushi night. We call up Masao-San from Sushi House tuesday morning and place our regular order (combination of nigiri sushi, sashimi and rolls) for pickup tuesday evening. Mari picks up the kids from school, feeds their ever growing appetites and drops them off at Nelson library. I bike to the library and hang out with them doing art and puzzles for the next hour or so. Mari wanders around happening Nelson, picks up the sushi and wanders back to the library. The nelson area also gets tuna from Fiji on tuesdays and hence there is a bit more variety in the sushi.

We then head home with a platter of yummy food ready to be devoured by the starving Tilos/Lobo clan. There has been an interesting change in dynamics the past few weeks. PJ who would not touch sushi once upon a time now competes with Maya to pick up the choicest morsels (leaving the rice for moi!). Last week we had to increase our order to accomodate PJ's growing appetite. Unfortunately, today Maya and PJ took it to the next level and pretty much gobbled up 80% of the sashimi and quite a bit of the other nigiri (the rolls have too much rice for their liking!). Looks like the order will need to be revised again for next week :)

Its kinda nice to see how PJ's food habits have evolved from a year ago. A year ago she would only eat rice, oatmeal and meat and refuse to touch any fruit or fish. Today, she loves to eat fruit and fish and is becoming quite adventurous in her eating habits (she still has some ways to go to becoming a true foodie!)

Headed to Wellington this week ...

We are headed to Wellington this weekend :) Taking the Bluebridge ferry and staying at Terrace Villas. We are leaving friday morning and will be back monday nite. If you are from the wellington area or know about good food / cafe / kid things to do, please leave a comment on the blog :)

we'll obviously document all the things to do with kids when we are there, but would be good to get some insider tips :)

Noise

Nelson is a pretty mellow place to live in and the weather is good. Riding my bike into Downtown Nelson today, I realized that there's a lot of pollution. Biking parallel with the beautiful aqua Tasman Sea, I take in a lot of exhaust. Nelson being a small town, I'm actually biking on Highway 6, which is used by the big cargo trucks all day long.

In the other direction, towards home, the sea breeze is against you, and there are bike trails away from the highway traffic. A very good bike ride from Nelson to Richmond (Railway reserve) is an excellent bike trail. On a major portion of it, it is accessible only to bikers and pedestrians. Nelson is a very biker friendly place. Even the children bike to school - girls and boys.

Everyday I hear this noise. It's 24/7 or until the windows are closed. Since we arrived, I haven't even seen one, but heard them all the time buzzing in the trees. I would wonder, "How many are in there?" Today, while biking home, one smashed into my chest. It was about 3 inches long and big. The previous night, I saw one in the house. ( the bathroom window will now be closed in the night). Some cidada fun facts below.

http://www.ivyhall.district96.k12.il.us/4th/kkhp/1insects/cicada.html

http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/projects/cicada/NZ/gallery.htm

Restaurant Review: Waterfront

Mari and I have started a "lunch date" tradition. One day in a week (typically thursday), we'll go out and have lunch somewhere in town. So far we've been to Waterfront, which is the sister restaurant to The Smokehouse Cafe (which we've also visited and have pretty good memories of, nothing outstanding but quite solid) in Mapua. It is pretty much across from the Boatshed (a restaurant no longer frequented by us!) on Wakefield Quay. The views from the dining room overlook Tasman Bay and the Nelson Sailing Club.

They have a pretty good lunch menu and on our two visits we've tried four different dishes. All of them were quite solid and well worth it for the price. On our first visit I tried the chili calamari with potatoes and a summer salad and Mari had the moroccan spiced turbot with a summer salad. The turbot was pan fried and quite delicious, the calamari was tender but not as spicy as I expected it to be. On our next visit Mari tried the nelson bay scallops with fries and a salad and I got a steak and mushrooms with fries. The fries were thick cut and not very good. The scallops were quite excellent with a nice white sauce. The steak and mushrooms were ok, I'm not a major meat eater so can't really evaluate steak very well. I suspect we'll try a few other places the next few weeks before going back there. Its close, quick, good and reasonably priced. What more can I ask?

Accountability in the non-profit world ....

A bit of deviation from my normal Life in NZ blog. Recently became aware of a pretty decent wiki/blog site called Givewell. This came up primarily from an article on the NTEN blog. Weirdly enough, this article is no longer present on the blog. I felt strongly enough to make a small comment on that article.

I have some experience on all sides of the non-profit equation, i.e. employee, funder and fundee. I was an employee of a non-profit (Groundspring.org at that time run by Tides, now part of Network for Good). My two years out there were an eye opening experience and I came away with a sad feeling about how inefficient the whole foundation funding process is and to some extent how big a role "connections" play in funding non-profits. I also concluded that some non-profit organizations are not very efficient, not willing to change and improve their business process and reduce expenses.

We started CiviCRM to provide a good base of open source tools for the non-profit sector. I've been doing this for a little more than two years now, and it has been a pretty good experience. We seem to be filling good niche and are getting used by quite a few orgs in the US and worldwide. You can read more about CiviCRM in our year end report, our website and our blog. We have been reluctant to go down the foundation funding road primarily due to the long road involved but have been lucky enough to have been funded by a good foundation.

We also do some funding in our personal life for a few organizations. Over a period of time, we've started focusing on funding organizations working directly in India. We have experienced quite a few of the things that the Givewell folks mention in their wiki and their blog. Its good to see an organization focus on the non-profit world and publicly analyze and compare them in a transparent manner. There is definitely a need for this, and I hope more foundations do the same and collaborate and publish their findings to improve the sector

The kids in Nelson ...

I recently took the kids to Edna Turner library in Nelson. Its the library for Nelson region and its quite big and very nice. They have a pretty big kids area, a coloring desk and chairs, bean bags and lots of other activities and puzzles to keep kids of all ages entertained and occupied. I had not been to the kids part of the library before (mari and cecile had done the honors previously) and it was quite a pleasant surprise. They have a pretty good collection of books and we checked out a few to keep the kids occupied. Their current favorite books from the library are: Good night, Pillow Fight and You are not my real mother. They also like the Madeline and Olivia series of books quite a bit. The house we are currently renting has a few small model cars. Both the kids are fascinated with the cars and spend quite some time playing with them.

Maya likes us to spend time with her in school so she can show us all her work. The school out here is much more relaxed and open. The kids can take and share books and toys during circle time, parents can visit and spend time with their kids, hours are quite flexible and casual. Mari spent an hour with Maya at school last week, and this week Maya wanted me to show up. It was interesting to see the group of three to five year olds playing together and individually. All of the kids were focused and doing their work, spending time thinking about what to do next etc. The afternoon class is much smaller than the morning class and so they do get more attention if needed. From the looks of it, the kids did not need more attention. All of them were self reliant and quite self absorbed with their projects. PJ was fast asleep for most of my visit, need to visit when she is awake the next time. I suspect Mari and I will try to visit and spend time at school at least once a week.

Dave and Bob gave the kids two george bears on their visit in December. Maya has named PJ's one eyed bear Sausalito and has named her bear Yoghurt. Not sure how she picked those names, but they are here to stay :)

Trips in the near future ...

We pretty much have a stream of visitors from the US and India starting late march all the way into mid may. We've started planning trips and will attempt to visit places that we have not seen before. Some of the places on our list include

• Wellington: Its relatively close, but the drive, the wait and the ferry ride make it a 5-6 hour trip. However the ferry ride is guaranteed to entertain the kids and give them something to talk about. We'll probably do this over the next few weekends by ourselves. It has the added bonus of having the IceBreaker factory outlet in the vicinity (or so i've heard)
• Northland and the Bay of Islands: We are planning to go here with Phu, Tamar, Chi, Jason and Grace after Easter. Their visit coincides with the kids easter break, so I suspect it will be one long road trip
• Golden Bay: We'd like to revisit this place and spend a few days there. Most likely we'll go there with Jill and Marley and my brother Steve
• Nelson Lakes: Definitely want to spend a few days there hiking and tramping. Hopefully the weather will still be good when Mari's parents visit and we'll rent a bach there. We'll probably do a day trip or overnite with JD and Lisa there
  
• Dunedin / Otaga Peninsula / Invercargill: I suspect we'll do this with Stephen, Ivy, Freia and Reia
• New Plymouth and Stewart Island are on the list. Not figured out when we will be able to make it to either place. Maybe with Mari and/or my parents
• Fiji, Cook islands, Vanatu: too many places, too little time :(

Weekend update ..

Another week flies by, followed closely by another equally hectic weekend. Its good to get back on a nice schedule and see the kids get comfortable with their surroundings and consider this their new home :)

Mari and the kids went to the Friday market at Founders primarily to get some delicous bread and baked goods from the awesome Founders bakery. The market is worth a visit just for the delicious ciabatta, whole wheat loaf and canale. Saturday morning, mari took off a bit early to go biking while I fed the kids and got them ready for the day. We met mari later on at Morrison Cafe and headed to the Saturday Market for our weekly produce / fruit / meat shopping. We really enjoy the market and are starting to build a good relationship with some of the suppliers. I also realized that our egg supplier also supplies free range chicken (but does not have a sign for that, since she has limited quantity!). We also frequent a great crepe place for crepes (Kaffey's). Some of our other favorite stalls include the my pie lady, the mussel man, the organic salmon lady and the cheese folks.

The saturday market includes quite a few craft stalls. We bought a very cute drawing table of the right size with two chairs from a local craftsman called Bruce Monro (s_bmonro at hyper dot net dot nz). Maya and PJ have been doing a lot of chalk drawing on it outside while we cook in the kitchen (and can keep them in the corner of our eye)

On Sunday we went to the Brightwater Wine, Food and Music festival. It was definitely the happening place in Nelson that day and drew a large crowd. It was a bit like the Saturday market with wineries in a much larger space. The music was quite good, and there were a few activities for the kids (bouncy tent, face painting, tractor ride, ice cream). We spent a good three hours there before heading home to rest and get ready for the week ahead

I made a pretty awesome chicken adobo and brown rice for dinner Sunday nite. The kids loved it and chowed down quite a bit. I put in a few lobo modification (fried onions and potatoes to improve on the recipe. We also used a few things that mari's mom puts in here adobo (star anise, brown sugar). Monday nite, i attempted to make, picnic fried chicken and was not too happy with the results. Not sure if i'll attempt that dish again or what went wrong :(

canele

After moving 3 times, it feels great to finally take all of or mostly all of our things from our suitcases. There's still some boxes in the basement but it's mostly winter clothes and there's no need because summer has arrived. There's still the occasional rain shower, but it's not freezing outside and it's a sure bet that the sun will peek through before it gets dark.

I've realized that I really like having fruit trees close by. It's so fun to pick a fruit and eat it whenever you want. There are two plum trees and one peach tree. We've gone plum picking 3 or 4 times from the backyard. Maya and PJ enjoy the fruit picking. Before plucking it from the tree we'll look at it, make sure it's the right color and then pluck it into the bucket.

The sun is awfully hot here so much so that if we're at Tahunanui Beach, Maya and PJ ask for ice-cream. They're regulars at the ice-cream truck. Maya once said, "If it's hot we have to eat ice-cream." The search is still on for good ice cream.

I cooked a lot of things from my Tartine cook book when we first arrived because I love to eat sweets. After being here for awhile, I found the yummy stuff. There's a baker at the founder's market that bakes canele. Other things that I've been eating: chocolate panetoni, olli balls (deep fried muffin), savory muffins, and cakes from the swedish bakery in Richmond.

I've stopped getting bit so much by the sand fly. Or maybe I've stopped itching after it bites.

Settling down ..

Life is back to normal and we seem to have settled down in a pretty good routine. The kids seem to be exhausted at the end of each day, so we let them sleep in till 7:30 am. Feed them breakfast, pack their lunch on monday and fridays, and then I drop them off at school by 8:50 am.

Its kinda boring working from home all day, so then I walk over to my alternate favorite coffee shop in Richmond, Ambrosia, which also has wireless access. Spend anywhere from an hour to three hours working from my cafe office (am a regular there and have my own reserved table and power outlet in one corner) before I head home and have lunch (typically leftovers from the previous nite dinner) with mari.

Mari picks the kids up at 3:00 pm (also spending some time at Ambrosia prior to picking them up). They hang out at the school or neighbourhood playground before I meet them at either the swimming pool or climbing gym or beach at 4:00 pm. All of us hang out, with mari and i getting in our workout while the kids are playing / splashing / climbing. Back home by 6:00 pm, we cook a pretty good meal. The menu for this week included spinach and mushroom gratin, lamb shank stew, whole salmon with wild rice, moroccan pie (from MyPie), and sushu from Sushi House. We are eating quite nicely out here :). PJ is well on her way to becoming a true foodie. She has started eating Sushi and chows down quite a few fruits these days (a sharp contrast from a year ago!). I've been tempting the kids with various lamb dishes. Its takes quite a few attempts but now maya and PJ seem to enjoy lamb. Yippee!, that means i can buy and cook more lamb (which is quite delicious out here!)

By 7:30 pm the kids are tired and exhausted. So we brush their teeth, read them a lot of bedtime stories and put them to sleep. Kinda nice to read to both of them at the same time. PJ sleeps in the top bunk bed while maya is queen on the lower bed.

The interactions between the two kids is getting quite interesting. They seem to play really well with each other, but then have a big fight periodically. PJ seems to be getting into her terrible two's quite nicely and is starting to rebel a bit more. Seems like we are in for some interesting times ..

Furnished vacation home and car for one lucky family ..

We are scheduled to be in the US from June 20 - July 10. We'd like to offer use of the house, car, bikes and kids stuff to any folks who might be interested. We need to know the family either directly or via a 1 hop relationship

If you are interested or know of someone who might be interested, please send us email. Please feel free to forward this message. Fares to NZ are quite cheap that time of the year (its winter in June, but the winters are pretty similar to SF winters). You can fly to NZ and Australia via Air New Zealand (pretty good service) for less than USD 1000

Book your tickets to NZ now ...

before its too late :). We already have confirmed visitors from late March (Jill and Marley) to late April (Phu, Tamar, Jason and Grace). Mari's and my parents will be visiting us sometime between late April and June

So if you would like to come out and hang around with the kids and us, better send us email soon. We will make sure you see the diverse beauty and splendor of NZ and sample the fine regional cuisine, local fine and superb coffee along with fun places for the kids and adults :)

And we are back with broadband access...

Nice to have reliable DSL access after close to 2 weeks of flaky/no-broadband /dial-up. Telecom NZ did come through quite nicely and flipped the switch when they said they would. Its another matter as to why it took them so long to do it, but thats in the past :)

Other than not being able to post on my personal and work blogs periodically (or too frequently as some of you might comment), life without DSL was quite productive. I managed to get a lot of work done since IM / Skype / IRC / email interruptions were quite minimal. I suspect i'll actually disconnect from the net on daily basis for 4 hours or so and see the results. We also spent way more time at Richmond Mall than we ever have, since there was a great coffee shop, Ambrosia, with good broadband access. Its close to the kids school which makes it even more convenient. Might be a regular part of our life. Have a flat white while responding to email :)

We'll upload a few more pictures of our adventures in NZ over the next day or so for the visually inclined :)

The move is done ...

Seems like it has taken forever to get to our current state. It has indeed taken a while (9 weeks), but we are now settling down, and unpacking some of the things we got with us. Unrolled the sleeping bags and thermarest (giving them room to breathe etc)

The kids had Monday and Tuesday off before the new quarter starts. We are still getting used to the NZ school and holiday schedule and messed up once again and drove them to school on a holiday! Mari has now attached the calendar to the refrigerator and hopefully we wont make this mistake again (we made the same mistake a week ago on NZ day!)

Dial-up at home is a bit painful. Luckily there are cafes with fast internet access near Maya's school (at the happening Richmond Mall). Paul Roper also stepped in and got me access at NMIT (you can read more about it at my work blog)

The house is nice and spacious. So please do come and visit :). The views of the Tasman Bay, Takaka Hill, Kahurangi range etc are quite amazing. We'll post pictures on flickr once we get broadband at home.

And we move again ..

For the second weekend in a row, we are packing our bags and moving houses. Being a nomad is not a lot of fun. Moving is painful :( Luckily for us, this is the last move for the next few months and we hope to settle in, unpack etc at our wonderful new long term rental place in Tahunanui, Nelson. We've got a fair amount of space (4 bedrooms), so we can definitely accomodate quite a few visitors. (the bottleneck is the lone bathroom, but thats pretty common in NZ!)

Telecom NZ is not the greatest phone/dsl provider. We tried to get the phone in our name in advance but this proved to be a bit too difficult. Mari finally managed to convince them to do so on Friday. We wanted to move our broadband connection from the old place to the new place, but they wont be able to get to it till the 8th of Feb. Yikes, we will be spending a fair amount of time in cafes over the next few days to get work done :( Not sure why it takes a company that long to flip a switch. Telecom had the unique distinction of winning the Supreme Ass Award for its Xtra Broadband Service. Hopefully our issues will be sorted out pretty soon ....

Comparing Nelson, SF and Mumbai

I was checking our new address in Nelson and was playing with the Hybrid view of Google maps. Here is the amazing mountains and terrain around Nelson, contrast this to the same view at similar magnification of our location in San Francisco, and for kicks, here's Mumbai, where I grew up. Three places in three different continents with widely different terrain ...

Nelson and NZ are beginning to grow on me and I'm appreciating the closeness to nature and a simpler more laid back lifestyle much more :)

Update for Week 9

Sorry for the minimal updates. We had to find a place for a week before we moved into our long term rental (in Tahunanui). We found a pretty nice place at the Brook Valley end of Nelson, the only drawback being internet connectivity is not great. The owners (Jeff and Rangi) are not in town this week, so they have allowed us to use the main house during the day. This helps a lot since we can get a fair amount of work done from there.

The wireless situation is quite wierd, it works sometimes for hours at a stretch, at other times, especially at nite, it flakes every few minutes. I do not understand this very well, and am kinda lost in how to potentially fix it. No big deal, since we just have two more nights here. The area however is quite scenic and very different from the other places we've stayed at. Its further away from town and more in the mountains / valleys.

In other news, I managed to reinjure my knee and was in pretty bad shape for a few days. Things are looking much better and the knee seems to be recovering quite quickly. Have hurt it quite a few times in Nelson, since the pavement a bit uneven compounded with me being a clumsy walker results in a bad knee :(

The kids are having a blast with their current schedule. They get up, have breakfast, goto school and do some fun activity (themes of this week: pirate day, dinosaur day, cook day, swimming day). Mari picks them up at 1:00 and takes them to a playground for some time before driving them back home. PJ typically takes a nap for an hour or so. At 3:30 or so, we head to the beach or the pool and play for a couple of hours before we come home, cook, eat, play and goto sleep. Joys of being a kid :)

They are pretty exhausted by 7:30 pm or so. PJ more so than Maya. However trying to put them to sleep at the same time results in a few challenges since they talk to each other and refuse to sleep. We've been tweaking the process and trying to figure out a more optimal sleeping pattern and rhythm. They love to share the room, read books together, wake up together whispering to each other etc. Kinda nice to see them sharing a room, since Maya was quite reluctant to share her room in SF.