The sun has come out in Wellington and the contrast is huge. Today Lynda and I planted seeds for leeks, broccoli, carrots and zucchinis. I assembled our bike racks, which Gwenda was extremely kind to bring over. The bikes still need some work before we can hit the road. This afternoon Lynda is off to sell merchandise at Word of WearableArt, as she has been for the whole week.

Last week I went and helped sell leotards at the NZ gymnastics nationals with my neighbors. I had a day off to go and visit Lynda and the Sandersons in Tauranga, whilst my neighbor, Hagwat, visited his Grandparents (Who incidentally are Sarah Rombouts’ Dad’s Uncle and Aunty- small world!)

This week I have been sinking time into my hosting project. I have also been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is lucky because while was putting the bike racks on, I came across a screw with a sheared head which I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to deal with. Synchronicity abounds!

Our days have been filled with lots of job hunting. I had another interview last week, this time for a bar management position (part of my segue into hospitality).

I have been managing my downtime by setting up a web hosting service. It is something I have talked about and toyed with for a while. It finally occurred to me that using virtual servers to do this would be a wise move whilst I am in traveling mode, rather than stashing hardware at other people’s houses (sorry parents and Tim). I have a lot of learning to do (books to read) and it may be a few more weeks before I can offer anything, for now it keeps me occupied while the weather is apocalyptic.

I have also found some odd jobs to do through the people we know. The rain is a bit of a dampener on the yard work though.

I found Wellington’s version of Dan the Pushbike Man and proceeded to make myself another roadbike. For Wellingtonians, he Mechanical Tempest is located at 128 Able Smith Street. You can buy second hand bikes, repair old bikes or make one (for  donation) most afternoons in the week.

John Darwin, our neighbor.

]]> http://adrian.com.au/2010/09/14/living-in-karori/feed 0 http://adrian.com.au/2010/08/10/one-month-in-welly http://adrian.com.au/2010/08/10/one-month-in-welly#comments Tue, 10 Aug 2010 01:11:08 +0000 adrigen http://adrigen.wordpress.com/?p=74 It has been a while since I wrote:

Lynda started her circus training, so we stayed the week in Wellington. The place we stayed at, was the place I believed I was going to be getting a job. Our week staying was to be a test to see if we were “sociable enough” to do the job. After the week ($336) she said that we were sociable enough, but perhaps I should do an unpaid job for a month just to see if it’s going to work out.  She said, “luckily”, she has a friend who will be able to do the paid job in that time… I might get mad about this when the disbelief wears off. Luckily, we found out what this woman was like before becoming her employee.

Went hired a car and drove to Tauranga for Lynda’s cousin Alecia’s 21st birthday – lots of fun. Their family put us up in a hotel room they have attached to the retirement village (Lynda’s uncle builds retirement villages) where Lynda’s dad Martin lives. We helped him move into a new house he had built there. Lynda’s family were very hospitable and took turns to keep us entertained throughout the week.

We traveled east to Gisborne on our route home. We visited Skippy, the Australian truck driver we met in January, and stayed at his house for two nights. We also visited Barbara, Penny’s Mother (but I haven’t told you about penny yet).

We returned to Wellington in time for Lynda’s class, this time we stayed with the Darwins: Penny and David. This is a work for accommodation arrangement for now, I am working on a couple of websites, one for Penny, and one for her brother Jeremy. When the sites are finished, we begin renting their granny flat.

We are staying with Deb, Dai, their son Bryn, the dog Pebbles and four horses, who’s names I haven’t committed to memory.

We started with a rainy week, in which we did a lot of indoor stuff such as ironing vacuuming and… not blog worthy. The sky cleared though and we got to do some shit kicking. Actual shit kicking. We put up a couple of gates… and kicked some more shit.

Shit kicking for those who also didn’t know that this term’s origins are literal: horse shit needs to be kicked to stop the ground becoming to acidic for grass to grow.

The better news is that it’s beautiful country out here and you don’t need to go far to see some awesome landscapes.

Our hosts are loveable and eccentric, Deb had Lynda hooked up to electrodes within 10 minutes of our arrival! She uses a thing called Scenar, which the Russians developed to cure ailments in space.

Further good news on the paid work situation, but not solid enough to report yet.

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I spent this week making steps to replace the muddy slippery slide which leads down the rabbit hole (you know the one). This involved a 4 days of digging, by Lynda, Daryl and myself. This was followed by a day of moving gravel, involving everyone.

The steps were finished in time for Saturday when we held a permaculture Hui. 15 people turned up to talk about permaculture and eat woodfired pizzas. We were introduced to the idea of Bio-dynamics. Which involves certain “preparations” which, when described, sound a lot like they should be called “potions”.

MONTAGE! The following montage shows the making of the staircase and the attempted execution of my idea: riding down the completed stairs on Daryls mountain bike…

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]]> http://adrian.com.au/2010/06/21/the-rabbit-hole/feed 0 http://adrian.com.au/2010/06/21/first-day-in-wellington-2 http://adrian.com.au/2010/06/21/first-day-in-wellington-2#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:38:30 +0000 adrigen http://adrigen.wordpress.com/?p=28 Friday was our first day in town. Upper Hut people say there are to many people in Wellington, and the people in Wellington say there aren’t enough people in Upper hut. It’s all very self defeating and now I am telling you about it.

The Arrival

Lynda and I had a great day window shopping and exploring through the streets. Looking at comics, artworks, graffiti, op-shops and everything else.

The latter half of the day was spent compiling and visiting some hostels. Did I tell you I want to work in a hostel? I want to work in a hostel. The reason being, that I recently got the inclination that it might be the kind of business I would like to be involved with in… say… 2012, and before I find myself involved in said business, I should first find out if I like or hate it. We achieved a moderate amount of success, the details of which I will withhold for superstitious reasons. We will be heading into Wellington again this Friday for more of the same.

For the moment our plan is to keep wwoofing for 4 more weeks. We aren’t making or spending any money doing this, though seeing what an awesome place our hosts have and the even awesomer, things they/we are doing on it, we’re getting the itch to get out and save some money.

Wellington was extremely cold. We had to put on all our worst-case-scenario warm stuff as soon as we got off the bus.

We had dinner with our hosts: Daryl and Natalie, their kids Falk, Finlay and border Matt.

We’ve been here two days now and have helped with fence fixing,  rabbit cage fixing, electric bike making, cooking and baby sitting. The next couple of days should hold more of the same. We will venture into Wellington on the weekend.