Nine Years

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Wednesday the 14th was our 9th anniversary of arriving in Aotearoa, so to celebrate Nicky and I had a pork roast takeaway for dinner, to which I added Yorkshire Puddings. We perhaps ate a little too much, but it helped the wine go down, and we did enjoy it.

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet. I haven’t had much work and the library has been steady. The weather has been a bit variable but the sun is getting quite warm when it comes out, so I have been getting laundry washed, dried and ironed on the same day. I had another go at yoga this week which was quite interesting. I am not going to go every week as it is quite a strenuous class and it takes me time to recover.

We watched a webinar on retirement on Thursday evening which was quite informative, and learnt a couple of things. Our savings plans are going quite well, but I still don’t have a clear picture about how things will pan out.

We had a late breakfast on Saturday morning, and the weather was more damp than dry. While Nicky was quilting in the afternoon I went to a local school concert in the Community Hall - or so I thought. It turned out to be a talent show by students from the Auckland International College which is located here in Blockhouse Bay (on the site where the Hilltop Primary School was until the GFC of 2009). The College prepares 16-18 year old’s for study at overseas Universities, primarily the UK, Europe and the US, and it populated largely by the children of Asian families. So we had traditional Chinese Dancing (pretty good), modern Korean Dance (lots of 1-2 minute bursts of pop music with a range of girls demonstrating their moves), and a couple of very good piano and violin pieces. Best of all in my view, the Japanese Drummers, who were just stunning. While sitting there enjoying the enthusiasm of both the performers and their peers in the audience, I couldn’t help but reflect on how my much perspective on life has changed since I was in sixth form (almost 40 years for those how can’t do the maths). Like me back then, I imagine the students of the college have a very different view on what is important in life, what the future holds, and what the world looks like. The students had such passion for what they were doing, I could see why the members of staff that I think I spotted obviously appear to enjoy working with them. It was fun afternoon. Steve and Stella came over for Scrabble which we followed with a quiet evening watching a DVD.

Today started damp but dried up in the afternoon, so while Nicky was in prison I started a jigsaw which we have spent most of the afternoon doing. Nicky took a break to lop the heads off the daisy’s with the mower. We might get it finished this evening while watching the tellybox.


Take care, Rick

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