Ally & Suzy's Blog

The booby prize!

The start of this week was mainly uneventful, apart from Tuesday evening when we went to a pub quiz in a local Irish bar called ‘The Bog’ in Parnell. Symon came along too and we had a great laugh, especially because we came last place, not just by a little bit as well! Our handicap, I told the bartender, was that we were Scottish! – I don’t know whether he felt sorry for us or what, but he gave us a booby prize of a Cocktail Jug (complete with a cocktail of my choice) to drink so we didn’t feel so bad about loosing so badly! The bartender was a nice bloke who we got chatting away to after the quiz and he let me know about another recruitment agency I should try, so that was nice!

On Friday, Symon invited us out to his ‘local’ pub, yep, you guessed it, another Irish bar near Eden Park. Suzy was getting tired before the night had started, so Symon had to twist her arm, but even she enjoyed herself when she got out! The bar was called Clare’s Bar, on Dominion Road and many of Symon’s friends and work colleagues were there. There was an band (made up of an Irishman, an Englishman, oh and a Maori too!). They were pretty good and the singer in the band (who also works at Symon’s work – Air New Zealand) cracked a few funny

Me overlooking the Museum from the Auckland Domain

jokes along the way. We headed home around midnight but didn’t manage to get to sleep till around three am for some reason, perhaps just our heads buzzing from the loud music!

On Saturday we didn’t feel up to much as we were both tired, but as it was such a beautiful day – T-shirt weather, I managed to coax Suzy out of the house after lunch. We went up Parnell Rise which is pretty steep (Suzy was huffing and puffing by the top!!), but we managed to get to the Auckland Domain which was nice. I showed Suzy the duck pond and we walked through the Domain and down to Lovers Lane, which comes out near the bottom of Parnell rise, which is where we started our walk. It’s a good circular route for taking the little tike out in the buggy in seven months time!

I’ve put more photos in the Gallery as usual, so click on the link to your left to view that if you haven’t had a chance yet and we will have another update for you next week, hopefully with some job related updates too (fingers crossed!).

On Sunday we went out to the Dove Myer Robinson Park which is up in the corner of Parnell. It has a nice rose garden (which will look better in the summer!). It’s also got a small bay at the bottom called Judges Bay. I’ve put some photos in the Gallery so check them out!

Not only are Suzy and I now feeling tons better, we have the Internets in our new pad so finally I can get back on to Skype-ing and blogging to you good people!

This week, the weather has been mainly very good for mid-winter. Temperatures have been a solid 14-15 degrees most days and the sun has been fantastic. Just yesterday I took a walk back home from my interview with a company called OSS (more on that later). I walked through the Auckland Domain which is a beautiful park just to the left of the city centre. It contains the Auckland Museum (which we already visited a few weeks ago with Symon), but it also contains lovely paths such as the Lovers Lane and a nice duck pond. The air is lovely and fresh, making you forget you are in a massive big city and there are some nice bird calls that I have never heard before in my life.

As I was saying, I went for an interview yesterday. This will be my first proper interview since my arrival, as the others were mainly just getting to meet with recruitment firms. This was a proper interview for a company called OSS. They need a Support Services Manager to manage a team of staff who provide managed IT services to enterprise-level customers. The services they provide are on the Data Centre end of things, so right up my street, and it’s all Open Source stuff, OSS stands for ‘Open Systems Specialists’. The company is fairly small compared to even Picsel, but the salary is in the right ball-park and the job sounds like it’s custom designed for me. I’m excited about it, and I think I did pretty well at the first interview, but there is quite a lot of competition I believe so I won’t be getting my hopes up at this early stage. Please keep your fingers (and toes) crossed for me though, I think I would really enjoy that job!

Me outside a church in Parnell

To celebrate the fact that we were both feeling a bit better, and that my first interview went well, Suzy and I went out to have dinner in Parnell last night. We went to of all things, an Irish pub & restaurant, called the Bog. Had a nice dinner in there and cozied by the fire in the pub until it was time to go home. Just to give you an idea of Parnell, if you imagine the distance of Morningside Road from say, Newington Road, that’s the sort of distance we are from Parnell. I think Beach Road (our road) still falls under the Parnell district, however, I wouldn’t quite call us ‘Parnellians’!. Parnell is a very exclusive little part of Auckland. It’s quite old, has some lovely architecture and lots of lovely shops and boutiques. There are lots of little vennels and secret but pretty alleyways revealing more coffee shops and boutiques. Suzy was quite delighted at the shops, not so delighted that we couldn’t spend any money in them!

So, the big question I am sure you are all wondering, is are we still enjoying ourselves here and do we miss home? I am speaking for Suzy here as well, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that we are both extremely happy with our decision, we’re not missing home too much and we are definitely not coming back any time soon. The first purchase I will make when I get a job is a car, as there are so many wonderful places we keep eyeing up in the guides we have. I also fancy doing a 2 week train ride across the north island, you get to stop at some great locations, you just hop off the train, take as much or as little time in the place as you like, and then get back on the next train down the track. It’s fairly cheap as well, it’s around £60 per person in the winter season.

Today saw the first of the bad weather return in quite some time. Plenty of rain today, however we ventured out to have Suzy’s 13 week ultrasound. Everything is normal again and baby looks like it’s getting to be quite some size already. On the way back we bought an ADSL modem and wifi router, so that’s why I’m on the net today and we also stopped in near the town hall for a bit of lunch. Suzy’s off for a wee nap right now as all this baby-carrying is making her sleepy. I’m just glad to have my Internet back. I’m going out tonight tomorrow to watch the All-Blacks take on the Springbocks for the second test. I hope the All-Blacks give them as much of a thrashing as last time because they were phenomenal – might even get into this Rugby lark!

‘Till next time!

Hi people. I’m sitting in a coffee shop over the road from our new apartment because we still don’t have broadband in the house yet (hopefully by Monday or Tuesday we should be back in business). It’s raining right now, but when we walked over, it was beautifully sunny. July is the mid-winter month in NZ, and the weather won’t get any worse than this at least! I would say that the winter weather in NZ is much like a fair spring in Scotland. Some days you get a bit of rain, some days are nice and lit by a high sun.

We don’t really have any photos for you this time because we have literally left the house to go to the doctors, that’s it. We’ve both been bed ridden for most days this week, I’m feeling well enough to venture to the coffee shop to appease my web withdrawals but otherwise, we won’t be doing much else this week either. I was supposed to have a technical ability test and interview with a recruitment firm yesterday morning but I was coughing up a lung and visiting the toilet every few minutes, so I had to cancel, making it the second interview I’ve had to cancel thus far. I’m bummed to say the least.

The doc’s have told me my immune system is a wreck and that I’ve got various things all going on including the flu and streptococcus c, so I’m on a heavy dose of antibiotics for the next ten days. Lucky me!

Suzy is not really much better, as she can’t even take any medication for her ills, so she is coughing constantly. She’s not getting much sleep at the moment either so combine that with the pregnancy, I’d say she’s been better!

Every cloud has a silver lining though, on the day I went for my blood tests to figure out what was wrong with me, Suzy also went for her ultrasound and just in case you’ve not seen the photo already, here is our little mite bouncing around. It very nearly brought tears to my eyes in the clinic seeing the miracle of life in action!

Bambino Ross!

Last night I went to see Bill Bailey with Symon at the Civic Theatre. As per usual, Bill was on form. It must be quite hard really doing his job: he has to travel to all sorts of places like New Zealand and Australia as part of his many long tours. I’m still exhausted (admittedly still having the man-flu doesn’t help), but travelling so frequently and so far, must make you screwy – still, Mr Bailey’s quips certainly satisfied my intellectual humour bucket, he was right on form and he certainly does everything to extol the virtue that there is a very fine line between genius and insanity!

Monday was our wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, Suzy was at the worst point of her woman-flu which she caught of me, and was a shivering wreck in bed pretty much all day, so I did the dutiful husband duties and got her all she needed and made sure she was as comfortable as could be (not very). The poor lamb continued to be quite green around the gills into Tuesday and Wednesday as well, I really hope she gets better soon!

This week will likely be a fairly non-eventful week until Friday, when we get the keys to our new apartment. I don’t look forward to carting the four suitcases from the lodge on the bus in two trips down to Parnell, but once we get settled I’ll be a happy chappy.

I will leave you with a photo of a local burger joint in Ponsonby. Enjoy.

Murder Burger

At the Waterfront Quay, Auckland

It’s been a busy old week! We spent the Sunday saying our goodbyes in the morning at the Airport. It was pretty overwhelming seeing so many of you at the airport to wish us a farewell. I felt really ill as I had a bad dose of the man flu (which I still have by the way, and I seem to have now given to Suzy), so if I didn’t appear grateful at the time, I’m sorry about that, but I was dying!

What can I say about the flights? Well, the first connecting flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow was with BMI and went well. We sat around in Heathrow for a few hours and had a pizza, then we got checked in when the gate opened for our onward flight with Air New Zealand. I would thoroughly recommend them, the service was excellent, the ride comfortable as economy class gets and the champagne was free of charge, as was all the food so I can’t complain there. We arrived in LAX on time, hung around for the plane to get cleaned and re-fueled and then got back on for our forward destination. I don’t like the American immigration folks – asked me all sorts of questions about why I was going to New Zealand, took my fingerprints, my retina scan and all sorts. I felt like telling them ‘none of your damn business!’, but I thought better of it!

Arrived in Auckland on time. Sailed through Customs, Security and examination (we had to get our bags checked because we declared that we had trainers that had been used for hillwalking). When we were heading for the door, I looked straight ahead, and there infront of us was Symon Tait, a friend of Adam Duff’s who I had recently got talking to on Facebook before I left to go to New Zealand. He stood there grinning with a poster saying ‘Ally & Suzy’ on it

The Man, The Myth, The Legend: Symon Tait!

This was all at around 5.30 in the morning, mind you. Not only did he drive us to the lodgings where we are shacking up for the first 11 days, but he gave us a wee pit-stop tour of the city in the wee small hours! Since then, everything has been as plain sailing and as pleasant as this. We were utterly bowled over by the pleasantness of not just Symon, but everyone else we have had proper dealings with in New Zealand so far. At least the rumours I had heard about Kiwi’s being a friendly bunch is one truth we can agree on!

For the first few days, jet lag sapped most of our energy and our sleeping pattern was pretty irregular. It wasn’t until day 6 that we started to return to anything resembling a decent sleep pattern. However, one (hopefully long-term) side-effect of this jet lag is that is has cajoled me into waking up at around 7am most mornings with the rising sun. I feel happy to do so, as I had mostly been sleeping around 12 hours before waking so I was at least ready to wake. I think this will bode well with getting back into a work routine.

By Wednesday we had managed to get out and about as far as the top of the road in Ponsonby, which is the area our lodge is in. Ponsonby is quite an up-market area, which was not our intention, it just worked out that way. There are lots of nice boutique shops, pubs and restaurants up on Ponsonby Road, which is about 5 minutes walk from here.

Suzy on Ponsonby Road

On Thursday, we ventured up Ponsonby Road and met a nice lady at the ANZ bank called Vera Kawan. She set up our account and made sure all our pennies came through. She was really nice and helpful and told us which hospitals were good for having a baby, which is good to know! Vera must have thought I was a real hobo though because I was still dying with the man flu, and not only that I couldn’t hear a thing out my ears as they were completely blocked up (from the flights). To top it off, I had conjunctivitis in my left eye, so all in all I pretty much looked like Sloth out of the 80′s film, The Goonies! There was puss coming out of my eye and it was all inflamed and everything. Not nice!

After spending over $100 dollars in Woolworth’s for some medicinal stuff and food, we headed back home. Friday rolled along quicker than I had imagined and I got booted and suited for my meeting with Martin Wong at Hudson recruitment which was in the Gen-i Tower in downtown Auckland. It was a huge, rather intimidating looking skyscraper (as many are down there). I went in there and was met by Martin at 2pm, I went through quite a lot of interview type questions with him so he could assess I whether I was just another idiot, or whether I knew what I was talking about. Hopefully, I was in the latter bracket! He seemed to think my salary expectations were accurate, which was pleasing to know!

Friday was also a busy day because we had two other appointments which we had made on the way back down Ponsonby Road the day before with LJ Hooker Real estate and another real estate firm. Firstly we saw an apartment up on Wellesley Street, it was fairly cheap but it was pretty ropey looking so we gave it a miss.

Our Pad in Parnell!

After my appointment at Hudson, I went down to the Parnell area to view an apartment on Beach Road. It was pretty spiffy so I showed Suzy and her decision was what made it concrete. We took the bus back to Ponsonby and signed the lease there and then with LJ Hooker. Very easy to do – they didn’t even want to see proof of income or anything. I guess I must just have a trustworthy face! We are due to move in on the 2nd of June. Friday was the first day we saw any bad weather since we got here. The temperature all day was a steady 13 degrees C, but the rain started around 11am, and didn’t stop until around 3.30pm. When I say rain, I mean heavy duty, bouncing off the ground and back up 2 inches or so rain. After the rain stopped, within seconds, the clouds disappeared and as you can see by the sunlight in the photo to the right, by 3.45pm it was lovely and sunny again. Apparently this is normal for Winter in Auckland!

A Pepperoni Twist

On Saturday we agreed to meet up with Symon again, and we went into the city again on the bus. We met Symon at the Britomart train station which is at the bottom of Queen Street (Aucklands equivalent to Princes Street, although a lot bigger!). Symon is a big fan of a Gourmet pizza place called Sal’s Pizzeria, so we went round the corner and got a few slices of that as well as something called a Pepperoni Twist. It’s basically a pepperoni pizza all twirled up. Tastes delish.

Suzy & Me at the Quayside

After stuffing our faces we went down to the Quayside, which is indescribably beautiful. It’s hard to believe that there are people in Auckland that don’t have a boat, because there are so many lovely yachts there. As well as there being plenty of boats, there are lots of great pubs and restaurants there. Symon pointed out all the good places to go so I made lots of mental notes to go visit them at a later juncture!

We moseyed up the hill to the Sky Tower after our stroll along the Quayside. Sky Tower is awesome. First, we got inside the main lobby which is huge in it’s self, and we rode the escalator up one level to the Casino. This is a -proper- casino folks, nothing like the shabby Circus casino in Edinburgh, it’s much more Las Vegas than that! I played a little roulette with Symon and Suzy

played the slots and doubled her winnings so we decided it was time to leave there before we started spending money! Then we went back down the escalator to the entrance of the Sky Tower it’s self. Going up Sky Tower’s 60 or so levels in an elevator is scary enough, but some visitors to the tower are crazy enough to bungee off the side of it! At the top there are some truly remarkable photos, which no camera can do any real justice, you just have to go up and see it for yourself.

The Sky Tower

Lying on the edge!

After leaving the Sky Tower it was starting to get dark, so we headed down to the Quayside and went to a swanky bar called Buffalo Bar & Grill, it cost around £6 for a 330ml beer, so we moved on after a pint!

Next up, we went to Danny Doolan’s pub which is an Irish bar. The beers in New Zealand I found, to my misery, are all way more expensive than they are in Scotland. It cost £4.25 for a proper pint of beer in Doolan’s which Symon tells me is about average. Regardless, we had a few pints in there whilst poor Suzy supped on her Soda and Limes . It was fairly ironic at the bar – the folks that served us were either Scottish (the barman I spoke to was from Aberdeen) or Irish.

Breakdancing in the street

Some American tourists got a massive big plate of food beside us which made us hungry, so we moved on again and headed up Queen Street, then on to the high street in search of Wagamama, a favourite Japanese noodle bar of Symons. I had a Miso soup concoction that had chicken and noodles in it, Suzy had a Teriyaki Chicken which was very nice. Just before we left we watched some Japanese kids breakdancing on the street just outside of the restaurant, which was pretty fun to watch so I touristed up and asked to take a photo. There is a lot of Japanese, Chinese and other Asian cultures here which we find really fascinating, as there is tons of different varied cultures added to the fold of the community here. Another benefit of this makes for a really varied selection of foods, so no doubt we will be tasting the delights of more Japanese, Malaysian, Polynesian etc foods very soon!

Going Maori at the Museum!

Mission Bay

Finally, on to Sunday.  Symon picked us up in his car around 1.30pm and we headed out on a day of sightseeing. Firstly, we went to the Auckland Museum. There were some really cool Maori artefacts there and some great artefacts of the last 100 years of Kiwi history too.

After the museum we went on a nice drive along the coastland of Auckland. We visited Mission Bay and looked out on the wonderful views there. It made us so happy to know that there is a beautiful beach less than 10 minutes from the city centre with stunning views. Even on a winters day like today, the car park was full and people were making the most of the sun. We trekked along the road and looked at the other beaches, including St. Helliers and Karaka bay.

Finally, we went up One Tree Hill which had some awesome views from the top. Sadly, the tree no longer stands at the top of the hill, but a large memorial is there. When we went up it was pretty windy so we didn’t spend too long up there, but here is a photo of the views over Auckland. Enjoy!

Symon drove us back to Ponsonby and we went to Burger Fuel for dinner. Their burgers are certainly unique, the one I had contained peanut butter, and others had mango and beetroot and all sorts in it, but they were pretty decent. Burger Fuel is beside ‘Murder Burger’, which has a picture of a kitten with red-death eyes that looks like it’s going to claw you up! Interesting marketing, but that’s what it’s like over here!

Views over Auckland from One Tree Hill

Old Shitty Chip Oil

Well, it’s been a busy week for sure and Suzy is currently curled up in a ball on the bed going to the land of nod. I’m off to see Bill Bailey with Symon on Tuesday which should be fun and I’m really stoked about moving into the new apartment on Friday. Maybe Suzy can blog next week’s news!

Until then, noho ake rā (goodbye for now!)