Wednesday, Feb 8th, 2006, New Zealand (GMT+12:00)
You know what I just realized? I don’t have to be online to blog. I just have to be online to //post// my blog…
I thought I’d share with you my ‘typical’ day on the road:
I’ve been getting up pretty early, atypically early for myself. While I’ve never been a morning person, I’m not sure if it is simply a residual effect of the jetlag or from eating fresh fish more often than not, I find I’ve been very aware and awake at a very early time. I’ve woken up around 5:30 unprompted, looked at my cell phone and thought ‘I’m wide awake and I’ve only slept 7 hours…’ Usually it doesn’t matter how much or little sleep, I still feel less than refreshed in the morning…but I’m rambling…or just beginning, depending on your point of view (insert evil laugh)…
After showering, I usually have two slices of hearty toast slathered with butter and a cup of tea. The bread in New Zealand (did I mention this before?) is very interesting, I gather white bread isn’t very popular. We’ve been going on site around 7:30 give or take.
Work is about a two minute walk away. The small (independant: most things are independant here, downtowns flourish, mom-and-pop is what it is all about. Chains and franchises are few and far between…I like it!) motel we are staying at is directly across the two-lane from Southern Veneers. Its strange, we are only a mile or two from downtown Christchurch, but the breeze is usually fragrant, smelling of flowers and trees. A picture wouldn’t do it justice…where do I start? New Zealand is the land of a thousand fences. Everyone has a fence of some manner around their property. Looking up and down this street, you’d see hedges and brick walls and lots and lots of tidy driveways. They are usually high enough to be a bother to jump over while still allowing pleasant glimpses of flower bed and small, tastefully designed houses.
Crossing the street, things get ‘boring’ fast. I find the job stimulating, interesting, and fufilling, but the details are rather dull. For instance: we swiched pressure transducer models recently. We also added a frequency drive to a pump. Either/or would have been fine, but the combination created a very strange effect where while the freq drive is running, the chamber pressure is read about 100 torr too high. Why? I couldn’t remember. Took me about 20 minutes of thinking ‘this is so familiar’ to remember that I had discovered that I needed to isolate the chamber from the sensor, apparently the chamber is absorbing some type of electromagnetic radiation from the freq drive or pump and somehow altering the electronics in the sensor. Insert a $0.50 plastic coupler between the chamber and the sensor, easy fix. Repeat this strange type of problem about 15 times, along with the prerequsite 20 minutes of pondering, becoming frustrated and dawning realization and you have a typical day…
During ‘work’ (mostly troubleshooting while co-ordinating what I guess what you’d call the ‘project manager in training’ and the sub-contractors) I try to find time to check email and send one to Kell.
After work, we’ve been treated to dinner mostly, while the past two nights we’ve been on our own (see ‘bad pizza’, previous post). Its a shame I’m contributing to the rape and pillage of the ocean, I really enjoy eating fresh fish. And driving my car. And conspicuous consumption. Et al…must keep hypocrasy to a minimum…focus…
After dinner I go back across the way and (thanks to the wonderful miracles of modern techonolgy) talk with Kell for a while. Skype allows us to talk like we are next door, even though I couldn’t possibly be farther away (until we install a kiln on the moon I guess). Honestly, if you find that you are spending any money on long distance calls, please let me introduce you to Skype and a nice (yet very reasonably priced) microphone. The quality is BETTER than a phone call. By far…
Kell and I chat and catch up, I usually keep her up past her bedtime since the sun is just starting to set here. I rather enjoy ‘competing’ live against her at jigzone.com. Something about the pressure of hearing her click puzzle pieces together while simulatenously feverishly assembling them myself…fun stuff!
The day wraps up in my hotel room. Here I am. Before I forgot the plug adapter at the previous hotel, I’d play a little Sims 2. Mostly I read, perhaps a magazine interpersed with little notes from Kelley, sometimes a book (working my way through ‘20th Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape’, a little dry but interesting). My Nomad MuVo is indespensible. I’ve only got one thing on it, but its in constant rotation: Pearl Jam, Wachovia Center Philidelphia, 10/03/05, all 30 songs. It was a good time and translated well to the recording. May I recommmend a song from that concert? Hard to Imagine.
While reading and enjoying the music, I’ll sip on a couple beers. I’ve found one to my liking: Monteith’s Golden Lager, brewed about an hour from here (three or four hour by bus/train). I think it’d go over well in the States, a mild beer with little/no bite, think Coors Light with just a hair more flavor.
Well thats it. Cell phone says 10:20pm, that means its time for sleep. I hope you’ve enjoyed following me through my virtual tour. I’ll try to get a new set of pictures. If the weather clears up, maybe we’ll spend a little time downtown tomorrow, Christchurch really is a beautiful city: they went the extra mile. If there is a bridge, it is elegant. If there is a wall, it is ornate. If there is a stream, it is landscaped. If there is a park, it is fragrant and be-fountainted.
Good night!
