There are so many people out there who will tell you that you can’t. What you’ve got to do is turn around and say, ‘watch me’.
Not my driving instructors
I had heard many stories about getting a California Drivers License. Like you must apply within 2 weeks of arrival, and ooh make sure you make an appointment to make an appointment at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) because the queues can be a bit of a hassle.
We had been here about 2 weeks and were in the process of purchasing a car. At the paperwork stage it turned out they needed or wanted a driver license number to register the car, and our Kiwi licenses were not going to do. So I checked the net to make an appointment at the local (ish) DMV and first appt was 2 weeks away, oh crap! This had become a priority as our rental cars (yes plural) were costing quite a few Kiwi shekels per day so I legged it down there early and started the queuing.
Now the DMV is American beauracracy at its finest. Really. The first queue is to get a number so you can join the next queue. This would not be so bad except all the people who had made appointments 2 weeks prior are allowed to cut in front of you.
Once they call your number you give your details (and money) and get a piece of paper that entitles you to join the queue for a photo. A temporary photo ID is presented quickly and you can now join the queue to get a written exam paper. After some multi-choice shenanigans (e.g. Which must you always give way to: A-Children, B-The President, C-Grizzly bears) you can re-join the exam paper queue to get your answers checked. This went reasonably smoothly given the large amount of time in queues in which to cram the CA road code. Then you are presented with an appointment in a few weeks time to sit the practical driving lesson.
A relatively straight-forward process but took about 3 hours. But most importantly I had a driver license number and was off to the car yard, yay!
The practical test involved a jaunt around the instructor’s home suburb pointing out interesting things and chatting about New Zealand, oh and trying not to run over children, Presidents or grizzly bears.
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We have recently gone through a major role reversal. Previously we were both working and Helen was doing about 95% of food prep, I was doing most of the washing/clean up. Now she has a serious job and I’m not working so it’s me doing 95% of food prep and all other house “work”.
This arrangement is obviously taking some adjustment time but the biggest thing has been to try to roll with the ups and downs. It is so easy to fall into the criticising role of “you’re not doing it how I do it” therefore it’s wrong. This is not a long-term strategy. It is much more constructive to bite your lip and say thank you. If something really is a problem then it must be dealt with, but in reality it’s seldom serious. Constructive criticism can be useful but too much of it risks becomming a nag.
With noisy demanding kids and a spouse that’s rarely around during the week days, so what if it takes me half an hour longer to prepare the evening meal? Learning from my own mistakes is a great way for me to improve and become more efficient.
A little patience and thanks goes a long way.
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Our youngest visits in the middle of the night maybe once per week. Initially this is nice but man does she wriggle! And not just while she is awake. After she falls asleep I don’t know if she is jogging or doing prep for joining a rodeo, or what?!? We certainly never sleep well with her with us. Usually after half an hour she can be escorted back to her own bed, or carried back asleep. Sometimes she goes from our bed to her older sister’s, and luckily the older one can sleep through anything.
When they were little they were in our bed more. I think it is good bonding time especially when they’re still breast feeding. But as they get older there are plenty of other opportunities for bonding that don’t involve waking up with little feet in your face.
You can be a much more effective parent if you are not tired. Less tired => more sex => happier parents => happier kids => better family. Well that’s a nice male perspective on it anyway!
In my spare time while not transporting children around the Bay Area, buying groceries and doing laundry I am helping out at a web start-up called JuiceBoxJungle.com. They launched quietly today so check it out. Here is their first offering. Actually this is kind of a test for me and for the website.
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So to the question, do I over-praise my kids? I think no. In fact if anything as a New Zealander and a quiet person I am at risk of not giving enough praise. Probably have a bit of the tall poppy thing going on like a lot of Kiwis. That said I certainly reward when it’s due. After all mine are the smartest most clever kids around 
Yes, cold
It had been a few days since my last ride and I was beginning to get a bit antsy. Various things had conspired against me including the weather. It seems that something closely resembling winter has arrived to my sunny California. There were various reports of rain (3rd time in 2 months, yeh!) so I’d done some prep at the local REI, no rain was going to stop me. And it turns out it was also quite cold… mid-week, raining and cold, the perfect conditions to bag some forbidden trails.
So I rugged up and headed out into the drizzle – 6 layers including 2 jackets, fancy gloves, gimpy under-helmet cap, etc. As I rode the rain stopped and things started to clear. There were some fuzzy clouds shrouding the hills that looked a bit dubious. I climbed Alpine Rd and the cloud cleared enough to reveal a dusting of snow, fun! I started near sea level and at about 400m I hit the dirt and the first snow, still very wet dripping from the trees etc. I was horrified to see two bike tracks ahead of me! They looked quite fresh so I upped the pace a bit and caught them just as the snow started to become thick on the trail. Yeah now I was bagging fresh snow. There were heaps of bobcat tracks and eventually I spotted one making a hasty exit into the forest.
At the top (about 700m) there are no trees so there was plenty of snow, I guess about 6 inches via my primitive measuring stick. Conditions were primo with the snow squeaking and plenty of traction, straight line climbing and descending was good although any speedy turn sharper than about 90 degrees seemed to require falling off…
I started the main descent back to home which is about 10km downhill. The beginning is sweet single track but I had to do lots of crashing through low hanging foliage loaded with snow. This filled me up with snow in every possible place and I had to stop before the really fast section to clear out helmet vents, gloves, collar etc.
A fun ride but took a while to thaw out. Yay for a hot shower and coffee.
Winter fun
Padded seat
Monte Bello OSP
Turkeys
Well I always knew there would be week where the homesick thing kicked in and probably there will be more in future. Something about Thanksgiving, everyone here said it’s their favourite US holiday. They like that it’s low key and no pressure, just family, friends and food.
We had a wonderful invite; good friends who are really generous and very welcoming. The girls did a really cute “concert” with a turkey song and a little act. We ate, drank and laughed.
But like any time where everyone else is spending family time, I was expecting Thanksgiving to be a time where our family felt a little homesick. It’s taken a week to figure out that that’s actually the case. Everyone a bit low, a bit more easily made anxious and a bit short on patience. For me, I felt tired, incredibly tired. And no appetite (imagine that). The only clue this was homesickness was a crazy set of, what can only be classed as, flashbacks, really intense sensory experiences of Wellington. A flash of the smell of the waterfront in the morning, the clear light on the Tararuas when you look up the harbour. The sound of the clickity-clack of the trolley bus lines.
I even found myself going out for a drive mid morning from the office (located right by the airport) to watch for NZ8. How sad is that?
So we focus on the cool stuff and the Fly My Pretties song of the same name.
Moments before the "third umpire incident"
Well actually New Zealand E third-11 reserves vs Barron Park Room 9 at the Barron Park Elementary School Oval.
Although slightly unusual for an American sports fan, Lucy’s teacher is a keen follower of cricket (and Rugby and Football, but that’s for another time). This provided an opportunity to show the class a curious “sport”, and to get Lucy to show a little of her NZ life.
It seems that when explaining cricket to folks in America you start out with “well the nearest sport is baseball but it’s completely different”. And when explaining it to 3rd graders we threw our hands in the air and took the youtube approach of a “this is what cricket looks like” viewing, followed by Q&A and some hands-on.
We watched highlights of an exciting game for the Black Caps – which pretty much means any game that New Zealand beats Australia. We watched a few minutes of a 2007 one-day game in Hamilton where Australia set a ludicrous total of 346 for only 5 wickets. Things went typically average for NZ after matching Australia’s 5 wickets for a third of the required total. At this point NZ decided what-the-heck and went ballistic to set all kinds of records and win in the last over with no wickets to spare, phew! No worries mate.
We had a bit of a Q&A session, some notable quotes: “are there real bats?”, “there are no bases”, “that hit was a fowl”, “he’s running with the bat”. All good fun. One class member seemed to know many details of the game but professed to be “just guessing”. I suspect a plant from the teacher maybe? Will check the replays.
Next was the practical. We massed on the “oval”. With one batter, one bowler, and twenty fielders all busting to swing the bat and hurl the ball things were a little hectic! There is no regular sport here in the US where a ball is thrown over-arm and this led to some amusing moments and a few replays of infamous NZ vs AUS historical moments! At one point another teacher passed by and offered “Typical, is that cricket teacher N?”. Perfect, sledging is part of the “modern” cricket game.
Excellent fun with most kids having a bat and a bowl. No one retired hurt even with a “flying bat” incident. A rematch is definitely on.
Not the VP office
Well today is election day. I’m having a “desk day”, researching a couple of companies for a deal team I am on and digging data. In the background I have the Radio NZ coverage of the US election and it’s very good (of course). I am sure they are reading the mood of the nation accurately and that all the commentary around this being an “historic” day is quite true. However, in the VP office, it feels like everyone has already celebrated. Maybe it’s because one of the guys in our team has set up a hugely successful group called Cleantech for Obama and has all the inside info, maybe it’s because they figure it’s not something to really talk much about on the day or maybe it’s just the fantastic foresight that venture capital firms need to have and the crystal ball has “spoken” in the form of polls, but, it’s really pretty quiet.
So when I printed off Jon’s and my NZ special voting forms, there was quite a flurry of interest – “oh do you guys have an election toooo?”. This resulted in a long discussion about the NZ system – the various players, strategic voting and role of the minor parties. I was forced to admit that I was ignorant to the policies of the “Bill and Ben Party”, had only ever heard of two out of the fourteen candidates in Welly Central and had no idea whether I could actually vote for the Maori Party (cause I just might if I can). Now, accents are a real problem here and taking care not to speak too fast is something I have to be constantly aware of. I’ve come to recognise the slightly polite, but perplexed, look that people here get when I talk too fast and they think they’ve heard it but it really didn’t sound right. In this case I picked up pretty quickly that everyone had heard me say one of the “fringe” parties that I – kind of – support (but would never vote for) was the Aoteoroa Legalise Cannibalism Party. At least no one will take my lunch from the fridge here!
The “comparing of notes” that goes on with voting is really interesting. While the Presidential Vote seems a done deal, the propositions are a hot issue. Along with the main vote for Obama or McCain, there are a whole bunch of propositions – teaching gay marriage in schools, renewable energy etc etc. We’ve been watching TV ads and seeing signs on driveways for the whole time we’ve been here. But one that had previously failed to get my attention has given me one of the best examples of the San Franciscan sense of humour as well as of the democratic process here…where with a little effort (and a bunch of lawyers) anyone can get anything to be a “prop”. And everyone here in the office (by my informal, statistically unsound poll) seems to have voted “yes”. And now it seems that there is a reasonable chance that the “Oceanside Water Pollution Control Centre” will actually be renamed as the “George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant”. It seems this means, in practical terms, changing the sign on the building and reprinting tour brochures (should you be lucky enough to go on a school trip to the poo plant). Once again California leads the way, on Cleantech and Dirty. And if you don’t believe me…
But more seriously, watching the Wall Street Journal over the past 9 months, I’ve seen the commentary move all over the policy spectrum. But this past weekend’s oped really summed this election up for me – that the top priority for whoever wins is rebuilding America’s ability to be seen as a global leader, using diplomacy not bombs and isolation. Quote; “For eight years, the United States has been in self-imposed exile, and that is one reason Mr. Bush’s presidency has failed on so many levels. After Tuesday, let’s rejoin the world.” Three cheers for that. Here is the full column.
Pumpkins
So it’s Halloween and we feel this is an induction of sorts. So much pressure… the “are you able to be really fit in here?” test.
We were lucky enough to get a soft landing (unlike the US economy) and were invited to celebrate with some fellow kiwis who live in Menlo Park. I met Ben at MORGO in August and since then we have hit it off with our similar senses of humour and our loyalty for all things kiwi; wanting to find a real way of helping NZ companies connect with the valley ecosystem without it becoming the main for reason for being here.
We checked out the address and decided our Audi was the better part of valour (which was just as well as the gates to the street only opened for Merc’s, Lexus and Audi, our 2005 impostor just managing to sneak through). There had been some wind (not Jon) in the previous 24 hours and all the autumn leaves had fallen in the street. Gorgeous. And the houses and decorations were sensational. Sophie was dressed as a mermaid and Lucy was dressed as… well a diversion is required…
When we left NZ, we threw out all the kids’ clothes and promised them new wardrobes (all part of “fitting in”, not feeling different). With the kiwi dollar tanking way beyond our worst case scenarios, our cash flow situation has been dire (cars aside). SO… the kids have been dressed in rags and threadbare clothes. It all got a bit much for Lucy who struggled this week. Upon advancing this story to a sympathetic ear at Vantage Point (who shall remain nameless yet the object of gratitude) we were loaned $500 for Lucy to have a “makeover”. Well what more can a girl ask for?!? She went mad at Old Navy and refused to dress in her fairy costume… only wearing her new outfits. As we trick or treated, if she was asked what she was, her reply was “I’m a NZ fashion model”. Well, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Anyhow, the neighbourhood was beautifully decorated, every home quite OTT and all the children suddenly released for their one day a year of being something other than the perfect suburban offspring. It was quite the experience… we had a fabulous evening and can’t wait for the next instalment. We tried our best in Cluny Ave to get the Halloween spirit going but, in the end, it’s a US thing and they really do know how to do it.
Big shake
