Our first guests!

Well, our first guests to New Zealand have arrived. Runi and Walter flew in early Wednesday morning around 4-5 AM. They handled the jet lag pretty well and managed to stay up till 7:30 their first night and maybe 10:30 second night.

Our first day was spent relaxing around Auckland. We walked up to a vegetarian cafe at the top of our hill and got a little exercise and showed them our neighborhood a bit. We then went over to Parnell Village which is basically the next area over at the top of the hill from us. I work here from the Starbucks once in a while and we also use the butcher and baker up their. They are the only area to offer free internet that I can find. The community offers the internet free as a perk to its visitors and residents on its main street which is very nice for me. I work at home most of the time so it gets a bit boring and a change of pace is nice to focus my consulting work.

While in Parnell I worked for a few hours and they walked around with Jen and then we met up in Newmarket which is the other big shopping area near us. Walter got a haircut and we had Sushi for lunch (don't worry I ate in Parnell before coming over at a great place called Pan Asia which has $8-9 lunch specials and very fresh and healthy asian foods).

We got some groceries at Foodtown next, then walked to the Warehouse to get some extra bedding since our stuff has STILL not arrived from the states. Its been 2-3 months now. It is due I think in the next due weeks, or at least that is the latest estimates. It should have been here weeks ago.

At night we had a bit of dinner and just rested around the house and watched a little Outrageous Fortune which is an interesting New Zealand show.

Thursday we got up bright and early, packed and got a cab to the airport area where we rented a camper van. The orientation on the camper van and getting out of the airport seemed to take 2-3 hours, but finally we hit the road south and saw some awesome and very beautiful countryside. We drove most of the day and took the More scenic route 2 instead of route 5. We ended up at lake Rotorua in the evening at our bed and breakfast which is called Clover Downs (www.cloverdowns.co.nz). This is a working farm and B&B and is quite quaint. We had dinner at the top of a nearby mountain after taking a gondola ride up. It was an all you can eat buffet and man did we eat. I think Walter went for at least 7-8 platefuls of dinner and deserts and the rest of us packed it in as well. Next back to the room where we watched a VHS version of Intolerable Cruelty, then off to sleep. This morning we have breakfast and a farm tour ahead of us. They actually have deer and ostrich's right outside our window! Runi's friend is thinking of buying this place, so we wanted to check it out.

The rest of the week we will probably sleep in the camper van and we plan on heading south to Lake Tapoa then on to the wine regions of Napier and finally to Wellington and Lower Hutt to take in the big city and see some of the Lord of the Rings filming locations. We are going to drive back up the west coast to Auckland next week and then hang in Auckland and do day trips for a few days. Then it is off to Sydney (Jen has to stay back for school sadly) to visit Ed and Steve and see the wonders of Australia!

Pictures coming soon!

Cheers,

Matthew

Spring.. er Study Break!

Well, it's spring break here and a beautiful day to boot. I spent most of the past few days at school studying and writing a few papers due the day we get back in session. School here is very focused on papers, not tests and not much on group projects or presentations. I still find it hard, but more so because I don't know how I'm doing. They just don't give any feedback. Most students in my undergrad classes actually seem frightened of the teachers.

I listened to a doctoral candidate lecture about stone tool remnants in Egypt last week. I'm a little tripped up by how far out on a thread the pros go in archaeology. It almost seems like they're making stuff up. One prof told me to trust the data, but I have a hard time with that when I come from a background in business - worse, marketing! I know you can prove anything with data, and spin it to meet your needs. What's to keep me from thinking they make the data fit their needs? At this point I stop and say, am I really dumb or really smart 8-)

Today's picture is the distal end of a human femur. The one on the left is a normal adult bone, on the right one with severe arthritis. Now you know why it hurts!

Archy

Alright, suffice to say then that the vices are good here (yay for coffee, and beer for the most part - but don't get me started on the bottled alcopops they also drink!). Now on to something from the History Channel...

Today I looked at pelvises (pelvii?). We were learning to sex individuals based on skeletal morphology. (Sounds pretty smart, eh?) My first thought about school is that I need to enhance my vocab. I speak like some kind of Valley Girl, and now lost in a sea of Brit-speakers it is amplified into quasi-ditz. So I keep a little flashcard notebook. Who'd have thought at 38 (39 in a month, eh?) that I would be transcribing words from the dictionary?

I spent all afternoon reading about Melanesian prehistory. More specifically, non-Paupua New Guinean prehistory after Lapita. I'm utterly enthralled, and can't say how excited I get trying to study. There's so much work that needs to be done in this arena, and scholars of this locale constantly refer to projects yet to be done. I am so ready! Just need to learn my craft. Sigh! If only I could rewind the tape 20 years I could be out there mucking around. Then again, computers were not ready for me at that time...

Mmmm... Beer.....

Well you knew it would happen eventually. A post specifically about the beer here. Overall, I would have to say I am "pleased" with a bit of longing. Most of the people here have a liking for simpler and less complex beers. They like the lager category of beers and drink pale yellow watery drinks. In my quest for some good ales, I have been all over town and have only found one IPA anywhere. Here's the run down on the major brands, bars and the future.

There are 4 major breweries around here from the looks of it. Lion Red is the BUD style brewery and is very popular. There are 3 others, Monteiths, Speights (Duneden), and Mac's. Monteiths is kind of your run of the mill brew pub style beer. Picture some random brew pub that makes 6 of their own beers. Most of the flavors are good ranging from an Original Ale, to a stout like dark beer and a few others in between. Although they are tasty, they are a bit uninspired and lack crispness and deeper flavors. Also there are very few hops to be found.

Speights is the big south island brewer from what I can tell. They also have a small line of several beers and I would just label them as almost identical in quality and flavor as Monteiths. They do have one brew called Distinction Ale which is quite tasty.

Macs is the crazy micro brew style company here and have outlandish advertising, and their own line of brew pubs around town with cheap (think $5-7) beers on tap. Some of their notable beers are Sassy Red (a beautiful bitter), Mac's Gold, a decent lager that is very popular and the daring Hoprocker which is a super hoppy Pilsner! Mac's is definitely my favorite beer line so far and is available at just about any store and on many taps around the city. Most pubs so far seem to have one of these three lines in them and that's about it. Sometimes they will have Guinness or some other beer to augment it.

As far as places to drink, there are a ton and I have only been to a few so far. Most cafes and restaurants are "licensed" to sell beer and some have BYO. Of note so far is the Belgian Beer Cafe - http://www.belgian-beer-cafe.co.nz/ This place has all the favorites from tons of Leffe on tap to Hoegarden, Stella, Chimay, Delerium, Duvel, Kwak, etc... They don't have an exhaustive list, but rather about 6-10 brewers featured only. They also have very few bottles beyond this. A place like this I would expect to have 100 different bottled beers for what they can't keep on tap, but alas, they don't. Still, it is a great place with good food. Some of the beer is pricey, but if you pick and choose what is on special or less expensive, you won't break the bank. They also have decent food and good atmosphere (at the Ponsonby location at least).

I have also gone to a place called the Cock and Bull. It is styled after a British pub and they had their own line of 5-6 beers. Most of them ranged from a lager draught to a nice wheat beer called Busty Blonde. The real gems were a Belgian style named Monk's Habit which has won local awards. This was $7 for a small snifter but was worth it. The pricey Mayhem was the only IPA I can find on tap just about anywhere unless you count Touys (which tastes like piss and has no hops). $10 bought me a pint of this since it was 6%. The barkeep was super friendly and told me about the local beer scene and let me try everything for free. They were out of Epic Pale Ale which is one of the best beers around here and very hoppy in character. Tastes more like an IPA. I got a six pack on the way home and tried it last night with Jen.

We also found a bar called Shakespeare's which has a custom line of beers from various places. They have about 12 taps and most of their stuff was VERY fruity. Think lambic almost. The stuff was almost sickeningly sweet, so I wasn't overly impressed. The beer did have a lot of character and flavor though and most of the percentages were 6-12%! Most of the beer you buy at the store here is 4% sometimes.
I would go back and try a few more beers here, but if you don't like sweet, stay away.

Jen and I tried out The Bog a few weeks ago which was a local Irish Bar. It was nice enough and is in our neighborhood but only had 1-2 beers from each of the above companies and Guinness. We did see a nice Aussie Rugby match on the tellie though.

None of the beers in Auckland, New Zealand are crazy flavorful, but many are a nice treat for a cold day and there are a lot of middle of the road staples. So instead of seeing a lot of crap on one end and a few good beers at the other end of the spectrum, everything is clustered firmly in the good/competent category with a few exceptions. It's nice to know we won't want for a good a brew when we are in the mood, but I still have cravings for a few brands back in the United States. I think the future for NZ is a slow move to more and more flavorful beers. Over the last few years the trend is starting to show that more people like Ales and more hoppy flavors or bitter flavors. This will hopefully lead to more and more companies like Mac's and Epic being able to take chances on more and more flavorful styles. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Cheers,

Matthew

LB arrives

Just returned from the cattery, and I'm happy to say Lucy has arrived. She's shaken AND stirred. I was very upset that she wouldn't come out of her kennel to greet us for almost five minutes, and she had this wild look on her face. But then she emerged and said her hellos, and showed me she still knew how to drink and pee.

The Pussy Cat Lodge is a bit "airy" for an indoor cat; the areas are not completely sealed from the outside with a big space up top open to outdoors - save some chain link fence. As you can see, it is chilly here this time of year. So now safe in my warm house all I can think about is how cold my Lucy is tonight...

Cuppa

So, I'm happy to report coffee here is _excellent_ (with Bill & Ted emphasis). The packaging and ad campaigns are also entertaining. Here's this morning's brew: