2kiwis

It’s Keryn’s birthday today, so we’re going out for dinner somewhere tonight. Other than that there’s not much to say. We went and saw the Thames Barrier close on Sunday morning, which wasn’t that exciting really, but it was interesting. We’ll have photos of it in the next year or so I guess (i’ve given up promising dates now). We’ve also got a Wedding date, venue and photographer. It’ll be 17th September 2003 at Ross Priory with John Hendry taking the snaps.

I had a nice surprise this morning when I got out of bed. I had a shower and went downstairs, turned on the TV and had a look at Sky Sport. What was playing? Waikato vs Wellington, live, and Keith Lowen from Waikato was in the process of scoring a try! Waikato went on to win in a thrilling game that must have been like last weeks win over Canterbury. They tend to have Australian Rugby League on Sunday mornings and they had a few NPC games in the first two weeks but I didn’t know they still do it. Anyway, its great to be able to watch Waikato when they’re doing so well. Actually, it’s great to watch any NZ rugby, especially live, especially when it’s Waikato and a bonus when they win.

We haven’t done much today, just lazed around home. Keryn rang her parents and that generally takes an evening/morning. I went to the supermarket a couple of times and we had a fun time avoiding a large spider while eating dinner. Turns out it was a common house spider, which we’ve seen a couple of times. We also seem to see the large ones, there’s more information here.

[ image removed at the request of a concerned friend ]

Recently I’ve cut down massively on CD purchases, but I have managed to get a few. A lot of the recent purchases are NZ artists, like Dave Dobbyn and Anika Moa. Anika’s album, ‘Thinking Room’, is really good. I also bought an album by a British artist, Gemma Hayes, when I bought Anika’s one. This is also a very good album, called ‘Night on my Side’. These two were actually bought from NZ, via SmokeCDs.com. For some strange reason its cheaper to buy the CD’s and have them send here than it would be to buy them here in the shops, I just have to wait a week or so for them to arrive.

The best album I’ve bought recently though is by Cara Dillon, she’s an Irish folk singer and she has the most beautiful voice. I’ve actually seen her play live as well, though I didn’t realise it at the time. When I went and saw David Gilmour (of Pink Floyd) play the opening act was a band called Ghostland. While we’re here, Ghostland is very good too, I bought their album just after the new year. One of the guest singers on the Ghostland album is Cara, and she sang at the concert. We’re going to see her perform at the ‘Return to Camden Irish Festival’ in October. I think that’s about all for now, bye.

Last night we went over to out old landlords new flat to pick up some keys so we could get the final gas and power meter readings at our old place. Actually, Selman doesn’t like the word landlord, we are friends instead. So we went and saw our friend, I should say. Selman and Kristina (he’s Turkish, she’s Finnish) are finally having their flat redecorated and remodelled after 3 years of arguing with their neighbour about planning consents, so they are currently living in another flat they own which has itself just been done up. The decoration for this new flat is quite similar to what we had, white walls, black marble in the bathroom and kitchen and floor to ceiling heating. Selman let us in and sat us down while he told us about the new place and what they’re doing with their redecoration and rebuilding. He offered us a glass of wine each and then asked if we wanted a pizza while we were there. Selman had family coming around later that night and he wanted to test out the cooking method. We said yes and Selman went to the freezer where he had put 20 small pizzas he had put together earlier – he was quite proud of the pizzas and how easy they were to serve, basically take them out, put them in the oven and heat for 10-15 minutes and there’s your pizza, ready to eat.

Selman was basically treating our visit as a trial run for the family visit later, so when the pizza was ready he put them on plates and set them on the table with knife, fork and napkins. We sat down and were treated to dinner. Basically it was like a restaurant meal and that’s how Selman was working things, talking about maybe making up a menu and getting into the act with serving us food and drink. Selman had also prepared a salad, had bread and a traditional Turkish yoghurt dip, tomatoes and chillies.

The pizza and bread were very nice. While we were talking after finishing our meal the door rang and the relations turned up. Selman ran off and answered the door while Keryn and I looked at each other. All of a sudden we became part of the evening and we spent the next hour and a half with Selman, Kristina and relations having more food and drink. Most of the time we were just spectators, Selman was talking mostly in Turkish and we could only pick up the odd bit of conversation. Having said that we didn’t feel left out, Selman and Kristina talked to us and we got to share in all the food, including some absolutely divine Turkish variations on the kebab – we’ll have to find out the name of that dish. Eventually, after having been plied with much food and drink, we made our excuses and left to fond farewells. We left and went back to the old flat and got the meter readings and then went home to bed, somewhat bemused at the evenings events.