Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

The room my team and I are in at work is often referred to as the Orange Room … for obvious reasons … my desk for starters. Other than my team of 2-3 as it has grown to in the last year, an extra can fit – and we’ve had a stream of them in that time. I’ve collected up a few Room Rules as we’ve cycled through people and got a reputation for being quite upfront about communicating them on someone’s first day sitting in the room! One poor guy ended up changing his eating habits to salad for fear of breaking the ‘smelly lunch’ rule … much to his partner’s delight.

So another new person arrived in the room this week – a Xero old-timer but has never shared a workspace with me. By now there were rumours of the rules being documented and the person vacating the desk next to me said he couldn’t get away fast enough. So I welcomed our new room buddy with an emailed copy of the rules, which I circulated around the whole office to show just how real they were, and so far so good. He’s been a very quiet and well-behaved neighbour and he’s had rather a lot of visitors and sympathy – people coming to see him to make sure he’s OK!

This morning I got to work and after him telling me yesterday that he could only abide by 2 of the 11 rules, I found that he’d printed them and stuck them up on the wall. Good man!

They are fairly unreasonable:

And a joke of course!!

There’s no doubt Wellington has had a lot of rain this year, not that we were here for the start of winter! However, before we get fully into spring, we’re being treated to some gorgeous blue, albeit freezing, days. Hard to imagine that the rest of the country is having rain and wind that’s causing huge power outages in the north and so much snow roofs are collapsing in the south – for once Wellington is some kind of oasis instead of that narrow part of the weather funnel dealing with every kind of weather trying to escape through the gap between the north and south islands.

So there have been loads of photos posted on Twitter the last couple of days showing how blue and beautiful Wellington can be. I joined in. My photo from yesterday was this:

And today I went out with The Mister and friend to watch them play catch:

The psychology and pleasure of catch is somewhat unknown to me but it seemed that it boiled down to who could throw hardest. I was allowed to throw to Simon, sure it kind of plopped in front of him due to the distance between him and The Mister being so vast, but they said I didn’t throw that bad for a girl!

Everywhere you go around central Wellington at the moment there are diggers and cones and holes and muddy patches – guess we’re sprucing up the town for the rugby world cup next year? Obviously there’s a lot of activity around Manners Street for the new bus route but I’ve notice work elsewhere as well. God I just hope they’re not putting more slippery cobbles everywhere – black asphalt may be ugly but so wonderfully practical.

Before posting about my 4th stint on jury service this week I looked back at my last week of service – it’s all pretty much the same! I had to spend 2 mornings there this week – Monday and Thursday, both days was balloted into the jury room and on Thursday was called up to be juror no. 12. The closest seat, the shortest possible walk-time for the lawyers to scrabble through their lists to find my name then check me out. As I approached the jury box the lawyers were giving me the once-over as they normally do so I returned in kind: I made full, stony-faced eye-contact first with the defense lawyer, then with the crown lawyer before approaching the box and using an almost imperceptible shake of my head declined the bible being offered with as much disdain as was socially acceptable and then taking a step up to my seat. “Challenge defense!” Oh! Guess my stare-down worked. For whatever reason I reckon that put them off – probably thought I was some kind of staunch, no-nonsense ‘modern’ bitch of a woman who would have no mercy and no likelihood of wavering on a guilty verdict. Either that or they saw my Xero t-shirt and decided that I was a goody-goody brown-nosing my employer, eager to please and given the larger number of women on the jury already would be easily swayed to their way of thinking and would side with a guilty verdict no matter if I had my own doubts.

There was a massive wait on Thursday, over an hour, while a previous trial finished and the 40 of us waiting for the jury box ballot just had to sit in the waiting room and not leave the premises. Hmmm, right over morning tea time. Out came the milk arrowroots (plain cookies). I really wanted a coffee. So I tweeted thinking one of my followers might work nearby and could deliver a coffee. The Mister tweeted back that he’d do it! Couldn’t believe it and texted him not to as I was beginning to get nervous that we’d be called into the jury room while I was ‘illegally’ outside getting the coffee. However, next minute I got a text that he was outside! So I formed what I’d say in my head if the court attendant asked me where I was going when I got to the lift (cigarette break (those people were allowed outside!)) and also what I’d say if someone asked me if I went all the way around to Fuel to get it (was outside for a cigarette break when a friend walked by, we got chatting, I was lamenting the lack of good coffee so they offered me theirs, oh how nice!) braced myself, and set off downstairs. No-one stopped me, it was great to see The Mister unexpectedly, no-one asked me where I’d been when I got back and the coffee was goooooood. So I didn’t have to lie in court!

There was the same collection of people as previous visits, people who I’ve come to think of as those in our city who don’t have anywhere else to be or aren’t so important that they can’t give up a couple of mornings a week to sit around waiting. I know that’s a dreadful generalisation but that’s what it feels like. It’s totally different than any of the other ‘public’ activities and meetings/conferences I’ve been to lately – no tapping away on laptops (I think there was 1 in the group of 130-ish people) and a handful of iPhones. It struck me as rather ironic (if that’s the right way to use this word Castle (!)) that the jury attendance induction DVD had a whole section specifically on the importance of attending jury service, what you learn by taking part with testimonials from people who’ve done it and said it was interesting and an important part of keeping our democratic society going … they should put that online or send out the DVD to people with the summons! If we showed up to do jury service we probably already realise all that so the message is wasted on us! They need to get some fresh blood in there!

A couple of people of note – the 3 ladies that brought along knitting the second day and formed some kind of knitting club (am SO doing that next time) and the woman that sat near me very loudly sucking her way through an entire packet of Mentos lollies, bashing them against her teeth and slurping. I cannot believe she didn’t realise the sound was audible outside of her own head!

So, this is what band practice is all about – Rocktober on 1 October. There’s an invite-only launch party at 7.30pm, then the main event at 10.30pm. Launch party features The Mister’s band, main event features DJ’s. All loud banging crashing rock music!

Check out the Rocktober websiste for ticket details. If you want to go:

• Get a ticket
• Get your name on the invite-only guest list either by emailing the organiser dave@rocktober.co.nz (tell him I sent you) or adding your name to their guest list in Facebook.
• Get a black t-shirt and some ear plugs.

So we have to fit band practice into our weekly schedules for a while! The Mister has been cajoled into joining a band of other hopeful wanna-be-rockstars, to play at an event called ‘Rocktober’ in October – an evening of 80’s rock from this band and a rock DJ to raise money for The Cancer Society.

Lucky for me it’s a borrowed kit. For now …

Last night we went to the second Ignite Wellington event – the first being the night before we left Wellington for New York back in March.

The aim of the evening is to get people enthusiastic about Wellington and about possibilities – people get up on stage and speak for exactly 5 minutes to exactly 20 slides. No matter their profession, their talk can be about that or some experience they’ve had or some random interest they have.

Last night’s event was great, and I rate it better than the first. People spoke about everything from starting their own company to selling real estate on the moon to outdoor graffiti knitting to wallpaper to game design. You can see the full list of speakers on the Ignite Wellington website plus a video of each talk.

In the talk about graffiti knitting there was a slide of the tree cozies and you can see the one I knitted!

I wrote down one thing from each speech – not necessarily something that sums up the presentation, but just something I liked or remembered.

• Tell your kids that Santa’s not real before it’s too late.
• Wellington has a leisure culture.
• Wellington has some ugly public spaces.
• Luck is an important factor between success and failure.
• Do something to stimulate your grey matter.
• I never want to finish the boat or I’ll have to find another expensive dream.
• I skate through life on a thin veneer of knowledge.
• If you’ve got a round logo then we’re working with you.
• Wallpaper is for every day, it’s not saved for best like the good dinner set.
• I’ve made a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.
• Intellectual property is not just an idea, it has to have a place in the real world.
• Moon, Mars and Venus are the most popular locations for extra-terrestrial real estate.
• Our lives are lived in boxes and we experiment and play to learn the limits.

The next Ignite Wellington will be in another 6 months or so, open to anyone to speak or attend so go along for some thought provoking stuff.

After doing the rounds of our CEO and other top management who live out of Wellington, through local staff who have kids and can’t drop plans at the last minute, we were called upon to represent Xero at the NZ Internet Industry Awards held at Parliament again this year.

Last year we got all dollied up and Xero won the Best Business Application award and The Mister gave a speech and we were photographed and crowded around and felt rather glamourous (previous posts: Awards at Parliament and Who are they?)

This year Xero didn’t enter the awards but as winners of one last year we had to present the award to this year’s winners in that category. The Mister didn’t have to make a speech, just stand on the spot and in manner of lady handing out the Oscar trophies, pass a certificate to each nominee as they came up on stage, then the award to the winner.

It’s always nice representing Xero and getting out there where people know the company because they’re investors or customers and to receive many compliments for the product and company overall. It’s incredible how many people know about it now and how amazing they all think it is to work there. Working hard inside the company, we often lose sight of that, so it was a good evening out. And the bite-sized pavlovas and lemon meringue pies served as Petit Fours were amazing!

Here’s a blurry photo from my phone.

And the official one of us from the NZ Internet Industry Awards website.

Have finally got back to Nikau since coming back from New York. With it not being open on a Sunday it’s slightly more inconvenient for us to go, having so much to jam in on a Saturday. However, we called in for Saturday breakfast this weekend.

We we welcomed back with hugs like old friends and it was great to see familiar faces there and a few new hair styles. We were out of view of Kelda (boss chef) but somehow she got wind we were there and came out to say hi and welcome us back – we felt Very Important.

Didn’t have a date scone (gasp!) as it was breakfast time, so had my old fav toast and peanut butter – something I hardly have at Nikau with us never usually being there for breakfast. Their homemade milk toast is really good – I only need one slice as it’s delicious and thick and you can actually taste milk in the crust.

My coffee was delivered in my special cup (even after all these months!) – good texture and well made although I have decided I really don’t like the flavour of Supreme’s Fair Trade Organic beans – it has a very distinctive ‘green’ taste, quite acidic, but I have no choice until they switch beans which I don’t think they’ll do being an organic cafe. It was great to be back and next visit will have to be for a date scone.

I’m thrilled to see Nikau is blogging again too – well done guys!!

Nikau Gallery Cafe, City Gallery, Civic Square, Wellington @nikaucafe

Being back in Wellington is turning out to be OK – we’re being careful not to play the comparison game.

So far we’ve seen nothing too different, so it feels as though nothing has changed so it feels like we’ve only been away a couple of weeks. That’s a bit sad if you think about it, kind of reduces our trip of a lifetime to nothing, but for now it’s working. And it’s surprisingly enveloping being surrounded by orange again.

Some things we’ve noticed or done around Wellington since being back:

• First coffee was at Customs Brew Bar
• Moore Wilson’s was just the same

• The guys at Fuel remembered our order after 4 months (Jessie was still there)
• The Telecom angle-sided building on Willis Street is coming along.

• There’s some large stadium being built by the Kilbirne/Miramar/airport round-about.
• Dinner at Capitol was fantastic. The pumpkin and sage risotto probably the best risotto I’ve had there. The restaurant was so quiet when we arrived (about 6.30) and we worried things weren’t going too well for them but within half an hour it was full and bustling as normal.

• I baked! Made some orange cupcakes … and realised just how much orange we have in our kitchen!

• Been out for pub-ish lunches twice as people want to welcome us back to work. Which was nice despite lunching at places with rather large pub-ish meals (however managed to get a plate of veg rustled up at the first place, and pate at the second – had to leave half of both but at least I ate something!).

• Back in my same room at work but different desk. The Mister is back in his same spot. Mine’s OK for now, a little public on the edge and I haven’t got myself set up with keyboard, monitor etc and I have a new person to look at.

• Trying to think about whether we want to start up the same routines or not, seems we have a reputation for routine which makes us seem boring I guess, but we did give in to Hell’s Pizza last night (god it was good) and Gotham on Saturday morning, main reason being to catch up with our Short Dark Friend.
• Our tan lines are still visible for now in the brief moments of time when long sleeves or socks are off. The Mister has been rather upset that everyone says I look tanned but he doesn’t – his watch and jandal lines are impressive.
• Am making superb coffee again! The first one was a bit gritty but after that, glorious smooth milk and lovely rich taste. And I was very chuffed when someone I don’t know very well saw a photo of coffees I’d made and thought the photo was taken at a cafe!