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

Zipcars are fantastic! We’ve used a couple of cars since we’ve been here. They’re a bit like self-service rental cars – you become an accepted member, get a card and away you go!

We organised membership before we got here, it’s all online. We had to source and provide a copy of The Mister’s driving record as well! The only glitch in the process was that we couldn’t make a reservation for a car for the day we arrived without validating our membership, done by entering a number off our membership card. Being mailed to our new address. Hmm. So we had to cross fingers the card was in the mail box when we got there and cross other fingers that cars were available to use that Saturday.

Got off the plane the Saturday we arrived and cleared the mail box as soon as we got the apartment keys – bingo! The Zipcard was there. With a number on it. The Mister rustled up some pre-paid internet on his iPad and we went to the Zipcar website, entered the number and we were ready to make a reservation.

The Zipcar website is great – plug in where you live and the time you want a car and it lists all the cars that are in the neighbourhood and whether or not they’re available. We had no idea that in parking lots, basements of office buildings and apartment buildings there were so many cars! We thought they just lived in special Zipcar parking lots at a couple of locations dotted around city. Turns out there were a couple in the basement of an office block about 5 minutes walk away that had no bookings after the time we wanted it so we decided to book one of those.

If you wanted a specific type of car, 4-wheel drive, wagon, pick-up truck, unmarked car etc you might have to travel further, but so far there have always been small cars big enough to carry groceries or an ironing board close by.

Upon reservation success an email arrives with the name of the car and really specific directions on how to find it – which door of a car parking building to go into, whether or not you need to speak to a security guard, which street to exit on or return to and if you need to use a swipe card to exit the building it’s tucked into the visor. The car’s also equipped with an electronic fast pass unit so that you don’t have to pay bridge tolls. The names of our cars have been Mozart, Anthill and Mandy – 2 Mazda’s and an Audi A3. The cars have all been really clean when we’ve picked them up and full of petrol. You need to leave the car with at least three quarters of a tank of petrol.

The car is opened using the Zipcard, it’s electronic, so they don’t need people there to meet you or other drivers to hand over keys. There are huge fines if you deliver the car back to it’s spot late. You wave your Zipcard over a little thing that looks like a solar reader in the windscreen.

They keys are bolted into the car on a bungy cord and never leave the car.

The use of the car is charged onto your credit card and if you’re out on the road you can log into the site and see your reservation and if no-one else has it booked after you, you can extend out the time if needed – came in very handy when we were out at Ikea and the supermarket yesterday – got stuck in rather a lot of traffic!

Now we’ve used the cars a few times we see them all over the place in street lots with other cars as we’re walking around the place.

A fantastic idea. A little on the expensive side but fantastically convenient and an incredibly smooth operation.

We’re renting some space in a shared office in SOMA – just for New Zealanders. It’s an initiative funded by the New Zealand government and tech investors to give New Zealand companies who want to launch into the US a base to start from. The Kiwi Landing Pad as it’s called is 2 suites in this building which will eventually house a kind of entrepreneur launch-pad as well, offering space and services for new companies starting out. Xero is the first company in the suite we’re in and over the next few months we’ll be joined by other companies sending 1 or 2 of their staff out here to start their US operations.

It’s fairly rudimentary at the moment but every other day something new for the office arrives whether it be a water cooler, giant poster of some All Blacks, white board markers, cutlery or hooking up the front door intercom. We sit in our corner

with a view over the freeway.

Great to have somewhere so quickly to base ourselves.

With our first visitors due to arrive this weekend we set about assembling the sofa bed – which arrived in a very thin box from Ikea and was to miraculously transform into a sofa which transforms into a bed!

Ikea is an expert at DIY – everything comes flat-packed or shrink-wrapped and you’re to assemble it yourself – and because of that you don’t need your own tools. Bonus! We don’t have a mixing bowl, frying pan or iron, let alone a screw driver. Ikea assembly also requires you to interpret pictures – box-sofa-bed transformations certainly needed consultation with the instruction manual but it contained no words, only pictures. Before we set out I held up the instructions for The Mister to see and pointed pointedly at the first picture and translated for him – “don’t be a hero and huff and puff and shove things around and do the whole thing yourself and jam your finger and get shitty, get a helper and together you’ll smile and get it done.”

Yes, I agreed to be the helper and not the instructor so he could retain his man card 🙂 Off we went following the pictures. No parts left over and everything went how it should including some fairly complex bracket and spring thingies that are the transformation mechanism for sofa to bed to couch. And we were smiling proudly by the end of it!

Get all the pieces ready …

Bed bit done – flash too – it’s a slat bed … complete with complex bracket screw thing expertly attached with tiny allen key and spanner!

A couch …

A bed …

While we were playing house we also arranged some other bits and pieces we’d collected while out. Two very cool orange baskets I’m using as fruit baskets from Crate and Barrel – love that store, so much orange stuff!

The Mister reckons the apartment has definitely got an orange glow to it now.

We also discovered The Container Store – oh my god – floors of nothing but mostly plastic storage stuff – coat hangers, office supplies, laundry baskets, wardrobe shelving, all sorts of hanging/sliding/under bed storage for small pokey places, rubbish bins … you get the idea. One thing I wanted was something to keep all the bottles of stuff in that we use in the shower – being a shower over a bath, shampoo and face stuff was beginning to pile up around the edges of the bath and it’s SO annoying when you’re trying to clean around it. The shower head offered no ability to hang a basket type thing over it so we looked at the suck-on canister things. I was a bit dubious though, with heavy bottles of shampoo I thought whatever we got would slide down the wall. But enter the ‘super sucker’ – big suction cups and a kind of clipping mechanism so it uses it’s own weight to maintain suck – it’s brilliant! And very sturdy.

We’ve met a few people here who say going to the market at the Ferry Building is the thing to do on a Saturday morning. Off we went. Man the place is packed – all fruit and vegetables and other things like honey, salami, herbs, bread brought in fresh from the surrounding areas. We didn’t really know what to get, decided we’d get a range of vegetables and make a roast vegetable and aoili salad (despite it being summer) plus other fruit and vegetables for the week. Probably ended up costing the same as the supermarket – by the time you’ve handed over crumpled piles of $3 and $4 in $1 bills at every other store you lose track of what you’ve spent!

Definitely got a couple of handful of beans from one of these piles – quite a few varieties to choose from.

It became apparent that we were a bit unprepared for market shopping. We never really shopped at the markets in Wellington otherwise we might’ve taken along our re-usable shopping bag or cart on wheels. I was rather laden down wrestling with a huge sprouting bunch of basil, several golf-ball sized potatoes, berries, loaf of bread, herbs, coffee beans  – carrying as much as we could in these weird biodegradable supermarket shopping bags the market stalls had – they felt like skin, all flimsy and like they might tear at any second. When our shipped stuff arrives we’ll have our Moore Wilson’s bag and our Amy’s Bread Shop bag so we’ll be properly local!

Also, no tomato crisis here – loads of varieties and reasonable prices – got to see actual green tomatoes – green as in the variety not under-ripened. And tomatoes here taste so good – so ‘red’ and tomatoey … must be truly vine-ripened in the sun.

For weeks now walking to and from work, whenever we go passed the clothing store Superette on Victoria Street I always look in to see what their Baby Moosey is doing. It’s a small stuffed toy (I suppose) that seems to take up a different position each day in the store window – sometimes in the leaves on the floor, sometimes somewhere on the display, perhaps snuggled between 2 woolly hats, and sometimes up on the shelf with the bags or belts. Usually when we’re going that way the store is closed, or it’s a Saturday and there are too many people in there for me to go in for a pat. However, today, I had to go home in the middle of the day to do the final power metre reading and the store was basically empty so I got over my discomfort that someone like me shouldn’t really be in a store so trendy, especially when I just wanted to fondle the display, and off I went. Totally worth it! Lovely soft little Baby Moosey – thank you for making me smile every day no matter what I’d faced that day 🙂

Found an envelope of poetry that I wrote during my first stint at university, those moody years transitioning from teenager to adulthood – well so it would seem for me looking through these old pages typed on my electric typewriter. Produced a few depressing pieces, seems I had a problem with finding somewhere to be alone in the city and sunset! Here’s one as a #keepsake.

Ode to Denton Park

‘Til blue dusk the hands approach
Like the beginning of some bizarre horror movie.
Shadow crawls
beyond the soft breeze.
The breeze which ripples
But gently
The swings in Denton Park.

Patches are the rays
which once warmed the sunny yellow faces –
of daisies now enclosed in white.
Bent heads.
Fading are the rays to a world beyond
Up there –
cotton wool paradise
A muser’s haven.

Is this city silence?
The traffic away but here –
A faded sound.
The city surrounds, but –
only glimpses invade this green land.
Where life passes –
and the occasional creak, of
a swing, where
I
am the aerodynamic being
A blur of colour with
A beat of heart.
Heart

Heart

Sinks to the pit. I am suspended.
Again
I think. I muse and contemplate
Life … which I shouldn’t.
I can’t
without tears

The cold now prowls
bringing grey to this green.

The hands take flight –
Rushing
To a new, new day.

5 November 1988

Wow, I’m so grown up and chirpy now!

I cry every time I come across this and read it. The pencil is faded and the paper thin. #keepsake

Sometime after March 2, 1990

The hole is huge – and so is the ache. I just can’t explain the feeling – the force that hit me when I heard that it was Uncle John. I heard and saw the event twice on the TV news. The first time I was drawn to listening by the key words … Ardmore … Harvards … aerobatics team … and then I saw it. The ruin. The once handsome, proud world war fighter, a crumbled wreck – a mere sheet of distorted corrugated iron after a cyclone. But – a green Harvard – relief. He has a green one. Until but a few terrifying minutes later when it dawned on me, a creeping crawling realisation that made me feel ill, that one of Uncle John’s new toys was a GREY Harvard – like the mess on TV. The phone rings, and a distraught father on the other end chokes to a hysterical daughter, the ghastly, horrific news of a dearest friend once alive, now dead. I was shocked of course, and all I could do all day was think about how utterly repulsive it was that Uncle John lay mangled at the bottom of a six metre pit with his plane, his dream, passion and life destroyed on top of him – never to let him free.

Many horrible hours passed as I drifted about, stunned – the picture in my mind of Uncle John – his smile, his sparkling eyes, his tallness and amazing strength, his love of life and willingness to do everything and help anyone. Years of memories kept flooding back – best not to shut the door – smile and remember fondly the man, love him still – these things don’t have to stop just because his life did. Boy it’s hard to convince yourself of this – but you have to.

Many days also passed – always filled with happy memories but so much disbelief. Horrible times of choking and crying, a slow dawning that it was true and no amount of grasping was going to bring him back – just the kite-tail of memories floating above.

And in a minute of relative calm I all of a sudden sat bolt upright – Auntie Catherine … what was she going through? And their sons Paul and Colin? Their husband and father – never to return. It’s just too, too tragic. Nothing but. That’s what makes it so unbearable. Their house will be empty, the bike, Porsche and plane will roar no more. How will Auntie Catherine sleep? And then thoughts wander and more terrifying possibilities creep in, what if it was my family? Just can’t shut them out.

Blank faces, many of them look at me: faces that don’t know, faces that don’t understand, faces unsure of emotion, faces of fear – fear of not knowing what to do. Sue, Gareth and Damien helped me to regain a little strength, we talked openly – talked about the accident and life before it, for me, for Auntie Catherine.

And to the funeral. To be in Auckland – I was going that day anyway, Uncle John was going to pick me up from the airport – I was going to stay with them – what a terrible terrible turn of events. I clutch Mum at the airport and cry – she has taken it really badly – Uncle John played an important part in her life when it was difficult. Mine too. How can I help her? Everyone cries. They play his music. I hold back tears. The service was lovely. Brian spoke beautifully. I cry hard only when I see Auntie Catherine and the boys leave, even more when I step out into the sun and I’m alone. Many faces of strangers pass by me – everyone is comforting someone else. Mum and Dad meet up with old friends united by the worst of reasons. But we were all there for John and Catherine, all grieving in our own way, and all loving them as we never have before.

I love you Uncle John.

About a week after 2 March 1990

John was a friend of Dad’s from high school, part of a three-some who were lifelong friends, friends of your parents who you call ‘Uncle’. I can still remember his face, smile and sparkling eyes vividly to this day.

I’ve got more readers on my blog now than a few years ago when I posted a bit on the choice to be childfree – haven’t much lately – perhaps that’s because I hope everyone’s accepted it by now or at least accepted it’s none of their business. But judging by some ramblings on a little folded up note I found in our storage locker, I didn’t post everything. However, now, for #keepsake’s sake, I am. Usual disclaimer – these are my own thoughts (probably should be private and not shared but why shouldn’t they? it’s my blog) and doesn’t mean I think any less or want to spend any less time with those who’ve chosen or got children and yes I know the world wouldn’t go on if there weren’t future generations. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, judge for yourself if I am a horrible person and de-friend me although I reckon if someone raved on about having children they wouldn’t come under any such scrutiny … hence my ramblings!

Random yet fairly serious thoughts:

I get irrationally annoyed at societal norms surrounding people with children – things like: wide carparks near the front door of the supermarket – I know I should be grateful that people with kids park there because kids won’t open and bang their doors into my lovely car or scratch their toys or greasy fingers down the side of it (a lovely car by the way that I am “so lucky” to have because I am “so lucky” I can afford such ‘luxuries’ because I don’t have kids); work compromises and acceptance to accommodate children – long phones calls with the partner who is at home with the child, timing of meetings, domestic leave, job share, lateness.

Do you have to produce medical proof that you are pregnant in order to qualify for maternity leave? Despite being necessary, this is time and money for people who make this choice, and there’s no equivalent for those who make a different choice.

Many women take 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 years out of their working life to raise a child. No-one questions their decision. If I choose to take 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 years out of MY life to *live* or do something that’s important to me, I can guarantee you I will be questioned. No-one asks a mother ‘Why aren’t you working?” Other than the question of who will support me financially, I wonder if I’ll ever be brave enough to do this? And for those who think about when the best time is for them to have a child, I wonder when the best time would be for me to be out of the workforce. My 33rd year? My 35th? 35-40? Entering the workforce again at 40 could be difficult, especially in these technological times when everything is changing so rapidly. I’d face similar difficulties to people who’ve taken time out to raise a child. Whilst age is no employer’s business I bet they’d more readily accept ‘I raised my children’ over ‘I took some time out for myself’ as a reason for not working for an extended period. They’d probably think I had mental issues.

5 February 2003

Hmmm, as I’m now closer to meno-pause years than I am to prime breeding years I think my time for a ‘life break’ has passed me by!

I wrote myself a list in 2000 of what I like in a job, most to least. I think it related to the job I had at the time but suspect it was one of those reflective times when I was thinking about what motivated me with a view to finding the perfect job, rather than seeking to fix something in the one I currently had. Wonder how it maps to what I do today?

1. focussed work on one project
2. control, central knowledge of project – specialist position
3. some hands on e.g. enough to know basic workings of a system
4. technical involvement even if at a high level
5. writing specs/guidelines
6. control of work and workload
7. implementation work – client side i.e. working with clients as they understand and use a new system and feedback/suggest modifications to development company
8. self-delegation and responsibility
9. processing feedback and requirements
10. flexible work hours and telework environment

A process or system gives a sense of expectation.

20 March 2000

At the time I was working at Innovus which had recently bought out Extrados/Spunk Media so having our small web services company swallowed up by a larger corporate probably brought on my evaluation.

Now, as the Community Manager at Xero I’d say this list if applied practically is flipped on its head – I probably still value all these things but in reality:

• I don’t have focussed work on one project, in fact my work is not a project
• My days are interrupt driven by whatever comes my way from a selection of social media sites so in any day I could do one thing or a hundred things. I have no control over my workload in that sense but I also have a manager in a different location and not much contact so am totally autonomous in that regard
• I do work remotely quite a lot but always feel terribly guilty about it
• My entire days are filled with processing feedback and requirements with a certain amount of helping our customers understand how to use Xero and interpreting/translating/feeding modifications back to our own product and development teams
• I don’t have control at a project level or control over my day but I do feel in control (mostly) of Xero’s social media – I am totally responsible for Twitter and other means of responding to customers using social media sites
• I’m getting less and less hands on but I still know the product. I don’t write much any more, let alone specs and guidelines
• My work is all public now like it’s never been before, public and attributable, not just content on a website
• I’m developing a thicker skin – everyone’s watching, colleagues are questioning, the CEO sees what I do

Interesting. Would be good to see this again in another 10 years.

Fancied myself as a bit of a poet in 1988 – here’s one of the not-so-depressing ones I found when cleaning out the storage locker.

Once upon a shadow
upon the pavement.
Dark but no –
Transparent.
Sometimes life and sometimes
Solid.

But never stands as a barrier –
to any
But the tiny creature
afraid of the night.

1988