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

Packing, shuffling, recycling, shredding, documenting and shipping is almost complete for the move to San Francisco.

I don’t think I have any maternal, sentimental or genealogical genes, although perhaps by my age you’d expect I might, so it means this move is going to be a great cleansing for me. Everyone knows you collect up a lot of stuff when you settle somewhere for a few years and as well as the stuff in this house, I’m still trundling about with stuff from my whole life, and despite your gasps of horror, I’m up for a new start, so out it goes! It’s liberating. If I haven’t cared for it all these years then here’s hoping those genes don’t fill me with regret in a few years – I’m moving to the other side of the world after all. I’ve rifled through everything, crying and laughing over memories in the decision to keep stuff or just let it go.

However, some stuff I wouldn’t mind immortalising on my blog (if today’s electronic means of publishing could be considered immortalising) so will reproduce various items in the days to come in a kind of keepsake series, and perhaps raw look into my psyche! #keepsake

Today’s exercise was going through some very old paperwork, stuff that The Mister hadn’t seen – those old reports and testimonials from high school – so he got a good look into the freckly, brace-faced, surly, girlie-swat teenager that I once was. Amidst my tears of laughter as he read things out and him roaring with amusement at some stuff he discovered, I took down a couple of choice quotes:

“Oh god, you failed Grade 6 [music] theory pretty badly – you were shit at ornaments!!” and some time later “Ha ha ha and when you sat it again you would’ve got distinction except you were STILL shit at ornaments!!!”

On reading the examiners notes from my Grade 5 piano exam – he laughed hysterically “Oh my god, check this out “Try to enter into the spirit of the pieces and convey it. You seem reluctant to relax and let yourself go.” God your personality hasn’t changed much in almost 30 years!!” Errr, thanks loving husband!

“Ha ha ha ha!!! “Catherine is a fit healthy sportswoman. She belongs to a tennis club and enjoys jazzercise.” – ha ha ha!” Can’t believe how much he laughed over that one.

“Oh, you studied accounting principles for a term – really?”

Ha ha Wellington I’m going to miss your roaring slapping rain once I’ve moved to San Francisco where I’m praying it’s fine and 23 degrees C every day. Saw this broken abandoned umbrella on the way to get coffee this morning.

We’ve spent a couple of really interesting weekends around coffee experts recently – the local and then national barista competition to see who was crowned best coffee maker in the country. The winner represents New Zealand at the World Barista Championships in Bogata in June.

The competition is very precise – just 15 minutes to make each of the 4 judges an espresso, a cappuccino and a signature drink (must involve coffee, no alcohol and showcase coffee in some way). Points are awarded for flavour, technique, coffee knowledge and experience. The contestants wear a microphone and have to talk through what they’re doing and are under close scrutiny from the judges – watching everything – how much coffee they spill from the grinder, how much milk is left over, and how tidy their work station is.

We knew one of the competitors quite well, Massimo from Fuel, plus recognised a lot of the other baristas from around town competing in the Wellington champs a couple of weekends ago.

It was a really fascinating experience and with the cameras everywhere and big screens showing close-up shots of extractions and milk pouring it was just like the world champ videos I’ve seen online. I think at the Wellington heats we were the only coffee drinkers/customers there – most seemed to be other baristas and people from the coffee trade – felt quite special! Unfortunately now The Mister thinks he knows everything about how milk should be poured to form symmetry on top of the espresso so I’ve been getting ‘advice’ every morning for the last couple of weeks on how I could improve my milk – what!?

A couple of pics from the Wellington champs (at the Supreme roastery):

Nick from Memphis Belle who won the Wellington competition

Aidan from People’s Coffee being watched by the technical judges

Arui from Christchurch showing the tasting judges the coconut she was going to heat up to enhance this flavour in her coffee

And some from the NZ champs yesterday (at the Mojo roastery):

Aymon’s every move being recorded

Massimo constructing his signature drink

And the winner Winner Hideyuki from Christchurch being mobbed by the paparazzi for an interview!

Heaps more photos here on Flickr.

We’ve all wheeled our Life chairs into the big meeting room at work to be cleaned this weekend. Mine is easy to spot! That’s pretty much how I feel – always a bit different, special, the odd one out! This photo someone took made me smile.

I’m known for noticing things when out and about, walking to work on a familiar route or some road untravelled. The Mister never notices things – big brain, big important grown-up knowledge, compared to my tiny brain, tiny details, throw-away knowledge … Usually I see quite random things like a tiny bunch of dried flowers tied to a park bench, a dead weta, part of a belt, an orange scooter (not so random and pretty obvious) and of course there’s the famous potato siting.

And then today on an autumn day with only a slight chill in the air I spotted a pair of ice skates locked to the bar with the bikes on Victoria Street. Hardly the day for such wintry footwear. And surely it’s never *actually* cold enough in Wellington (despite southerly windchill) to get around town on a pair of ice skates? Actually don’t even know where you can skate around here?

It’s finished! After a start that went nowhere much back in early March when I found the edge pieces and Sara joined up one side, we’ve picked it up again over the last 2 weeks – it looks great!

It was so cool doing the first layer that had some street and building names – knew straight away which part of the puzzle to go to.

The middle layer was pretty quick and formed the foam base for the buildings to fit in.

Putting in the buildings was quite time consuming – some had unusual bases otherwise there were a lot of square and rectangle buildings to put in and the little plastic replicas often not so easy to recognise.

It’s been very cool the last week as more buildings have been put in, coming up the stairs to the first thing you see in the lounge being the coffee table with New York at eye level.

Was rather serendipitous that on our mid-week day off the new Air New Zealand 777-300 was at the airport giving free tours to airpoints members – so off we went.

The plane is massive and very white inside.

We found the premium economy seats to be rather less comfortable than the current 747 and 767 seats in the same class – they were in ‘pods’ which means you don’t disrupt the people around you but the recline felt less and the leg room definitely very strange and cramped, due to the curves of the pod, basically pushing your knees to flop outwards into the aisle. Also the angle of the seat combined with the shiny hard white leather meant that you couldn’t help but slip down. Unless I was doing it wrong, I was rather uncomfortable!

If you want premium economy go for the window sets of 2 – they might be less ‘coupley’ (the middle sets have a small table in between to share) but at least your leg won’t flop out into the aisle.

We went to take a look at the sky couch – all the window sets of 3 seats together can be purchased as a set to make into one – the advertising pictures show what they’re really for: husband reads, wife curls up with head in his lap; mother watches TV with 2 little kids playing beside her – definitely not designed for 2 people to lie down together. Apart from the fact that The Mister’s feet stuck out in the aisle, we were snugged in quite tight and unless you sleep like that anyway, you wouldn’t be very comfortable for a few hours. And certainly no room if someone puts the seat back down in front of you. The tour guide was very quick to announce that they were a sky couch and not a sky bed when people begun to flock around us to see if you could in fact get 2 people in the bed couch.

Business premier much the same as now but a better screen and better mattress. However the new white leather seems a lot harder and not like the dumpy den chair offered by the brown leather in the cabins on the planes currently. The Mister obviously looked like the type of traveller they were targetting for this cabin – the media guy was very quick to take his picture!

Well, actually red pandas from the Himalayas  but they were orange pandas to me and you can see why!

Had a day off work today and decided to do something very different from sitting in an office or home in front of a computer so a mid-week trip to the zoo was in order. We got to feed and pet the orange pandas as part of Wellington Zoo’s Encounter programme – they do the pandas, giraffes, cheetahs and big cats.

4 people at a time were allowed into the enclosure with the zoo keeper and we visited with 2 sets of panda pairs. They ate fruit out of our hands or fingers and put their paws up on our knees when we were sitting on logs in their enclosure.

One of the pandas was so eager that when The Mister was the 1st one to sit down it leapt right up onto his knee like a cat!

It was such a great time – the 4 pandas definitely all had personalities of their own and it’s just so hard to explain how insanely cute they were. They had warm little feet and the older ones were coarse to pat, a bit like an old dog’s fur, and the younger ones were quite soft and cat-like. Beneath their orange fur they had a thick downy layer almost like possum fur. Their little faces were just so adorable.

When they’d filled up on fruit they went back into the trees and fell asleep almost immediately!

Loads more photos on Flickr.

There’s a sign up at Fuel today – 15 years they’ve been making coffee! And I’ve been drinking it from one or other of their cafes, holes-in-the wall or carts for 13 of those years. I reckon on average I’ve had a Fuel cup in my hand every day for the last 13 years. So great they’re still around – a real Wellington institution.

So the mystery shrub/tree/weed that’s taken residence in our patio pot is growing tall and so are it’s friends! We’ve changed our mind from our initial guess of hebeis purpleis and also rejected Mother’s suggestion of Asclepias curassavica. Orange Sister put forth a guess of baby pohutakawa which was quite exciting, but sad because it’ll never survive in the pot if it is one … mind you she was guessing by looking at the display on the back of the camera, not having seen the photo previously posted.

So here we are … 2 months on and now much bigger. Any more guesses?