Qantas finally turned up with Mitch’s suitcase at lunchtime – well, ok, a courier paid for by Qantas….

A day of rest and recovery today to get rid of the jetlag for Mitch. Followed by an early night in preparation for our road trip to the Rugby World Cup 2011 opening ceremony in Auckland tomorrow.

Back to work this morning, leaving Louise with a mission to unpack boxes. Bless her……

However, I’ll probably never find anything ever again!

Well! What a busy unpacking session that was!!

We asked the movers to put the “easily identifiable” boxes into the rooms we thought they might end up in – that was only about 25% of them though! The rest just got piled up in the garage – luckily the garage is big enough!

However, even the ones we thought we could identify had been repacked by the UK movers – each box ended up being unpacked into 3 or 4 different rooms……..Thanks, Anglo-Pacific……….NOT!

We set aside the “suspicious” boxes that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) wanted to inspect before they were unpacked. The two girls that turned up for the inspection later in the day were dead impressed by the cleanliness of kit in general (thanks to you too Mitch!), found the odd UK pine cone that we’d missed on the Xmas decorations (we had to virtually take to pieces two of the Xmas wreaths!) and were quite impressed at the box containing “Army kit”. I’d been trying to work out what it contained, aside from the odd pair of combat trousers and a camo jacket. I know for sure what MAF thought was in it! Guns, ammo, dirty trekking boots and the odd mortar! In fact, it turned out that Anglo-Pacific had a strange sense of humour and piled into it all our underwear and anything that couldn’t be thrown into any other box as packing! The MAF girls were not too interested in my underwear (most of it too boring), but were asking Lou where she got hers from!

They also spent an inordinate amount of time on the Xmas decorations boxes (there are a lot after all). At first we thought we were in for a big cleaning bill….. but it turned out that they were just taking a great deal of time ooing and aahing over Louise’s collection! Phew. As it is, they found about an A4 plastic bag’s worth of stuff to clean or destroy and as it was all likely to have been destroyed by the heat used by the cleaning process we had it all destroyed at no cost. Result!

On the downside, the house looks really untidy with “stuff” in it now!

Never mind, it won’t take long to find a home for it all!

Woohoo!

Up early this morning to get everything ready for our stuff/furniture/container arriving!!!

Just like Christmas morning – but bigger and many more boxes!!

Aaarrrggghh!! The UK movers have “repacked” all our boxes – nightmare sorting time!!

More jobs done today, as well as answering mails and Facebook entries from concerned family and friends. Even the black & white NZ lifeform we’ve named “Poser” came around in a very affectionate mood.

Thank you all very much for your thoughts! We were actually asleep during the quake and its aftershocks, but New Zealand feels so much like home that even Christchurch feels like its just down the coast……

Lots done today. Louise has been sanding down the downstairs hallway, and I’ve been getting to grips with the intricacies of wiring Cat 6 ethernet cable sockets!

We had a quick chat with Louise’s parents tonight. Although I think the severe weather is affecting the internet, their sound was bad. It might have something to do with the 140kmh winds we can hear once we’re outside.

I think I might be taking the car in the morning. The police have suggested that motorcyclists and high sided trucks might want to reconsider their trips for the next 24 hours….

Ah, they offloaded one or two containers in the night then! Eenie, meenie, mynee mo……..it must be………that one!

Weather cleared up lovely during the night and we had a gorgeous day. We spent the day doing jobs and the garden/lawn soaking up the sunshine.

We didn’t check out the tv or radio until about 4pm and hadn’t heard about the earthquake in Christchurch until then. What a mess!

Fingers crossed for you all!

Wet n windy in Wellington again today!

I had to work late tracking down a possible mail spoof today. I did however manage to spot our ship coming in to the harbour as I left work.

A quick trip home in the gale and I got online in time to see the ship being unloaded.

Woohoo! I can’t see any new MSC containers on the dockside yet, but we’ll check again in the morning….

Quiet day today, lots of meetings for me and Louise had a quiet day resting from the decorating!

The container is on its way to Christchurch, although there is a gale coming in from the South. On the bright side, that means the ship is getting blown here quicker!

Well, our container has left Bluff on its way to Dunedin!

E-mailed the agent in Wellington again, this time from work. No news by about 3.30pm, so I gave them a ring. Turns out they’d e-mailed me home 2 hrs previously! Logged on and downloaded a load of Customs and MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries – they carry out the Bio scans) which Anglo Pacific hadn’t sent me…. long night filling out more forms tonight then…….

Louise had finished off the corridor in colour when I got home, it looks wonderful!

It was a late night indeed…….inventories, insurance lists, customs regulations…………..

Up early this morning to help carry out some server software upgrades and in to work for 5am…………..deep joy!

Louise is a little bit more into finishing the hall today methinks – once she gets the bit between her teeth!

Played 4 aside football today, so lots of running about (and a bit of falling over once the legs start giving out!). The game ended up in a draw, but as we all work in ITS, then it doesn’t really matter anyway……. just a way of taking note of the time spent running about!

Finally left about 4.20pm after lots of discussions around the forthcoming mail server migration.

Got home to find Louise has done really well in the hall. The heater was on to encourage the ceiling paint to dry before its last coat. She should then be able to put colour on the walls too then…. yippee! The paint works out at about $10-16 a litre (about £5-10), so not exactly the cheapest product in the world.