On the way back from Wellington yesterday I picked up 2 NZ driving licence forms. We’d decided to get them done, so I thought I’d find out if we could do it locally. Yep! We can! It looks like its only about £20 and there’s no exam or anything (well, maybe an eye-test!).

Played RPG with the guys back in Bridgend over Skype again – brilliant fun! The random dice generator seems to roll as many bad dice as I do normally! No change there then….

I completed the driving license forms in the early afternoon (getting Louise to just sign hers LOL) and we popped down to the AA office in Paraparam. The lady behind the counter groaned a little when she realised that there two “foreign conversions” to do, but put a brave face on things and ignored the queue building up behind us. Nearly all the Kiwis behind us could see we were going to take awhile and popped into the other queue, but one stayed. She did look a bit frazzled and on edge though.

I’d worn my contacts as it was a bright sunny day (again….) and had no problem with the eye test – there was a machine on the counter and she even stopped me reading out the lines because I could see too well!). The only downside for me is that it will stste on my license that I HAVE to be wearing corrective lenses (contacts or glasses) when I’m driving. No real problem there though as I can’t see otherwise! The police would take a dim view of me if I was found not to be wearing them though, and kindly help me lighten the load on my wallet by the removal of several $20 notes!!

Louise had no problems either, although she had to move away from the machine a bit while checking her peripheral vision – she was hugged up too close to the machine!

All in all a nice friendly experience. Nothing like the hassle I’m sure most Kiwis could look forward to if they were doing the same thing in the UK!

Back home for a cheap rump steak and salad again. We would have got chicken of course, but the price of “chooks” makes it a non-starter. Its cheaper to go to KFC for a chook-fix!

Got a phone call from Equinox first thing this morning. Can I come into Wellington for a face-to-face interview over a coffee? “Well” I said, “it’s an awful long way to come….” and “I’ll be there at 2pm!”

Also got a phone call shortly after from an Agency I’ve applied for jobs to in the past, but only to get my details and decide to pass onto the Permanent role recruitment bod. Ah well…….

Left home in plenty of time for the interview and parked up by the Southern Cross Apartments again as they were the easiest parking space to find (with a coupon anyway).

I’d forgotten how steep some of the hills in Wellington are! That’ll be blisters for me by the end of the day. That’s what dressing in a suit does for you!

Finally found both the building and the guy – he was actually on a different floor to the one he’d told me he was on…… and we popped next door to a restaurant for a coffee. I did think to say from the start that he really should know that he’s on the 10th floor, and that the building only has 15 floors – so telling me he was on the 16th floor wasn’t a good advertisement. Luckily, I decided that probably wasn’t a good way to introduce myself!

The interview seemed to go ok, although it was strange because he didn’t seem to be interviewing me for the advertised systems admin job, but rather as a possible project manager – weird! It’s very hard to answer questions in a set direction if you’re unaware of where the direction is going!!

He left me with a promise that I’d get another phone call tomorrow from someone else in the company to talk techie.

Managed to get out of Wellington before rush hour and headed home.

Popped out about 8pm to the cashpoint to get some more bike money out ready for the weekend.

Had a long working night again last night, not sure how many more of those I can cope with……….. Caught up on sleep though as I knew we didn’t have to get in to Wellington until early afternoon.

Joe, from Wellington Motorcycles, phoned to say that the weather was pretty atrocious this afternoon in Wellington. He also mentioned that someone else had test ridden the Suzuki DL1000 this morning because it had been ready earlier than originally thought. Now, I’m aware of the little sales techniques used and this didn’t affect my decision to go into Wellington despite the rain at all. After all, Joe is of American descent too, surely the most trustworthy “salt of the earth” nation in existence. It’s not like he’s a secondhand car salesman or anything……. Ah, good point, yes he is, sort of!

We took the wets in to Wellington with us, but in the end the rain had eased off nicely. We had a 30 min test ride out to the airport and back around Oriental Bay. Decided to go for it! Just have to visit the hole-in-the-wall a couple of times….. Pleasant surprise with being able to get £300 in any 24 hr period – won’t take too long LOL! The exchange rate at the moment is pretty bad, so still not worth bringing over any large amounts!

Went off to Wellington motorcycles today to have a look at a Suzuki VSTROM DL1000 due in at lunchtime – looked promising, we’re going back tomorrow for a test ride, if the weather holds off (there’s a nasty band of rain sent over by Australia coming up over South Island this evening!).

Popped in to see Graham and Jayne on the way home from Wellington. Lovely to see them and catch up, if only for a few minutes – didn’t want to stay too long as they were getting tea ready!

We came back home via Battle Hill which is a shortcut through the mountains from Pauatahanui to Paekakariki – what a lovely biking road, if a little worrying at times! Gorgeous view at the top looking down over the Kapiti Coast, we’ll have to go back when the sun is shining! Our house is in the 2nd township on the left, obviously you can’t see us – we’re using the camera!

Nearly finished off cover letter for NZDF now……………ish……………….. 5 pages and counting

Tried to do more puzzle this morning, hard-going……….. We gave up eventually and had a lazy day reading.

Went to the cinema tonight to see “Lovely Bones” – voucher for reel club feature movie @ $9 each – bargain! The film didn’t end quite as well as we’d liked, but pretty good all the same, for the genre.

Spoke to Margaret & John on Skype

Another page for the NZDF cover letter.

Looks like the New Zealand Defence Force cover letter for their job positions just hit 2 pages!

Started a new puzzle this evening – “Angel of Darkness”. Angel in the middle went together not too badly, however the edges are a right pain.

Played Lord Of The Rings online for the first time in AGES tonight in bed as Louise couldn’t get to sleep. Spent 30 mins trying to do a pub crawl around the Shire – hilarious – the screen got all colourless and fuzzy, my character wouldn’t respond to the directions properly and kept blowing bubbles everywhere!!

Got up this morning to a phone call from a company in Wellington called Equinox. I’d sent an e-mail to them last Wed to “cold call” them if any interesting jobs came up. Read up on Equinox and found two jobs for New Zealand Defence Force. Equinox did say they’d phone back to arrange a chat over a coffee next week – didn’t get a return call today though…………

We had a fair few drinks out on the deck, got slightly sunburnt (Louise anyway) and had a lovely afternoon!

We decided to have a break from steak tonight and I popped out to Dominos for a pizza after ordering it online. It would have been nice to get it delivered, but evidently they don’t deliver to Rosetta Rd as Renown Rd (the next road inland from ours) is the furthest they go. RATS!

Played RPG over Skype this morning for the first time. GREAT!! I must admit to missing the RPG sessions, but having found an online dice roller, courtesy Wizards of the Coast, it proved fairly easy to join in. You miss out on the facial expressions sometimes, but you can’t have everything.

Still on the search for a watch, Louise had had a brainstorm and checked out Warehouse online where they proved to have a number of possibilities for a new watch. We decided to head for Palmerston North, both to look at motorbikes and to check out the Warehouse there which seemed bigger than Coastlands.

We’d phoned up the Suzuki dealer in Palmerston North before we left, they actually had two VSTROM DL1000s and four VSTROM DL650s!! Except………….the manager had taken three of the 650s out on a jolly with some of the staff – not back for a couple of days, and the only DL650 left was a brand new one. One of the DL1000s was also a new one.

I thought we’d fill up with petrol at PaknSave before we left, and everything went fine this time …….. nearly. I sort have had a senior moment and we were halfway to Palmerston North (about 45 mins away) when I realised that not only had I forgotten to close the petrol flap, but had also forgotten the petrol cap!! We carried on anyway, but I just knew I wasn’t going to live that one down for a while. I was right – “senior” jokes all day!

Excellent fun, not only did we test ride the secondhand DL1000 but also a Bandit (just for the experience obviously! The Bandit was FUN, but no matter how much fun it was on the main roads, it would be of limited use on some of the gravel roads we’ve travelled across in the past! The DL1000 was a heap of s**t! There were 1500kms on the clock, so must have been around the clock at least once, the engine was ropy, noisy and smelly and there seemed to be an inordinate number of rattles all over the place. We decided not to get this one!!

The Warehouse here was indeed HUGE!! We easily found a watch, and Louise put the bad memories of yesterday aside and spent a happy few hours looking around what seemed to be EVERYTHING! Ended up buying the odd bit of stuff over and above the watch – but to be fair, she got some excellent clothes bargains!

Checked the garage on the way back, but no luck. Looks like I’ll have to drop in to get a new one from Repco or something…………………

Unfortunately we had to have steak and salad again for tea when we got back.

Louise’s watch finally gave up the ghost last night, so we thought we MUST be able to find one in Wellington.

Before we parked up, we picked up a couple more $5 parking coupon vouchers. If you park in the middle of the city (not coupon parking), then it costs $4 per hour and most road parking places have a limit of 2 hours.

We called in to a sub-level shopping centre at 1 Willis St for a coffee and poached eggs on toast. It was going well, the coffee had arrived and was lovely, until the staff came out to say there was no brown bread left, tsk tsk LOL! We told them that white was fine and the breakfast turned up a couple of minutes later and was pretty good.

We picked up a cordless phone at JB Electronics for just $25 – might make life a little easier when chatting to people out on the deck. We also found a wargames shop in the arcade, not a bad stock range really and not too much of a price difference! Some really excellent scenery for RPG and wargames in general.

As we were “passing”, we had to go back to Kirkcaldy & Staines to check out the Christmas decorations – just in case new stock had come in or something, yeah right! Louise actually admitted to being fed up of shopping and window shopping! Hours later, feet aching, shopped out and no cheap watch anywhere!

On the way home we went for a quick shop at Pak n Save to pick up some more cheap rump steak – looks like steak and salad for the next few days!

Chatted to John and Margaret about 10pm – they told us how much snow they had in the UK. Even Torquay – must be bad!!

Late start for me this morning………..none too surprisingly! I got to bed about 6am after working through the night!! It certainly wasn’t dark anymore! Perhaps I should look at my timesheet and find out…………. thinking about it, I couldn’t reboot the server until after 5pm UK time, so it must have been somewhere between 6 and 7am here………..

Found some jobs on the New Zealand Defence Force website that look promising. However the cover letters look like they’ll be a right royal pain LOL!

We had a quiet afternoon, sorting out job applications, break for reading with NO alcohol this time!

We thought we’d go to the pictures tonight to watch either “Lovely Bones” or “Sherlock”, it being the Orange Wednesday that’s not – if you see what I mean. Rather than cook tea, we thought we’d try out one of the local restaurants – Cobb & Co at Coastlands.

Lovely meal, and on Tue nights they have a special menu where you get two main meals for $25 – bargain! Although, not so much of a bargain when you have a glass of fine wine each, and a dessert (that’ll be Banoffie Pie for Louise !!) and a cup of coffee…………… We didn’t get to the pictures. Louise’s watch had stopped, in fact gone to sing with the heavenly vestibule – in others words, dead as a doornail! However, by the time we realised it was too late to go to the pictures we could at least take our time over the coffee!