All done

Wednesday this week turned out to be rather exciting, even though I was at home sick with a cold. I had a phone call about 9:00 from the electrician's office, asking if it would be ok for him to come around. I said the last time he had come he said the builder had to do something first but it wasn't clear to me what he expected to be done; the office lady said she would ask him to get in touch with the builder directly. Then about 10:30 there was a knock at the door. It was the electrician, who said he was in the area and thought he'd stop by to see if things were ready for him to finish off. It turns out that he was waiting for the units to be installed (I'd been making a distinction between the builder, being the guy from Tradeskills who removed the kitchen and patched a few things up, and the installer, being a different guy who, well, installed the units). So within about an hour he was able to put in a new plug for the microwave, replace the plug for the fridge, and put a new plug on for the phone jack. Then at 1:00 the installer arrived to do the final touches: attach the handles and seal the bench. When he was just about finished the plumber arrived, he had a few hurdles in fixing up the tap, but everything has worked out nicely in the end.

So now I finally have a new kitchen!

... with stuff in it!

Surprise

I received a phone call today that the bench was ready and could be installed this afternoon.
Then later on, another phone call to say it had all been done apart from the handles, because I had ordered two different sizes and they didn't want to guess which ones went where. So they'll come back maybe Tuesday and do that.
Now all that's left to finish off is the plumbing, builder again and electrician...

(apologies for the weird angle on the last photo!)

What do you mean, it's too short??

Wednesday. Yesterday. I had on my calendar, 'Kitchen installation'.

The installer arrived at about 8:30. I showed him the corner unit that only made it into the garage, which he sort of sighed about but started dealing to it, made a couple of phone calls, and by 10:00 it was inside the house and in its proper place. The bench got delivered (in two parts, since it is an L shape), lots of powertool noises outside trimming things to fit.

Then all the noise stopped, apart from a 'what the...?' It turned out that one side of the bench was 10 cm too short. Mr Installer went for a smoko, made a phone call to the guy overseeing the project. Mr Project came out from Wellington, had a look, yup, 10 cm too short. Then they decided to show me and explain what the options were.

Basically it boiled down to someone not thinking about which numbers they were adding together to get the length of the bench.
No problem, the benchtop company can make a new one.
    Only they don't have this particular laminate in stock.
No problem, they can order it today.
    But then it won't arrive until Friday, and they still have to make the bench.
    And Monday's a public holiday.
    And the installer guy is busy on Tuesday and lives in Levin.
But he can come on Wednesday and do it then.

So it means another week of a half-assembled kitchen, and boxes in the dining room...

But at least I can see what the colours look like!

(and I have somewhere to put the phone...)

Delivery

The cabinets were delivered today... minus the sink. Which I kind of suspected, because the girl who was my 'consultant' didn't write down which one I wanted. Anyway I rang them up and they said they would order it for me in time for Wednesday, which is when it all gets installed.

So for now, I have some boxes sitting in my kitchen, wrapped in plastic...

... and one they couldn't get into the house. Which might be interesting come installation day.

Cleaning out

First, I had to clean out the cupboards. Now all my kitchen stuff is in boxes in the dining room... and plates and glasses in the washing basket. But of course.

If you thought that looked empty...

And the end result, some fantastic outdoor-outdoor flow...

... or not.

The new kitchen gets delivered Monday afternoon. More pics then!

It's new kitchen time!

"It looks like a motel."

That's what my brother Stuart said about my kitchen on the day I moved into my house. Built circa 1969, the kitchen is original. It's time for change.

This time next week, everything will be all go... the kitchen is being removed on Friday, then the new kitchen delivered on Monday and installed on Wednesday. It means nearly a week without it, but it's going to be worth it...

So for reference, here is what it looks like today:

Chicago

It's about time I posted some photos from Chicago, so here they are.

But first, before that trip, there was one Sunday afternoon where we had a particularly heavy downpour and my street flooded. So that was a bit exciting...

Now, Chicago. The experiments worked really well. And because of the delay between asking the travel agent for a quote, and securing the funds to go, it meant that by the time it came to book the tickets it was either pay an extra $1000 or stay an extra day. So on that extra day we went into the city - something that despite having been to the lab half a dozen times before, I haven't managed to do. We only had 5 hrs or so, which was enough time to have a drive through the Loop area (I was driving so I don't have any pictures of that), then pay a visit to the John Hancock building and then wander over to Navy Pier and have something to eat. Then off to the airport and back home. Which was also good - there were two Air NZ flights to Auckland from L.A. that night (one having come from London), and the one I was on was so empty that everyone was able to have a row of 3 seats all to themselves. I think I got 7 or 8 hours' sleep, which was more than I'd had in one night since arriving in Chicago...

Anyway, here are the pictures.

I really liked this building. I don't know what it's called, or even what it is (offices? apartments?) but I think it looked really cool.

I was there. This is (one) view from the John Hancock Observatory, on the 94th floor...

... this is another...

...and this is yet another. I think the thing that struck me the most, being up there, was seeing just how flat the countryside around Chicago is. As you can see, we had great weather and were able to see for miles.

A view of Madison Avenue ('the magnificent mile'). All the spring bulbs were just starting to come out and there were these flower beds everywhere. With all the skyscrapers and concrete, it's nice to have some living colour around the place.

No Good Friday?

So my church doesn't have a Good Friday service. That's not uncommon these days. But it still disturbs me. One could argue that Easter is the most important period of the year for Christians. If Jesus hadn't come and died on the cross, we would all be lost for eternity. It's only because of what happened, that we remember at Easter, that we can have any hope at all of salvation.

I also know that it's worse in the US; there, Good Friday isn't even a holiday. When I was living there I took the day off, to remember and that, but everyone thought I was weird.

Yet there was an interesting thing that happened yesterday. In the weekly email newsletter from the MacDiarmid Institute, of which I am a member, the director wrote:
"The Easter and Anzac long weekends are upon us and I hope that you are able to take some time away from your work to be with family and friends.  I am not sure what to say about the overlap of these two remembrance events (it is the first time I can remember them coinciding), except to say that it is a chance to reflect on the history and meaning that lies behind them."

I don't know the director's personal background. But it was encouraging to see him calling Easter a time of remembrance with 'history and meaning'.

Melbourne, Melbourne, Chicago

Once again I must apologise for not updating this anywhere nearly as frequently as I have in the past. I guess things have just been muddling along, and although I've been travelling it's been to the same places. I haven't written about it because I don't want to bore you... so some feedback on this issue would be more than welcome! Do you want to hear about my latest trip, even if it's "I went to Melbourne and did some experiments"? And how much detail do you want?

In anticipation of an affirmative answer to the first question, I had a trip to Melbourne at the end of February, doing some work with a group from Auckland University. It was their first time, and it didn't go smoothly - for the first day, at least. Anyway we managed to modify the experiment, so instead of having a reaction going on the beam line and us watching things change in real time, we (well, they) were busy making samples in the lab, drying them, grinding them into fine powder, packing into tiny glass capillary tubes, and measuring them that way. It was very intensive and at the end of it I was glad we only had 3 days!

Today I am in Melbourne again, for a proposal advisory commmittee meeting. The committee meets 3 times a year, to discuss beam line development and review the proposals that have come in. So it was fly in this morning, stay overnight, and fly out tomorrow morning. It was theoretically possible to fly out today, but that would mean leaving home at 4:30 am and not getting home until midnight, so I would have ended up taking tomorrow off anyway.

Then next week I am off to Chicago for some experiments looking at the size distribution of nanoparticles and their aggregates in sunscreen formulations. We have been trying to secure beam time for this experiment for about a year, so it's great to finally have some success. The work is completely unrelated to any of the projects I am meant to be working on, but fortunately the Royal Society has a fund that you can apply for, for travel funding to support new research linkages, particularly between NZ, Australia, the US and a few other countries. Since the work involves myself, a girl in Sydney, Mike in the US and a facility in the US, it seemed an ideal application. And of course, the public interest factor of nano-zinc oxide in sunscreen helps too. When someone high up in the MacDiarmid Institute heard about it, they offered to cover the rest of the costs (because of the good PR that would generate). So that's all go...

...and finally, the week after Easter I've been invited to speak at a conference in Rotorua. I'm not sure when I will find time to prepare my talk! although it's not so bad, because I will be reusing several slides from the talk I gave at the conference in Korea last year.

Routeburn

Sorry it's taken me so long to update this. I thought I'd share some pictures from the Routeburn. Looking back it was good, although the costs really do mount up (the price you pay for going to remote places). I didn't enjoy it at the time as much as I was expecting to, but that was primarily due to the cold that I had that just left me shattered at the end of each day.

From the side of the valley heading up to Routeburn Falls, looking out over the north branch of the Routeburn and Routeburn flats. Perfect weather!

Day 2, near Harris Saddle. Weather not as friendly, but it did stop raining in the afternoon.

Weather outlook in Fiordland.

View over the Hollyford valley up to Lack McKerrow.