Entries from July 2010 ↓

Have been back in the Wellington office a couple of weeks now and I think I’m suffering from motivation sickness. I know your office space can impact on how you feel at work but I’m believing that there can be a physical impact itself, beyond sitting at a badly arranged chair and desk. That part of my set up is good.

I just don’t recall when working in New York that I ever had such stinging dry eyes and dog tiredness and often times feeling totally deflated. We’re getting way more sleep here than we did in New York and we’re not working stupid long hours, probably the same length days as New York. Perhaps it’s a winter thing, that our bodies and minds are in hibernation mode. Or perhaps it’s the fluorescent lights and too warm dry air from the air-conditioning. Perhaps it’s being in the office again getting interrupted and dragged into meetings and conversations, which sometimes I missed while being away, but most of the time just enjoyed doing my own stuff in my own time at least being able to recognise something achieved at the end of the day.

Hmmm, have to figure it out before my productivity slips.

On the same page as the leek & potato soup recipe we used last week, there was a recipe for buttery leeks, and ideas for how to use them. ‘Mix with eggs, cream, feta … put into pastry shells and bake’ kind of thing.

We didn’t quite have all that in the right quantities but in the fridge last night we had leeks, pastry, eggs and cream so invented our own quantities, although the mixture was a bit runny when it came time for assembly.

Had to leave them to cook a little longer than suggested because the middles weren’t cooking very well (I think we should’ve beaten the eggs first, plus I skimped a bit by not using extra egg yolks) and I was paranoid about eating partially cooked eggs.

However, the middles cooked and set nicely and the pies were absolutely scrumptious. Now just have to remember what we did!

After doing the rounds of our CEO and other top management who live out of Wellington, through local staff who have kids and can’t drop plans at the last minute, we were called upon to represent Xero at the NZ Internet Industry Awards held at Parliament again this year.

Last year we got all dollied up and Xero won the Best Business Application award and The Mister gave a speech and we were photographed and crowded around and felt rather glamourous (previous posts: Awards at Parliament and Who are they?)

This year Xero didn’t enter the awards but as winners of one last year we had to present the award to this year’s winners in that category. The Mister didn’t have to make a speech, just stand on the spot and in manner of lady handing out the Oscar trophies, pass a certificate to each nominee as they came up on stage, then the award to the winner.

It’s always nice representing Xero and getting out there where people know the company because they’re investors or customers and to receive many compliments for the product and company overall. It’s incredible how many people know about it now and how amazing they all think it is to work there. Working hard inside the company, we often lose sight of that, so it was a good evening out. And the bite-sized pavlovas and lemon meringue pies served as Petit Fours were amazing!

Here’s a blurry photo from my phone.

And the official one of us from the NZ Internet Industry Awards website.

Have not been to Felix for coffee or lunch or dinner or anything for years! I lost my patience with the cafes along Wakefield Street some time ago when they all seemed to close so early on week nights meaning there was nothing cafe-ish in that part of town. Back in the day when I was at university Lido and City Limits (where Finc is now) used to stay open quite late and you could always get a hot chocolate and a piece of cheesecake on the way home from the movies after 10.30pm.

When Felix opened I went a few times because of the orange. Of course. Last night we had our apartment Body Corporate AGM on Cuba Street and decided that we’d give Finc a go for a quick, light cafe meal, but they were closed. Sigh. So Felix it was. The orange teddy bear light is still there and the orange roof

I had a bowl of minestrone with toasted ciabatta and The Mister had a burger. Both were excellent. It was a bit chilly in there, I could only see one heater, and as inviting as the bench seat long the windows or high stools around a communal table looked, they were just too cold to sit at being so close to the windows. So we sat at the back at the bar. Which was OK, we like sitting at the bar, except there were no foot rests on the stools or the bar and even The Mister’s feet didn’t touch the ground so you can imagine how high up in the air my feet were swinging! Wasn’t particularly comfortable but as we were there for a quick meal, it was over pretty quickly.

We might add it to the list of options for dinner on the way home when it gets a bit warmer.

No I’m not talking about my life on an island sipping cocktails while enjoying a view of the endless blue ocean lapping at white sands bordered by palm trees, I’m talking about Paradise dot net dot NZ.

Received a call out of the blue this morning asking what my decision was in light of Paradise being ‘retired’ by TelstraClear … hmmm … I was supposed to be making a decision? Seems I’d missed an email about it … ironic really. Anyway, the offer was on the table to switch to Clear (well, back to Clear in my case) and keep my existing Paradise email address, well, for an additional $2.99 per month. So I organised all that over the phone then they guy told me I had one day to forward all the email I wanted to keep to my new Clear address because once the redirect was in place for Paradise, mail would go straight to Clear and I wouldn’t have access to my old Paradise mailbox. So I spent ages doing that. And it all worked fine.

So no more Paradise webmail for me:

I know a few people at work who use it so I asked them if they were going through the same thing. Seems they weren’t and were rather alarmed that they hadn’t been told that their Paradise email address, that they’d also had for 10 years, was going to disappear. We began to worry it was a scam. So being a good Internet citizen I phoned Paradise to see if it was a scam … overlooking the fact that it’s TelstraClear who answers Paradise’s phone now, I spoke to someone who assured me that it wasn’t a scam and that the person who’d phoned me that morning was indeed a real person, and employee of TelstraClear who worked in the Auckland sales team.

So I’d been tweeting about all this as the day went along, wondering online why none of my colleagues were going through the same thing and wailing about someone else already having orangegirl@clear.net.nz as their address. Then what do you know but TelstraClear tweeted me back! We swapped a few tweets then email addresses and I got the full low-down on why it was me and no-one else who was loosing their address. Seems customers of 10+ years who were paying by credit card and didn’t use cable had some whole lower level of security that meant through lack of address, drivers licence and secret question information collected at the time of becoming a Paradise customer all those years ago meant they were getting rid of all these accounts. Seemed plausible. And I was pleased to get the personal help and to be able to put the minds of my colleagues at rest.

For everyone out there who emails me at my Paradise email address, this doesn’t change, I can give you a new Clear address if you like, but my Paradise email is going straight into my Clear inbox for the duration of my time with Clear.

Update several days later:

So, am going through all stages of loss here. First the denial/disbelief that Paradise was going, then the sadness associated with no longer logging in (although I was glad to see the back of the ugly web site used for reading my mail) and now I’m firmly in the anger stage. Someone emailed me at my Paradise address and it turns out the redirect is not working, it bounced. I have all our electronic bills going to that address and let me tell you if Genesis cut off our power through non-payment, TelstraClear will be covering all costs associated with that! And I received a ‘Welcome to TelstraClear’ pack in the mail asking for my bank account details for the monthly payment – what? I want to pay by credit card – I have a shiny new card that gets me air points so I want to pay by credit card like I have done for the last 10 years!! Although given that credit card paying customers seem to be those who lost their Paradise accounts it seems that they perhaps don’t take credit cards for payment any more, perhaps it’s too much trouble to chase around updating card expiry dates, although it never was a problem before.

So I’ve emailed the person who ‘convinced’ me to swap to Clear to tell them of my annoyance, and I returned to Twitter, although now I’ve conversed with a real person at the end of that Twitter account I feel kind of bad that the person and the company are one in the same and that they’ll think I’m mad with them. Although it happens to me all the time with the Xero account and no-one holds back their displeasure even if they do know who ‘OG’ is receiving the tweets at the other end.

Of course, it’s the weekend, and no-one is responding. Sigh.

OK – I’m absolutely convinced selection for Jury Service is NOT random. Just got my 4th summons today – it is 3 years since I was last summoned but in the 3 years prior to that I was summoned 3 times, so that’s 4 times in 5 years which really is ridiculous.

So I’m off to do it again in September. As you’ll see from previous ramblings on Jury Service on my blog, I don’t know why I feel it’s not right to get excused for the sake of it and why I feel reasonably ambivalent about going.

Wonder if they have wi-fi by now? Ha!

Have finally got back to Nikau since coming back from New York. With it not being open on a Sunday it’s slightly more inconvenient for us to go, having so much to jam in on a Saturday. However, we called in for Saturday breakfast this weekend.

We we welcomed back with hugs like old friends and it was great to see familiar faces there and a few new hair styles. We were out of view of Kelda (boss chef) but somehow she got wind we were there and came out to say hi and welcome us back – we felt Very Important.

Didn’t have a date scone (gasp!) as it was breakfast time, so had my old fav toast and peanut butter – something I hardly have at Nikau with us never usually being there for breakfast. Their homemade milk toast is really good – I only need one slice as it’s delicious and thick and you can actually taste milk in the crust.

My coffee was delivered in my special cup (even after all these months!) – good texture and well made although I have decided I really don’t like the flavour of Supreme’s Fair Trade Organic beans – it has a very distinctive ‘green’ taste, quite acidic, but I have no choice until they switch beans which I don’t think they’ll do being an organic cafe. It was great to be back and next visit will have to be for a date scone.

I’m thrilled to see Nikau is blogging again too – well done guys!!

Made a batch of leek & potato soup last night – very industrious of us for a Friday night. With some old bread toasted and cut into soldiers it was a great winter’s meal and saved the poor delivery man coming out on such a dreadful night with pizza.

Have been introduced to Yummy Mummy’s Cheesecakes – a little store in Woodville that now has cupboard of a store in the James Cook Arcade off Lambton Quay. Got our first little cheesecake-for-2 on the way home from work and it was divine! Not baked cheesecake, just regular, passionfruit – YUM!

A hot topic right now is whether or not we’ve settled back in Wellington after the 4 months living in New York. It’s the question we get asked most often, a change from ‘how was the trip?’!  Being at the Xero AGM last night brought all the questions out of the woodwork as we caught up with lots of people we hadn’t seen in a while. Observations are that we have settled well.

We are definitely portraying that. It doesn’t do us or anybody any good to fight the system on this one. Obviously we didn’t want to come home and would do anything within reason to get back there – and right now that means working more hard yards, saving up again and seeing where Xero takes us. We’re not about to chuck in what we’ve worked so hard on to live there, perhaps in time that will tempt us, but right now, Xero is still a driving force in our lives. It’s no good being anti-NZ and we may well be in the privacy of our own homes or if you manage to get my guard down, but being negative to everyone about Wellington or life in NZ just belittles the lives everyone has here. I might be fairly blunt but I’m not going to do that!

Even this weather is not getting me down today. It’s winter! Plus I’m walking around under my New York umbrella – something I wouldn’t dare put up while there, but it’s not so touristy here!

We’ve been meaning to try the new Cuban cafe on Taranaki Street for ages, Cubita – one of those places that we always walk by on the way to the movies, always has people at the tables outside but we just never got around to it, until last Sunday.

It was packed, and it’s tiny, and felt like a totally different crowd of people – not sure how to explain that – I guess a bit like when you go to movies at a different cinema, and even though you don’t normally recognise people at your own movies, you feel like it’s all different people.

Their coffee is from beans imported from Cuba, so not fresh roasted in Wellington, however it held it’s own although had a slightly sticky flavour to it, almost like a burnt caramel taste. Not unpleasant but a taste I often associate with ‘bagged’ beans. We ordered lattes but after observing the giant cups they seemed to be serving to other people we doubled checked the cup size of the latte, and changed our order to flat white to get something ‘normal’. We also had a slice of carrot cake, well I ended up having most of it because there was some spice in it that made The Mister’s nose turn up at it, but being a sucker for cake, I persevered! Something like amaretto or marzipan or something slightly perfumey.