Busytown: Sons for the Return Home
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We managed to get our garden equipment, and tent, in without much more than a 'man clean' by myself. In fact, customs was a lot less interested in our stuff then we thought they would be. If in doubt, give them a ring. I found them very helpful on the phone when I called them regarding my wife's 50 or so food essences!! You might be surprised about what you can bring in.
I often tell people I moved to London with a backpack and three tea chests and moved back with a wife and a whole shipping crate, and that the two are definitely related. Get a few quotes from different moving companies but expect to pay more once they have wrapped everything up. My wife brought a whole bunch of antique furniture which I thought was excessive at the time but has been great to have now. Once you reach a certain volume of stuff, the marginal cost of including even more is fairly small.
Whether you like Georgian furniture or Ikea, the range in NZ is a lot smaller and more expenisve than the UK (and the US probably), and it is also good to have stuff that remind you of your overseas adventure. Bring back those lamps.
And if you are moving to Auckland, prepare to be shocked re house prices.
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And a whole lot of better and more exciting galaxies to stare at down here too!!! With unpolluted, light free (nearly) skies!!
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Christopher Dempsey, in reply to
how do I enroll the kids in school? answer: find a school, bowl on up and talk to the principle
Yep, those principles are very handy when talking to the principal.
And a whole lot of better and more exciting galaxies to stare at down here too!!! With unpolluted, light free (nearly) skies!!
Wearing elected rep hat: Unfortunately light pollution hasn't really figured much in Council planning/capital works etc. I'm working on it though. Doffing hat.
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oh heh! sorry
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Jolisa, your posts often make me cry, and this was no exception! What a sweetly sad piece of writing.
I love the treehouse idea. I wonder if you could train a tree to be a house like these folk in India have trained trees to be bridges?
The disjuncture you describe between how familiar places look and how they exist in the mind is familiar to Christchurch people. I suppose our memories gradually get overwritten. I thought this was a poetic visualisation of change in a landscape: artfully merged images of Toronto past and present.
ETA:
Flying home from the successful job interview, the astrophysicist in the family says he felt as if he’d landed the biggest fish in the world.
I’m dying to ask if it’s Dancing With the Stars . But I’m resisting! ;-)
Congratulations, and welcome home! :-)
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Can I suggest that you make sure to make contact with as many friends as possible. You want an instant social life, it really softens the blow. Don't forget the PAS peeps!
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Jackie Clark, in reply to
Somehow, I don't think that'll be a problem......
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One thing that I've only just worked out is that my children have been little repositories of disease this year. In the last couple of years in South Australia, they had relatively little time off school, but this year back in New Zealand has been quite different - there has usually been at least one child home for at least one day every second week. I think it may be something to do with reacclimatising to the NZ germ pool. I'm hoping that by next year they will have developed some resistance to the local bugs.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
And a whole lot of better and more exciting galaxies to stare at down here too!!! With unpolluted, light free (nearly) skies!!
Bah!
While we were in Arizona, each evening I'd set up the scope and look at something - often Jupiter and her/his moons. In auckland I tried to do that and really our skies aren't too light polluted ... but the clouds :( I hadn't remembered how many days it is cloudy, even thin wispy stuff ruins an evening of gazing :(.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
I wonder if you could train a tree to be a house
One of the things I like to joke about when asked what I want to do is "I want to plant a seed and grow a house" ... only I'm not joking, I really want to see that done someday and know I had a part in that. Of course making it a home such as the one Jolisa is leaving is a much more complicated task.
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Sacha, in reply to
a GM house...
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
integumental shellter...
“I want to plant a seed and grow a house” … only I’m not joking, I really want to see that done someday and know I had a part in that.
...with convolvulus for cabling,
hedges for proximity alarms
and lilyponds for solar power...
I wanna see that done, too... -
Ross Mason, in reply to
Of course.......Auckland. I forgot. ;-)
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James Butler, in reply to
I wonder if you could train a tree to be a house
Our wisteria is doing its best to make a sunroom of our deck, so there's a start.
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recordari, in reply to
I wonder if you could train a tree to be a house
I think you'd have more luck training a house to be a tree. No, I'm not kidding either.
But oh the humble tree house. Monkey Mansion is my favourite. Only $10,450! Or there's this.
The problem with growing a house would surely be the wait? Especially if you wanted one with hardwood floors.
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Sacha, in reply to
The problem with growing a house would surely be the wait?
hence the GM. or some smart nanotech might help
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recordari, in reply to
smart nanotech might help
They could call them Entwood houses.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
I want to plant a seed and grow a house
A Yew Topiarian vision.
<coat>
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Jolisa, I too found your writing wonderful and very familiar. I constantly think about returning to NZ, possibly for the wrong reasons, and you have named and identified many of the things that both trouble and excite me albeit with so much more clarity. Although I've been away nine years, it has been in Australia, a far more familiar place, I suspect, than New Haven. Still, when last in Auckland, the place I spent my first 19 years, I felt very dislocated.
A Yew Topiarian vision.
Genius.
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Ross Mason, in reply to
That copse the lot.
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Jolisa, in reply to
A Yew Topiarian vision.
If yew build it, they will come (but yew will have to prune it carefully and regularly, viz. the Elephant Hedge at Rockingham Castle, for example).
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This, on the other hand, is a Mew Topiarian vision.
(Via the excellent HedgeBritannia blog).
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Lilith __, in reply to
And how do you finance a treehouse? Mortgage or hedge fund?
[if a tree falls in a forex...?]
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Fluctuations in forex must be logarithmic.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
A Yew Topiarian vision.
That is so going in my next seminar. And no, I do not want to derail this thread honest.
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