Thursday, July 31, 2008

Happy day

Today was a most excellent day.

First, the wire transfer from NZ came through, so our money-stress went away. Mort's Dad chased up the bank in NZ, and must have scared them something fearful.... It seems it had been "Forgotten" somehow in Auckland, pretty shocking, really.

Then we had a call from the real estate people to say our application for the rental we're after was accepted despite our lack of credit records (must have been our sweet smiles), so now we have somewhere to live, and a way to pay them tomorrow! I'm not sure if we can move in tomorrow, but I hope so. If not, I think we can move in Monday. Either way, I'll be able to start work-proper next week (other than just hanging out at necro & histo rounds).

My "Grown-up" check-books arrived today (my temporary checks had Tigger & Bugs Bunny on them), although I have no idea what the bank thinks I'm going to do with five new check-books.... Papier-mâché a giant money-box, perhaps.

We wandered into the public library and I was able to get a library card (I needed a letter to prove my address, even though I'll be moving soon), I expect we'll spend quite a bit of time in there.

Then we went BIKE SHOPPING. We had a great time trying out bikes and comparing bells etc., and you can't beat the customer service when the bike-shop-guy (Vernon) says he wants to "make these the best bikes you've ever had, and have them remind you of that every day". We picked all the bits we wanted, and they said we could pick up the bikes at the end of the day. Yay for Cyclotopia, they rock.

To celebrate, we had lunch. At a brewery-pub. McMenamins. It was awesome. The pub itself was very interesting - there was a fairly major water feature taking up a wall - it consisted of taps pouring water into sinks which led to other sinks and so on....




The underside of many of the sinks were painted, usually a face. Sometimes a Beaver.



The rest of the bar had plenty to look at, it was a great place to have lunch.



And the server got us a tour of the brewery, where the brewer, Gary, showed us around.


Aren't those fermenters awesome? And the beer was great.



Later on we made our way back to Cyclotopia, noticing there are quite a few sunbathers around here. I guess since it isn't such a death-sport in this country more people take part. Our bikes were fine-tuned and fitted for us, and Vernon modelled them for us with good humour (Mort's has a pump tied to the rack, in case anyone's wondering what is going on there).



Cycling back to the campus was great. It was fast and smooth, and it only took a minute to get used to the skinny(ish) road tyres. Best of all, my feet didn't hurt at all the whole way back, until I got off the bike and realised my blisters were still there, and will be for a few days. At least now they can have a chance to heal up - no more Te Waewae Express!

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Squirrels & Bees

Sorry about the lack of interesting eye-fodder - not a lot has been happening, really. We've spent the last few days walking around and around the town, looking at potential places to live and gradually turning my feet into gigantic blister-balls (we had hoped to have acquired bikes by now). I still can't get over the bikes here. Not only are reclining bikes common as dirt, I've seen at least two tandem-recliners. I'm not sure if they'd be so fun in the rain....

Even after all this time in Corvallis, nearly 10 days, we still can't pass a squirrel without stopping and pointing at it, giggling, until it flounces away. Come on, those guys are hilarious.





Not only are there squirrels..... There are bees! BEES! In the supermarket! It has to be the coolest things I've seen in at least a day. Look - here's where you get the honey......



And here's where you let bees out into the supermarket! It's fool-proof!




Also, we've noticed the bumblebees here are yellow and black, with a yellow thorax. Really cool.

We made it to my (our) first Knit Night (Woo, the Corvallis Ravellers). These people are fantastic - apart from being a good laugh and full of useful local information, they've pretty much offered to give, sell or lend us most of the things we'll need to get started once we can move into a new place.

Manfred came to Knit Night, too.




And here's a bunch of us in Borders, which is one of the biggest bookshops I've been in so far (although I am looking forward to Powell's in Portland).





In business news, we applied for a rental today, it's the top floor of a duplex. Hopefully that comes through ok despite our pitiful lack of credit records. The real estate people have been quite understanding.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

On foot in Corvallis

Apart from various piles of paperwork, we've spent the last couple of days walking around Corvallis, getting to know the town and figuring out where the good places to live are. We're also getting a huge amount of entertainment seeing real things that we thought only existed on TV....

Like the yellow school bus with the stop-sign:





Another awesome stereotype was when a tiny elderly lady was taking multiple shots at parking her gigantic blue Ute, and finally parked it over two disabled spaces.

And we had to wonder how they managed two typos on the same sign (you might need to click on the picture to make it big enough to see):




Manfred rode the creepy squirrel by central park:




And we found Christmas... The home brew shop here is amazing, with a massive range of equipment and ingredients we couldn't hope to find in NZ. The sad thing is there are more varieties of NZ hops for sale here than we could get back home. They also sell a range of beers from all over the world:



Note that we haven't yet made it to the place in town that is noted for having a massive selection of beers....

And what was this thing doing in the home brew shop?



We made it into a micro brew pub one hot afternoon, where they poured us five tasters since we had no idea what the beer was like. Everything we tried was excellent, I think we're going to have a bit of catching up to do when we set up our own brews here.

We're also going to be able to afford to bake most of the stuff in Dr. Oetker: we've been told that cherries and hazelnuts are cheap and common here. We found evidence of this for hazelnuts, at least, when we noticed the shells get used for garden chips....


Thursday, July 24, 2008

Settling into Corvallis

We've had three sleeps here so far, although it feels like we've been here much longer. We're starting to know our way around campus and parts of town, although there's still heaps to explore.

The people here have been awesomely friendly, the guy in the bank said we could email him any time with questions about Oregon in general, and a couple of people in a Korean eatery helped us with useful tips, like what the pedestrian crossings (cross-walks) look like and where we can find bicycle shops.

We've been roaming around the university bookshop, which also has some pretty crazy stuff, including The Tub O' Flying CATS (extra ammunition for the Catapult):



Also, people really are crazy about Beavers....



Beaver merchandise is everywhere, on just about every building. If the Beavers (football team) are playing a home game, don't try to drive anywhere.

What we've seen of the town itself it extremely pretty. The picture below is of some kinetic art down by the river park (photo taken at 7pm). The whole thing rotates and the individual birds also turn on an eccentric axis, so it looks like they're randomly flying around the lamp-post.



The river park is really musical, with various people busking. Not your every-day busking, mind: there was a string quartet and another guy playing a stringed instrument we couldn't quite identify, but it had a renaissance feel about it. It looked kind of like a lute, but was being played flat on the guy's lap. Any ideas?


Naturally, City Hall is appropriately impressive:




The food so far has been pretty good. The other night I learned how to eat a teriyaki salmon steak with chopsticks, and last night we went to American Dream Pizza. We ordered a medium-sized pizza, and the two of us could barely get through half of it! And one of us was Mort! It was a massive, 5cm-thick pile of mushroom, olives and various cured meats. The mozzarella was on the bottom, which was quite odd. Anyway, I should get going. We have pizza to finish for breakfast.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Not a bad trip

We're here. Somehow, we managed it without losing any luggage or overly exciting the fruit-beagle, and somehow I'm still awake, even though it's 6.30pm here and it was 53+ hours ago that I last slept in a real bed.

I think the worst part was waiting in airports, the time actually spent flying was pleasant enough. Our flight from Auckland was a little delayed, although we were secretly (loudly) pleased that it meant less time in Sydney airport. And so.....

The Little Bear Waits.



One convenient coincidence of our altered travel plans was that we ended up trying to leave Sydney for LA simultaneously with hoards of American Catholics who came to Oz to see the Pope-wizard. So when they decided they just wanted to go home, or clicked their red slippers together (or whatever it is catholics do en masse), they swamped the airline and we were bumped up to business class, which is pretty ideal for a 12-and-a-half-hour flight. Awesome for us, and probably the only reason I haven't (yet) fallen asleep face-first into the laptop.

Manfred also appreciated the finer points of business class on a Boeing 747.



We were so out of our depth in business class, when they came around with pre-take-off hot towels, we had to watch to see what other people did with them. Hot towels are awesome, by the way. Other than the hot towels, pre-take-off service included drinks, looking at the lunch menu, pre-ordering from the breakfast menu, and receiving piles of freebies, including night-shirts and sleep/toiletry bags.

The menus were ridiculously posh, and although "salad of smoked salmon and green peas with mint dressing" is very tasty, I'm not sure my stomach liked it much as a lunch entreé. We had "slow cooked lamb in rosemary and garlic with potato pureé and broccoli" accompanied by "green leaf salad with herb vinaigrette" and followed by "Nice cream espresso and praline ice cream with créme anglaise". After all that rich food, I didn't want breakfast when it came around.

Oh, and in business class, the stewards learn your name and call you "Mr. and Mrs. Piripi". Very hard to get used to.

At least we were thoroughly brought down to earth (no pun intended) with our last flight on an Embraer, with the bung seat and the sticky door that the pilot had to come out and shut for the stewardess.

The shuttle driver from Eugene to Corvallis was a good character, he asked all the standard questions (are you from Australia? Don't you have a lot of sheep?) and was happy to talk about the area.

On arrival, the Cauthorn Hall people actually met us outside the building and were very sweet and helpful. We distributed our gear about the room in a randomly strategic manner, then went for a walk around campus in the sun, which was pretty awesome after all that travelling. Our first taste of Corvallis was warm, green and spinning gently (possibly a sign we need sleep). I saw a squirrel but Mort doesn't believe me. It was grey. We both saw a pointy bird winkling bugs out of a tree. Pictures of the place will follow at some point.

So tomorrow I've got an appointment for my official "check-in" with the university, and will try to find a bank to open an account with (assuming I wake up in the morning). Wednesday morning I'm going to Necro rounds, Histo rounds, then out to morning tea with the pathologists - that'll be a great way to meet everyone and have a chat.

For now, however, there is nothing left to do but....



Yeah, he'll be pretty pissed when he sees this.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Departure imminent

Well, we managed to get ourselves fully packed with about 7 hours to spare. Our bags aren't overweight (according to the Qantas website, anyway), and no single bag has greater mass than that of a small sun. The dimensions are a bit tight, however..... Although everything looks pretty small piled up like that.



Now we just need to get to Auckland, pick up my I-797 form and check in. Then onwards to Sydney, LA, Eugene and Corvallis.

On another note, my birthday a week or so ago was good fun, Goulash all round, as prepared by master-chefs:




As usual, they couldn't play nicely for long.


Wednesday, July 16, 2008

A justified rant

I'm fairly sure it's a well-established and time-honoured rite of passage that anyone attempting to get a US visa has to run the gauntlet. I believe this because of the occasional jokes I hear, the way people roll their eyes when the topic comes up, and because it took 4+ months for me to get the paperwork giving me permission to apply for the type of visa I need.
So when there was some kind of computer system issue at the consulate causing just enough delay that we had to change our flights, I was prepared. But when they accidentally failed to return a document to me, a document that I need in order to enter the country, it caused some serious stress. Especially since I only found out about the importance of this document by luck, and we could have easily ended up stuck in LAX trying to convince people to let us in. This problem was discovered with exactly 1 working day available to remedy the situation.
Happily, the people at the consulate were quite helpful and apologetic, and eventually accepted that sending the document to Palmerston North would not be optimal, since we are in Kerikeri and leaving from Auckland. They even let me start returning their calls on a number other than the dreaded 0900 USVISA (@ $3.62 per min.). I'm pretty sure it was the special number for American citizens with emergencies.
Crossed fingers everything goes smoothly from here.....

Sigh. I have rum now.

Leaving Palmy

Before leaving Palmy, we managed a few fare-well dos, including a notorious AWC dinner (thankyou to Trish & Pete for hosting that!). It was a great send-off, including plenty of homebrew, venison ham, and miracle hangi which mysteriously appeared without Mort & I having to dig a hole or get kumara-sticky on our hands.
We were presented with Dr. Oetker's guide to killing people with excellent German baking, then the evening degenerated into a speed-scrabble marathon. Gill's ability to outstrip the rest of the players was plainly due to her "faster-than-a-speeding-bullet" technique as captured here:




Packing our gear up consisted of hurling it into various cases, packs and bags. We'll re-pack properly before we try to get on a plane, honestly. The trip up North included a lot of snow and a freezing carrot.



Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Some kind of introduction

Well, here goes my first attempt at blogging. We shall see what comes of it, if nothing else it may be a useful way for friends & family to see what I'm up to.

The blog name? Partly because I have always found sheep to be inna
tely funny. Baaa. I guess you either get that or you don't, but I know I'm not the only one. I certainly can't be the only Kiwi. I'd like to think I'm not the only one who considers Black Sheep a romantic comedy, but so far that remains to be seen. Maybe I chose this blog name because I did my undergrad degree in an agricultural university where, in my first year, some considerable internal damage to my hostel was caused by a sheep. The title of my PhD thesis includes the word "Sheep" only once, but I did knit wool from sheep while my examiners deliberated my fate.

Or maybe I chose this blog name because of what I can see out the window:




Who can say?