Beer here

It has been a busy, fun, tiring week. I presented my first gross case at Necro rounds (that's gross, not gross), so I've passed through at least one initiation....

Mort had fun building his computer:



Last weekend we went to happy-hour (or five), starting at Squirrels, where we found a bona-fide Lord of the Rings pin-ball machine. We lost a lot of "cool" points by taking photos of it:



Unfortunately I didn't check to see if the ball was the Eye of Sauron.

Oh, and remember how many beers you can normally get on tap in NZ? About four? The Fox & Firkin knows how to do beer on tap. I think there are 38:




After Squirrels and the Fox & Firkin, we headed over to Enoteca, a really stunning wine bar (at least, by my standards). You can tell a place has a special level of class when they include a Doggie Bar:



After a certain hour at night, electric car recharging sites are particularly funny, although I can't remember exactly why.



On Sunday, we went to a BBQ out near Independence. We learned that people here take kegerators to a whole new level:


Yep, that's four beers on tap just outside the back door. Awesome.

Of course, in a town of engineers you get some pretty spectacular home-brewing setups. This one provided the afternoon's entertainment:



Also, people here have a highly developed sense of morality that I can totally relate to:


At the BBQ I was given some sourdough starter that originally came from Germany. It's awesome stuff, tastes very yoghurty and makes very tasty bread.

During the week we finally got downstairs neighbours. We gave them a bit of help moving in, and they gave us pizza. A pretty fair trade, and we got to try traditional US-student-grade pizza instead of the flash stuff we tried some weeks ago. Cheese-some to the max.

One month in

One month in, and we finally have enough food in the house that we can't eat it all in a single meal. Also, we have a bed of our very own:



It's much, much higher than it looks. After sleeping on the floor for a couple of weeks, it felt quite odd to be lying so close to the ceiling.

To celebrate the bed, we tried Jiffy Pop.


We're starting to get a bit of a social life - so far (apart from Knit Nights) it consists of transporting dessert across town in the bike trailer. People thought it must be a kid in there ("Trifle? That's an odd thing to call a kid, but I 'spose it makes sense...."). We'd be miserable beggars to put a kid in that thing anyway - there are no windows or place for a seat. During the evening we had great fun explaining that "Kiwi" is not in fact a derogatory term (unlike "Beaner" or "Coconut"), and that we are not actually calling ourselves hairy fruit.

In the world of shopping, things just get stranger and more perverse. I mean, if this Jolly Green Giant guy is a plant, then what are these?




Possibly they're related to this tool (which looks like it should be put to use in ram fitness testing)




And this is just wrong. Do people really think about what they're calling their products?




And for the children.... Here's a tasty treat that is actually designed to look like one of our favourite childhood choking hazards:

No bats for me

Due to the "supply limitation situation" concerning rabies pre-exposure prophylaxis vaccination for humans (it's not a shortage though - see here), I'm not getting vaccinated for another month or two. This means no bats for me, and I have to avoid anything else that might be even a little rabid.

In other news, we have a power-squid:

This creative device has a niche in everyday households due to the shape of the power outlets here. Some kind of power-board/multi-board is needed because many appliances do not require an earth pin, so the plugs support themselves in the wall-socket by two pins only. Because in US plugs these pins go into vertical slots, a problem occurs when the wall-sockets become worn:

Hence even though there are some 50,000 power-points per room, plugging into some kind of power-board is a good idea since it has the handy earth pin to keep it in the wall. The reason for a squid vs. a board is bizarre: The sockets on the power-boards here are so close together only about half of the points are usable at one time.

Oh well, at least the power-squid matches our new lamp:

I think it's supposed to look like a cluster of pink flowers, but it mostly reminds me of giant tubeworms. This makes me happy.

There's an excessive heat warning on at the moment - it was 38ºC outside a while ago (only 36ºC inside, which was relatively refreshing). So we're mostly just sitting around eating ice-cubes dipped in rum & coke. Interestingly, the use of high-fructose corn syrup (instead of sugar) in soft-drinks here seems to make the coke foam far less when combined with rum.

Another weird thing: all the supermarkets sell dry ice. How awesome is that? Especially in this weather.... I mean, when we got plates out of the cupboard for dinner, they were already hot. That's just wrong.

The finishing touches

Ok, so we splashed out a little... And bought a bike trailer. Now I know back in Palmy this would brand us as Über bike geeks of geekdom, past the geek of no return, but here in Corvallis a bike trailer is pretty normal. Honestly. Stop looking at me like that.

Anyway, look at all the household stuff we were able to move in one trip!



Yes, there's a microwave oven in there. There's also a saw, which we needed for this:




It turned out to be a deceptively large (and heavy) desk, and now it looks like this:



Yay for bed risers.

In business news, a microscope was found for me today (by which I mean they had to send out a search-party for it), and I was shown where all the good pathology books are hidden.

Oh, and the Rice & Spice (like a small Davis Trading) sells Milo! How awesome is that?!?

Somewhat more sorted

After a week of me disappearing off to work and Mort staying home to sort out various utilities & services, we're mostly settled. I think we only need to find a clothes dryer (since we don't have a private yard to hang clothes in) and a bed (although the air mattress we've borrowed is the best one I've ever come across).

Here's a pic of the outside of our place - there are two identical L-shaped units, we're the top one.



We ran into the owner of the place and her son last weekend while we were moving in (via bus). They were kind enough to drive us back to the hostel on campus to pick up the rest of our gear and bring it back, which was really lovely and saved us quite a few bike-rides.

Needless to say, we wasted no time in setting up the kitchen with the essentials (Marmite, a kettle, knives, beer). I think once we have a couple more pots and some corningware we should be mostly done with the hardware, although it'll take a lot longer to collect the food-stock.




The thing that really bothers me about the scrubbing brush in the above photo is that the handle isn't colour-fast. If you get it wet, it makes your hand red and leaves drops of pink everywhere. Hopefully it'll wear off, or we'll find another.

We got our first real teapot, it's not too bad, either. Probably not the perfect teapot, but it'll do. The teashops here have a reasonable amount of awesome, and the owners have the good grace to concede that British-style stainless steel teapots are far better than anything available here.



We had to submit to an upright vacuum cleaner - seems that the "normal" canister style is not what people use here. When I was talking (complaining) to someone about it, she exclaimed, "Oooh, you want one of those vacuum cleaners from the '50s!"

Yes. Yes I do.


Outside of the house, the birds here like to tease cats that are behind fences, just like at home.

Signing up for a flat

Life is sweet now that we have bicycles - even Manfred appreciates them, I think.




Thanks to our shiny new bikes, we were able to travel to the property agent place via a route we wouldn't otherwise take, and got to check out the covered bridge on SW Campus Way. Pretty, is it not?




And I've no idea what this plant is, but Mort took and awesome photo here:



I think the only service we have left to organise for the flat is internet, hopefully that doesn't take too long - we've become accustomed to being able to email/message people whenever. Thank goodness we were able to get the power account in both of our names, that should be enough to let us change the bank account into a joint account, and Mort will be able to open his own account if necessary. It's incredibly hard to do these things without a social security number!

So far, we've only got around to taking pictures of the kitchen, since it's so much more important than the rest of the place... Heaps of cupboards, pretty good lighting, a huge oven/stove, a reasonable amount of prep-space (helped by the dishwasher), two full-sized sinks - Luxury! Even if one has an in-sink-erator (gah!). The kitchen design is pretty sensible, with a good triangle between stove, sink and fridge. You wouldn't believe some of the places we saw advertised, several had quite low cupboards over the stove!



The only problem will be that green light-shade - it's a real hazard for Mort. I know it should go over a dining table, but one that far out from the wall will choke off the kitchen a bit. We'll probably take off the shade and hitch up the bulb to avoid scalp wounds.



Oh, and the place is full of blinds, which sucks a bit. Still, none of them are broken, and the mesh screens on all the windows should help keep them free of fly-specks.