Eurovision 2016

The Eurovision finale was broadcast in New Zealand for the first time, and I missed it! To be fair, it started at 7am here, and it sucks. I could not have sat through four hours of it. I could barely sit through 9 minutes of it:

https://youtu.be/T077sFWGKzg

All I can say is that this year didn't disappoint. (Be sure to check out the winner, Ukraine, in its entirety.) Also check out the UK entry--to be fair, they didn't come in last place as usual, but it is ironic that artists from Azerbaijan and Belarus sang better English. (I think the line was "I come alive when I'm with you" but it sure sounds like "I come a lot when I'm with you.")

Feijoa - the real kiwi fruit

Forget Chinese gooseberries -- grown in China and renamed "kiwifruit" as a marketing exercise -- if you want an authentic taste of Kiwiana, come to NZ between March and June and feast yourself on feijoas (fe-jo-ahs).

Of course, if you believe Wikipedia, feijoas are native to South America,  and are usually referred to as "pineapple guavas" in the States, but this isn't about facts, it's about the subtle taste of "pineapple, apple and mint."  It's about cutting an egg-sized fruit and letting the soft, somewhat slimy flesh slip over your tongue.  It's about the strong, somewhat sour scent hitting your nasal passages.  In short, it's about acquiring a taste for them.  It's about going native.

Last year I found them a novelty, the kind of reaction that is neither good nor bad, but "interesting."  This year I find myself craving them, in large part because someone had the genius idea to put them in a pavlova.  Which, by the way, was actually invented in NZ (unless you believe Wikipedia).

Sadly, feijoas can't be picked early and artificially ripened, and they bruise easily, making them a poor candidate for shipping.  However, if you have a local source (I'm looking at you, California and South Carolina) I highly recommend you find yourself a few of these gems and trying them straight, put them in a smoothie or mix with yoghurt. Or just come to NZ and I'll make you a feijoa pavlova.

Lost wallet

I'm so lucky, I've never been mugged or pickpocketed* but I have lost my wallet...twice.  The first time was just after I moved to the UK, I had no cash, no credit card, no ATM card, nobody to help me, and I was living in a hotel so I didn't even have the option of eating at home!  I was quite desperate during the week or so it took to cancel all my cards and get new ones.  And then a few days later, my wallet fell out of a suit pocket in the closet.

So when my wallet went missing two weeks ago, I was hopeful it would show up on it's own.  However, I was so busy I had no time to look for it.  It took a good week just to go through my drawers and closet, plus the car and office, but I finally came to the inescapable conclusion that it was not coming back, and I needed to deal with it.

Fortunately I had some emergency cash so I was fine until the bank cards arrived.  The driver's license was a bit more annoying, as I had to go to an agent and provide sixteen forms of ID, plus pay $38 for the privilege.  Similarly the Snapper card (the equivalent of London's Oyster card) cost $10 to replace.  (More annoying, the city is looking to get replace Snapper cards with HOP cards, so this is a limited investment at best.)  I have yet to replace my library card.

I also lost a $30 gift card from Mitre 10, the local DIY chain, I'd just received a few days before. I had returned some window stays that I'd never gotten around to installing on the last house, and the current house didn't need them.  As the cashier pointed out, 11 months was slightly out of their 28-day refund policy, but she gave me the gift card instead.  Amazingly, I was able to fish the receipt out of the bin and take it back to the shop, and they re-issued another gift card!

But of course, the main thing I miss is the wallet itself.  When my last wallet died, I decided to eschew a leather replacement and found this:

It was made out of Tyvek, the same material used for shipping packages.  I didn't think the wallet would last six months but it lasted two years and was still in fine condition!  Plus everybody loved the idea of a wallet made out of money.  Of course, being in NZ I couldn't get another one with British pounds, they didn't offer one with NZ notes, and I didn't like any of their other designs, so I was a bit flustered until I discovered you could design your own.

This is what I put together:

The laser kiwi is obvious, but why a $5 note instead of, say, a $50 or $100 note?  Well, for starters, it has Sir Edmund Hillary, of Mount Everest fame, who is a lot more recognisable than Kate Sheppard ($10), Sir Apirana Ngata ($50) and Ernest, Lord Rutherford of Nelson ($100).  Plus it won best banknote of the year, 2015 (seriously!)  But the main reason is that the $20 note has a truly awful photo of Queen Elizabeth II, and as much as I adore the Queen I couldn't bear to look at that regularly.

* I once told an ex-girlfriend I'd never been pickpocketed, and she pickpocketed me!  So I really have to qualify that by saying I've never been pickpocketed by anyone who wasn't kissing me at the time.

A new toy

Yes, it's a Mac.

Now, before you accuse me of selling my soul (which I'd have to do to afford a new MacBook Pro) let me hasten to note it belongs to the company.

When I moved to NZ, I bought a $200 laptop primarily for updating my blog, which of course hadn't seen much action. I knew it was woefully underpowered for a work laptop, but since almost everything we were doing was in the 'cloud' I thought it wouldn't matter how much horsepower the laptop had.  So when I joined the company and they asked if I wanted a new computer, I said no, my laptop would be fine.

Needless to say, it wasn't fine. Although the systems were in the cloud, I'd often have 15 windows open trying to manage them, plus video conferencing or listening to music.  The laptop would regularly grind to a halt and I'd have to spend half an hour just shutting everything down and rebooting so I could continue to work!

A couple of times this occurred while I was talking to my boss, and he told me in no uncertain terms to get a new computer.  For some reason I felt bad about this, like it was a failure on my part, and besides I had no idea what the budget was and I didn't want to look greedy.  After going back and forth several times, I finally decided to go all-out and get a 27" Mac All-in-one.  My boss sent me this 13" MacBook Pro instead.

Which is fine.  I already bought an adapter so I can use my external monitor and I will probably get an external keyboard (when the %#*& is keyboardio going to ship?!) and mouse, so at least I won't get carpal tunnel, but I definitely need new glasses (or new eyeballs).  And for all the terrible things I've said about Apple over the years, I have to admit this thing is fast, and so far a pleasure to use.  But tomorrow I will start using it for work, so I'll reserve final judgment until then.