first two weeks

We arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on the 10th. It's the 23rd now, so we've been here around two weeks.

Here's a compilation video of timmy at manila international airport (you don't want to miss that part), and walking through the airport at Sydney.




We were very lucky to be put in touch with very good friends of Sol's best friend, they have a four bedroom house and are only using three. So we're on a homestay with them until we can get an apartment of our own.

Here are some views of the house, from the outside and looking out the dining room window into the front garden.

And views of the houses around us.



Sol was trying to take a picture of our room when someone popped his head into the frame.


We have half (a very generous half, since our host family is MUCH larger than ours) of the refrigerator. So we shop often (twice a week, or sometimes more frequently) since we need to refill our provisions when our half of the refrigerator approaches empty, or when we're running low on timmy's milk.

We bring Timmy because we both have to be there, so we don't forget anything, and because we can load up his stroller with heavy items, with me carrying the rest of the items for the ten minute walk uphill and home. He had a yogurt snack the first time we did that.


Timmy is an early riser. Normally I would resent that since I'm certainly not a morning person. However, he always wakes up smiling and makes the mornings lovely.




We were concerned about the milk (or formula) that Timmy would drink in NZ. We tried to get him to drink milk in Manila and the first time that failed (my mother-in-law couldn't stand his protests so she gave in and made him formula). We later gave him fresh milk and formula mixes and he was OK with those. We weren't sure how he'd react to NZ milk though, so we bought a can of formula and we researched brands of formula available in NZ, and what the equivalent of our manila formula was here.

It turns out that there was no problem. He loves the milk here and he drinks it better than he did his formula (he would often leave an ounce or more of formula in the bottle, here he drains the milk to the last drop).


And then he sleeps it off.


We've been here two weeks now. Last Thursday, Sol landed a job with Catalyst IT Limited, a specialist in open source technologies. We've got the first few hurdles, ahhh, hurdled. We're now working on finding the right apartment for us. That's a bit hard because we're not very mobile (with Sol starting work tomorrow, and not having a car or being able to drive here). Fortunately, we have had incredible help from Sol's best friend and her husband. Julius has been driving us all over Wellington in our search for an apartment. It'll probably take another week or two for us to settle on the right place. But luck has been with us so far, so maybe the streak will continue and we'll have a place by this week.

biblical fail

Note: that's hosted on photobucket so as to avoid goatse shenanigans, and to be
polite to the original host. The original of
this biblical fail is here.

Despedida 2008

On Feb 2, 2008, we had a despedida (going away) party at the Richmonde hotel. This was the same hotel we had Timmy's birthday party at. We certainly didn't have the budget for a function room though. We just rented a two room suite (with dining area, living room and kitchen) and had the party there.

We were concerned it might become standing room only, but it all worked out and while some did have to stand, the flow of people was such that we didn't really have the same people standing for hours.



The theme was "food we'd miss in NZ", so there was mamang's wonderful kare-kare, Amber pancit malabon and another white pancit, mamang's rellenong bangus, a lechon from cebu, malasugui sashimi (it was going to be kinilaw, but Sol changed her mind) and the piece de resistance (hehe, I don't know how to type accents in this textbox, and wouldn't be bothered to do so if I knew how), isaw baboy and isaw manok from Manang, in U.P. Diliman (isaw not showing in the picture, as, I think, Jack and his wife, who went and bought it, hadn't arrived yet).

We had a good mix of people I'd worked with, good friends and cousins of mine, and good friends of Sol.



I was very happy that we were very lucky, that diggi (from CamiguinAction) just happened to be passing through Manila and he brought Jaime, Julia and Paco.



There were a few babies there too, so Timmy had a good time walking around with them.


and of course, there was the penguin stuffed toy, now called "Hug" since he taught Timmy how to Hug (something he does enthusiastically now, almost exclusively to women, and when he says "Huuuuuuuu" while doing)


Timmy was also able to say goodbye to his maternal grandfather, whom he doesn't see enough

progress

Today we made some forward progress. We went to the nearby Johnsonville town center to get some prepaid phone SIM cards and to open an account. We got both things accomplished. Both were very pleasant experiences. So we've got phones now, and our cash is out of our hands and we've got ATM cards.

Tomorrow sol goes to get her tax ID number (IRD). And then, I figure, she should be working on Monday :-).

bravo

the lopsided results, and causes, of the USA-Israeli war on palestinians

Americans don't care though. And for Israel, well, while there's land to be stolen, there will be blood.

Landed

WE left Manila for New Zealand on Saturday, 9 Feb. The flight was slightly delayed in leaving, so we took off at around 8PM. Landed in Sydney after 7 hours or so, at around 6AM local time, and around 3AM manila time. Timmy slept through most of the trip. He woke up though at around 1AM manila time and didn't go back to sleep. So the last two hours were a bit hard as sol and I had to carry him (he would fight when we tried to hold him while sitting down).

When we landed in Sydney we were a bit confused as to where we were to pick up Timmy's stroller. After some walking around we were told that it would have been shipped through to Wellington. So we went off in search of diapers because Timmy had run out by then (multiple diaper leaks on the plane). There was a little pharmacy in the airport bookstore and they had diapers. That was a Godsend. We also got to change some USD for AUD. Which was just right since we needed to get some water and a snack.

Apparently, in my peregrinations in search of Timmy's stroller I had dropped (i.e., LOST!!!) my passport. I had no idea it was lost, so we were very relaxed while waiting for our connecting flight. Fortunately, someone found it and gave it to AU immigration, who tracked me down and sent it on to our connecting flight gate. So on net, everything worked out well. It could have been a bit of a nightmare though.

I was a little irritated at NAIA international (Manila) because at a security stop the body search guy ran across my envelope of dollars and, when I told him what it was, paused for a bit, trying for intimidation, I guess, and then winked at me and told me it was OK. Which it was, I'm familiar with the rules and we weren't violating any law. Winking and letting me go was fine, but he then started hinting loudly for a tip by saying "Kung Hei Fat Choy", which is the greeting for Chinese New Year.

I wasn't irritated enough to make a scene. I ignored him though, and remembered to blog about him. In fact, every time I've been through NAIA customs, I've never been shaken down for bribes. I've seen a lot of hinting for tips and gifts though. So, things have improved from 20 years ago, when bribery wasn't the name of the game, instead customs officials would extort money and gifts to let undeclared but taxable items through. But things aren't normal yet.

In contrast, Sydney was a joy, and Wellington, International, although a much smaller airport, was just as good. Customs were very efficient and helpful. They could have been more efficient if they'd opened our boxes. But they took our (truthful) word that we only had clothes and such in there. I had to fill up a currency import form for the dollars, but that I'd expected. And in fact, the customs officer actually filled most of it up. She did the math (converting USD to NZD amounts) and, when I took my time trying to understand what to write in the form, she went ahead and entered most of the numbers, leaving me to enter just passport information and signature.

We are staying at a home-stay. That is, with friends of a friend who has a spare room. We'll stay maybe for a week or two, then we'll search for and find our own apartment or small house. Timmy was a bit confused about sleep last night. He slept most of the night, but fitfully, sometimes waking up and crying. He did sleep through most of the night though. He's having his morning nap now. He's slept longer than he should, so I'll be waking him up and maybe he won't have his afternoon nap so that he'll sleep through tonight again. All together, he's sleeping pretty well. That was our main concern. He has no problems eating and walking around, but we can't tell him about sleep yet. He's already half adjusted though from last night. I expect that he'll be fine by tomorrow.

last day

We're leaving for New Zealand tonight. It's been a panicked last few days having lunch with best friends, playing badminton with new good friends, packing things, removing heavy already-packed things (and that's not yet complete), converting USD to NZD (that wasn't completed either, they didn't have enough NZD since we didn't notify them ahead of time, we'll complete when we land) and me giving my last postgresql lecture (CASE WHEN, how indexes work, optimization, explain, explain analyze, ...).

But we're finally almost done. Just a few last items and we leave for the airport in 5 hours or so. 3-4 hours to wait and we'll be on the plane. I hope Timmy is able to sleep on the plane since it's going to be a long 10-11 hours to NZ (including stopover in sydney).

Cracking up

Timmy had a lot of fun





and again:



I've got a lot of videos, but I need to edit some of them into compilations. That takes time since I don't actually know what I'm doing when I do those edits :-). We're also booked solid for all meals til we leave for New Zealand on Saturday. Since most of those meals (or the occasional badminton game) are at malls or clubs some distance away (all interesting malls and restaurants are a significant distance away) travel time is a factor too. Likely I'll push up a compilation from NZ. That's not going to be a great thing to do, given the bandwidth limitations there, but one must bow to the tyranny of time.

Timmy walking -- long

Timmy has been walking for a few months now. We'd get Timmy to walk alone (from me to sol or the other way) but it took a lot of cajoling to get him to walk by himself. Recently though, (when we got back from our New Year's trip to Cagayan de Oro) he suddenly gained a lot of confidence and started walking by himself. Following is a compilation of Timmy walking alone videos.

NZ slowly

I just went and added a whole bunch of NZ blogs to my bloglines account. It's a bit less than a month before we fly out to NZ. Time to get acquainted with events and culture. I'm only looking at tech, employment and business/investment blogs for now. I may add a political blog or so, but that's not going to be interesting for me until I'm over there, so there's no hurry with political blogs. Commentary on culture and society though, I'm definitely looking for.

Fortunately

It's a good thing that last Friday was my last day at work. Timmy has had a bad cough all through Christmas. We have to nebulize him with salbutamol three times a day and sometimes at night, if his breathing is particularly bad. We need to give him medicine for his colds and lung phlegm and sometimes paracetamol if he's uncomfortable because of fever. So I wouldn't have been able to go to work yesterday or today anyway, since often we need to be up late at night taking care of him.

We're going to Cagayan de Oro. We're hoping that the air (or the huge decrease in pollution) there will help his cough. He's still very happy and cheerful (except when his body or teeth ache because of fever or teething), but I wish the noises from the phlegm in his chest would go away.

I'm sure they will. He had coughs in December last year, this is probably the same. It could go away FASTER though. It's a bit hard to listen to him breathe :-(

Timmy - Growing U.P.

Timmy is growing fast. He seems to be growing longer, rather than wider. At his doctor's (the lovely Dr Maelene Pile, highly recommended) appointment he hadn't gained weight but had gained length. He's also very active, so maybe that's why he's not gaining so much weight.

Even though he does enjoy lounging like an adult
He still enjoys pretending to be laundry

We don't go to U.P. enough. Sol and I graduated at The University of the Philippines at Diliman, although, ahhh, in different decades :-). We hope that Timmy goes to college there too, although if he doesn't, I'm sure he'll go somewhere better :-).



I'd have more pictures of U.P., except I mostly take pictures of timmy and sol


In those pictures, by the way, Sol is modeling the baby sling from Next9. It's very convenient and it looks lovely (although they have production problems, I think, so some things are out of stock).

My stepfather arrived from the U.S. and we stayed with them overnight one weekend before they flew onward to Cagayan de Oro. My stepfather had an unexpected long stay in the U.S. because he had some blood clotting related problems (in his leg, fortunately, not his brain).

Timmy spends a lot of time with my mother-in-law
We've been coughing a lot lately, Timmy and I. Fortunately, he's been taught by my mother-in-law to cover his mouth when coughing. And to pretend to cough and then to cover his mouth when he sees me coughing. Or maybe he's joking when he does that. Or suggesting I should cover my mouth. But I think he's joking, he always is, when he's crinkling his eyes like that.

He likes standing around with books, looking cute.


Something he might have not done so effortlessly if he'd known it was hair clipping day.

The first few minutes he was entertained by Barney on the TV, and his toy car barber's chair
After that he realized how unusual all these events were and the tears started flowing.

Fortunately he's very resilient. These were from a few hours later, at home, but he'd forgotten the tears just five minutes after we left the barbershop.
And a few days later he was back being cute again :-).

Last day

Yesterday was my last day at work. I'll continue to provide completely optional support, unpaid. But this is because I really want to do the work. The database there is on the order of 400GB (I thought it was 500+GB, but then I ran a few clusters and lost some bragging rights). That's the main reason I want to work with it. I have permission to continue some experimental work to enhance performance and since I don't have access to any other database that large, I'm happy to do the experimental work for free because I'll learn from it :-).

The last week or so of work I was sick a lot. Some of that was due to the weather, some of it was, perhaps, over-adventurous eating :-). But a lot of it was just fatigue. Timmy is a handful and I'm not in my prime anymore. I'm going to have to get much more fit so I can take care of him fulltime when we get to New Zealand.

That's the proximate reason for quitting a job I enjoyed thoroughly. We're migrating to New Zealand so it was convenient to quit at the end of the year and take a month and a half to get ready for the trip. Now I'm trying to figure out what I'll be doing. I need to limit reading online articles. If I don't consciously limit it, I'll do it all day. every day. I need to be much more hands on with Timmy, and I need to exercise (weights and aerobics work) so that I get more fit.

I'm planning to learn how to use git too, and oracle, and visual C#, probably. I'll work more with java (after a very long hiatus) and maybe play with SQL Server. I'm working with the developer or express editions of all that payware, so there will be some things I won't learn (e.g., how oracle works on grid hardware or how to cluster oracle or SQL server for multi-master functionality). But it should be enough to learn the basics.

I'd love to learn more about postgresql, maybe even enough to be able to submit some patches. But that's just a wish, not something I'll be pushing extremely hard to do.

sick

I've been sick since about Thursday. It's something like the flu, with the aches, runny nose and chills. Lately I'm coughing up a lot of phlegm and have a stuffy head (with some dizziness). It'll go away, it always does. It's miserable though. I hope I'm well enough to go to work tomorrow.