Hello everyone.  School is going great and I’m really enjoying my time here.  A lot of people have been asking for pictures, so I’m going to oblige with some of my favourites that I’ve taken thus far.
March 2008 Pictures
Yup Yup!  

What a wonderful place!  I’ll write more when I have a home connection and time to upload some of my pictures, but for now, I can tell you that if Palmerston North is the “ugly duckling” of New Zealand, then this country must be simply amazing.  I found a place to stay for the weekend.  This was no small feat considering the stock-car racing event (!) that was taking place on Fri/Sat.  All the gearheads had booked most of the available housing for the weekend.

For the moment, my main concerns are trying to find permanent housing and getting lined up with school activities.  Communication is at a premium here.  Cell phone and internet services come at a very high price.  The food is exceptional and there is intense sunshine for most of the day.  My best source for connectivity is the school library, where I am typing this blog entry now.

As for the geographical layout of the town, there’s essentially three sections.  Going south to north, it’s (1) Massey, (2) City Center, and (3) Airport.  Students get to use the bus for free, but there are lovely parks and walks nearly everywhere, so taking motorized transportation with this weather really seems like a wasted opportunity.  It’s definitely a small city at around 75k, but it’s beautiful and the people are very friendly.

The flight was really quite easy.  I slept for over half of the trip from LA to Auckland and spent the rest of the time watching movies and eating relatively decent food.  Jet-lag really doesn’t come into play too much with only a three-hour difference.  The biggest adjustment is going from five hours of “sunlight” per day to fourteen of brilliant rays.  I’ve been able to meet with a handful of people from the university to get a few details ironed out before school actually begins in a little over two weeks. 

Hope you all are well. 

“Now, for my next trick, I’m going to make a day completely disappear!” Well, not exactly, I mean, the day will probably still exist for you, but for me, Feb. 6, 2008 will be greatly shortened, if not altogether skipped. Here’s what I mean:

1. My flight leaves Portland on the 5th of Feb at around 4PM. I arrive in LA at 6:30PM. So far, so good.
2. After a 3-hour layover in the scenic Los Angeles airport, I leave for Auckland, and it’s still the 5th.
   
3. I arrive in Auckland, New Zealand on the 7th! HOW MYSTERIOUS!
   Then it’s just a little 1-hour flight over to Palmerston North, which puts me at my destination around 11 on the morning of Feb. 7th.

I wonder what I would tell people if something monumental were to happen that day. “Where were you when such-and-such happened?” Well, I’m not sure. I was caught in the space-time continuum over the Pacific Ocean pinned between two fellow international travellers. What about people who were travelling like this on Sept. 11th or when the Challenger exploded?

By the way, did I mention I had a middle seat for the flight over? Nice. Here’s hoping that the good people in seats “D” and “F” are HWP, believers in the value of good hygiene, and that they don’t have to tell me every last detail about their life while I’m trapped at 30,000 feet.

Monty Python comic takes a swipe at PN and the Kiwis fire back.  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10440967

Wow!  I can’t believe someone wanted to buy my car, much less for the amount they offered.  Apparently there’s a market for 1996 Honda Accords that don’t run and have body damage to the front and rear, no airbags, copious amounts of dog hair throughout, and a flat front tire.  One man’s trash I suppose…  I can’t help but think that the poor car was cursed in some way.  After having had a garage door fall on it, mysterious window shatterings, the theft of its airbags, and being the victim of an innocent fender-bender, I hope that the old girl’s darkest days are behind her.

I would like to think that many people have had the same thoughts that I have had about their careers and their lives. At some point or another, you look around at your office or your cubicle or your restaurant or your classroom and wonder, “Is this really what I am meant to do? Am I happy doing this? Does it make others happy that I am doing this?” I have spent the last nine years of my professional life as a computer engineer working in the Pacific Northwest. I live in Portland, OR, a fantastic place with numerous opportunities, wonders, and people that make it one of the best places on the planet for a person to call home. I have a pretty good setup, I think… terrific friends, a roof over my head, good food, and a pleasant routine that makes for happy days.

Despite it all, something didn’t feel right to me. It’s hard to explain. The result of it all is that I have decided to take a shot at doing something else someplace else.I remember one day when I was at work in 2000 and the bottom was starting to drop out of the tech industry. One person at the office decided that he had had enough and that he felt like his work wasn’t satisfying enough, so he had made up his mind to take his family to Vermont to start a small farm. Most of the other people there laughed and said he was crazy. I didn’t really know the guy and I didn’t really take his decision to heart at the time. Looking back on it, older and perhaps wiser, I can appreciate what his reasons may have been. I have spent the last few months working in a veterinary hospital. I have always held a reverence for the science and care of animals, and I like it well enough to go to school to get my degree to become a veterinarian. I have enrolled at Massey University, in Palmerston North, New Zealand. The fall semester begins in February. Since my educational and professional background is not one that is usually followed by veterinarians, I have applied for the school’s program which evaluates candidates based on scholastic aptitude as opposed to prior course and employment history. Massey offers the unique position of being able to begin school in an exotic location with a relatively less stringent set of course prerequisites.

The curious thing about an ecosystem like New Zealand’s is that they’re obviously isolated from other regions by large expanses of water. In order to not upset this fragile, balanced environment, the good Kiwis have requested that I jump through a number of hoops to prove that I’m going to pose as little of an impact on their natural life as possible.

The medical exam for a student visa is comprehensive to say the least, and most facilities in the U.S. schedule a large chunk of time to complete one. Mine was completed at a relatively new urgent care office in Beaverton, and since they were new to the process, my health forms came back with a few mistakes. I took the bus out there yesterday in the cool rainy Portland afternoon to get a few I’s dotted and T’s crossed.

This morning, I resent the forms back to the consulate in Santa Monica. I am hoping to have the visa back within a couple of weeks, according to their estimate. The paperwork is pretty much done now. Time to focus on getting my car sorted out… anyone want to buy a ‘96 Honda with no air bags, lots of German Shepherd hair, and a questionable starter/ignition? Whoa whoa… not all at once.

I’m sending my dog, Sara, cross-country with a guy who is taking his truck to South Carolina.  I met him at the Oxbow Park exit off of I-84 this evening.  I packed her food, leashes, toys, and a couple of blankets into her crate and thanked him for looking after my friend for the next week.  At about 11:30 I got a call saying that her foot was bothering her and that the crate was too big to transport in his pickup along with the rest of their possessions.  I’m hoping to meet them sometime early tomorrow morning at a pet store to pick up a smaller crate that can make everyone a bit more comfortable for the trip. As for the paperwork, I’m nearly done with everything.  I only have my student visa application left to complete, and I can’t send the paperwork in for that until after the new year.   There’s still a lot to be done, but some big things are out of the way, and with over a month to go, it seems like it’s all coming together in good time.