Kurt Vonnegut Dies

Sad news, one of the few people I'd really have liked to have met. But he took the right atitude to getting old.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=580066&category=Nation&BCCode=NATION&newsdate=4/11/2007

Tracy on the TV (not)

Tracy failed in her bid for TV stardom when her role hit the cutting room floor. Basically a local personality here is on the local version of Dancing with the Stars/ Strictly Come Dancing (the show is big here, like almost all reality shows I fail to understand why) and broke his toe. He is continuing on the show "against medical advice" as they keep telling us... and guess whose medical advice!

Tracy was a bit nonplussed to share her office with a film crew but commented that she did like the professional dance partner.

Personal News

In a shocking development Tim actually started working as a dentist today, having finally sorted out his registration with the NZ Dental Council. Finally fixing teeth again after nearly 8 years away from general practice and 6 months without working!

Pictures

There are now a ton of pictures of our time here at:

http://www.timcooke.com/NZ/index.htm

Easter

It is a big holiday here, as they get 4 days off and it obviously falls at the end of summer/ early autumn. It is an interesting combination of laws based on the religious nature of the weekend (no alcohol can be served Good Friday without buying food we discovered) and extreme commercialism with all kinds of end of season sales. I'm not sure how Easter Sunday will pan out. We are staying at home because Tracy works Friday & Monday but at least the holidays she works feature shorter hours and more pay.

Work Update

Tracy continues to enjoy her job and its not too arduous hours. While patient confidentiality precludes me relating an interesting story till it's in the public domain she did get visited by a TV crew doing a story on someone else. If she makes it on NZ TV I'll tell all.

Wednesday (the visit to Wellington was to help finalize the dental licence). This will be a shock after nearly 8 years!

Wellington

You may have noticed my disclaimers that I've only experienced rural and small town NZ, but I finally made it to Wellington, the capital and 3rd biggest city. It certainly has a British city feel and a fantastic setting, while a few features missing elsewhere are well represented:

• A motorway, cut right through the city in true Glasgow style. Doesn't go far out of the city though.
• Quite a few stretches of real dual carriageway/ divided highway. There was even a high occupancy vehicle lane coming into the city from the north.
• Traffic jams. Like many cities built for the features that led to large scale developments pre 20th century and now get in the way (harbours, rivers, deltas, defensible hills) the traffic is bad

However it is a very attractive city and I look forward to getting there again.

Currency

An interesting concept in the money here is the fact that they've dispensed with coin denominations below 10c. All cash amounts are rounded to the nearest 10c which saves on worthless change (take note USA!). The copper 10c is a little confusing to those of us used to cents and pennies however.

One question though: why don't they just round all prices to the nearest 10c, for at least everything over maybe NZ$1. Prices with 99c at the end are dumb enough without a rounding system, but meaningless with.

Interestingly the notes are almost identical to those in Vietnam, especially the NZ$20/100,000dong, I suspect they use the same mint. A major security feature is a clear plastic window in the design.