Dragonboating

Perin recently finished her first season of dragonboating with her team from Deloitte. She received an award with the nickname Perin "When does the fun start?" Wehde. As such, this may be her last season of dragonboating as well.

You can see some pictures of the inaugural and exaugural racing season here:

Dragonboating

How to Make a Bed

There are differences between how Perin and I make the bed. Let's start with the unmade bed:



It appears as though we slept in the bed. Great. Now that it's a little messy, please allow me to show you what a "made bed" looks like:


See that? Nice smooth cover on the top. Doesn't look like two people just got out of it. The bed is made. Who wouldn't want to crawl into that shining example of bed making perfection? However, Perin states that the bed is not made. She believes that this is what a made bed looks like:


The bedspread and its lines are completely square. The pillows are arranged on top and that decorative pillow is placed in the middle. (On a side note, the room is apparently better lit too:) I believe that this bed is also made, but more time has been spent on the pillows. Conclusion: there is more than one way to make a bed (according to me) and one way to make a bed (according to Perin).

Feel free to draw your own conclusions:)

Television in New Zealand

New Zealand has, quite possibly, the worst television in the industrialized world. We have cable, but there is never anything good on. The very best shows are House and CSI, which have two one-hour time slots out of 168 hours week on 60+ channels. I never watched either of these shows in the States, but I have a whole new appreciation for them now. There is no on-demand or Tivo, so you have to watch shows when they're on. Oh, the humanity!

Right now (in prime time), on Comedy Central M*A*S*H* is showing. It is followed up by Frasier. Dukes of Hazzard, and Deal or No Deal are in the top echelon of show choices right now. However, what prompted this post is that Perin and I chose to watch Girls of the Playboy Mansion. It's a repeat. How do I know this? Because a lot of the time, it is by far the best show on. And this is the third time we've watched the softball tournament episode.

We've tried to convince ourselves that we should get into the Six Million Dollar Man series, or follow drag racing in States, but it comes down to E's non-stop GOTPM marathon being the best thing on TV most of the time.

I'm not sure you'll believe this, but I've been getting a lot of reading done while here.

Perin's first sewing project

Perin signed up for a class called basic dressmaking and finished her first project at the end of week three. It's a bag for her niece.

Perin's First Sewing Project

BBQ

We invited some people over a BBQ last weekend. Enjoy the pictures!

BBQ

Rugby Sevens

We went to the Rugby Sevens. They play rugby, but with only seven players on each team and seven-minute halves. Each team plays multiple games over the course of the day. Although Kiwis don't dress up for Halloween very much, they made up for it at the Sevens!

Rugby Sevens

NZ Naughtiness

During a recent visit to the dairy here (all convenience stores are called dairies) I noticed that the price for a pack of cigarettes is between $13-15. So I inquired into the price of chewing/smokeless tobacco to see if was significantly cheaper. Turns out it's illegal here and in Australia! You can import it, own it, use it, but it's illegal to sell. That's the first bit of naughtiness.

The second bit of naughtiness is when I started making fun of strippers (in a general abstract kind of way) when we were at the pub. I got me thinking: there is no paper currency here under $5. How do the strip clubs work? Do strippers here not get tips? Do they wear big baggy underwear to hold all the coins (whereby the best strippers are identified as the ones who look like they pooped their pants)? Do patrons throw coins at the strippers? Hard?

Instead of investigating in person, we asked some guys next to us. We were informed that patrons exchange real money for "stripper money" that comes in one- and two-dollar denominations, and other than that, strip clubs here function just like they do everywhere else. So now you're all caught up!