New Zealand Wine

It's a little off topic from the travel theme that I really should be keeping up with but, since I'm stuck making money for the moment, you'll have to settle for an interesting research tidbit/sideline.

From the NZ Herald on New Zealand Yeast:

"Terroir was mostly thought of in terms of the geography and climatic conditions in which a variety is grown," Dr Goddard said.

"But I'm suggesting that there's another component of terroir: the diversity of microbes that reside in a particular region."

And apparently NZ is swarming with as many unique yeasts as it is with unique everything elses.

Update Time!

Damn I am bad at doing this with any regularity.

S should have some photos up soon from the last little while. as should I.

Since my last post the most significant thing we've done is go to an All Blacks vs Italy rugby match. which was awesome! even though the Italian food stalls had closed by the time we got to the pre-game street fair.

Besides that we've been trying to save money because we're back into the hardcore job hunt mode. The plan is to find work (ideally that pays us tons) here in chch taking advantage of weekends and other time off to get out and around the parts of the south island that we've not yet explored as much as we'd like to. Then Nov/Dec we'll head up to Wellington to do some house sitting and enjoy spring in the capital (possibly with more work). Jan will hopefully be travelling/camping/tramping/sitting on beaches, followed by more of the same but with some more housesitting up near Gisbourne and hopefully going bush for a week or 2 near Ruatahuna. That should take us through to march/april again when we'll need to start panicking about only having 4 months left on S' visa.

and really that's about it. Time to apply for some more jobs and then.... well I don't know. Maybe go out for dinner (or at least groceries) and then finish off the "How I Met Your Mother" that we got from our Czech friends back when we were apple picking.

Bwahahahahaha

I just watched the All Blacks lose to France :( in HD.

and then played Rock Band 2 on the XBox 360!!!! Hells Yeah!

now I fear for my paychecks (once I figure out where they're going to come from) because I have visions of a big screen folding out of our car so that we can rock out while we're camping...

Where were you today?

She caught a fish!

A 42cm kingfish we think. But the min size is 75cm so he escaped the dinner plate.

EDIT: Turns out he was a kahawai, which doesn't have a minimum size and is apparently tasty eating. Oh well. It was his lucky day, and gave S a good fishing story of the "one that got away"!

Success!

Oyster catcher

And mussels and cockles :)