marc.vic.max.elliot

Hi all, I’m back!

The trip to Shanghai was fairly uneventful and it was good to get back on Friday afternoon and see the family again. Here’s a brief rundown of my week:

Saturday:  Left Wellington at 07:00 and was told at check-in that my requested airpoints upgrade to business class had come through – yay!  Got to Auckland to find that my colleague had also got an upgrade!  Too bad Air New Zealand business class is shite on a 767 (but better than cattle class!) An eleven hour flight later and we’re in Hong Kong where we get a cab to our hotel.

The evening is spent wandering around the night markets with some Australian based colleagues and the whole next day is taken up with looking around markets and computer fairs until 16:00 when we have to be in a cab to the airport for our 2 hour flight to Shanghai. Items of note bought – one small USB SC card reader for about 15

Sunday night to Wednesday is spent at the technical summit in Shanghai being scanned whenever we enter or leave a session (even to go to the loo!) Talk about control!  We also went to the night markets.  Items bought – Matching fake Rolexes for 60 NZD the pair.

Pete and I decided when we got to Shanghai that we would rather spend some extra time in HK so we changed our flights and left Shanghai at 16:15 on Wednesday where that evening and Thursday were spent in a similar fashion to our trip up.  Items bought – Cases for my ipod and x50v, in-line remote for the ipod, some clothes for Vic and I from Esprit.

Our flight was at 19:00 and again my upgrade came through! Six hours sleep on the flight was brilliant and after a quick flight from Auckland to Wellington I was home at last!

Highlights of the trip?

Coming back and after I’d been home a few hours I met Max on the stairs and asked him for a hug. He gives me a big hug and says “I love you Daddy”!  Going away for a week was almost worth just that

Catching the maglev train from Shanghai city to the airport.  Firstly it’s cool technology and secondly the image below shows the speed that we got up to – on a train!!

Well It’s 05:30am on a Saturday morning and my cab is about to pick me up 🙁

I’m off to Shanghai for Dell’s Asia-Pacific-Japan Technical Summit!  Three days travelling to attend a three day conference – I’m not sure it makes sense……..  Packing my suitcase was easy, packing my hand luggage much harder!  Laptop, phone, PDA, Ipod, Card Reader, cables, wallet, passport and tickets should just about do it

Have a great week everyone.

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I’ll miss my boys while I’m away for a week 🙁

Elliot’s growing up so quickly!  He’s really interacting now and can keep his head up for quite a few minutes.

As for Max he’s turning into a typical tearaway two year old who can be divine one minute and a stroppy shit the next! lol!  Here he is pretending to be Superman with an All Blacks silver fern cape

On Saturday we bought Max and Elliot an inexpensive scotch chest each and they were delivered today. We then spent 30 minutes with Max changing his room around so that they would fit and it meant that when he went to bed nothing was as it was the night before…….

He wasn’t tooooo bad going to bed but it took him about an hour to drop off to sleep and it will be interesting to see how the night goes  

We are still alive!

The last week or so has been crazy busy and between doing stuff and not bothering to do stuff I haven’t done stuff!

The weekend before last saw us fill up our weekend depressingly fast.  Saturday saw us driving two hours up the coast for the second birthday party of Abbey, daughter of our good friends Ali and Al.  Max now has discovered the joys of a full size trampoline and spent a huge part of the day climbing up a chair onto the tramp and bouncing madly then climbing back down (rinse and repeat……) Max spent loads of time following the “big boys” (four and six) around and due to this can now operate a water fountain well enough to get a couple of mouthfuls from it.

Sunday, and it was me and my Dad moving four cubic meters of premium topsoil to finish the filling of our raised garden.  This took a lot longer than expected and before I knew it it was halfway through the afternoon and I was collapsing on the couch.

The week? Well it’s the week, right?  Get up, feed Max while Vic sleeps, work all day, give Max his dinner, bath both the boys, put Max to bed, have dinner, watch a tiny bit of TV and go to bed in the knowledge that I’ll be awake at about 06:00.  Multiply that by five and you have my work week.

On the Saturday of the weekend just gone we had a lovely family morning out and drove into Wellington for the morning.  It was quite a nice morning and we had a walk around town, stopping for brunch at about 10:30 so that Vic could have Eggs Benedict.  She love EB but hasn’t had it for close to a year due to being pregnant and then just not going out much.  After I dropped everyone off home I then popped out to buy a nice shiny new 60GB colour iPod!  It is a very nice piece of kit and I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with it I also bought a Griffin iTrip so that I can transmit to my car stereo but also play music on the stereo in the family room.  I have 130 songs in the genre “Children’s Music” and Max had 90 minutes of random kiddies music this afternoon – great stuff!

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Well the upgrade from ExpressionEngine 1.2.1 to 1.3 seems to have gone without a hitch…….

Here’s Elliot all wrapped up and ready to go on a chilly winters day He’s really started to smile now and has started “talking” back to you.

Max has a new word……. why?

Oh joy the first of many years full of “why?”