7 days

This time next week we (god willing) will have finished our first marathon. Both of us are reasonably healthy and will take the start line....

I have taken the drinking is better approach for training and as such i am in great beer drinking form and my running form is coming a distant second. Kat, apart from shin splints for a couple of weeks is in good form and should kick my a$$. Here are my predictions...

Kat - 3.23
Ben 3.47

You heard it here first.

Hey Mumbai

Late August i packed my bag and left for the airport to jet for Mumbai for week. Consequence of doing some work for a customer with outsource operations in India. 9 hours after leaving Heathrow i flew over the slums 20 meters from the airport fence.

Once you have seen one third world city... you know what to expect and it was no different, although things are a bit more extreme with kids running in front of cars ,
The digs were brilliant although overlooking the slums from hotel window puts things into perspective. Most of the week was work but we managed to get out into the city for half and day and even went out for a local meal... and it is true curry is better in India!!!!!

as usual can't be arsed writing a novel so here are the highlights:

1) Didn't get sick once which is lucky as i winged it and didn't get any injections
2) the food - one curry had 126 different spices .... and i can not speak highly enough of Tandoori chicken .....
3) Cows... being holey and all they do what they want and they do.... including walking / sleeping all over the highway
4) Indian Gucci - everything is ripped off including my Gucci bag that lasted less than a week
5) cheap as chips - £10 is like 900 rupees
6) Coming back they closed the runway 45 Min's early while we while sitting in the plane - the pilot had to fight hard ball to get them to get off the runway so we could take off.. annoying and amusing all the same
7) India people are top shelf... real friendly and they could teach UK folk a few lessons... call centre customer service is another issue tho..........
8) folk live whereever than can..... including on highways in busstops, on the beach. Rent in Mumbai is more expensive than downtown New York.....

Photos can be found at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21713&l=63488&id=547246954

Grand, Happy Times, Phenomenal

Portugal can be described as all of the above and was by the six of us whom left the dire summer of Dublin (Mel, Niall, Emma, Tim) and London (Kat and I) and headed to Quarteira, 20 kms outside Faro on the southwest coast of Portugal. Six days of 30 degrees blue sky and beach... No tourist traps this time, just good old fashioned lying in the sun, moving only to get food and drink. Rather than bore you with the how good the beach and swimming in the sea was every day we have pulled out the highlights:

1. The food - being on the coast it was fantastic to be able to eat proper fresh seafood again. One of the meals was monk fish and prawns (the biggest prawns i have eaten ever) it was truly Phenomenal. We also managed whole fish inclusive of head (yummm) and fish and chips on the beach...

2. The booze- chip as chips, we had a couple of good nights out and about. The Sunday we ended up in Villamoura - the town next to Quarteria. There are jaded memorys of rediculously overpriced Pimms and Lemonade, huge shots ot Tequilla a mexican bar at 3am and the Casino that we entered but did not play (that's a 1st). Other booze highlights included the 'Drunken Drunk' cocktail (Niall's idea) that tasted more like Paint thinner and a fantastic beer called Super Bock , that was served in 700ml pints....

3. The Grass Umbrella and deck chairs... not necessary but absolutely mint to capture some

shade and get off the sand for quality reading.

4. Beach Tennis - A game Tim and myself invented - probably the best game in the world but too hard to explain, happy to explain over a beer.

5. IceCream - a must in 30 degrees but the best part was the self service bit where you get what you want then they weigh it! - Well done to Tim who took out first place with a £6.50 icecream...

6. The Vibe - We both agree this was a holiday to relax and the local cutlure was awesome, flying back into london and dealing with the tube was awful.

7. A darker shade of white - I am perhaps the darkest white i have ever been, i also managed to avoid major sunburning , Kat is African American and can not possibly get any browner

8. Running - There is nothing quite like running down a beach to start each day and excluding one badly hungover day this is what we did - super amazing and hard

9. Bacon - At the buffet breakfast was A+, gutted when they served tiny little sausages one day instead

10. Catching up with friends - It was great to see the folk from Dublin and everybody was on good form - good times

Training Update

8 weeks to go.... yep 8 weeks till we run 42.2 km in Budapest. So far so so average, in fact i am concerned about it, Kat not so much she can run and run, me i gotta work for it. I'm struggling with the weekday running as i'm away for work etc but Kat runs to and from work so does a fair no. of k's during the week.

We knocked off a 2 hour 35 run in Jersey and managed a 2 hour 45 min run today so we are not too far away from being able to 'finish' but gone are the goal times and prospects of finishing in 3.15 , anything under 4 would be gold. however just getting over the finish line will be reward enough.

On a brighter note my work pants are loose again and my belt is no longer at risk of going to the next notch, which is a surprise considering the amount of beer / whiskey and wine i have consumed while away.

Toast

The annual Festival that is Toast NZ, a summer wine and food festival took place last week. After the week of flooding, thunder and lighting that was very very frightening we held our breath that the day would break fine... and it did (well for a while).

We had Tim and Emma over from Dublin to stay in the Studio la Paddington (cosy is a word that springs to mind) and we were up bright and early for the Rugby to watch the abs wallop oz (its not prem season after all) and then headed to Fulham Palace to enjoy NZ beer/wine, food, music and friends.

To be honest the set up was fairly avg.. we ended up eating Thai food ... at least the monteiths summer was flowing. God was obviously not in a great mood and the heavens unleashed at about 1pm for an hour as the Black seeds were playing.. foresight meant there were 1000s of ponchos to give out and our trusty umbrella kept us semi dry. We ended up finishing the day with more beer and very very avg pub food - good times.

Jersey...old folk and no tax

Jersey is a piece of land in the channel islands, it is part of the UK but only 14 Km from the coast of France... long story and since you asked..... It all started in world war II when the UK Held Channel Islands as a strategic entry point, they gave it up to the Germans.. but nobody told them that and they bombed away killing a few folk. The Germans took over for a few years and ruled the roost and many castles, After Victory on D-day the UK refused to give supplies to the Germans and most of the soldiers gave up and the UK took back the island...

learnt all of this from the Jersey War Tunnel museum, fantastic museum from start to finish and very educational...

Jersey is a tax haven where old people go and retire, most tourists appear to be over 75+, breakfast in the hotel was like a rest home....... god bless them.

Jersey is however a great place 27 diffferent beaches and more castles than you can poke a stick at. The tide is also amazing, the marina where all the rich folk keep their boats during low tide is nothing more than a pile of mud with very expensive rudders stuck in the ground, come high tide it becomes a normal marina, again with very expensive boats. The tide from low to high raises 5.5 metres.

We managed a few beach trips, a 2hr 30 run and just generally relaxed. well until we got back to heathrow and my bag didn't show up... in fact not till wed did it arrive mailto:#@%%5E%%5E#m .

In summary Jersey is a nice place but we won't be going back for 50 years.

TDF

The magic of the biggest bike race in the world hit London for the start of TDF a few weeks back, the day dawned with glorious blue sky and sun (for the first time in a few weeks) and 2 million odd folk came for a look. Getting a space track side was ni on impossible so we settled with some friends in front of one of the 11 massive screens set up in Hyde Park with our supermarket bag full of beer. Managed to make it to the trackside to see Julian Dean, NZ's sole rep this year fire past (you can see him in the pic to the left if you look really hard), but he had a crap day and finished well down. Fantastic day and the hype and size of the event is mind blowing.... it is a shame that drugs have again shat on this years race, we had been following it daily from our desktops at work but gave up when it turened to custard. Check out Julian Deans diary for a riders perspective it is good value. JulianDean.co.nz .

tis a shame it's not really possible to ride in Central london, as it would be great to get out on the bike and do a few miles.

Poor Form

aye, its been a while since the last post so we thought it due time to provide an update of what we have been up to. Things are going along at 100 miles an hour at present, so finding half a day to sit and do nothing is quite a treat. Work is keeping both of us busy and i am spending a fair whack of time away in Scotland where i am learning to say aye in every second sentence.

Since Amsterdam we have made it to Jersey for a weekend, watched the TDF, visited the extended family, gone to Toast nz, and got very wet in the London summer amongst others things but i think they were the highlights.....

Slowly but surely making progress on the wedding so good news there....

We are off to Portugal next Saturday for a week to lax in the sun with a group of friends so that should be great...

Amsterdam

How to describe Amsterdam........ Its fairly hard to articulate what Amsterdam is like, after having a couple of days back at work we will attempt to describe the city that is the most alternative city you can imagine.

i) bikes.... they reckon there is about 600,000 bikes in the city, not hard to believe there are bikes everywhere and where as in London, car parks are gold, the same is true of a bridge rail / lamp post / rubbish bin, anywhere you can lock you bike to. They say bike theft is a problem in the city .. don't really understand why when they appears to be six bikes for every person.

ii) Coffee shops - A new meaning for 'coffee' indeed. If you want to see 80 year olds having a reefer or a quiet pipe with their newspaper, Amsterdam is the place to be. Needless to say across the road from every 'coffee shop' there is a munchies bar - this means on every street there is a coffee shop and kebab shop!!!!! . A coffee shop should not be confused with a cafe which serves actual coffee... so they call it - it was crap.

iii) the red light district - Not much you can say, that's not actually true we could write alot but in keeping with the R13 rating of the blog we will leave it and say it needs to be seen to be believed.

iv) Trams - the trams share the roads with bikes, people and the odd car. There are no road rules and if you think crossing Willis street at lunch is dangerous, try crossing the main road in Amsterdam.... combined with the 'coffee shops' one of our favourite things was just watching folk go about their business and trying to cross roads. Controlled mayhem that is self regulating - it just wouldn't be allowed in the land of the long white cloud. ACC and OSH would be all over it.

We also managed to knock off the Heineken experience (entry buys you a tour, 3 beers and a gift... go figure it was a bottle opener in a bottle of Heineken). Fourth form history also came alive with a visit to Anne Franks house -a surreal experience. Kudos to the foreign folk who lent us they umbrella while we waited in the pouring rain to get in...

Still don't really know what to make of Amsterdam, nothing can prepare you the laxed feel and acceptance of what the west generally term unacceptable - not a place that is forgotten easily.

T-365 Days

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

or should that be aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Service in the UK

I ordered a pair of Sunglasses online last week. I received this email yesterday .... i did what you are not suppose to do and replied straight away. Service in general over here is shite so i decided to reply according. I wonder if and when i'll get my glasses!!!!

------------------------------------
Dear Ben , We are emailing you to let you know that the sunglasses you have ordered are currently out of stock but are due to be delivered to us shortly. We will email once they are in stock and we send them to you. If you would like an alternative colour or model that we can ship to you now please let us know.



Many thanks, The Sunglasses Shop
----------------------------------


Dear XXXXX

I find that completely unacceptable. The sole reason i brought the glasses from your website was that they were in stock. Your price was more expensive than most and you charged for delivery (this would not be an issue if you could provide a reasonable service). You have charged my debit card, waited a week to email me that my order can't be actioned and you have NOT given me a expected date.To add to my frustration i find that if i go back the website, the glasses that i ordered show as 'in stock'. Please explain that one to me......


I do not think it is unreasonable to request my money back in light ofthe facts:

i) i have no idea when i can expect to receive my glasses
ii) It took a week to send an email to advise this
iii) Your website shows them in stock
iv) There is zero acknowledgement of the inconvenience or annoyancethis has caused me
v) If i wanted another model / colour i would of ordered them in thefirst place, i would like the glasses that i ordered

If you are struggling to see my frustration i am more than happy totalk through the issue with someone there to give you a customer viewpoint of your process.

Please advise how i can get a refund or confirm that i will have the glasses before the 18th. Which is 2 weeks from purchase and is themaximum that you allow for delivery if i have read your website correctly.

Regards,

-------------------------------

I await a reponse..

16 Weeks To Go

16 weeks until what???

16 weeks until we line up for our first marathon ever, that's right we made a pretty quick and sudden decision that we needed an event to train for and this is it. We miss competing and Ben's worried about joining the hundy club (and so he should be because there won't be a beach wedding next year if he's in the prestigious club!). So we picked our date (30th September) and then searched for a marathon on this day (marathons are huge on this side of the world, you could find one in Europe on any weekend you wanted).

We've entered the Budapest marathon as conveniently this is somewhere on our must travel list and its a bigun with an expected 4,500 marathoners taking part!

Normally you'd want around 20-24 weeks of dedicated running training but we wanted to race the 30th September so we can go and enjoy ourselves at Oktoberfest in Munich the following weekend! Smart logic, we know.

We did our first long run yesterday of 90 mins and are expecting to build that up to about 3 hrs over the coming months, as long as we don't fall apart before then which knowing us, is a real possibility so go on, start making bets on how many weeks we last! Ben already has a sore knee from yesterday and we have to look after ourselves since chiropractors cost around 60 quid a session...

We'll keep you posted on our training and smaller races we do before the big day.

The Home of Football

So another week passes, just another Friday night - maybe just a couple of beers at the pub then a kebab. That was one option, the other was to head to the new Wembley and check out a couple of teams, i think they were called En-ger-land and Brazil or something.

Anyhow, its takes all of 5 seconds to appreciate the stadia when you get off the tube. Wembley is truely EXCEPTIONAL. In summary 90,000 people and not a single queue to get in, for beer or to access the 2500+ toliets.... (The no queue didn't extend to getting home where we had to line up for 90 mins to catch the tube.... a chance to sober up, but seriously the line was 1500 meters long.)

The game itself was fairly avg, Brazil looked tired and Kaka and Rabbit Teeth didn't seem to want to play. Beckham was by far the best player on the pitch, his vision is something else, Gerrard was magic as usual.

A burger costs you 4.50 or you combo for 7.50!!!!!!! - stay away... thats what we said until we got hungry and ended up getting piece of pizza bread for 4.50 apop....Beer on the other hand is not 2 bad for a stadium only 3 pound. You have to drink before kick off tho, as they stop selling and you are not allowed to take beer to your seat (obvious reasons).

90,000 people can make alot of noise and when Franky nudged the ball in the back of the old onion bag the crowd went nuts, just outdoing the national anthem and beckham chant.

Typically England lost it in the last 5 seconds.. a suitable finish to a historical occasion.

Belgium

When you think of Belgium, 3 things usually come to mind: Beer, chocolate and waffles. 3 days in Belgium and all is true. We had to get up at 4.30 am to catch a 6.55 flight (Thank god for the heathrow express train, home to Heathrow in 15 minutes!) We landed in Brussells and got straight on a train and headed to Bruges. Bruges is a cool kids destination at present, it was voted the European Culture capital in 2002. It is a small medievil town that looks straight out of the 1800's with all the modern touches - Amazing architecture and best of all not a starbucks or McD's in sight. You can walk the entire city in 45 minutes.

Points of Note

- There are 1000 bikes to every car or there abouts (go the cyclist)

- There are just as many horse and carriages as there are cars (seriously)

We hit up the Brewery tour on the first day and learnt all about how they make beer, we also got to taste the 'unfiltered stuff' that they drink in the brewery before the chemicals get added and shipped to pubs and shops. This was the first of the 17 different Belgium beers we tried, some fantastic and some so bad that they are not worth a mention.. look out for our ratings in a future post. We also hit up the diamond museum where i bought Kat some diamonds (the fact they came from a robot called BORIS, cost 4 Euro and look like sand is not the point.

Next was the chocolate factory, believe it or not i got through it without tasting a single piece, it was more fun looking than eating. After all this it was time for more beer.

The best cure of the next day blues had to be a fresh waffle... truly unbelieveable and a benchmark that will probably be impossible to beat outside Belguim.

We spent the last day in Brussels looking around, nothing special - although again fantastic waffles.

Fantastic weekend and we may just have to visit Bruges again sometime.

Everyday life ...

so, its been a while since the last post, nothing unusal there... Not really much to report since we got back from Paris.

Katherine threw in her old job with MorningStar and got a new one with ea, yep that ea as in easports and eagames. Perhaps the most important aspect of her contract is that she is entitled to 12 free games a year........ 'its in the game'




We have both been busy with work. Katherine went to St Tropez for 3 days 2 weeks ago for a 'work conference' aka lets get drunk silly (a week into the new job) (refer to photo) and then i travelled all the way outside London to the mighty Chesnut for a 3 day course where i proceeded to sufer my way through the 3 days after drinking too much on the each of the nights.
I also proceeded to learn a valuable lesson last week. Drinking 5 Hoegarden 'white' pints in the space of 3 hours leads to big big trouble. I am still yet to learn that a pint is not a 330 ml bottle or 300 ml glass like in Nz. use your imagination and times it by 10. It was a six star hangover on a school day.. not good. We also sucessfully had our first house guest .... kudos to Mel for coping with our cosy space.


So if you hadn't guessed we are working hard and drinking more and more as the need arises, this leads in nicely to the next post which is about our weekend in Bruges and Brussells.

Je ne comprends pas, parlez-vous anglais?, Now this can go 2 ways . Oui, can i please have the ham and cheese sandwich. or Non, then Je voudrais un sandwich au jambon et fromage.

Just as well the ham and cheese baguettes are magnifique as that was the limit of my french. Just as well Kat could bust out the odd french sentence!!!

So... Pari, well we hopped on the Eurostar and got to Pari on Saturday morning, we managed to find our hotel from the metro on the crazy double decker subway trains, lets just say the paris metro is a whole lot more reliable than the tube. We met up with Tim and Emma who had just arrived from Nouvelle-Zélande and headed to the Tower d'Eiffel. It took a while to warm to the mass of metal but after standing on it and seeing it at night it slowly grew on us.

The highlight tourist trap was the Louvre where the holy Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo reside, the whole place is truly amazing. We also managed to check out Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe which is truly post card paris. We also managed to check out a number of the local drinking and eating establishments. On the food front the highlights were the local boulangerie and fresh baguettes and pain au chocolat , unbelievably good.

On the drinking front the leffe and Hoegarden beers the size of our heads were interesting as was the popcorn they brought us .. maybe they thought we had had enough. After spending a large amount of euro on beer, we had some good luck , coming across a local pub with 2.50 euro pints during their happy hour... (As context a pint was costing 6 /7 euro), even better news was that happy hour went from 4 -9. We got there at 5 and left at 9 but not before partaking in the local quiz. The crazy French MC had great delight referring to us as Team aoteorea from Nouvelle-Zélande ..

So Paris is an interesting city that outside the central district is very very different with some good and dodge areas (just ask Tim & Em about the portaits they were schemed into spending lots of euros on), a very segmented city with different areas having very different feels and local vibe.

Breaking News ......

Emails don't get much more exciting than this..

Dear Ben
FAN: 55457
Ballot Reference Number: 2581
England v Brazil Friday 1st June 2007 Wembley Stadium Kick Off: 20.00
We are delighted to confirm you have been allocated a ticket for the above match. Tickets for the match are priced at £60, £50, £40, £30 and are subject to availability at these prices.

Yep off to see England play Brazil at Wembley in the first match England will play at the 1.3 billon pound, 90,000 capacity stadium. Should be alrite eh? . OK it nots the world cup or anything, but it is history in the making and in 50 years time, we (Prob just me, Kat is only a little bit excited) will be able bore anyone that whats to listen about how we were there to watch England play the new wembley for the first time against Brazil.

M for massive.

3 Months or 3 Weeks

3 months have past since we left NZ, and to be honest it seems more like three weeks and we are well and truly at home in at the center of London.

You know you are getting used to living in London when.....

I) You see 100 police officers at the train station and are more concerned with whats for breakfast. (London Police do things en masse without exception, it is not unusual for up to a 100 boys in blue to be waiting for a train to pull in, so they can escort football fans to a ground so they don't cause trouble)


II) You are catching the tube, and you are gutted that you just missed one and you are going to have to wait two minutes for the next

III) You can't remember a single week that you have not been to the pub on multiple occasions for a few 'quiets'

It is starting to get into summer now the last week has average +20 and Monday is forecast to be 23+, no wind and nothing but sunshine. Bring on Paris at the weekend. It must have been the sunny weather but we went a bit crazy and booked another couple of Holidays, so to recap...

1st May Bank - Paris
2nd May Bank - Bruges
2nd week June - Amsterdam
3rd week June - Glasgow for Kat with Mel
Mid July - Copenhagen
August Bank - Rome
and a weekish long holiday on the coast of Spain or somewhere equally as exciting in August with a group of friends.

its a tough life, but someones gotta do it.

The Premiership

Another tick in the box. Went to Fulham v Blackburn on Saturday. Full house at Craven Cottage in glorious sunshine Our seats were ridiculously good in row 1 behind the goal just to the right. The atmosphere was fantastic, blew away any AB's game that i have been to. The football itself was OK. Nice to see NZ's only regular premiership player R. Nelsen dominate the back four for blackburn. Fulham look like they are going down tho, not good as they are one of the only clubs that it is easy to score tickets 2.

Holidays

Just planned our May bank Holidays. 5th of May we head to Paris and 25th of May we are off to Bruges in Belgium. Meeting Tim and Emma in Paris as they start their tour of duty, so should be good times. There is also talk of hiring a house in Spain for a week in July which would be excellent. In other exciting news off to the premiership on Saturday to see the mighty Fulham take on the av-er-age Blackburn, on Sunday we are going to watch the London Marathon and consider if we can be arsed fund raising to do it next year (me anyway, Kat is fast enough to qualify in the challenge with people that run fast)

Bladers

One of the weirdest things about London so far is the craze of roller blading, i thought it is an 80's things, apparently not. 'bladers' are every where. So much so that on Sunday about 1000 of them went out and about around hyde park. They are most annoying when running as they all think they are speed skaters and try and do tricks.

7-1 and sunshine

After experiencing snow and super cold temperatures upon our wake-up arrival in London, while nz was experiencing (finally!) the sunshine we missed during 'summer' before we left, we have overtaken nz with our current temperatures reaching the 20's , the past four days have been +25 degrees, the best thing tho is ... no wind.. Kat has just bought a new bike and can't wait to go rid'in in the sun.


7 -1. What a result, managed to watch the game in Leeds (for work) in a random pub full on Roma supporters, awesome.

Good Things TakeTime

Today represents the start of a new beginning. After months of false starts, different sites and reading random blogs I decided to do it and start a blog of what we have been up to. The motivation probably comes from the vodka, lime and soda that Kat and I are currently enjoying on our 'quiet' night in. 10 weeks later we find ourselves in April and well and truly living and loving it on the other side of the world in the myriad that is Lon-don.

Looking forward we have Paris to look forward to on the first May bank holiday and we are currently planning a week in Mallorca in June. Photos below are the Oxford/Cambridge boat race on the Thames today. We got there late and didn't get to see much, but still pretty crazy experience having 500k people watching a couple of row boats hammering it down the river.

In sad'er news man u lost 2-1 today to Portmouths meaning the gap closed to 3 points. Which brings me to another point about London, Super 14 is Super zero over here, it mars well be school boy rugby. Viva the football.