Time to say goodbye

We are moving out today! Hannah and I have been busy cleaning and packing our place (Serenity) last whole week. We moved into Serenity on July 2009, and after nearly 7 years, we are moving on. We will be moving to Chicago (in fact ,we have already signed our lease for the new apartment!). We are very excited about the new place, and we have planned a nice, cosy room for family and friends’ visits. However, meantime, we need to pass the final house inspection so that we can get all our housing bond back. 

We started packing about 1 week ago. It was very hard, especially for Hannah, because we only have budget for moving half the items we brought from US. This means that she has to give up lots of books, clothes, shoes and yarn. We have firstly brought A LOT of stuffs from US because we had this impression that most things in NZ are going to be very expensive. We are not wrong, but also it was a bit too dramatic (in my opinion). Eventually, after several days of negotiation and planning, we narrowed it down to 3 suitcases, 1 black plastic box and 1 wooden chest. Hannah bought the wooden chest in NZ, and it has exquisite cravings on it, and EVERYONE had told her that she NEEDS to bring that back with her to US - so the chest is coming with us! The suitcases and boxes contain books, yarns, some nice pieces of knitting from family, dive gears etc. All these items are going to be shipped and it will take approximately 12 - 16 weeks. It will give us sometime to get settle down in Chicago and find places to store all the items.

Meantime, back to the harsh reality of cleaning and more cleaning :( . Hannah did most of the cleaning - mopping the floor, cleaning the walls and shower etc. I am in charge of dusting (because Hannah is highly allergic to dust!), and driving around donating things to op-shops and throwing away bulk rubbish to transfer station. Between all the dusting and cleaning, we were holding a garage sale in order to get as much back from all our valuables… and at the end of the day, we earn $925!

Nelly (the estate manager) came with Sandie and Ken (the house owners) at around 2pm. Nelly inspected the house with Hannah, while I spend some time talking to Sandie and Ken around out future plans, how much we love the house, how we named it Serenity etc. We gave a bag of green tea to Sandie and Ken, and a bottle of Michigan maple syrup to Nelly. Ken helped us took a last photo on the deck, and Hannah snapped a last picture of Serenity as we pulled out of the driveway. Time to say goodbye - Hannah said goodbye to Serenity as her eyes starting welling-up. 

We packed our remaining of our luggages (we have left the main checked-in luggage with Selena) in the van, with Jet and Lilith, we are ready for the next part of our journey in NZ. However, we need to officially say goodbye to Waiheke as well, and there is no better way than to spend an afternoon sipping wine at Man-O-War Bay! After a nice bottle of white wine at Man-O-War bay, we had dinner at The Cove (own by Julia, the next tenant of Serenity!…such a coincidence!), and spend the night at Surfdale beach. Tomorrow, we will start our journey!

(Disclaimer: there may be grammatical and spelling errors in this post and posts in upcoming weeks because we are on the move and have limited internet access. Therefore, we need to try to do all our "internet things" on our phone 3G network. We will have to be more efficient in order not to use our limited access up before the month!...so bear with us).

Waiheke Wharf 2 Wharf 2016 Water stations

I found a couple of photos of the fabulous water stations from the Wharf 2 Wharf 2016 facebook/ webpage. I thought I would share it here. All photo credits go to Waiheke Wharf 2 Wharf.

Waiheke Wharf 2 wharf 2016

Hannah and I ran the Waiheke Wharf 2 Wharf 2016 25km race on January 16, 2016. I am just playing catch up with the writing on this blog because I was busy with my PhD dissertation. Anyway, the last time I ran wharf to wharf was in 2011, and I only ran the 7km race. This year, for whatever reason which very quickly became unknown to me in the race, Hannah and I decided that we were good enough to do the 25km race... perhaps it was that only the 25km finishers were awarded a super-nice copper medal! Vanity :)

The race started early (8am), but we were already up at around 5.30am - took care of the dogs, had our coffee and a light breakfast, packed our extra clothes in a small back-pack, and off we went to Matiatia ferry terminal. A ferry would bring the runners to the start point at Orapiu. Reaching Orapiu, I went (together with at least 20 other guys) for a quick pee behind the bushes. Unfortunately for Hannah (and 30 other girls!), she had to queue up for the two available portable toilets.

The horn went off, and we started racing (I mean, slow jogging) up the steep slope! The race course (in fact, the whole island Waiheke) is famous for its steep slopes other than its beautiful scenery... but who is admiring the scenery when you can hardly breathe! The 25km race course proudly boasts about the three steep uphills before you hit the relative flat portion of the run. Our plan was to conserve as much energy as possible, but still fast enough so that we could get to the finishing line before it gets too warm, and we started melting in the hot sun! I was feeling relative good, running up those gruesome hills, and even have to wait for Hannah on couple of occasions. There were water stations about every 3km, and people in the water stations were dressed up in different themes - from pirates to red-hat ladies. That really helped to cheer me up during the race.

At around 11am, the last 5km, I felt that everywhere hurts and I am dying. It was 29degC out, there was no breeze, and exhaust from cars and buses were pushing the temperature higher. I was hungry, and (according to Hannah) I HIT THE WALL! I couldn't run anymore, my mind said run but my legs just refused to move. Hannah stayed with me on the last 5km, encouraging me,  giving me short distance goals... She would said "let's run to that corner and then we will walk.." "let's just try to run to that lamp post" "2 more km..." However, the only thing that went through my mind was "Why?"

Finally, we ran through the finish line, and with some awkward maneuvering,  volunteers at the finish line managed to put the prized medals around our necks! Yay! We made it (and I didn't die)!

Fast forward a week.... Hannah had convinced me again to go do a 47km run.... that story I will let Hannah tell you about it.

We live on beautiful Waiheke

Sometimes, it is easy to forget that we live on a beautiful island. We are always grateful when friends visit us because we get the chance to show them around, and at the same time, remind us that we are fortunate to live in such a beautiful place. Bas came to stay with us for a couple of days after his conference in Dunedin. We spend the day showing him around Waiheke; quick visit to the weekend flea market, explore Onetangi beach; and spend a idyllic afternoon at Man-O-War vineyard.

A fruitful weekend

Hannah went to a mutual friend (Selena) 's party in Auckland. I was invited too, but I (according to Hannah and Selena) am a grouchy old man who would rather stay at home! :P. Anyway, I stayed at home, did a whole bunch of writing, planning, and research for my experiment. In between writing for papers, and working on the experiments, I also managed to plan out my lecture for the Monday BIOSCI lab - Gene expression. Also Alfred introduced me to this website which host a lot of asian movies...so I did take a break here and there to watch a couple of kung-fu movies.

Sunday morning, I joined a group of volunteer divers from NZ Underwater Association, and Auckland Uni Underwater Club (AUUC) to do a couple of transect surveys around Waiheke. They picked me up on the AUUC club boat at Little Oneroa beach, and off we go taking turns to do underwater surveys in pairs. The purpose of this survey is to see whether it is feasible to propose a Marine Protected Area around Waiheke. We managed to carry out surveys on 6 out of the 15 stations before it got late, and everyone was tired. We decided we would stop for the day, carry on the next time. They dropped me off at the Little Oneora beach, and I was home, washed up and writing by 4pm! It was great to be diving even though it was very short dives (two dives, approximately 16mins each dive).

Life being a PhD student is hard... you kinda have to be constantly working!... if you are not working on your research/ experiment, you would be writing paper, grants applications. If not, you are reading scientific papers, or analysing your data! Thus, when one of my colleagues (who is thinking of applying for PhD) asked me, I told her you really need to know why you want a PhD if you decided to go this route. Do not do a PhD just because there is nothing else better to do! There are always time for fun as well. Just need to plan your time properly, and be discipline. I have a couple of goals this weekend. I stayed back, and finished them..now, I am going to watch a movie :) Good night.

Bouldering adventure

We went bouldering at the eastern end of Waiheke. There are a bunch of nice boulders which were marked by the NZ rock climbing association. The sky started to turned grey when we arrived, and we were worried when the rain cloud was approaching us. The wind turned while we were hiding under a huge boulder, and the cloud drifted away as well. So the climbing started!

We turned out to be much more climbing-unfit than we thought. We could only clear some of the easy routes. However, we do managed to take a few nice pics on the boulders we managed to climb. Time to go back for some training, and we will be back here soon. We also went to search for the elusive Hooks Bay (which was rumoured to be very beautiful!) after the climbing, but could not find it.Our body is going to complain tomorrow :P

Grace's "There and Back Again" DAY 10

Back on Waiheke. We went to Oneroa town to have our breakfast. It was disappointing because the cafe we went to used to serve such a huge breakfast, and now with the new management, the breakfast is SO SMALL :(

Well, after breakfast, Grace shopped for some souvenirs and we walked back home, stopped by the tide pools to explore the little critters, dig our toes in the sand, and just enjoyed the view. It was a gorgeous day, and I suggested we go swimming at Enclosure Bay! We reached Enclosure Bay, and found that although the air is warm, the water is extremely cold. Hannah decided we should go back home to put on our wetsuit! People at the beach had a very confused look when we hop into the van after dipping our feet in the sea water. Imagine their face when we were back all dressed in our wetsuit. Back at home, it was quite an event for Hannah and Grace to put on their wetsuits. Since Hannah has been diving drysuit neither wetsuit had been used in years and they were both VERY tight. It was a great snorkeling/ swimming location - we saw mini jellyfish, triplefin fishes, lots of snails and kelps. Grace had a lot of fun seeing what is under the water in the ocean, maybe we will may a scuba diver out of her someday! We returned home and ended the evening with a nice lambchop and kebab BBQ.

Food to introduce to Grace - Lamb ✓

Walking along the esplanade

Her first starfish

Lessons from the marine biologist

She liked the cushion stars best. They are cute!

Time to go swimming!

Editor's note: I thought we were posing like penguins for this photo. However, Grace did not cooperate.

Our grill is the best!

Dining with a sea view and breezes.