Naren among Kiwis

Round-up

2007-09-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

Its been almost two weeks since I have posted. The biggest thing that happened in this time was that Anna graduated. That was this last Tuesday. The ceremony was at City Hall. It was a really cool ceremony. They started with the doctoral students and for them they read out a little summary of what their work had been on. It was quite amazing to hear about some of the cool things these students had been working on. Another cool part was watching the traditional custom of some of the students. They had two garlands on and when they received their degree, they took off one of them and put it around the neck of the chancellor. When one of the students got her degree, here mother (I guess) got up and sang out a song for her. Everyone stopped to wait for her to finish. It was pretty cool.

Anna's dad had come over from Fiji for the graduation. It was nice to spend some time with him. We also had a barbeque for Anna on Sunday. Chu and I had marinated all the meats on Saturday night. We started cooking early so that a bunch of the food would be ready when the guests started arriving. Along with the guests the rain also arrived. We pulled out the blue tarp and tied it between the house and some trees to continue with the party. My flatmates, Andrew and Natalie also came for the party. We had so much food - I think we were eating for hours.

Rugby World Cup

2007-09-09T23:19:00.000-07:00

The rugby world cup just started in France, and that's been dominating all news here. The All Blacks won their opening match against Italy resoundingly. As is their tradition, the All Blacks performed the traditional Maori Haka before the game started. The Italians got together in a huddle during this, a move that was taken as a snub to the haka.

I think it's really awesome that the All Blacks do this before every game. It's really cool to watch.

Last Friday, Chu and I went to see a real live rugby game here in Auckland. It was a different game though because it was the "rugby league". The Auckland Warriors didn't win though. But it was fun being out there in the field with all the very vocal rugby fans.

Pizza from Hell

2007-09-06T03:02:00.001-07:00

Last week we stayed late at the Uni, so we decided to get some pizza. It was Chu, John, Corrina and me. We got the pizza from Hell's pizza.

You might have already heard about the backlash to their name and ad campaign, but it's actually quite a solid franchise here in New Zealand and they are planning on expanding to the UK and even the US.

Their marketing is pretty all-out though, snazzy ads, they've got the 666 prefix for the phone number, and actually a very cool web-site - http://www.hell.co.nz/ where you can select toppings and sauces and what side of the pizza gets what, and you can even play with the little flash devils :)

Flat-mates

2007-09-06T02:41:00.000-07:00

You guys have been asking me for pictures of my roommates, I mean flat mates, so here it is. Next to me are Natalie and Andrew who have been living in this house for a while. At the other end is Amy who had just moved in a week before I did.

We had a flatmate night in and Andrew cooked some awesome risotto, chicken, grilled mushrooms and spinach. The mushrooms were simply divine, just a bit of feta and some oyster sauce, a few mins on the grill, and voila!

There are more pictures on the "week four" pictures on the sidebar.

Apple service in Auckland

2007-08-29T19:50:00.000-07:00

This has to be the one of the shadier Apple service centres in the world. You have to go out behind some building and the service centre is located in an alley. But who cares, right? It's the service that counts.

So why did we go to the Apple service in the first place. Some time back Chu had spilt tea on her MacBook keyboard and was quite keen on making sure nothing was damaged. The campus techs were able to open it up, clean it and it worked fine - except for the iSight camera. So she took it into the Apple service centre. They found that when they unplugged the camera from the logic board and plugged it back in, everything worked... but, occasionally the camera wouldn't work.

Here is the quote from the service centre.I'm not sure if you will be able to read the text when I post this, so here is the transcript.

Problem: Customer going to bring machine in on Monday. Spilt coffee on machine camera now not working. All over keyboard area.

Solution: Disassembled MacBook and thoroughly inspected, but could not detect any evidence of liquid damage. Keyboard tested, all keys are functioning correctly. Confirmed iSight camera is not working correctly, intermittently is not detected by the system. MacBook thoroughly and repeatedly tested, all Apple service Diagnostic tests passed. Quote supplied for replacement logic board.

Condition: Nothing to note.

Price: $2104.89 (with labour $2403.00)

How do you go from "all diagnostic tests passed" to "quote supplied for replacement logic board"? Why does a $2000 computer take $2400 to fix when almost nothing is wrong?

Funny Sky TV Ad

2007-08-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

I see this ad when I walk up from Parnell to the UoA campus. The walked by and even looked at it a couple of times before I really "saw" it :)

New Zealand has bananas?

2007-08-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

Actually a lot of them. If you read the word in context, that is. I have heard the term "banana" applied to a person of East Asian origin who is more "white" inside, despite their "yellow" skin. But back in the US we use that term in hushed whispers and people giggle when they say it. But the bananas here in New Zealand have a conference of their own and took out a full page ad for it. As Chu likes to say, "Cool bananas man!"

There is a form for that?

2007-08-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

New address

2007-08-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

After a couple of weeks in New Zealand I found the perfect place to stay for the rest of my visit. This place is really close to Chu's place, the rent was most reasonable that we found and to top it all off, the others living here are awesome.

There is a couple and a single person other than me. It's so much better moving in with flat-mates rather than finding a separate apartment because I don't have to buy everything to make the place livable.

Vodem

2007-08-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

I got a Vodem the other day. To be able to work from here, I have to have a reliable internet connection that is available to me all the time. There is very limited free Wifi in Auckland and even the available ones are configured for limited access.

They had different plans and promotions on the Vodem, but since I only needed it for a couple of months, I went with the monthly plan and just bought a used device from TradeMe.

It was pretty cool the other day, we had to go to the printers and the binders to get Anna's thesis done. Chu was driving, I was sitting in the back seat and working as we were driving down the streets of Auckland.

Rotorua

2007-08-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

We went to Rotorua for the weekend. It was about a four hour drive, so we left early on Friday. The weather was nice and clear making the drive quite pleasant. We had rented a Rav 4 for the trip so we were able to fit all 5 of us comfortably. Meena drove half the way (why was she following this truck?) and after a little coffee break I took over (and there was joyful singing). By the time we got to Rotorua it was a bit dark though but we didn't have too much trouble finding the lakeside house that we had rented. It seemed like it was a bit of a drive from the city but later when we went back to Rotorua to pick up supplies, it seemed a lot closer.

Since Sunita couldn't get off work early, she and Anita drove out later. They only came in after the rest of us returned with the groceries. Meena had brought food from home, we had that for dinner. It was Anita's birthday that day, and we had picked up a cake for her before we left Auckland. It was this yum orange cake and we had it after dinner, after the cake cutting ofcourse :)

Saturday, the weather changed! It was cloudy, cold and there was a bit of rain too. Perfect day to lounge. We had plan to go to the slopes, but they said the weather there was even worse. So we just spend the day in Rotorua. Chu had not done the luge before so we started off with that. It was actually kinda fun going down on the luge with a little drizzle, but sitting on the seemingly long chairlift ride back up was not.

After lunch at Pizza Hut, we spend almost 30 minutes trying to figure out what to do next. Some of us went home to lounge. The others went to a park in the middle of Rotorua to check out some hot stuff. There had been a thermal eruption a few years ago and had left a bunch of hot springs and mud pools behind. It was quite an experience.

That evening we went to the Polynesian Spa and sat in some really hot spring water! Like, really, really hot. 42 degrees. Centigrade.

Sunday was glorious. We had a hearty breakfast out in the picnic table. But we had to leave our goodbye note and head out right after that so that we could make it back in time to say goodbye to Gita who left to work in Australia... It was hard to say goodbye after knowing for four days. It was only four days, but... it seemed like, three.

iBuild among Kiwis

2007-08-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

I am proud to report that our award winning iBuild installer build tool has found its way down to New Zealand! I was standing at a petrol station filling up and this truck pulled up next to me. I had to whip out my camera and get a quick shot.

The fella driving the truck was quite proud of his logo - he said he it had got many appreciative comments.

While I was taking the picture, the cashier was apparently knocking on the glass windows from inside to grab my attention. For some unknown reason he wanted to stop me from taking pictures in his petrol station. Oh well... I hope no one tells him that I posted the pictures on the internet for all of mankind to see.

Why is this page all black?

2007-08-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

No it is not because having more black pixels on a computer monitor will reduce the energy used by the monitor. It's actually because of the "All Blacks", the national Rugby Union team of New Zealand.

Then again everyone looks better in black - no matter what they say, black will always be the new black.

First few days

2007-08-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

The first few days in Auckland have been spent mostly indoors. Since I got here on a Monday, I had to get going with work right away. On Monday, I came in with Chu to her department and met a bunch of her friends. We have walked around the university areas to get food and such in the last couple of days. It's awesome, reminds me of 1994... walking around campus, eating street food, working unstructured but long hours.

In the meantime on the work front, I had some trouble connecting to machines back in Austin. It was strange, I was able to make the VPN connection, I was able to connect to our machines with the older 130.164 IP addresses, but not the ones with the new 10.0 addresses. It was baffling. But then it turned out that Chu's router was using the 10.x address range for the internal LAN addresses, so the router was dealing with my requests as though they were local addresses. I finally got that resolved and am back to being productive with work.

On Tuesday night and again today, I practiced some tukong in the corridors here while Chu's been working in her lab. It's interesting to adapt the forms to the layout of the corridors and the desks.

The weather has been quite good here. It's a little chilly. And it rains on a whim. But that's Auckland for you. Today it was up to 60 F. I left my sweatshirt at home. Took the bus in to the Uni. Met up with Chu near the bus stop. We walked around the "city centre" for a bit, window shopping. The city is really pretty at dusk when the sky is clear. The sun turns red, since it is winter. All the bright city lights look good against the evening sky.