Coffee

I have never been a coffee drinker but after living in New Zealand I have come to appreciate the culture of drinking coffee. I do really enjoy the smell, but I just do not like the taste. And those who know me well will also know that I can be quite sensitive to caffeine so really you would not want me to be caffeinated every day, as I would eventually drive everyone around me nuts.

Unlike me, however, Kiwis love coffee. There are coffee shops everywhere you go, most of them far superior to Starbucks, although you can find a few of those here as well. I have mentioned before that breaks are an important part of the work day. We start the day with a cup of coffee while we get things organized for the day. Mid-way through the morning we take a break for a cup of tea or coffee, and again mid-way through the afternoon. It is common practice for the employer to provide teabags, coffee grounds, milk, and sugar for these breaks. Outside of work, if you are out about town and need to kill time, you go get a coffee. If you want to catch up with a friend, you schedule a coffee date. If you need to have a meeting with someone but it does not necessarily have to be at an office, you meet for a coffee and talk through your business. If you are tired or stressed or grumpy, you have a coffee.

I never spent a lot of time in coffee shops in the US, but it seems that the coffee shop menu is a bit different here. You have your standard hot chocolate, mocha, cappuccino, and tea. Tea options will be Earl Gray, English Breakfast, and several herbal options, not limited to, but including: peppermint, green tea, and something fruity. If you just want a black coffee, you order an Americano or Long Black (name varies shop to shop). If you want something fancier, you can get a latte or a flat white. The lattes generally have flavor options, such as vanilla, caramel, mint chocolate, double fudge mocha, and I’m sure many others. A flat white is not something I have ever tasted, but from what I can tell it is a combination of a cappuccino and an un-flavored latte. I am probably not entirely right on that, and my flat-mate who manages a restaurant and makes the best hot chocolate in town would probably roll her eyes at me for not figuring it out yet, especially since I used to work at a coffee shop J

There is a bit of a science to ordering your coffee here. Do you want to have it in shop or take away? If you are getting a cappuccino, do you want cinnamon or chocolate sprinkled on top? If you are having a hot chocolate or mocha, do you want marshmallows? Marshmallows in the drink or on the side? If you are ordering a hot chocolate for your children, would you prefer a fluffy? (A fluffy is a warm hot chocolate). You can also specify if you prefer regular milk, skim milk, or soy milk. Also, as a general rule, all coffees are double shots. That means TWO shots of Espresso. Yikes! says those of us who are not tolerant of caffeine! If you do not want so much caffeine, you can request half strength, quarter strength, whatever strength you prefer. You can also get extra shots, but I cannot imagine who would want to haha. The best customers are the one who have an order such as “I would like a soy cappuccino with cinnamon on top to have here.” Easy enough, they know what they want, and you do not have to ask twenty questions when taking their order t to make sure you get it right. The scary ones are those who come up to the counter and say “Can I get….”. If they pause, you know you need a pen and paper because their order will end up being something like a quarter strength, trim, Soy, half vanilla, half caramel, extra-hot latte with cinnamon on top and a marshmallow on the side. 

Some coffee/cafe pictures which have made me smile: 

Hot Water Beach, Coromandel, North Island

Wellington (I think....)

Wellington

Crowded House, New Plymouth

Somewhere on the South Island

Outside Hamilton, North Island

New Plymouth

Wellington

Westport, South ISland

Joe's Garage, New Plymouth

Wellington

What's in a name?

Yikes, I did not realize it has been a month since I posted anything! That is clearly testament to how quickly the time is flying for me. Since then, well I have made a rather impromptu trip home for some time with family (So great, we really need to make family reunions happen a bit more often!), performed in two recitals, added several new gigs to my busy music schedule, and gotten a visa to stay here until September 2015. And yesterday it was a lovely spring day so I cleaned out our garden plot and planted flower seeds around the borders so it looks pretty when it is time to put vegatables in. I will post pictures when there is something other than freshly over-turned dirt to see. So I have had lots on my calendar :)

But anyway, all of that is not actually what I planned to write about today. I thought that I would share an amusing mingling of cultures that I experienced yesterday.

Yesterday I had brunch plans with a fellow pianist who became a good friend during Phantom of the Opera. We had been wanting to have a catch-up for awhile but we both have busy teaching and accompanying schedules so pinning down a date and time can be difficult. However, it is currently school holidays for two weeks in between terms 3 and 4, so it seemed a good time to meet up. We could not settle on a coffee shop that would not be crazy busy on a Saturday mid-day so I offered to play hostess. I decided to put American food on the menu and set about making biscuits and gravy, as I was assuming the chances of her having tasted it before were quite slim.

Biscuits as Americans know them, and gravy as something you'd want to have at breakfast on your biscuits are both food items which Kiwis are likely to have never encountered. They do have gravy here, but not white gravy, and certainly not sausage gravy with lots of cracked pepper. It is easy to find the brown gravy you would expect on your turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving, but they generally refer to is as just sauce. Gravy is not made with sausage here because they generally only have sausage in the form of links. You can find ground pork but it lacks the flavor of sausage so you have to add your own. Unless you want to finely chop the links and have chunks. I have tried both options in making gravy. Not sure which I prefer yet :)

Biscuits is a whole other topic of discussion, and one which set us on a funny conversation about food and names while we were dining yesterday. In NZ if someone offers you a biscuit, they are offering you something sweet, such as a Tim Tam or a chocolate chip cookie or an Oreo. While we refer to these items as cookies, kiwis generally would not be sure what you mean. What we call biscuits would be called a scone here. Most scones in NZ are a combination of a biscuit and a muffin and are generally savory, meaning they are have ham and cheese in them, or spinach and feta. Date scones are quite popular, and are usually the "sweet" option.

As a general rule, things are not so terribly different between NZ and the US. I did not experience the culture shock of new customs, new food, new language like when I went to Japan, or to a lesser extent, Austria. But even after 15 months, there are still things nearly every day that make me smile, even if it is just a vocabulary thing. There have been many interesting discussions at work that started because of something simple that was said by me and interpreted differently by a kiwi, or that I heard and did not understand, and so on and so forth. These experiences are educational but also fun. I find it terribly amusing to watch the reaction to asking a Kiwi if they have ever tried biscuits and gravy, because you can bet that if they do not know what you are referring to, they are probably picturing a chocolate chip cookie with brown sauce on it :)

Dutch Windmill

Shortly after getting my car, I decided to break it in with a weekend road trip to Wellington. Things had been crazy busy schedule-wise with Phantom running for 4 weeks and I was needing a couple of days to just relax and recharge. I decided that I would do better at actually relaxing if I took a couple days and went somewhere. So I got a long weekend off work, and the day after the last phantom show, headed South. Driving North takes a bit of mental preparation because you have to tackle first the mountain and then the gorge. The recommended speed limit for most of it is 15-35 kph, not very fast :) Driving South however is quite the opposite. It is most flat, ad surprisingly straight, as New Zealand roads go. You get to drive through lots of nice farmland and cozy little towns.

The time spent in Wellington was lovely. I even got lucky and the rain held off until I left. Windy is known as the windy city (on bad days it is apparently far worse than Taranaki) but I was lucky in that respect as well). I spent two days exploring bookstores, art galleries, and coffee shops :)
On the drive home, when cruising through one of the cute little towns along the way, I saw a sign for a Dutch windmill. Since it was time for a break from the car anyway I thought I'd check it out. In addition to the Windmill, there were signs and photos in "downtown" which was really just Main Street, showing just how little it has changed in the last 100 years. It was not anywhere that I could see myself wanting to live, but it was a cute place to stop for a coffee and stretch of the legs.

Still in use today for making flour

View of downtown/Main St from the top of the Windmill

The last stop I made for a break from the car (it's about a 4-4 1/2 hour drive) was at Duddings Lake, just because the name made me laugh. Nothing terribly exciting, but it would be a nice place to camp :)

In Other News

When it is cold out, I get crafty and I cook a lot. I have decided quilting in the winter-time is excellent because it keeps you warm. We have also found that since we do not have a heater in our apartment, on really cold nights the easiest way to warm up quickly was to bake something. Cooking something works well too since you stay warm by the stove, the but oven being on long enough to bake means that you have the benefit of both the kitchen and the lounge warming up.

One of my friends is expecting and her baby shower is this afternoon. This means that I have been able to satisfy my recent itch to make something by putting together a baby blanket for her. My sewing machine did not fit in my suitcase when I moved over, so I thought it would be best to opt for a small project that could be done by hand in case I could not find a sewing machine to borrow (the last quilt I made was queen size....lot of work to do by hand!). The biggest problem I had with this project was choosing the fabric, as I could have easily bought out half the store :)

Last week I was having cravings for Japanese food, so I decided I would make okonomiyaki, which roughly translates to "things you like fried together." It is delicious, easy to make, and one of those things where you can really add what you want. So Friday night I got my Japanese fix :)

I'm not a food blogger, so at least in this case you don't get the step by step photos and instructions. But if you want to try making them on your own, it's quite easy.
Mix together:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1 Tbsp sugar (optional)
about two cups of chopped cabbage (more or less depending on how much you like cabbage)

You can use shrimp, bacon, ham, or pork (or probably whatever else sounds good) as meat to go in it. Easiest way I have found (although it is not technically traditional, but I'm making do) is to chop and pre-cook the meat.

Heat a fry pan w/ a bit of olive oil in it, put a couple scoops of your cabbegey batter in the pan and make a "pancake" out of it. Put the meat on top while the bottom side is cooking and press it in a bit so it sticks together. Flip when the bottom side is just turning golden brown (you'll need two spatulas to flip if it's very big). Let it cook until both sides are done, I tend to flip it over a couple times so both sides cook twice. Top it with Okonomiyaki sauce (available at your local Asian market) and Kewpie mayo (also found at the market, and the best mayonnaise EVER). Other optional toppings include shredded dried seaweed and fish flakes :)

A beautiful day

Spring is coming, I could feel it in the air yesterday :) And I can again, as I sit out on my balcony in the sun to write this. Yesterday was the first actually warm sunny day we'd had in quite some time, several weeks I'd say. We've had sunny days and we've had a few that almost felt warm, but yesterday we got both :) I celebrated this in the morning by putting two loads of laundry out on the line, which were dry by lunchtime! Now before you laugh and think my life must not be very exciting if I'm using exclamation points over laundry, let me remind you that I do not have a dryer (I suppose if I have not previously told you this, then it isn't a reminder, but let's not get hung up on -technicalities haha). It is quite common to have a washing machine at home, but quite uncommon to have a dryer. There is a laundry mat fairly close by, that has HUGE dryers, but I am a bit reluctant to use them, because it costs $2 for 10 minutes of drying time. If you are wanting to dry big fluffy towels, well that adds up quickly. So this means our alternative is hanging them on the drying rack, which usually ends up on the balcony in the hopes of the wind drying it despite the cold. This is always an excellent plan until the wind is accompanied by rain :)

Anyway, enough about laundry. Once I was done playing housewife, I thought I'd spend the afternoon outside. Since I live in Taranaki, it was quite windy, but I thought I'd be brave and go climb Mount Paritutu. I posted about climbing that sometime last year, probably about this time of year actually, but the day I went up it was cloudy and gray so the view left much to be desire. It was delightfully clear yesterday so I was anticipating a gorgeous view of our majestic snow-covered mountain on one side and the ever-changing ocean on the other. I was not disappointed. How lucky I am to live in such a piece of paradise.

New Plymouth and Mt Taranaki

Beck Beach

Industrial side of town

The Port

The Sugar Loaf Islands

All grown up

It's funny what will make you feel like an adult. For me, it was not graduating college, or getting my first "real job" after said graduation, or even packing a suitcase to move to New Zealand. But two recent events in my life have made me feel as if I am indeed all grown up.

The first of these events is signing a contract at work which results in me becoming a salaried employee instead of just a contracted hourly person from the local employment agency. Yes, I am aware that being on salary does not necessarily you are better off financially since working more hours may or may not translate to making more money, but still. It made me feel grown up :) It also solidified for me that, at least for now, I was in the right place when it comes to work (yes, mom you were right again!). From my perspective, the company had enough faith in me and New Zealand's immigration system to take the risk involved in offering me the contract. I have the full support of my employer for my visa documentation, which is highly beneficial in keeping a visa to stay a bit longer in Kiwi paradise. An additional benefit to me is since I am now a Powerco employee, my boss has agreed to let me go through additional training to expand my skills. Who would have thought this little pianist from Missouri could figure out electrical stuff?! In the last few weeks I have been learning how to process/plan/approve the applications from our tree contractors who need to keep the lines clear of branches, etc. Fuses, switches, reclose blocks and 11meter Busck poles are worlds different from J.S. Bach and F. Chopin :) I am enjoying it though, it is a nice mental challenge.

The second "growing up" event was buying my first car! While my parents were wonderful in letting me have one of their old vehicles between college and New Zealand, it just is not the same as buying your own car with your own $$. That being said, if someone had asked me three years ago if I thought my first car would be a right-hand drive purchased in New Zealand, I probably would have laughed and said something along the lines of "Yeah, right." I did not buy a flashy, super exciting car, but that is clearly beside the point. I now own a 1993 Toyota Corona. I was actually not seriously hunting for a vehicle, but someone across the street from work was selling it, it is in excellent condition considering its age, and the price was right. I got to work one day and one of the guys on my team (who loves cars and was looking for an excuse to go car shopping) asked if I had seen it. The conversation wound up with us deciding I should go take a look at it. One thorough test-drive and negotiation later, I was working out to get the keys. I also had a fun international chat with my folks at home, since my dad knows lots about cars too, I called to ask him his opinion and mom jumped on the phone too, so she could ask the important questions like what color the car is and if it looked tidy :) All joking aside though, it was really a bit of a blessing to stumble upon, because the extent of my involvement in music in the area has made it increasingly to get around to rehearsals, gigs, schools, etc on time and without getting too wet if it was a rainy day. Not having to rely on a bicycle and the buses means I have greater flexibility to accept music opportunities which could eventually lead to full-time piano work, which would be a dream come true.
Anyway, here is my car :) The ladies at work have declared I need bright pink fuzzy dice.....we shall see on that one!

Winter weather

Growing up in Missouri, the automatic response to someone complaining about the weather (especially non-locals) was “Well, if you don’t like the weather, stick around a bit, it’ll change soon.” Since moving to Taranaki a year ago, I have heard a similar sentiment, but it is usually a declaration that you can experience all four seasons in one day. I think I have gotten up to about three in one day in my time here. Due to the temperature extremities I grew up with, it has not yet been both hot and cold enough in one day to feel like I had summer and winter both happening. However, the other day it was warm enough in the sun to feel like early spring, rained in the evening and felt damp and chilly like fall, while there is definitely enough snow on the mountain to make it clear that winter is still here.

Winter in Taranaki is not nearly as severe as what we survive in the Midwest. The worst part is the damp and the wind. It tends to rain quite a lot, and there is a chilling South Easterly that threatens to blow you over on the worst days. Temperature wise it doesn’t get much below freezing, if at all (unless you live right by the mountain), but the wind is able to cut right through you and it feels quite chilly sometimes. The last week has seen a delightful variety in winter weather. This time last week the skies were gray and it seemed like it might never stop raining. Some days it was not really daylight until nearly lunchtime, which I tend to find a bit depressing. Then we got a day of sunshine, but it continued raining. The benefit to this is that you get to see lots of rainbows J But in Taranaki, a sunshiney shower can last half the day. We were lucky over the weekend to have rain-free days of sunshine. I was happy for the sunshine, because we spent most of Saturday at Rugby Park for the Taranaki Rugby Union finals. Now that I have been around long enough to develop an elementary understanding of the game, rugby can be quite fun to watch. I find it a bit quicker-paced than American Football (which is called “grid-iron” here), and therefore easier to follow.

Anyway, back to the topic of weather, winter here is really not so unbearable, but I have found that I keep thinking the holidays must be just around the corner. After a few weeks of winter, my brain is thinking it must be time for Thanksgiving. Instead, it’s time for………….hmmmm well the next holiday is not until the end of October.

Holidays or not, we do have a pretty mountain to look at J

Taken on my way to work on Fri morning.
By the time I got to work, it looked like pink
candy mountain b/c the sun was just coming up :)