It's Thursday - aka Fridayitis

Yes, it is Thursday here in Qatar; the last day of the working and school week for us and my one morning at home without constructive occupation.  So here, at the computer, I sit listening to the despondent, the motivated, the inspirational and the complaining population of NZ radio listeners.  It is around 10 days since the earthquake and we think about the challenges now and ahead for those in Canterbury and those further afield supporting them...keep it up.

As for us, we continue "a normal life".  This week has not been super busy, really just full of baking contributions for school sports day, preparing for 21 little Rainbows and their bubble blowing session, practicing guitar, and managing the portfolio - no small feat this week thanks to the oil price fluctuations and the plunge of the NZD, coupled with the close out the NZ tax year, some trouser hemming, and finalizing our NZ home leave, I am looking forward to our weekend.

Home leave planning is not as smaller task as I had originally thought.  Ross enlightened me (I initially thought) with a paper by Peter Jacso: Searching for measurable benefits, Vol 33 No. 1, 2009.  It covers how you can easily get ripped off booking holidays, flights in particular if you book by on-line airfare providers, Expedia being case in point.  After trawling his lengthy paper and becoming frustrated at the author's lack of ability to simplify data in easier to read tables as supports rather than screen shots.  I concluded that I already knew it all.  Okay, so I have booked three of us return to NZ, economy class, including short internal NZ breaks and rental cars for less than USD5,400 but it has come at a small cost.  Our return trip is not the shortest available (24 hours including a 4 hour layover in Melbourne) as it gives us a stop in Sri Lanka, then onto Singapore for an 18 hour layover and then a 9 hour middle of the night layover in Brisbane before landing directly in Dunedin.  Happily, I have scored a good price at the cost of 36 hours and a chance to visit friends.  Long live the use of Airfare hub sites for routing and then booking generally directly with the airline!

School is progressing along well.  Everyday, Teagan is keen to go and loves her classmates.  Sherborne is great at creating such a nurturing environment and the kids seem so happy and exceptionally well behaved!  Reading is Teagan's current forte, thankfully, she has moved off "creative reality".  At home after she has read through her school books we have started on "bigger girl" stories.  I am loving our current read (I read outloud as Teagan's passion for the printed word does not make her a genius reader!).  Debi Gloiri's, The Witch Baby and Me, is such a fabulous read.  She is a Scottish author and makes such witchy world that a child will present the book to you before you have even consider waking up in the morning to get the next chapter (bah humbug)!

As a special treat this week we had our windows cleaned inside and out.  After parting with a good pay and a heap of praise, I can now see the sun shining again!  Oh, how sweet to see without dust covered lenses.