Commenting Instructions

Some of you have asked about how to leave comments on my blog, and I know that some people have had difficulty, so I have written some instructions.

1) In order to get to the comments section, look at the bottom of the post. It will say “No comments” or the number of comments, and you can click on those words.  This will take you to the comments section.

2) You will see a text box, in which you can type your comment.

3) Underneath the text box, there is a drop-down menu, which defaults to “Google Account." If you have a Google Account, you can leave it like that. If not, you can see if you have any of the other accounts listed in the drop-down menu. If you have none of these, then select “Anonymous.”

4) If you select “Anonymous,” you will have to type in a code “To prove that you’re not a robot.”

5) Also, if you select “Anonymous,” please put you name in your post, so I know who you are. If you have a common first name, please put your last name, or at least the first letter of it, so I can be sure I know to whom I am responding.

Thanks! I look forward to your comments!

Cars and Banks

After spending quite a bit of time looking online for used cars, J and I headed to Integrity Dealership, which had listed most of the best deals. We looked at a variety of cars, and found that the ones we liked were out of our price range. Then we found a cute red Toyota Ist that we both liked, and was on a huge sale. J managed to haggle the price down even a bit more, making it a fantastic deal. The downside was that to get it at that price, we agreed to pay in cash.

That wouldn’t be a problem, because we have the money, except that most of the money is currently in the US and Canada. Which also wouldn’t be a problem, except that when we got back to the hotel and tried to do the Internet transfer of the money, we found out that we need a NZ credit card for the transfer to go through. Which wouldn’t be a big deal (are you noticing a trend?), except that J had to wait for his first paycheque to go through before he could apply for a NZ credit card, which means he doesn’t have one yet. Moreover, none of this would have been a problem in the first place, except that we misunderstood how J’s first few paycheques would work. We have paid for all of our moving expenses (plane tickets, shipping, food, etc.), but J’s job is going to reimburse us. That is very generous of them, and we are so appreciative, but J has to work there for five weeks before we get that money. I think that that’s a very reasonable policy, but it is a long time to wait when we are needing to spend money on furniture and other large things (like a car).

The other reason we have found ourselves in this situation is that no matter how smart we are about finding good ways to transfer money (and J is very good at it), we lose money when we convert it between currencies. This is particularly relevant because we will be earning NZ dollars, but we need to pay back J’s student loans in US dollars. So our goal is to leave as much money is our American and Canadian accounts as possible. As soon as we’re settled, not buying cars, and we’ve been reimbursed, that will not be a problem. But for now, it means that we are cutting it closer than we would like.

Before you get too worried, we did sort it out. We are getting a small loan from our bank here (ANZ), which we will then be able to pay back as soon as J gets his big reimbursement cheque in a few weeks, so we won’t have to pay interest or anything. We decided that that was the best option, so we can leave our money where it is, but also get the cash to the car dealership.

Having learned a lot from our international banking experiences in Canada, we have done a better job of managing it all this time, but it is still quite a hassle to figure out the best ways to handle money in three different countries, especially when each country has their own rules about how banking and transfers work.

The exciting part of all of this is… we bought a car! Yay! And that means that once we get it, (after we pay and they do a tune-up and put on new tires), I get to start driving on the left side of the road! I am so very excited!

How 'wh' became 'f'

My friend Ruth commented on one of my posts with an interesting question, which lead me to an interesting answer, so I thought I would share it.

Ruth asked about the Nationality of the people who first used an alphabet to turn Maori into a written language. Part of the reason for her question was that she wondered how it came to be that ‘f’ would be written as ‘wh.’

Here is what I found:

I read that British missionaries to the Maori were the first people to try to write the language down. They lived among the Maori, and early in the interactions between Maori and British, the majority of people (Maori or not) who lived in NZ spoke Maori.

As for the ‘wh,’ it turns out that it is a bit of a confusing issue, and came to be because Maori had a phoneme that English didn’t. In traditional Maori, ‘wh’ is the “voiceless” version of the ‘w’ sound. It is pronounced by blowing out air quickly between your tightly pursed lips. If you try it, it kind of sounds a bit like an ‘f’ sound, but not exactly. It is hard for us Anglophones to pronounce it, since it is not a sound we have heard or tried to make, but for the Maori it was natural. Apparently, both sounds were written as ‘w’ at first, but then when a distinction was made, the voiceless one was written ‘wh,’ which was the best way the Anglophone recorders could find to record that sound with the English alphabet. That reminds me of the ‘w’/’wh’ distinction in English, which is based in mouth/air difference, and not in auditory difference at all. As a kid, I remember feeling with my hand whether or not there was a puff of air when I said a word to know whether or not there was an ‘h’.

Anyway, over time, with the increasing use of English in Maori populations, the voiceless ‘wh’ sound has shifted to being a full English ‘f’ sound, but it is still spelled ‘wh.’ I read that some people are frustrated by this, and try to sustain the traditional pronunciation, but so far, I have only heard the ‘f’ version.

Does that make sense? Pretty neat, I think. Thanks for asking that question, Ruth. Otherwise I might not have learned that!

Productivity Feels Good - On a Bike

Our boxes that Dad very kindly mailed us from Kansas arrived yesterday. All but one of them will remain boxed until we move into our house, with the exception being my BIKE! I was so very excited that it came, I got it unpacked and reassembled right away, and then rode around, just for fun. Today, I had plans to spend the morning in a preschool, then I had about a million errands to run in the afternoon. I was thrilled to realize that I could leave at 8:20 instead of 8:00 to get to preschool for my 8:30 appointment, and even more thrilled when I left at lunch time, feeling famished, and only had to make it through the seven minute bike ride home before I could eat. The long walks back after forgetting to pack a lunch have been rough, and it was great to avoid that problem.

So, after a lovely morning playing outside with the kids, and a lovely lunch back at the hotel, I was amazed to find that I ran all my errands and got back to the hotel in about the time it would have taken just to walk to my furthest errand. Biking is the best invention ever! And these weeks of no bike and no car while J is at work, especially given that they have been very errand-heavy weeks, have made me realize that more than ever! Hooray for bikes!

Also, I feel that I should throw a “Hooray” my own way as well, because I definitely put together my whole bike, all by myself! Dad helped me to take it apart, and I was concerned that I would not be able to reassemble it without him, but I did! By the way, thanks to Dad for making me write ‘R’ and ‘L’ on the pedals, despite my assurances that I would remember. J So “Hooray” for Dad as well!

A note: Turns out, biking is also affected by driving on the left side of the road. Who knew? I am finding it easy to remember to ride on the left side, but not at all easy to predict where cars will come from, which is risky on a bike. I know that I just need practice, but I feel quite vulnerable, and I’m sure that I am looking like a crazy person, because I feel the need to crane my neck in all directions at once, in order to make sure I know where the cars are. Good thing I'm used to looking like a crazy person.

Alex the Lion

I just have to share a wonderful conversation that I had with a few children at an early learning centre this week.

We were cooking fish and chips in the sandbox, when one of the children asked, “Why do you talk so funny?” I said, “I do talk differently than you. That’s called an accent. But I came from a long, long way away from here, and where I’m from, everyone talks like me.” We had just finished building Emirates Team NZ’s yacht and winning the America’s Cup, so I thought that might be a good way to explain it. I told them that I was from the same place as Oracle, so I talked like them. They asked where that was, and I said America. One of the children, who had only partially been listening, jumped up and said, “Alex the Lion is from America!” (For those of you who don’t live in preschool-land, Alex the Lion is one of the main characters in Madagascar 1, 2, and 3. He is originally from a zoo in NYC, and he is a charismatic and beloved character.) The child continued, “Alex the Lion has a different voice, and it’s not like my voice!” I explained that since Alex is American and I am American, we have the same accent. He was begrudgingly willing to accept this, but insisted that Alex the Lion and I are not the same, “because Alex has a boy lion voice, not like you.”

My take-away from this, (other than that children are fantastic), is that different accents are a bit hard to process for children. However, despite the imperfection of his understanding, I love the fact that he was able to think of something from his life that connected with what I was talking about. This child was able to distinguish between “like me” and “not like me,” but he was not able to figure out that it was the accent that was different. I think that makes sense, because for children, accents can be difficult to distinguish from unique voices, speech patterns, gender, and even the physical appearance of the person. Or the lion.