One week in...

....So, Week one is over and done.

Finally over the jetlag, and started work on Monday.

I'll start with home and then onto work (pleasure and then business!)

So, the house is good. We have a lemon tree at the end of the garden. I've been munching grapefruit from a colleague's garden and some oranges are going to come my way next week. What a treat!! The rain has been impressive all week (and not in a good way) while the rest of NZ has been sunny. We'll need to find somewhere warmer to live for the winter - this place is draughty and chilly at night (not least because the mattress is still on the floor), but at the moment it is really nice. So good to have a garden.

Work is an odd and interesting place. It has been an up and down kind of week. Prof forgot to mention that I was expected to spend time in the operating theatres, bringing some jetlagged, squeamish panicking to the proceedings. My job description seems to change every five minutes at the whim of the boss. Somewhat frustrating, but I'm hoping it'll settle down soon. Or maybe it won't!! Fuzzy Academics!!

I met someone who was post-doccing at Guildford when I was there and shared an office with a friend of mine - random meetings!! Met some nice people and I'm hoping that I'll have some friends there soon.

Will has been in Tauranga for the last 2 days and I am off to join him tomorrow for the weekend. Just a couple of hours out of Auckland and some beach for the weekend. I think that it might be a little too much like Bournemouth for comfort, but we haven't been there, so we'd better see it for ourselves!!

The kiwis are a strange bunch. There is a lot of talk about an event called Movember (which, worryingly, also seems to be happening in the UK). The idea is simple and worthy - men grow a moustache for the month of November and raise money for prostate cancer research. However, the sheer coverage and attention that this seems to demand here is huge and bizarre. If you don't 'gro your mo to be a bro with a mo' then your masculinity is in question. As I said, bizarre.

More soon.