Ginny had her ballet concert yesterday. The Bennett School of Ballet & Jazz performed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Ginny was in two scenes – one as a cloud and one as a doll. It was very entertaining. Thank you and great job, Ginny!
Archive for the 'ballet' Category
Ginny, Corinna and I went to the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s production of Swan Lake last night. It was so beautiful. For those who love classical ballet, this is it. The dancing was perfect, especially the prince who seemed to float Michael Jordan style during his many leaps and jumps. Of course my favourite dances were with the swans. They reminded me of snow in the Nutcracker. There was one with the dancers crossing arms and holding hands that was just perfect. Even though Ginny and I had never seen it before, the Tchaikovsky score was very familiar and the live orchestra really brought it to life. Besides the most famous theme, we also recognised three of the pieces that Bud Johansen added to the Olympia production of the Nutcracker last Christmas (Divinity, Hungarians, and Spring/Flowers). It was nice to see it in the newly renovated Regent Theatre. Even though we were in the student seats (at the very top), we had a lovely view and would definitely sit there again – aside from the noisy preschooler and the chatty older ladies sitting next to us. We are very lucky to have access to such a wonderful ballet experience. I can’t wait for Cinderella. Cheers, Fa
(Fa says…) Ginny, Corinna, and I went to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company perform last night in the Town Hall. It was a real treat to see such talented dancers. My favourite was a beautiful pas de deux with incredible dancing and costumes. There was a mix of traditional and very modern pieces in the two hour performance. Everybody was great to watch, but the male dancers were particularly enchanting, although they were wearing costumes reminiscent of the original Star Trek – very distracting for us Jean Luc fans. It was not only nice to see professional ballet, but to be accompanied by two wonderful companions and to have a couple of “graduate school free” hours!
We are in our final 4 weeks of the term and I only(!) have seven more papers and projects to complete. I am very much looking forward to Easter break and the between term break. The MBA programme has been quite challenging and a lot of work, but I am still here 
. We finished midterm exams last week, so I have been taking it a wee bit easier this week. I actually had dinner with my family tonight (an delicious meal of lamb and eggplant Parmesan) and I plan to go to bed early (before midnight) and sleep-in tomorrow since we don’t have Law until 10:30. Very decadent I know. I am sure I’ll pay for it with a late night in the library tomorrow.
The weather has been awful after a really nice turn last weekend. I must be paying for all of the summer weather bragging I have done. It feels like fall is here. The worst part is that there is no insulation in the houses and no central heating, so it is very hard to leave a warm bed in the morning. The house is freezing and we wear hats and coats inside! I hope this is just an unusual weather system passing through from the Antarctic, but I have a feeling it will be a long, cold, wet and windy winter.
In addition to my studies, Jorit, Jennifer, and Corinna are teaching me German. My word for the day is “verrückt.” I have found it very useful. Well my Financial Accounting syndicate report is calling me, das ist verrückt… Cheers
Needless to say the last few days have been pretty typical, with not much to say. Fa and the kids have been doing lots of schoolwork, but other than that, not much going on. Ginny had ballet last night while Hank and I wandered around downtown Dunedin. We picked up stationery and food and met Ginny on the way back up the hill. It took us about half-way before we caught her up. Fa had no homework to finish last night so we had a leisurely dinner and then watched “A Beautiful Mind”, because she is studying Nash’s theories in Statistics class. We’d seen it before, of course, so both fell asleep before it was over.
Today the kids and I met Phil for another squash game. I did better than last time but still lost. Oh well. After getting home I’ve been struggling with Premiere Elements for a couple of hours, doing some video editing. It is overkill for what I’m trying (baby steps) so eventually I abandoned it and used Virtual Dub to encode a video I took with my Digital Camera. I’m going to start doing some real filming now with my camcorder, but I thought I’d play around first. Here’s a sample I loaded on YouTube:
We finally got all of the boxes we sent to ourselves. We picked them up on our way to squash with Phil. (Unfortunately, I lost 3-1. I’m getting worse, it seems.) Then after getting the boxes home. I dropped Ginny off at ballet and Hank and I picked up a new monitor, since we need one now for the old computer. We got a “MAG” 22″ monitor for ~$NZ600. Then we got a wireless PCI card for the new computer. This was pretty risky buying all this stuff since I didn’t know at that point if the computer made it across the Pacific intact. Finally getting home, I set up the new computer in Ginny’s room and the old one in the office. It worked! The only hiccup was the wireless mouse took a while to find itself. No biggie. Then Windows needed to install 24 updates. An hour later I was good as gold. After setting up the printer and webcam, I think we’re in business. I’m using it now to write this. Now to get to all of those things I was putting off until the computer came, like doing some video editing and downloading some maps to the GPS, and all of those other things I was waiting for but forgot now. It’s our weekend from school starting tomorrow, but no big trips this time, just exploring Dunedin and to the beach. Bye.
Today we slept in. Woohoo. Unfortunately, we missed the farmer’s market. It’s Saturday from 8:00 am to noon. We got down there too late, couldn’t find a car park, and realized we wouldn’t make it back in time for Ginny’s ballet, so abandoned it. Too bad. We’ll try next week.
Fa walked Ginny down the hill to her first ballet class:
It was a great succes – she had fun and learned a lot. While they were there Hank and I did some schoolwork. We they returned we had lunch, then Fa and Ginny went to the dance store for some new tights while Hank and I got a wireless access point with 4 port router at Dick Smith’s. We dropped Fa off at the biz school and went home. Ginny and I did some schoolwork, we had dinner, and I set up the wireless. Now it’s nice to be able to write anywhere in the house. I’m doing so now at the kitchen table. And it’ll be fun to do the webcam from here so people can see our great view, although the resolution is so poor I doubt anyone will be able to see anything! Around that time Hank lost a tooth:
We’ll have to see what the Kiwi tooth fairy brings tonight.
I picked up Fa, had some Speight’s beer, and that’s it.
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