False Alarm
Saturday night was a rather interesting night - as it almost seemed as though I was about to be a father somewhat unexpectedly and out of the blue. I could go into a blow-by-blow account of what happened, but probably a better idea is to take what Nats has written about the night (and the couple of days after) to give you all a better indication of what happened.

I am still pregnant which wouldnt be so bad if my baby hadn't decided that it wanted to come Saturday night and after getting mummy all excited, causing me excruciating chest pains and being at the birthing center all ready to go that it wanted to stay for goodness knows how much longer. I am an emotional mess right now. I was happy still being pregnant, wasnt worried when everyone else that was due around the same time as me (and even many that were due afterwards) were having there babies, I wasnt in a hurry just taking my time... and then came Saturday/Sunday and now I am a wreck.
My baby is still quite high up so everytime I got a contraction my uterus and the baby were pressing rather hard on my diaphram, ribs and lungs causing imense pain, of course this isnt a common pre-labour symptom (that I have been told about anyway) so I was not prepared for it at all, so after about 6 hours of this I have started to panic, my blood pressure has dropped, I am shaking, crying and to top it all off vomiting alot. I couldnt stand up, I couldnt sit down nothing I did was working to ease the pain in my chest. I had already had about 3 showers but decided to go to my grandmas as she has a bath and I thought that would help. I stayed in there for as long as I could until it got really uncomfortable and then went and lay on the floor in the lounge while my grandma napped in her bed and Josh on the lazyboy. I was sick once more and was having sharp pains with the contractions at the top of my uterus, by now I was absolutely exhausted (after 5 1/2 hours of walking around who wouldnt be) and asked Josh to call Collette (midwife) and ask her what we should do as I was feeling less and less in control of things, she said to come into Birthcare, so that she could give me something for the vommiting and hopefully see some progress.
We called my mum and told her to meet us there made sure we were organised and then made the exhsusting trip (it is only 20mins away from my grandmas but I was in lots and lots of pain so every little bump hurt like hell) We sorted out what stuff we wanted to bring up with us and went inside. I got undressed and checked my urine (which showed traces of protein) the checked my temperature and blood pressure as well as the babies heartbeat and position. Explained that no my waters hadnt broken and I hadnt had a show, but I had been having regular painful contractions since 5pm (it was now nearly 1am) Collette arrived and I chatted to her about what had been happening, was reassured (if you cna call it that) that the chest pains I was feeling was because of how high the baby is, she explained that I am only 3/5 engaged and it would be favourble if I was 4/5 or more but that was ok, that the contractions were working to move baby down. My mum arrived after getting lost and me panicking that she wasnt comming at all (long story) I was still having contractions but not as bad as earlier, I was walking around and swaying from side to side for ages and things just did not seem to be progrssing at all. So we decided that going home was a good idea... If I wanted some Pethidine I needed to be checked for dilation neither of which I wanted so Collette went and told the other staff that we were going home... Discussed that I was in labour but being in a non homely environment was hindering my progress and that she fully expected that I would be able to see my feet by tmrw :)
We got home at about 4am on sunday morning and set the spare bed up at my grandmas so we could try and get some sleep fully expecting to be going back to birthcare to deliver my Bug later on in the day. I was still having contractions and my chest was still very very sore, and moving was extremely painful. I woke up again at 5.20am to go to the toilet and hoping that I would be sick to stop the acid in my throat to no avail. I went back to bed, lay down and the minute I did I had to scramble to get to the bucket to be sick, causing extreme pain as you use your chest muscles to get up. Everything that came up was dark, so I panicked and screamed at Josh to get up and turn off the light because I thought it was blood. After establishing that we didnt think it was, we settled back down to sleep.
I had a little sleep and felt a little better as my headache had also gone by now. I had some toast and a cup of tea as well as oodles of milk to combat the damn heartburn, had another sleep and then came home so that I could clean the house up (all I could think of was the fact that the house was really messy, there were dishes to do and the toilet was filthy lol the things you think of) we watched a little bit of tv and then went back down to my grandmas where we were going to stay. By now the contractions were very sporadic and nothing special so I decided to come home to my own bed. We watched some TV and called my mum and spoke to her about things that were going on in my head and her head etc. I went to bed and had about 6 hours straight sleep before I had to get up and pee and then got up to take my car to get its warrant by 10am... So I have no car, Josh is at Uni and I am all alone with nothing to do... Things have calmed down a lot now and I no longer feel like I am in labour although I feel like I have been run over by a bus, my contractions are no longer regular and I just feel emotionally and physically drained. I just hope that next time something gets started it stays that way and doesn't stop cold turkey, I still feel confident in myself that I can do this and I was never scared that I was in labour, I am just disappointed and exhausted...

I guess on the plus side (why is it always me who looks on the plus side of things?) Saturday night was probably a sign that the baby isn't too far away. It also gave a us a bit of practice in putting that "what happens if Nats goes into labour" plan into practice. I think we did that pretty effectively, although in some ways we were slightly unprepared and had to madly rush around the house collecting things we felt we might just need. But when it really decides to happen next time we will be pretty well prepared, as the bags are in Natalie's grandmother's car - who is going to be driving us to the birthing centre. I guess in some ways having a dummy run can be useful, but it was a let-down as Nats has already alluded to, going from the big excitement back to reality of everyday life.

My literature review is coming along, after being rather put on the backburner after the drama of the weekend. I've written just over half the amount of words which are required, and am slowly getting through the enormous amount of stuff that I need to write about. It's quite challenging making sure that I keep reminding myself that it is a literature review rather than a basic essay and that I need to sporadically detail where the literature surrounding the subject had reached by a certain point of time. It's an interesting topic, with a lot of potential for research as much of the writing throughout the past five years has reached the conclusions that neither urban sprawl nor compact cities can adequately respond to the complex requirements of the sustainable city - although clearly the compact city has much more promise than urban sprawl does.

Literature Review
My rather large 4000 word literature review, which is due next Thursday has reached a really annoying point in my research. The point where I almost feel as though I should have stopped with all the reading and note-taking and started with the writing, but I just know that there are certain parts of my review which I need to research a lot more. But then when I go looking for more articles or books I just find the same old arguments getting repeated over and over and over again, which is not only wasting my time by reading them all, but getting me more and more frustrated. I guess that I should be mastering the art of skim-reading a bit more, but I seem so terrified that I might miss something important that I go through meticulously and take notes from everything, probably writing the same thing down again and again. What I probably need to do now, is make up some sort of a plan for how I'm going to write up this monster, and then hopefully I'll be able to address exactly where the holes in my research are so that I'll be able to focus my research better and not feel like I'm wasting my time so much. But then I feel guilty for not putting as much time into my assignment, that instead of being on the internet I should be studying more and more. Ugh.

We had a pretty quiet day today, spending much of the day back at Natalie's grandmother's which was nice. Nats has definitely picked up my cold, and I feel pretty bad for giving it to her, although I guess that was pretty inevitable given that we live together. Hopefully it passes her by as quickly as it did to me, although I still seem to have some remnants with a pretty nasty cough that's just sprung up this evening. But anyway, the baby should theoretically be popping out on Sunday as that's its due date, but when did a baby ever do what it should so it seems like we might be waiting a while yet.

Human Geography
In my fourth year of studying human geography I think that I've got it pretty much sussed. Things go in about four or five steps: firstly we're presented with a problem, it might be that cities are polluting too much, or that we're having unequal access to health etc., second step some person things they've come up with a brilliant solution to the problem - they've done a piece of research and prove beyond doubt that this is the way to fix it, but then someone else does the same research in a different place and gets the complete opposite result. Then all the human geographers get together in a huddle, realise that there are just too many variables in the world and, in effect, just decide that everything is just too complex and too hard. That seems to be the case in my research project at the moment, which is based around trying to find out what sustainable urban forms are, as well as how and if policies that will lead to these particular forms can be implemented. Most people agree that urban sprawl is pretty unsustainable, because so much car travel is required and that it just eats up all the countryside. Problem is that all the alternatives such as more compact cities turn out to be just as big of a mess, plus the fact that it seems as though everyone would rather live in spread out urban environments, just the exact opposite to what would be needed to achieve urban sustainability. Aaaarrrgghhh!!!! I guess that eventually it has to be decided that you can never please everyone, and that you're better off just trying to please as many people with the policies that you can.

Anyway, enough of my academic spiel. Nats is now over 39 weeks pregnant, as her due date is this Sunday coming up. It's pretty scary to think that for so long March 28th 2004 seemed like an age away, there was always that inevitability that we would get there, but Nats' due date always seemed like quite a way off. Yet now it's only a matter of days, and the rather odd pains that Nats has been experiencing in the last few days may suggest that the baby may only be a few days off now. Now there's a scary thought as my life seems to be fairly full at the moment - but I guess that there are always 24 hours in each day and I'll have to make the most of each and every one of them. Hey, I'm sure writing up assignments at three in the morning, or doing the dishes between crying fits will become normal after a while..... maybe? I guess on the bright side, that even though everyone goes on and on and on about how much hard work it's all going to be, they always say that it's totally worth it. I guess that the whole emotional side of things will kick in at some stage, probably when I least expect it and I'll actually realise that I am a father, that this really is happening, and it won't seem quite so surreal anymore.

I have really been lacking in motivation to write on this page over the last week or two for some reason. Maybe it's the myriad of other things I need to get done that by the time I get onto the internet I really can't be bothered putting in the effort of writing a half-decent entry; maybe it's that I don't really feel like anything's going on in my life that's worth writing about (although I highly doubt that as there have been far more boring stages in my life in the past than at the moment.) I'm not quite sure exactly, but I hope that this phase passes, I've been writing here for over three years now and it would be sad to stop just when I'm about to have lots of interesting things to write about, and about to go through one of the biggest changes in my life.

In some ways I do hope the baby just holds on a little bit longer as I've been feeling like crap over the past couple of days and seem to have managed to catch a cold, even though it's still sort of summer. As a result the last couple of days have been full of blocked noses, sore eyes, sore throat, high temperatures and the like. It's all rather frustrating, as being sick always is, but on the positive side I did feel a bit better today so hopefully the worst of it has passed by and I'll start to feel normal over the next couple of days.

Comfy Baby
It's been nearly a week since I last updated, which is pretty shocking but every time I've got down and started to write I've sat there for a while not really knowing where to start. Not that much has groundbreakingly happened: no baby, university same old same old.... Nats is getting a bit fed up with the fact that the baby has decided to make us wait longer and longer until it blesses us with its presence. She hasn't really felt any contractions and the baby still seems quite high up, so maybe we'll have to wait a little while yet. But as her due date is only a week away today I can't imagine that we'll have to wait too much longer.

University is definitely beginning to 'heat up', as I finished my first little assignment on Friday and now have to worry about a huge literature review which is due on the first of April. I guess the positive side is that I have full reign over my choice of topic, which I've made to be the discussion of different types of urban forms and whether city planners should be focused on creating compact or dispersed types of cities. This assignment is meant to form as the basis of my thesis topic for next year, where I think I would apply the theory to the Auckland situation and maybe even a specific part of Auckland to focus on what the type of development is happening and whether that's the best option available. It will be interesting, although a hell of a lot of work as there has been a lot written on the subject and I need to get my head around where the literature is at the moment on the subject so that I know what I'm talking about.

Waiting....
I had a fairly uneventful weekend: work on Saturday was quite busy because it was St. Patrick's day and they had a parade down Queen St, then lots of people came in at the same time so things were rather chaotic for a while. Work is rather strange at the moment, not being there all the time for the first time in ages is odd - when I'm there it's like I'm in a really familiar environment (really really familiar!), and it really seems like I'm still working there fulltime. I guess that eventually, once it has settled in that I'm not there five days a week (or more) I'll eventually click that things have changed. But for now it's actually quite a nice feeling, having the comfort of such a familiar environment, and still keeping in touch with everyone there without having to go through the graft of being there for 40 hours a week.

Still no real sign that the baby is coming, although Nats is feeling quite a few less movements than she is used to which is probably a sign that the baby is getting rather squished up where it is - and therefore might feel like stretching it's legs in the not-so-distant future. Actually trying to convince yourself that there's a living baby inside of her is very difficult, no matter how hard I try to see it and imagine a newborn baby it still seems incredibly unreal. Strangely more unreal than it all did a few weeks ago.

My assignment which is due this Friday has turned out to probably be quite a lot less work than I originally thought it was going to be, which is always a bonus. The only issues are that it still needs to be done, and that even though I don't need to do particularly much writing when it comes to actually putting something on paper there is a lot of background reading to be done as the whole point of the exercise is to get us started on the reading. It seems to be that's what postgraduate study is all about: reading, reading and more reading. I guess it's good in a way that I'm becoming a bit of an expert on the strict preservationism vs. comanagement debate which is rather heated in some journals. Hopefully, once I have finished with this small assignment, I will be able to easily continue on to doing the rest of the coursework for this particular paper (which is a big long essay) reasonably easily because most of my actual hardwork would have been done. Then I'll just have to worry about my 10 million other assignments, although on the bright side I do feel like I've still got things under control as far as my assessed work is concerned although there's always that fear that it's going to come down to the last minute no matter how hard I try to avoid that (it seems somewhat inevitable throughout my university career that I'll end up rushing to finish my essay by the 5pm handing in time).

Time Flies
Whoosh..... and there go the first two weeks of university! Typically it's just disappeared faster than I could possibly imagine, which is actually quite normal and how I normally feel after the first few weeks of uni. For some reason time just seems to fly by, which really isn't a good thing as it means that all my assignments just come closer and closer. I spent most of today reading about whether indigenous people should be allowed to remain living in National Parks or not, a rather interesting debate when you find yourself somewhat coming to the conclusion that yes they should be, for the park's sake as much as theirs. By next Friday I need to have completed some sort of a literature review about whether "strict preservationism is the best way to ensure biodiversity maintenance". At the moment I'm sort of leaning towards the "no" side of the argument, although I have read a lot proposing the other side of the argument and it's quite fun going through them all and trying to pick holes in their logic. I also have another rather larger assignment due on the first of April, which is meant to be the first step towards deciding upon the topic for my masters thesis which I am going to write next year. Talk about throwing you in the deep end, I thought the whole point of your first year at postgraduate level was to get some idea about what you are going to research and here I am in the second week making the most important decision of my academic career! But anyway, the highlights of university so far have probably been: meeting up with people who I hadn't seen for over a year who've also come back to do geography after a year's break, being thankful about how quickly all my geographic knowledge came flooding back to me as it's nice to see that a year at McDonald's didn't completely rot my brain, and finally realising that I'm able to access all the library resources from home (which wasn't possible when I was undergraduate) so I will hopefully be able to do most of my study at home. Lowlights have been my mission to get enrolled, and get my student allowance sorted - which has luckily been sorted out finally, as well as realising the huge amount of work I'm going to be doing this year.

Obviously there's still no baby (that will surely take precedent as my first post once it happens!) and all the indicators that seemed to point towards something happening early this week have kind of disappeared and it seems like we're in for another week or two before Nats' bump decides that it wants to come out and meet the world. We managed to have a good talk about baby-names today which was good as we still haven't settled upon anything. Funnily enough after a mad scramble to think up of names when we first discovered that Nats was pregnant we've kind of forgotten about that rather important job over the past few months. It was kind of fun going through the names of all these sports players while Nats said "no... no.....NO....NO BLOODY WAY AM I CALLING OUR CHILD SHANE!!!....no.... etc." But it was a constructive process as we have 'sort-of' settled on a name if it happens to be a boy, which had been the most problematic of the two (there seem to be millions of girls names out there, but hardly any decent boys names). But don't think I'm going to tell you what they are, everyone will just have to wait and see....

No baby... no baby
I can just see my posts for the next while: it's going to be "day one.... no baby..." etc. until some time in the next few weeks there will appear a "hey..... I'm a father!" It's rather strange getting on with everyday life as normally as possible knowing that one of the most significant moment of my life is just around the corner. Most important things you have some idea when they're going to happen, graduations days, christmas, birthdays etc. but in this case we really don't have a clue. It could be tomorrow, it could be three or four weeks away. I guess that all I can really do at the moment is ensure that I can get to Nats reasonably quickly wherever I am, and that we put off going anywhere outside Auckland until after the baby is born.

With Nats now being over 37 weeks pregnant it has really only just sunk in that it could be any day now. I guess that I had become fairly comfortable with the idea that "it wasn't too long to go now", and through talking with Nats, our midwife, and going to the ante-natal classes I had become fairly confident in my knowledge of what was going to unfold and feeling pretty confident about the whole "adapting to be a father" thing. But then the other morning I woke up and the fact that it all seemed so soon, that we've managed to create a pretty cool new household over the past month, made me a bit afraid of all the change which is going to happen. I guess this is the transition between 'we're going to have a baby soon' to 'it could be any day now'. As a result I began to wonder whether I really am prepated mentally for it all, although at a point you just have to say "I've done the most I can to prepare, now we just have to wait and see, and react to it all".

University's well into its second week, and I am pretty proud to say that I've made a start on at least one of my big assignments - which is more than I've usually been able to say at this stage of the year in the past. I guess with all the upcoming events in my life I feel as though there's a big need for me to get started and to get ahead of my schedule of assignments. Everything looks pretty interesting, although it's a bit of a pity that my most interesting paper probably has the most boring lecturer taking it so it might not turn out to be as good as it potentially could be. But I guess the advantage of postgraduate study is that a paper is really what you make of it and as so much of it is personal research and study the lecturer shouldn't really have that much of an influence upon it. My fieldtrip to Kerikeri has been put back to the end of April which is really good as it was meant to be at the end of March, exactly when our baby is due which is a bonus as fieldtrips are always really useful in geography courses, as I learned in stage three with my fieldtrip to Hastings where I probably learned more than 10 lectures could have taught me.

Maybe they're not so bad after all...
I've decided that even though they took forever to organise my enrolment (and still haven't finished it all) I do actually quite like the University of Auckland. First of all they managed to sort themselves when it comes to accessing online journals and journal search engines, which means now with the simple entry of my university ID and password I can access something like 10,000 online journals from my computer at home. This effectively means that if I need to, I could probably complete most of my studies from home with all my resources at the touch of a button. Then secondly I received a couple of letters from the university today, the first being an (incomplete) fees invoice for a few thousand dollars which I was expecting, while the other letter turned out to be one congratulating me on the fact that I had been awarded a $2025 postgraduate study grant which means that my fees are now a whole heap less than they were before. Nice how these pleasant surprises arise, in total now the university has given me nearly $6000 in scholarship money - almost half the fees that I've paid them over the three and a bit years studying there. Just goes to show that working hard and getting good grades really does pay off in the end.

I went back to work today after almost a week's break. It was a little bit odd, after working there most days for the last year and a half, everyone was like "hey Josh... haven't seen you for a while". Saturdays are a pretty good day to work at my store, and probably the day that I've worked least often in my two years at the place. The store is reasonably busy, but it's not rush/dead/rush/dead like the weekdays, rather a more consistent type busy which is much easier to handle as a manager. We had a little bit of drama as a bunch of people decided that they would noisily protest outside our store against McDonald's and our use of battery hen eggs, some of the other managers got a bit freaked out and called all the big McDonald's bosses who pretty much told us that we couldn't do anything but ignore them unless they decided to come into the store when would be able to escort them out again. Nothing came of the protest and eventually they moved on. I felt a little bit odd as I do support what they are protesting against, but on the other hand I did feel like they were protesting against ME as I was running the shift at the time and therefore in charge of the store.

One Week Already!
My first week back at university is over, and it has been a fairly interesting week. My papers look rather full on, which is to be expected at this level, but also look to be rather interesting as I have pretty much free rein to research and write about topics that I'm interested in. It's kind of scary the amount of reading and research that I'm expected to undertake, but I guess the way to look at it all is in a positive light that I have the opportunity to learn a lot more about some pretty interesting subjects.

Nats hasn't had anymore contractions since the weekend, which means that it was probably just related to the stress and the windy weather of the weekend. Nats is pretty confident that March 7th is the date, although now that we're only three days away from that it seems as though things might take a little longer. But I guess it could all happen quite quickly so we'll just have to wait and see, as the baby will come when it wants to. But it's all pretty exciting, we're basically sorted now with only a few things to organise in our house, which means that we can really think about how things are going to be with a baby in the household.

First Day of my Master's
Trust Auckland's weather to completely screw me over again. After reorganising about 10 different shifts at work so that I could have Saturday off to go to the cricket a massive cyclone decided to hit Auckland on that day. So the game gets postponed to Sunday, which I could have covered my shift on much much easier if I hadn't been trying so hard to get Saturday off - and there ends up being a really exciting game played on the Sunday. Grrrrrrrrrr.... But I am not surprised, February 2004 has been the wettest and windiest February on record for most of New Zealand, to the extent that I've just about forgotten that it's meant to be summer. Does this mean that we'll have a really dry March/April to make up for it, or will the insane weather continue I wonder?

But anyway, it was my first day back at university today for almost a year and a half which was rather exciting. First off we had a meeting for all new 4th year geography students which was pretty cool as I was able to meet up with a couple of people for the first time since stage three geography. It's pretty cool being a special "graduate student", having special computer labs, a pidgeon hole, being able to go into the geography common room etc. Furthermore, there are only about 20 odd students doing postgrad geography so the classes are pretty small and hopefully I'll get to know most people in the not-so-distant future. I learned from doing my bachelors how important it really is to get to know people in your classes, so that you have someone to discuss things with before or after lectures and someone who can probably take notes for you if you're going to miss a class for any reason. I met up with Ella, who had her first day as an undergraduate today, which was pretty cool as it's the first time since 1999 that we've been at the same school/uni. Her timetable seems rather frantic compared to my four 2 hour lectures each week, although I know that I'm definitely going to be busy with all the readings that will be heaped upon us every week. My first lecture, Environmental Management, was probably a sign of things to come as the lecturer gave us all a 20 page reading for next week's lecture. I guess it'll give me something interesting to do during boring bus rides.

The funnest part of the day was just being back at uni, just walking around the place and feeling a part of it all again. Reading Craccum in the HSB Cafe, listening to overly-loud music in the Quad, catching up with people I haven't seen in a long time and so on... The only problem turned out to be my fieldtrip for my first paper is scheduled at the end of March, about a day after Nats' is due to have our baby. So right now here's hoping the baby does decide to come a bit early...

Enrolment Finalised.... At last!
Finally, three days out from actually starting university it seems as though my enrolment has been confirmed. It's nice to see that the university is incredibly well organised - or not! But I guess at least I can relax that it all is going to happen, and that I should be starting to organise myself for lectures and possibly find out a few of the readings which I will need to do. All the new postgraduate geography students have a big meeting on Monday morning which should hopefully clear up any further issues that I'm going to have, such as the nature of the tutoring jobs. Over the last week I've begun to wonder whether it is the best decision to do tutoring rather than McDonald's - as with McDonald's I would be able to have a bit more flexibility in my hours as well as being able to pump up my hours during the university holidays when I obviously wouldn't have any work tutoring. On the other side, I would imagine that tutoring would offer me a much better hourly rate which means that I wouldn't have to work so many hours for the money that I'm able to earn (only $130 a week before tax while I'm on the student allowance), plus tutoring is going to be a more interesting job I would imagine. I guess that come Monday I'll just have to see what kind of package the tutoring job is, how many hours a week I would be working, what the pay rate is etc. etc. and then I'll make a decision. I guess on the positive side I know that McDonald's needs me so I'm definitely not going to be left with nothing.

It seems that almost every day now we seem to get some more 'baby stuff' from one place or another. Sometimes I think that we probably now have enough things even if we were having twins! This is obviously a good thing, as I would not want to be in the opposite position struggling to find a bassinet etc. but it's just a little bit of a problem to try and find somewhere for it all to go. We've managed to fill up a reasonably large one bedroom flat very very quickly, further making me wonder how we ever squished most of the stuff into one little bedroom before. The baby seems to be moving into a better birthing position than it was a week or so ago, with its back facing outwards rather than up against Nats' back - which is a very very good thing as it makes the whole labour and birthing process a lot easier (theoretically at least). All of this could really only be a week or two away now, which is a rather scary thought, although at least we can say that we're fairly well prepared for it all.

I'm going to the one-day cricket match between New Zealand and South Africa tomorrow, weather permitting. I would be rather annoyed if it does rain tomorrow, as I've swapped about 6 different shifts at work around so that I could have tomorrow off and be able to go to the rain. It would just be my luck for it to rain the whole day... but I guess on the bright side I seem to remember saying the same things last year the day before I went to the match against India as the weather forecast was terrible, but the rain managed to stay away for the day. Here's hoping the weather gods smile upon me tomorrow.

The end of an era
And so my last week working fulltime at McDonald's begins.... the place is in a bit of chaos at the moment because lots of the staff are in similar situations to me and will be heading back to university either this week or next which is causing more than a few headaches for the senior managers. I guess that in some ways I just shouldn't bother worrying about it all, I won't exactly be there most of the time, but after so long at a place I do have a strong sense of attachment to my store. I want things to improve, sales to finally build up a little bit, the place to get itself together like it's beginning to do. Queen St McDonald's is the flagship restaurant for McDonald's New Zealand and it is pretty cool working in such a place - it's just going to be rather odd either only coming in for one shift a week or not working there at all. I imagine that over time people will disappear to be replaced by new staff and eventually I'll only know a couple of the staff working there. That's the way it is for a place like McDonald's, with such a high staff turnover you really see the whole place completely change face within 6 months.

I'm still trying to organise my student allowance, university enrolment etc. Tomorrow I will be sending off the information which I was first told wouldn't be needed, but then subsequently told that I had to give them so that they could further process my allowance. I guess I just don't understand the point of me having to get my boss to sign a piece of paper saying that I'll be only working a few hours while studying. Surely they can just liase with Inland Revenue and find out exactly how much I'm earning each week? But that would be too smart for a government agency, instead they spend about $5 on the paperwork of sending me a letter saying they need more information, a return envelope and all the associated processing. I guess the scary side to it all is that this time next week I would have finished my first day as a postgraduate student - I will have had one of my four lecturs, hopefully sorted out the tutoring stuff FOR GOOD and have some idea about how my university year is going to pan out. Auckland University has changed a bit since I was last there in 2002, a big new student amenities block has been built which is very flash and full of brilliant study space. I can see myself spending quite a lot of time there researching my inevitable flood of essays. It will be odd returning to the library, walking through the quad, even sitting in a lecture for the first time in ages when it used to be such a normal and common thing to do. I even remember my last lecture, silently screaming "yes.... and that's the last lecture of my degree!!"

Furthermore, it's on the cards that at any time really over the next month and a half I'm going to become a father! It's great to hear some words of encouragement from the few people who read this page and I do promise that I will attempt to post any news related to Nats going into labour etc. as soon as I am able to. It's odd thinking about how back in June 2002 I was announcing the birth of Nats' cousin Alexandra on this site, and that in only a few weeks I'll be announcing the birth of my own child.

Ugh.... get your act together uni
Typically my optimism regarding getting everything for unversity sorted out was misplaced. Each day this week I waited for mail confimation of my enrolment, and waited, and waited. Finally on Thursday I gave up and called the graduate advisor to find out what had happened, he wasn't there so I only caught up with him today. It seems that everything should have been sent out on Wednesday, although if that was the case for me then I should have received it all by now. So he's sending out another copy of everything on Monday. Yay, more delays. And then Studylink (the people supposed to be paying my student allowance) decided to send me a letter saying that they needed confimation of my employment status as of the start of university - never mind the fact that the university hasn't even sorted out its tutoring so I don't know what my employment status even is!!!! I don't know how much I'll be earning, how many hours I'll be working or any of that, yet with the processing times of any kind of benefit I really need to give them all the information NOW or there'll be no money at all once I start university. As a stop gap (who knows how long it will take for the tutoring to sort itself out) I asked my McDonald's boss to keep me on the schedules for one shift a week for now until I get back to her that I can't do it anymore. Funnily enough McDonald's is the only organisation that seems to have its shit organised at the moment, so at least for now I'm not leaving the place, just cutting down my hours big time.

Nats has started to have her first painful contractions this week, which got her a bit worried that the baby was going to come in the next week or two while she needs to be at least 37 weeks to give birth the way she wants so - which is just over a couple of weeks away. So we're all yelling at the baby to just hold on a little bit. I guess the fact that everything's potentially only two weeks away makes it really start to feel like it's all real. We went shopping today and bought a few more baby clothes, so it really seems like we are well prepared for the little squirt to make its way into the world.... although those are probably "famous last words" and I'll be writing here in a few weeks about how I really wasn't that well prepared, couldn't have been that well prepared, it's totally different to what I imagined. I guess that I'm just really excited at the moment, the shock of the whole situation has finally passed and I'm just looking forward to it all.

Another February
We had our last antenatal class last night. The six weeks of classes have been pretty useful, although the main thing that I've probably learned is how much I already know compared to most people out there. Even through reading just a couple of books and talking to Nats about things I had probably learned most of the stuff that they tell you about during the antenatal classes. It was also nice to meet a few other people in the same situation, even though they were all quite a bit older than us.

I was thinking earlier today that this is the 5th February I've worked at McDonald's - and I was trying to remember something from each of these years. Back in February 2000 I was still pretty new to the game, and remember being pretty frustrated that it was taking me ages to learn how to do everything, the managers were pretty grumpy towards me because I was slow. The next year I didn't really work at McDonald's much as I was in Australia for most of February, although I remember working in those holdiays like mad so that I would be able to save up enough money. Those Christmas holidays were probably the highlight of my time at St. Luke's McDonald's as I was still learning things so the job was reasonably interesting, but I was good enough not to feel like I was slowing everyone else down. By the time February 2002 came around a lot had changed in my life, and I was working at another store, Pt. Chevalier. Working at Pt. Chev was kind of odd as it was a totally new store which meant that nobody really knew each other that well - as we were all either pretty new or had been plucked from a variety of different stores. At first it was really awkward, working with a bunch of strangers after knowing just about everyone at my previous store, but eventually it turned out OK as we got to know each other, and the fact that people didn't remember when I was new at McDonald's meant that I got given a lot more responsiblities as I was now one of the more senior crew in the store. Then this time last year I was at yet another store, my current Queen St which had just been through the drastic change of a new restaurant manager and a new #2. It was a really chaotic time, as we were continually running out of stock and other stuff while the new bosses sorted their stuff out. I know that during February last year I was seriously thinking about getting a different job because I knew I had a year of fulltime work ahead of me and I didn't really want to spend that as a crew person at such a chaotic store. I guess the fact that we did manage to sort everything out reasonably quickly, and that I got promoted not too long after that to management kept me in the 'system' over the last year. I suppose I will look back at February 2004 as the end of an era, the last month that I worked fulltime at McDonald's before going back to university, probably the last full month of my life before there's a new member to our family. After four years I think that I want to make sure that I enjoy my last couple of weeks at McD's. And I must remember to take a spare set of clothes on my last day just in case people decide to give me a going away present traditional McDonald's style.

Organisation Perhaps?
Things seem to be sorting themselves out, my Student Allowance is set to come through while my enrolment should be all sorted out, although given the fact that I've thought this was the case at least three times in the past and there has turned out to be a problem I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch. It's become odd being at work knowing that I'm not going to be doing this anymore in less than two weeks. I've worked for McDonald's for over four years now - fulltime for the last year and a half - so it is going to be strange leaving the place. I do want to continue my employment there during the university holidays while I can't do my tutoring work to keep some income coming in, but it's really not going to be the same as working there fulltime. Oddly enough, even though the place drives me mad from time to time I'm going to miss it, going to miss the people and going to miss the chaos of a busy lunch rush.

We've now been living in our new place for two weeks, and in some ways it seems like forever. Going back to Natalie's grandmother's is odd, you feel like this is sort of home but not really, a kind of similar way to what I feel going back to my parents' place. I wonder if this is how everyone always feels about a place when they move out of it, most people would know it much better than I do as I've only lived in three places in my whole life. And of course we're not going to be living here forever, so one day we'll be driving past the road we're living on saying "hey.... I used to live down there". There is still lots of things in boxes that need to be sorted out - although a lot of it is just the random stuff that seemed to clog our old room so maybe it's for the best that it stays in the boxes as long as possible!

I was walking home from the bus stop today letting my mind drift (as it usually does after a long day at work) and I realised that I don't really seem to believe that I'm going back to university soon or that I am really going to be a father in the next month or two. Maybe these things aren't the kind of changes that you can mentally prepare yourself for, does imagining the baby in the lounge really make it any more real? Does imagining myself sitting in a lecture theatre two weeks from today really make it sink in that I'm not going to be slaving away at McD's for another year? It's hard to really say whether I'm prepared for these changes which are sneaking up on me faster than I care to think about... I wonder whether I will be able to cope, will I be able to be a good father? Will I be able to write a decent essay after a year and a half of not writing one? But at the same time it's all deeply exciting, briefly watching an episode of The West Wing a couple of days ago there was a father saying hi to his newborn twins, and although Nats isn't having twins there's still the same feeling that wow this is going to be me in around a month. I'm going to have a cute little baby who I've helped create, who I'm going to love, who I'm going to play a major role in shaping them as a person. Someone who I can play beach cricket with just as my father played beach cricket with me, someone who I'll take off to their first day of school, who I can read stories to, help teach them to read and write.... it's all very very exciting!

Salads Plus
My entries into this page seem to be drying up as of late. I guess most of the time I just don't have the motivation to write - there's either something else which I need to do or my mind seems full of things that I don't particularly wish to write about. I've had a pretty quiet last couple of days, which I think has been pretty good, a chance to just blob out and get myself ready for the madness of the next few months. Tomorrow's going to be the start of things, as I plan to sort out university things as well as my student allowance. Once that's all done I should have a lot less stress that it just isn't going to happen, which is a good thing. It seems as though I'm putting off everything at the moment which is not a good thing, as I really should be sorting everything out so that once university starts and once the baby arrives we're not going to be in a massive panic - so hopefully after tomorrow there will be a few less things to worry about.

I also have work tomorrow, which should be quite interesting as McDonald's launched its new "Salads Plus" menu today, which is supposed to be a sort of health-conscious alternative to the traditional Big Mac and fries. I was sort-of involved with the development of the new items when I was helping out at Head Office last year, so I do sort of hope that it works out well and that I can say I was involved with it all. I can already boast that they're my hands on all the posters showing people how to make the new items - YAY! But on a more serious note it does seem like a step in the right direction for McDonald's who seem to have been a bit behind the times lately.

According to our midwife Nats is about three weeks ahead of normal in where the baby is, which is a good thing although doesn't necessarily mean that she's going to give birth three weeks early. On the good side, the baby's head is well engaged in Nats' pelvis so it's very unlikely we'll have to worry about a breech baby; but on the not-so-good side it seems as though the baby has turned around to face outwards which means it's back is up against Nats' back which is not the ideal birthing position. The midwife is fairly confident that it will twist around, although Nats needs to encourage it to move by sitting in all sorts of awkward positions. I guess we just have to wait and hope that it twists around.

Chaos....
Life is still rather chaotic - it seems that there just aren't enough hours in the day at the moment, between sleeping working, trying to have some relaxing time, having dinner, doing it all over again etc. etc. It's all rather odd as it seems as though I had heaps of spare time while we were living with Nats' grandmother and it's all just disappeared. Maybe it's because I seem to be sleeping like a rock at the moment which means that I'm only waking up just in time to disappear off to work and then by the time I get home I'm so tired I just want to crash on the computer and basically just get off my feet. I guess that things will eventually sort themselves out - there's just a lot of stuff regarding university and student allowances which I really need to get sorted ASAP and don't really seem to have the chance to do at the moment.

My cousin Anson and his wife Jill had their baby in the last couple of days - which is pretty cool and rather odd when you think about it. Since my sister was born in 1985 there had been no additions to my (reasonably) immediate family in 18 years and now there are going to be two additions to the family within a couple of months. I guess that moving into our new place, which is going to be the home we're going to be in when the baby is born has made that day seem a little bit closer. I'm actually envisaging where we're going to put all the baby stuff and what it's going to be like once it's born. All in all it's a bit scary, listening to the midwife who takes our antenatal classes saying that babies generally like to feed for around an hour at a time every three hours or so.... geez so you spend a third of your life feeding the little thing??? Poor Nats!

It's so nice to be able to spread our stuff throughout this whole flat rather than cramming it all into the one bedroom which is what we were always doing before. We can actually say "let's leave that area free of anything, to just give us some space" rather than the good old "where are we going to fit this???" With all my working over the last week I haven't really maanged to get stuck into the organisation of everything that much - although hopefully over the upcoming weekend we will be able to sort out all our clothes into the drawers and wardrobe, as at the moment they're just anywhere in the dressing table or somewhere in one of the boxes in the dining room. We're also quite aware that as of this Sunday Nats is 33 weeks pregnant and it isn't unheard of for the baby to decide that it wants to come sometime during the next couple of weeks and it would be a bit of a disaster for all of that to happen before we've even organised the house, as I get the feeling once the baby is born everything else is going to have to take a back seat for a while. I do miss our old place, miss all the people there and miss the security of not having to feel responsible for the place, but I guess that's all part of growing up and the positives are definitely outweighing the negatives at the moment.

Moving...
It's been a rather chaotic couple of days, but in the end we have moved into our new place. Yesterday was a very long day, as we managed to move (in many different trips) all our stuff from Natalie's grandmother's to our new place. Fortunately they're only about a 5-10 minute drive away from each other, and we had three cars at various stages to help with the shifting - but it still took about five or six trips. The most challenging things to shift was obviously the furniture which ended up being tied to the roof-racks of the cars - and especially the bed. The weather was a royal pain in the ass, as in the middle of one of our trips (just had to be the one when we're hauling the mattress up there) the heavens open up and it absolutely pelts down! Five minutes later we're soaked, the mattress and the computer desk which was on top of it are soaked and it seems like the whole thing is turning into a disaster. Fortunately we managed to dry our the mattress through using lots of heaters and dehumidifiers, but it was a bit of a mission. Then on our next trip up here the rain is even heavier and as we're just getting inside Nats slipped outside and slammed into the glass ranch-sliders. Luckily she didn't go through them, but still ended up feeling rather battered and bruised. But eventually we got there, spending most of yesterday evening and today trying to organise the ten zillion boxes of 'stuff' that we brought up with us.

It's very odd living in a new place. I guess it will take time to realise that this is our new 'home' and not just another place that we're staying at for a little while. It's funny how I always have one particular 'home' in my head which may or may not in fact be the place you're living at. I know when I moved from living with my parents to living with Nats - which was a rather drawn out and gradual process - it took a long time for me to really adjust to this new place being 'home'. But now, about two years since all of that, it really was feeling like home and how I have to get used to thinking of another place as home. I'm sure that over the next couple of weeks I'll be down at her grandmother's and probably wander into the bedroom expecting everything to be the same as it always was - before suddenly realising that in fact I'm in an empty room and that all of our stuff is at our new place.


University seems to be continually screwing me around with my enrolment - firstly when I went in last week I found out that one of the papers that I had been enrolled in had been cancelled and that the replacement paper I had as my backup plan had also been cancelled. Then today I get a message that it seems as though another paper isn't going to be offered this year. To be honest there aren't many papers left that I have the slightest interest in doing that I'm not taking already so I really don't have a clue what I'm going to do about all that. Whether or not I'm going to get a job as a tutor also seems to be up in the air, although I'm constantly reminded that I would be near the top of the list. But does this mean I can tell McDonald's that I'm definitely not going to be able to work unless it's the holidays or that I will be able to work one shift a week or what? I don't have a clue what the pay rate is (although everyone says it's pretty good), what hours I would need to do and what sort of training would be required. I suppose that I just need to get everything sorted that I can do something about and just hope that everyone else gets a move on so that I can safely feel as though everything's set up for March and that there aren't going to be millions of last second stresses.

Getting Ready to Shift
Life has been fairly uneventful over the past few days. We've organised some of the shifting for Saturday, but it's going to be a big mission as I mentioned before getting all the furniture and our stuff to our new place. In some ways it's really scary - all these familiar locations that I've gotten really used to over the past two years are going to disappear. I guess that it's also exciting to be able to have our own place for the first time - to be able to jump on the net whenever we like and stuff like that. Although on the other side we'll have to do all the dishes, washing etc. etc...

Work has been really quiet lately, with a long weekend it seems as though everyone decided to take a holiday out of Auckland which did actually give everyone at work a chance to catch up on a lot of things taht needed to be done. It seems as though my boss is showing a little more faith in me now, as I ran a couple of good shifts over the weekend and hopefully proved to her that I am a capable manager. In any case it seems as though I'm probably only going to be there for another month, until I'm back at university and starting on my new tutoring job. Obviously I don't want to be over-confident as nothing has been finalised yet, but I have been told that I would be near the top of the list and hopefully that means that I'll be able to do a job that's somewhat intellectually stimulating and also something that pays a lot better. However, I don't want to burn my bridges (as they say) as it would be good to work for McDonald's during the holidays as the tutoring job would obviously be put on hold. But I guess that's up to the powers-to-be, although there is a precedent for allowing things of that kind, as one of the managers currently working went to Otago University and would work during the summer holidays each year before going back to Dunedin.

I guess at the moment it's as though we're finally getting around to doing stuff that we've known about for ages but have put off a bit. I'm going to finally sort out unviersity tomorrow, as it seems I might be better off starting with a Postgraduate Diploma of Arts this year and then doing a Masters next year which would be the same amount of work, but give me the insurance that if something does happen (such as getting the best job offer or something else that makes me unable to go to university next year) I won't be left with nothing to show for this year's work. Obviously we're shifting, and also finalising our finances for this year once I'm no longer working fulltime. Hopefully by the end of the week we're going to be able to settle into what is almost another stage of our lives, or at least be a bit more ready for all the changes that are going to happen over the next couple of months.

Long Time No Post - Stupid Telecom!
I partly have a good excuse for not posting in five days as our phone lines got disconnected for a couple of days so we had to live without the internet (horror of horrors!) In this time we've been mainly concentrating on getting things sorted for next Saturday, which is "move out" day. Packing up the insane amount of stuff that we have crammed into our room into zillions of boxes which have now completely taken over our room shows us how much of a mission it's going to be. But I guess on the positive side we have volunteers to help us coming out of our ears - and we're going to need them not only to shift everything but also when it comes to organising it all at the other end and cleaning up at this end. I guess on the positive side we don't have to take everything we can always come back here at a later date to collect anything we just don't have room for at the moment. But anyway, it's all looking rather exciting and interesting - only thing now is that I have to swap my shift that I'm scheduled to do on Saturday, although considering I did ask for the day off like two weeks ago...

Work is still a little crazy, although things seem to be settling down a little bit after all the changes which seem to have been happening lately with our new consultant. It appears as though finally the bosses have got the right idea - that we really need to invest and get things sorted at Queen St. So we've been told if we need to add extra people on then that's OK, if something needs fixing then FIX IT etc. etc. Considering that Queen St. is the second oldest McDonald's in New Zealand and you get the feeling that a lot of things haven't been replaced since the place opened it's no wonder the place is falling apart just a little.

I guess one of the advantages aobut working in the city is that you do get to meet some pretty cool people. I remember last year spotting Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh when they came into our store the day before one of their ODIs in Auckland. And then this year I was serving on front counter when I figured that my customer looked rather familiar. Indeed it turned out to be Pakistani cricketer Abdur Razzaq who had nearly singlehandedly beaten New Zealand the night before, and he was in the restaurant with wicketkeeper Moin Khan. I had a quick chat with both of them, said that I remembered a couple of times that I had seen them play quite a while ago which they seemed to remember fondly. I also got both of their autographs which was pretty cool.