Exercise

I wanted to talk about exercise. From those who knew me in Makarska, you may have thought that I was obsessive about exercise – I was certainly an oddity in the village because I was out exercising 6 days out of 7. Odder than odd was the fact that I ran (in public) and even more odd, I rowed!

New Zealanders are a sporty physical lot. We run and gym, we yoga, surf, tramp, skate and ride. There was a government programme a few years ago which encouraged people to ‘get up and push ‘go’ ‘, with the aim being that everyone tried to do 4 thirty minute sets of exercise each week – even if it was just going for a walk. People are encouraged to walk to work or even just to walk to the next bus or train stop. If you ride a bike to work every few months there are free breakfasts for bike riders in the city square.

Of course the aim behind the political encouragement isn’t because they want you to feel good – the government is not so much a good Samaritan as a watcher of costs of running the health system. Overweight people have heart issues, diabetes issues, depression issues, all of which cost the health system in the long run. Better to try and ‘nip it in the bud’ so to speak, and if there is an off-spin from that which means that people feel better about themselves, then all the better!

In my group of friends, everyone exercises. My rowing group is made up of 18 women, of which 10 of them have had their 60th birthday – and they are not ready to stop rowing yet. They wade through the mud and the stones to carry the boat into the river, they laugh if they slip into the mud. I guess the endorphins from the exercise keep them going but the endorphins from the laughing has just as much to do with it!

I’ve just been down to stay at our beach house for a week, and every morning there is a continual flow of people running or walking or cycling along the road that wends its way along the beachfront. Everyone is doing it!

And the other fascinating thing that I didn’t realize was a particular NZ cultural thing, was that every person that you pass in the morning calls out to say good morning. I did the same thing when I was out walking in Makarska, and didn’t realize for a while how wrong I had it. Kiwis speak to strangers when they are out exercising or walking, so, naturally I did the same thing in Makarska. People must have thought that I was odd!

To take the exercising thing to new heights at the beach, three of the local 70 year olds have created an amazing track through the bush (recimo, forest, suma) and there are some fool hardy idiots (like myself) who run the track … I love it! I love the exhilaration of barreling through the trees, twisting between trees and skipping over rocks! I love the colours and the smells in the bush... And then straight into the sea for a swim – although the temperature doesn’t ever reach the lovely warmth of the Adriatic.. It takes your breath way, but what a wonderful way to start the day!

I can’t imagine not exercising every day. I can’t imagine the feeling of not pushing my body to the limit, not feeling fit and strong. I can’t imagine not feeling comfortable in a pair of shorts! And I have all of those older women in the rowing team as role models. They have the 'use it or lose it' mentallity. Actually, I have my mother as a role model too – she is 84 and three days a week she walks with a walking group, although she laughs and says that she is one of the young ones – how can I stop when she is still going strong!

Oh, and as a bit of a bonus, here are some photos of our beach...

The Christmas End of Year Work Thing

I’m slowly disconnecting from my house! Even the lawns are looking in desperate need of a cut – this is not like me at all!! Yes, I sold my house and have to be out by the end of January 2012. It’s almost (almost!) liberating, and there is almost (almost!) a sense of adventure in the air. I’m not sure where I will be living from February – I may be renting with a friend, or may be drifting around for a while between family. My furniture will probably be in storage for a while, while I decide what to do.

Today I looked at an old rundown place – a tiny two bedroom 56m2 cottage in desperate need of a rebuild and a makeover. And I am feeling (almost) brave enough to do it. It will mean about 6 months of building and construction work (I may disappear to Makarska while they do it..). I’m going to get my ex husband to take a look at it – he’s a man with a vision and big dose of practicality- and he will soon tell me if I am crazy even thinking about this.

But briefly to something that is slightly more interesting.

On Wednesday, we shut the office doors at 11 in the morning and all piled onto a bus –an excursion! The original plan was to take the company boat, but it was too windy, the sea was too rough - and we were heading out to the Hauraki Gulf to Kawau Island¸a beautiful paradise about 50 minutes away by boat.

So – onto the bus – plates of sandwiches, seafood and other bits of deliciousness were handed around to keep up our sustenance for the 40 minutes trip – then we piled back off again and onto two water taxis - 15 minutes later and we were in Moores Bay.

Check out the little be beach houses along the shores...

My boss and another couple of investors own the land in this bay and are doing an ‘eco development’ there. The houses have to be designed to specific requirements – low to minimize the impact on the environment, colours to blend in with the bush – there will be a sophisticated recycling and sewage system - and there are to be no machines/ cars/ motorbikes that will create a noise above a certain level that will create a nuisance to other owners. At this point there are are only a few cabins built for accommodation.

The island was home to Governor Grey - one of New Zealand’s earliest Governor Generals. The story goes that he had a mansion (still called Mansion House) on the other side of the island but in Moores Bay there was a little cottage which housed a certain young woman, whose company the Governor sought out on a regular basis …..

my boss has renovated and renamed the cottage, and it stands now as the ‘clubhouse’ for residents to use for parties and barbeques.

We drank cocktails and champagne – some just sat in the sun, some kayaked, played volleyball or touch football. We had a beautiful lunch with sumptuous salads (you see? salads are a thing here),

a few more cocktails…. I went for a bike ride and found a beautiful mossy glade… and then we all piled back in the water taxis to be back in the city for 7. It was a beautiful day, good company, good food and wine, and a nice way to round off the year – a way to relax with the bosses, and a way for them to thank us for our support during what has been a difficult year in the tail of the recession.

And that’s another kiwi thing – the institution of the Christmas Work Function!

Vendor Remorse

Oh, it’s a weird thing selling your house – an absolute end of an era, and tonight (because tomorrow is the auction to sell the house) I am walking around trying not to cry, trying not to panic at the prospect of what I am doing.

The house is destined to sell tomorrow - it is a lovely house, it is in a good area, an area sought after by upwardly mobiles who want their children in the right school. And apart from that, there are 6 different families who have indicated that they will be at the auction tomorrow to try and outbid each other to purchase my house – they all want it. Which is good I guess because I will get a good price for it, but….

I’ve spent a bit of time looking at houses to buy, but nothing is grabbing my attention. Wrong area, wrong size, wrong price or just wrong ugly! What is grabbing my attention is the knowledge that there won’t be any new houses on the market for sale before February because New Zealanders disappear and go on holiday during January. In fact, the city empties out and most businesses are closed until the last week in January. So no chance of finding a house to buy during that time. Looks as though I will be staying with family for a while.

I don’t know how on earth people go through this on a regular basis – those people who buy and sell every few years. This house has the memories of my children being born, renovating and painting every room, every surface, every corner, a divorce, teenagers, weddings, grandchild. A lifetime of good memories.

So, it’s not sold until the fat lady sings, but I can hear her in the wings, limbering up. It is a grand old lady of a house and deserves another family to love it and fill it with noise. It needs some rowdy kids to slam out the back door and race down the yard and through the bamboo into the school field again.

I’ll let you know what happens tomorrow – get the champagne ready. And maybe a tissue or two.

Visual Interlude....

I took these photos to show you my office - it is the perfect place to work if you have to work in the middle of the city. I go to work each day on my bike - it's mostly downhill from my house to the bottom of town where the port is.

U kafic

I touched briefly on coffee the other day. Ordering a large coffee with milk was the first sort of full sentence that I said in Croatian – I used to practice it under my breath as the konobar came to take my order.

The whole café experience is different in NZ- I will try and take some photos to show you but in the mean time you will just have to follow the description.
Most cafes are inside rather than on a terasa – this is because our weather is not very dependable – there is a song that says that we have ‘four seasons in one day’ – so it can be hot, then rain, then be cold then hot again. Easier to not rely upon only outdoor seating, but cafes with a terrace or garden seating are more popular.

When you go into a café, you don’t go and sit down and wait to be served – you go to the counter and order what you want. And that’s the hard bit, because there are so many choices. Tea - black tea, white tea, green tea, green tea with raspberry, and then the full range of herbal teas. That’s ok for me, I don’t ever have tea in a cafe.

You can have … black coffee, short, long, espresso – you can have coffee with milk – full fat milk, trim milk, and then you can have soy milk if you have issues with cow’s milk. Then you can break that down further into a ‘flat white’, latte, cappuccino…. God, then they want to know if you if you want your latte in a glass or a bowl… oh, forgot to mention my choice on a day when I have already had a coffee or two – a soy chai latte. The coffee when you are not having a coffee. It isn’t too out of it to hear someone order a ‘trim milk decaffinated flat white’. A café is no place to be neodlucan!

Apart from the tea/coffee there are a plethora of cold drinks – pure fruit juice (juiced before your very eyes) or a smoothie (a mixture of fruit juice, bananas or other fruit to thicken it – add coconut milk or yoghurt, or wheatgerm grass (yes, we can be seriously health conscious) – or bottled juices. Or bottled water (a million flavours, take it with gas, without gas). Or stick to coke. Or milkshake. Or hot chocolate – with or without marshmallows…..

But apart from the staggering range of drinks, there is always food in our cafes – always. Maybe this is why we are a little bit more inclined to be overweight – pay for your soy chai latte and staring at you are maybe .. fresh raspberry and white chocolate muffins…

. Carrot cake (oh, you have to have the recipe for that perfect gem of a creation)… date and orange scones (now I’m hungry.. see?). And that’s what happens, as you stand there telling yourself that you only need a coffee, the taste buds are coming alive as you look at the ‘banoffe pie’ (banana and toffee). And besides that there are the savoury choices -

Panini with salami, French sticks with ham… fresh salads by the bowl.

Vegetarian pies. All fresh, all healthy and all beautifully presented in the cabinet in front of you. Do you see how hard it is if you are a person with no self control with your cash flow card at the ready????
There are so many cafes, all trying to be the most popular – so each one must try and offer something which puts it ahead of the others – so the choice widens and widens and then broadens…..

And one last cute thing – one of the local cafes near my house has a beautiful garden terasa with shell paving and olive trees- and because it can get cold, they have woolen blankets that they hand out to wrap around your shoulders, and huge gas heaters to ensure that people keep coming to sit in their café…. and they don’t go to the one across the road which has no garden seating….

For Sale

I made a (rash) decision in the weekend, but one that I don’t think that I will regret. I say ‘rash’ because it was made in an instant (justlikethat) as I was cutting the hedge at the front of the property. I resented cutting the hedge – partly because I had no more room in my ‘green waste bin’ to put the rubbish, and partly because it is hard, dusty work which invariably makes me sneeze. The hedge is above my head height and I have to stand on a chair or a ladder (which is easier, except I can’t find my ladder since I have been back in my house). I decided that hedge cutting was my least favourite thing, and why didn’t I find a house with no hedge.

Which lead me to the Property Press which is a newspaper supplement which comes out every weekend with all of the houses which are for sale. Houses here are sold by agencies generally (although of course you can sell a house privately) and these days they are mostly sold by auction. The theory is that this generates some excitement and competition between different parties who want to purchase the same house, and so a larger price is achieved – the old ‘supply and demand theory’. Good for sellers.

I chose a few houses in my area and went to the Open Homes – forgive me if I am being too simplistic in my explanations, but I didn’t spot any ‘Open Home’ signs in Makarska, so will explain the concept. The advertisement in the paper will state that there is an Open Home for the house that you fancy, say, between 12 and 12.30. So, anyone can rock up to the house and wander through – you leave your shoes at the front door, sign a register and give phone details, and in you go .You wander around and poke your nose into the rooms, ask the agent any questions that want to, and then leave. Cheap entertainment – some people spend every weekend going to Open Homes!

So, I found a house that I liked. If you want to look at it, here is the link – http://www.harcourts.co.nz/Property/Residential?pageid=-1&search=52+Marlborough+St&formsearch=true&OriginalTermText=ES2969&OriginalLocation=&location=22002&proptype=&min=&max=&minbed=&maxbed=

I like it. It is just like my house (white walls, big hall, wooden floors). My house has a large yard where the grass keeps growing (they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they invent grass that doesn’t grow..). This house has a small backyard and no hedge – yus!!!

Now this buying and selling business may just be bringing Croatian readers out in a hot flush – because you just don’t sell your house ‘willie nillie’ (that means in kiwi speak – ‘just for no reason’).

Here, the average time for house ownership is 7 years. Imagine packing up your house every seven years! I have been in this house for 30 years, and if you are any good at maths, if I have been here for 30 years, then with the law of averages, others have shifted even less than 7 years – maybe every two years! Who could be bothered! But that’s what we do. So on that same law of averages, it seems to be my time.

My friend is a real estate agent and I trust her implicitly. She is going to sell my house for me. On the weekend I had the outside of the house washed, cleaned all of the windows, weeded the garden within an inch of its life…. And real estate agents came through to check it out yesterday. Today I have a sign hanging on my front gate. I felt pretty emotional when I came down the road and saw it today.

You see, we don’t have the family thing with our houses (you know, parents and kids all in the same block) but we do have neighbours. I know most of the people in my street. I am now the person in the street who has lived here the longest – I have been through most of my neighbours’ houses (a cup of tea or coffee and a chat over the fence) and seen young couples buy places, renovate them and move on. This is my family – the kids next door call me ‘nona’ and they all congregate kod kuce when my granddaughter is visiting. I have a school on the other side of my back wall and the kids sneak into my yard because they call it the ‘secret garden’. I know about the local priest who had the affair with the woman who lived here before us (she left her children, ran away with the priest and they are still together!)

So, I am closing the door on a bit of history. I know every sound and creak in the house, have painted every room two or three times over. I love this house….. but the hedge and the lawns are not getting smaller and I have mountains to climb and rivers to cross…. And if others can walk away from their houses, so can I.

Goodness, feeling a bit emotional about it though! There are still things to do – I need to be the successful bidder at the auction for the new house (23 November) and I have to sell my house (auction on the 30th of November). In the meantime, there will be open homes every day from now until the auction – and my challenge is to keep the place looking perfect until then!

Cash Flow

Here’s a wee thing that is completely different from life in Makarska. When I first arrived in Makarska it took a fair amount of concentration to keep a stash of cash in my wallet.

Firstly the exchange rate meant that any cash that I had seemed like such a huge amount (the NZ dollar to kuna was about 4.7) - so I was always doing complicated division in my head… for example, to have 300 kuna in my wallet seemed like an inordinate amount of money – I would never have $300NZ in my wallet! The reality was that that was only $64NZD and would last a while.

But the thing that was really the issue for me was that I am used to living in a pretty much cash-free society here in NZ. I was just assessing my week, and because you are humouring me by reading this, you will need to assess with me.

I had to buy a train ticket on the train last Tuesday which costs $14.50 (and is one of the few things where cash is required) - (multiply that by 4.7 to get kuna). This is a ten ride ticket, so pretty cheap in terms of entertainment to get to the city each day and back for a week. I had no cash so stopped at a dairy (mini market) bought something random (chewing gum) so that I could get some change from the purchase. I paid for it with my cash flow card, asked for $20 cash which automatically debits the funds from my bank account. That gave me $18.00 in change in my wallet after the gum was deducted, $14.50 of which I handed to the friendly train conductor who insisted on a cheery ‘good morning’ and ‘have a nice day love’. Leaving me with $3.50 in my wallet, which I donated to the Melbourne Cup (the horse race in Australia – there was a bet in the office which cost $2). The rest is rattling around in my wallet still. That’s 9 days later.
You don’t need cash here – there are rarely shops that offer a discount of any sort for cash as opposed to a cash flow card.

I had half an hour to waste this morning before a specialist appointment (I have a finger nail that would scare small children- think there is glass under the nail from an accident 9 months ago – eeeuwh) and so went into a café. $4.50 for a velika kava s mlijekom but paid by cashflow card.

People came and went while I read the paper and drank my coffee, and I saw no-one pay with cash. Recimo, 20 people buying coffee (short black, long black, macchiato, late, flat white- we have a ridiculous variations of coffee, including soy milk chai late - but that's another conversation for another day)..and not one paid with cash in their pockets.

The taxis take cashflow, as do all shops – everything you can think to buy and all that other stuff you would never dream of buying you can pay by cashflow. You pay for your petrol, your meal in a restaurant. Actually buses have got really smart with a card that you transfer cash onto and you just ’beep’ yourself onto the bus instead of buying a ticket at all. Then you ‘beep’ yourself off again – you don’t even see a paper ticket. No little bits of tickets on the ground around the bus station…

I digress - what I am trying to highlight is that you just don’t need hard cash here. At all. Maybe on Breast Cancer day when you donate a gold coin and get a pink ribbon to show that you have been benevolent… but day to day life, you can have an empty wallet. You just have to have the real thing in your account to you avoid the words ‘transaction declined’ ¬ (especially traumatic if you have your trolley laden at the supermarket and are really hungry!

Recycle it

New Zealand has a reputation for being ‘clean and green’. We have a strong recycling, no waste mentality. Or at least, the people who I mix with do…

Plastic bags in rubbish have been identified as a pollution issue. They don’t break down in rubbish dumps – calculations were done to show how many rubbish bags are ‘rubbished’ every day- it’s more plastic rubbish bags than you can imagine!

Supermarkets in NZ encourage shoppers to bring their own bags to pack their shopping into - alternatively, you pay an extra 10 cents for a plastic shopping bag. These alternative plastic bags have been developed so that they break down faster than the traditional plastic bags and are not as strong as the old bags – in addition, you feel guilty if you don’t bring your own bags! There is a look that you get from the check out assistant…

Each house has two rubbish bins – one for ordinary waste, and the other larger one for any items which can be recycled – so all glass jars and bottles, all plastics, all card and paper goes into that recycle bin. And to make it even easier, a truck comes past your house each week to empty the bins. Our opcina is making recycling work.

There is money in rubbish – it is a good business to get into. I presume that the initial move to encourage us all to recycle was driven by business men with an eye on some profit, but we have all jumped on the rubbish truck, seeing the potential savings for the environment, not just the pocket. We are encouraged to buy the products with the least wasteful packaging. Going back to the brown paper bag days.

In addition, there are those obsessive types (like myself – I admit it) who compost. No food waste goes in my bins – it is all put into a container in my back yard.

When I mow the lawns, the cuttings are added to the mix, mother nature does her thing over time, turning the vegetation and the grass into a rich soil which I then dig into my vegetable garden. Taking it to the extreme.

At my office we are discussing buying a ‘worm farm,’ a simple self composting set-up for those living in apartments with no backyard. It is mess free – you add your food scraps to the top, and the worms living in the container work away eating their way through the scraps, doing what worms do (eating, shitting) – this creates a rich waste that can be used for terrace planters, complete with a liquid which gathers in the base of the container which is rich in nutrients as a plant additive. The idea is that we will plant our own lettuce and tomatoes on the terrace off our office, and then use the rich soil and nutrient produced by the worm farm to feed and enrich the plants – simple.

So imagine my consternation at having no choice in Makarska but to put my rubbish in a plastic bag and dump everything in the dumpster at the end of the road. I nearly had to have counseling! The guilt was incredible. The rubbish thing was an issue for me – I hated seeing so much rubbish lying on the beaches, so many plastic bags dumped at the rubbish bins. My friend Nino must have been driven crazy with me pointing it out all of the time.

It became a joke at rowing – crazy Allison reversing the boat to go back and pick up plastic bags and bottles floating in the sea. But the boys were into it – they got what I was trying to do.
Zagreb does the recycle thing in the streets – large dumpsters so that your rubbish can be sorted out. As I said, there is always money in rubbish, and it will take some enterprising person to work that out, and start Makarska doing what it should be doing anyway – if for nothing more, than to protect the beautiful environment that the tourists flock to see. It’s not that difficult – it just takes a mindset change, some incentive and some organization.
Just do some maths – each household in Makarska would probably put out at least one plastic bag of rubbish out each day, that’s 365 each house each year – and where does it go…. There’s your incentive.

November 5th

I’m sitting here in my kitchen and all I can hear (apart from the CD of Oliver playing - I told you that I miss the Croatian music) is the sound of fireworks banging and whizzing.

Tomorrow night is Guy Fawkes night. Let me explain – our history is closely tied to that of England, and the Guy Fawkes celebration goes back to 1605 when a Gospodin Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords in London. People lit fires to celebrate the fact that his plan was stalled and the King lived on. It developed from there to include bonfires that burnt with effigies on top of figures that weren’t very popular – the poor old pope was represented on the top of a few bonfires back in the day. If there are effigies on bonfires now, it is more likely to represent Guy Fawkes these days.

As a child, our family lived in the country (in various selo’s) where the community would gather on a neighbour’s farm where a huge bonfire roared with Guy Fawkes statues on the top- children snuggled on blankets at a safe distance with their mothers, while the fathers lit the sky rockets and other fireworks. We were allowed to hold sparklers which was pretty exciting. And roast marshmallows on sticks in the embers. MMMMmmm.

As time went on and we moved to the city, there were no bonfires, but there were always crackers. Back then there were not so many ‘health and safety’ rules. Parents made the rules (or turned a blind eye to what the kids were doing). Brave boys tied double happies to dolls to see if they could fly if the bang was big enough, or crackers were put in peoples letter boxes. Looking back, it wasn’t necessarily safe, and there were a few injuries and burns (and worse). But it was fun.

The new ‘sensible rules’ are that fireworks can only be bought 4 days prior to 5th of November and then not at all after that date. Pop up stores (from the back of trucks – here today, gone tomorrow) are selling fireworks everywhere. Teenage boys and budding pyromaniacs are in heaven! They can’t wait until tomorrow night and so are easing themselves into a weekend of playing with matches and lighters already. Oh, the tricks that you can do with some of these things!

Most people go to public fireworks displays now if they want to see fireworks. Pay $20 and let someone else light the crackers and fireworks. Or get together with friends, pooling the fireworks from each family for a big display. And a barbeque and a bottle of wine or two. We are being encouraged to think safely and protect our children from injuries. Goodness, we will have a generation of kids who have never taken a risk with a cracker or a match!

Sometimes this ‘health and safety’ thing goes a bit far.. we used to love going out in the backyard the next morning to try and break open the sky rockets to see if any of the gun powder would still ignite!

Tomorrow night I will sit out on my back verandah and watch.

I love the smell of the gunpowder, it reminds me of the sleepy nights as a child, sitting in the dark watching the colours and the shower of stars as the fireworks exploded in the sky. I might even buy a packet of sparklers to amuse myself.