New Zealand 13 – Coffee Wars

Remember the last post where I said snow was in the forecast? Well it actually did snow.  In fact, it accumulated quite a bit (not for New England standards, but maybe for Washington DC standards).  And yes, our Kiwi intern did show up, albeit a bit late 🙂

Our office was still up and running but, as I mentioned before, the rest of Christchurch decided to shut down! I tried to call a couple clients in the morning and I’m pretty sure they thought I was crazy for thinking they had made it to the office. It’s an ongoing tradition (started during a couple snowstorms last year) to go out for fish and trips on “snow days”–the fish market is the only place that remains open (along with KFC) during inclement weather.  Therefore, we all stopped around noon, gathered round the meeting table, and thoroughly enjoyed a bunch of fried goodness.

Parking Lot Blizzard

Wishing we owned ice scrapers…

Friday night we were due for another office outing. We discovered the small local community of Lyttelton was celebrating it’s annual Festival of Lights. I found a local restaurant that managed to take our 14-person reservation and we headed to the port.  The festival was a great time–the street was closed with your typical fare food venders,  performers (including a blue grass band much to the delight of some very excited coworkers…), hot mulled wine and fireworks! After watching the fireworks and listening, perhaps a bit too long, to the blue grass band we headed to dinner and kicked off a great start to the weekend.

Fireworks over the Harbour <-I’m getting a bit too used to New Zealand spelling

Not up to par with the Soggy Bottom Boys…

Saturday I met with a new cost estimator friend for a spa day. If I had to complain about one thing here, my Kryptonite is the hotel bed.  Luckily a trip to the spa managed to untie the past two months worth of knots.

Sunday was…SPORTS DAY. With the NHL in the Stanley Cup Finals, our Kings fans borrowed the office projector to stream the game live in the apartment. Unfortunately, the Kings didn’t pull through but at least they still have a chance. Luckily the game ended early enough for me to catch the last couple minutes of the Celtics/Heat game…I probably shouldn’t have even tried to watch considering how depressing the last quarter was. Oh well, everyone left the apartment a bit depressed that day.

Thank goodness for the projector

To conclude, I leave you all with…

~~Coffee Wars~~

I mentioned previously that New Zealand does not have drip coffee. Therefore, the TTNZ office has been utilizing a french press since it’s establishment. There’s always been a lot of grumbling around the office about the french press–especially the finely ground sludge it leaves at the bottom of your mug. Well something happened last week, because one coworker had finally had enough and he sent our intern on an errand to find a drip coffee maker. We all gathered round and collected our first drip coffee cup in several months to savor the taste. And you know what? It wasn’t that great. Maybe it was the coffee maker, the fact that we used a mesh filter versus paper, or perhaps we didn’t use enough ground coffee. I can tell you that there was not a bit of sludge at the bottom of my mug though.

So who wins the war? French press or drip coffee? I think I’ll stick with shelling out the $4 for my morning latte…