WatzUp

I finally am able to blog again since I've been without internet for a week. A lot has happened in the week and a half since I left Christchurch. First after seeing some of you Saturday evening I left for Balclutha the following morning. The drive was reasonably good, the road going south was relatively quiet (as was expected with people returning to Christchurch from Show weekend) and I had my disc-man plugged in with good music cranking. However, good things cannot last forever and things started to turn to custard. For those of you that don't know my car is a beast not only is she an automatic but she also beeps when you go 103 kph (oh, wait good Christian ... I was going precisely the open road speed limit and therefore did not find out this information). Whats worse she isn't properly tuned. I passed a couple of cars (not going anywhere near 130 whilst passing of cours) when she started to misfire and chunder along, which made the ride very rough and whats worse it made my discman skip. I resolved to get to the next town and try to stop the car and restart to get it to fire correctly. Anyway I was getting quite frustrated for obvious reasons when I hear a bang and the rear of the car started to drag, I had popped my rear tire, on top of that I was at the head of a bridge at the time so I had to drive the length of the bridge with a bung tire. At the end I pulled to the side of the road to take a look at the damage. The left rear wheel tire was absolutely shredded so for the first time ever I had to change a tire. The good news was that when I restarted the car it was firing correctly, the bad news was that I still had the four hour drive to Balclutha ahead of me in the beast. I put on some worship music to calm my nerves a bit, Jeremy Camp's Carried Me: Worship Project to be precise, the first song ironically enough was 'I will trust in the Lord' which was exactly what I needed to hear. I got to Balclutha safely and without any further adventures.

The family I am staying with hear are relaxed Christians, in other words they don't have many major hangups which is all good. However, you will be amazed to hear that they drink more coffee in a day than I normally do in a week, and since they're constantly brewing they always do an extra one for me, and I find it hard to refuse. The downside is that it is instant, however, I do have some plunger stuff to give me a proper wakeup call (hmmm, I might bring them down some Hummingbird for a Christmas present). They have two beautiful girls (four and eight) who have decided I am something akin to an older brother or cousin. They also have five cats which after figuring me out have reclaimed my room except for one that looks like Garfield (an orange tabby that is massive) which still is unsure about me, I may have to buy him some lasagne. They go to the local Anglican which seems pretty alright however it looks like I am the only one in my age bracket (15-30) so I may have to find another one.

Obviously I have started at PPCS Ltd, Finegand. For those of you that don't know PPCS is a slaughterhouse ie cows and sheep go in one end and meat comes out the other. Well...that isn't strictly true actually lots of stuff comes out the other end there is pretty much nothing which they don't use. Even the blood (which they drain from the animal according to the practises of halal) is processed. I finally went down to the Sticking room (where the sheep are killed) for the first time on Monday. It wasn't that bad although I couldn't watch it for too long (I won't say anything more lest this site gets R-rated for blood splatter). The smell around the plant is horrendous because of the fat Rendering they do. The task they have set for me is mammoth. I have to assess the departments to discover sources of wastewater that is going to the effluent treatment plant (don't even ask me about that which is going into stormwater ... the place is a 'mare). Then I have to discover points where I can sample in order to get an accurate representation of flow and composition from each department (this includes the stock yards where the sheep and cattle go to the bathroom). Then I have to assess each stream in terms of cleanliness (this is according to the BOD) and then organise the sampling routine with dirtiest and cleaniest getting highest priority and then do flow and composition sampling. I am going to be kept busy until I get back to Christchurch.

Anyway signing off now, I will be up in Christchurch from the 23^rd December to the 4^th of January, though I'll be Nelson for Christmas but will definitely get into Christchurch and will look forward to catching up with any of you guys that are around. Also if you could recommend any movies for me since that is a good way to kill the evenings/weekends it would be muchly appreciated. Ahh, I am relishing the DVD capabilities of this wee beaut of a laptop.