Tag: GBBO

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 427: Vancouver, BC – A New Job!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis had a 1 on 1 in the morning and then did some more project work but mostly tickets throughout the day.

Curtis did have a meeting right before lunch with the account manager from Zoom who was mostly try to see him stuff, but was also useful to ask questions to.

When it came to the afternoon, Curtis had some more tickets to do and then someone needed some urgent help, so he jumped on a video call with them to get their issue sorted.

Kim’s Day

Kim started her day by getting out and picking up a coffee for Curtis and herself. Her third and final interview today and wanted to get out and go for a short walk beforehand, to stretch her legs and het a bit of fresh air.

When she got back Kim drank her coffee while she got ready and prepared for the interview. She sat down, double checked her questions, the job description and the companies LinkedIn page.

Kim joined the call and after 5 minutes of waiting received and email asking if she was joining! She responded that she was there and looking at ‘waiting to be let in’, they then resent the link and the same thing happened, so after a couple of tries they sent over a new link and the interview went ahead. It was such an interesting discussion and it was with the CEO and Founder of the company. It was wonderful to talk to someone who is so passionate about the project and what they would like to achieve. During the interview the role and company sounded even more perfect for Kim! The community involvement and mindset is something Kim has always wanted to do and be a part of.

After the interview Kim stayed on the call to discuss a few things with one of the people from the other two interviews and it was lovely to have a less formal chat and go over the next steps.

Kim was then going over the interview with Curtis and saying how she think it went well when she received a meeting invite and email asking if she could jump back on the call to discuss one more thing. Kim was then asked a couple of questions and then was offered the job! She said yes on the spot, it was a no brainer as Kim is extremely excited and looking forward to this opportunity. After the call Kim told Curtis, who was very happy, and then they had lunch!

After lunch Kim dropped off a bit of the bed that they sold last week to the people who bought it. So that was a nice walk and s great way for Kim to walk off some of the energy.

Evening

We played some games and then got hungry, so we had a pretty early dinner.

Kim made Jamaican jerk chicken with coconut rice…This was SO delicious!

We ate that and watched a bit of TV and then watched the Great British Bake Off.

We watched some other TV and played some more games in the evening.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

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Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 426: Vancouver, BC – One Step Closer?

Kim & Curtis Hale

Last Night’s Hockey

Curtis’ team did not do as well as they have been!

The game ended 4-4, but Curtis’ team were winning by two goals twice and managed to throw both leads away!

The game went to a shootout and Curtis took one shot, but the goalie made an incredible save.

As no one won in the shootout, the game ended a tie.

Curtis’ team haven’t lost yet, still, but a tie wasn’t the desired result.

Curtis’ Day

Curtis spent most of his day doing the project work from yesterday, as well as some tickets.

He had his Norwegian lesson for an hour which went well, and then he did more project work.

He did his project work whilst on a call with some colleagues to talk about it and figure out some stuff together.

That was pretty much the entire day, just getting the project all sorted, as well as the tickets he did.

Kim’s Day

Today Kim had a second interview for the role she is really excited about. She got herself prepared and ready for the interview. She ensured that the mic and camera were working, that she had water and the laptop was on charge.

Kim joined the meeting nice and early and waited to get going. The interview went well, but Kim wasn’t sure she was what they are looking for or that the interview didn’t go perfectly.

For the rest of the morning Kim tried to relax and not worry about it. Then during lunch Kim got an email asking her if tomorrow works for a third (and final) interview!

She was so happy and relieved and set up the interview right away.

Kim then spent some time researching the person she will be interviewing with and a check of her CV and the job listing.

Kim listed the mini hockey set for sale on Facebook over the weekend and someone bought and collected it today. Its great for storage and space, but sad to see it go, it kept Kim and Curtis sane during the first few months of the pandemic for sure! There just isn’t the space in this apartment and so it made sense to go to someone else.

In the late afternoon Kim went for a nice walk with her friend and their dog. They grabbed a coffee and a snack and had a great catchup. They then visited a pet store on the way back and there was a puppy training session about to happen so Kim met and said hello to a few puppies and was very happy about that.

Evening

After Kim got back from her time out with her friend, we had leftover egg fried rice and watched a bit of TV.

We finished watched The Boys Season 2 and then started the new Great British Bake Off season, which we didn’t realise was a thing!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 143: Vancouver, BC – Helping Strangers

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis got to work and there were a lot of new tickets, so he went through those and started fixing stuff!

He did that for a while and then looked into purchasing laptop for someone, which took way longer then expected.

After lunch, Curtis spent all afternoon seeing how his project would work on a mac as he forgot to do that!

Once he figure it out, he took some screenshots and put them into the guide.

On the way to meet Kim wwhilst walking home, Curtis was stopped by two girls who said they had a school project and wanted him to help them.

They played him some music and asked him what language he thought it was (it was Persian) and what he thought of the song. Random but something interesting!

Once Curtis finished that, Kim showed up and we walked home.

Kim’s Day

This morning Kim had the socil team meeting, so she spent a bot of time preparing for that by organising the minutes from the last meeting and arranging the talking points for today’s. Other than that Kim took calls and ad hoc tasks for some of the morning.
The meeting went really well, Kim divided up a few of the action points rather than trying to take them all on herself. Mainly because she isnt around for Halloween and thats where a fair amount of the focus went. They set up some good ideas for further into the future too!
When Kim got back to her desk she made a few amendments to the quiz she has made for the other office. This will reduce the amount of potential cheating and gives us the opportunity to do the whole quiz again in a few months if there is a want!
Kim then sat down for a quick lunch. When she got back to her desk Kim made a good start on the holiday party invites. She made a base template and had a section that is customisable per city location.
Kim then had a little impromptu catch up with her manager for about 30 minutes which was nice.

After this Kim looked at some options for the holiday party for the UK office and then caught up on emails before heading home.

Evening

We got back home and Curtis made his dinner, which was the same as yesterday.

We watched a 45 minute YouTube video and then Kim got ready to head out to exercise.

Kim’s class was fun. Its was the class closes off the month where she put all the moves she learnt into nice little combos!

Once Kim got home, she showered and we watched the next Great British Bake Off episode.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Auckland

Place 49 – Day 319: Auckland – Takapuna Evening Beach Walk

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day;

Curtis actually had stuff to do today!

When he got to work, Curtis was informed that a client in Christchurch had no internet, so he called them to see if he could resolve. Curtis was able to resolve the issue pretty quickly, which is good!

Curtis then got a call regarding something he helped with yesterday and had to investigate that for most of the day.

Curtis started lunch and then had to cut it 30 minutes early as he had to help sort out a PC for someone remotely. After that, he then had to investigate the issue for the lady he spoke to on the phone previously, followed by setting up a PC for someone. He wanted to leave early, but left 15 minutes later then he wanted to, but still left early.

Both of us;

Once we were both home, we wanted to go for a walk along a beach, so we drove to Takapuna where we saw there was a triathalon happening…random for a Wednesday night!

We walked along the beach and spoke about our day. It was perfect weather for this, too!

We left here and stopped at the supermarket on the way home.

We had enchiladas for dinner with the leftover meat from yesterday’s.

We watched the final of the Great British Bake Off and then chilled out for an hour or so before heading to bed at a better time than normal.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale

Auckland

Places 49 – Day 309: Auckland – Sundae Treat

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day;

The power was back on at Curtis’ office, so he went there in the morning.

Curtis got to the office, made a coffee and then started working on a Mac that he had been given. He was trying to move files from the Mac to an external hard drive, which any other time is easy, but it just would not do it so that took most of the day, too.

Curtis had two phone calls in the morning also, one lasting an hour and then one right after for 25 minutes! A busy morning for sure.

After the busy morning, the afternoon was less busy, until Curtis started to look at setting up a USB print server, which didn’t seem to work and before he knew it, it was the end of the day for Curtis.

Both of us;

We had a nice simple spaghetti Bolognese for dinner along with the remaining wine.

After dinner, Kim popped out to get a free McDonald’s sundae each which we got from the monopoly promotion. We then watched the Great British Bake Off whilst eating these with some strawberries!

We are off up north with Josh and Danielle for the long weekend, so it should be another interesting weekend!

We packed this evening so we are ready for going tomorrow evening.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale

Auckland

Place 49 – Day 304: Auckland- Onehunga Shopping & Cornwall Park

Kim & Curtis Hale

We woke up way later than planned or expected, at 11:30!

We had a quick bite of breakfast, showered and left the house.

We met Josh and Danielle in Onehunga, at the mall.

The mall was very busy! We walked around the mall with Danielle and Josh, stopping in a lot of shops. The mall is an outlet mall, so lots of great deals! Kim got some sunglasses and Curtis got some swimming shorts.

We left here and Curtis wasn’t feeling great, so we grabbed a bottle of orange juice to drink. We then drove over to Cornwall Park and walked to see the sheep and lambs!

Lambs_CornwallPark
The lambs!

We left Cornwall park and headed to Glenfield mall. The day today had odd weather. we were warm and then absolutely freezing, especially once the wind came in.

When we got to Glenfield, we went to get just a couple of items from the shop (pasta, wine & strawberries…A normal shop!) And then went to get a coffee from Little Things, which as excellent as always.

We got home and did a bit of laundry, then watched the Great British Bake Off.

After that, Kim made hoisin duck and mushroom pasta and we watched some YouTube videos whilst we ate.

After that, we watched the apprentice.

Once we were done with that, we played some Call of Duty with Kim’s friend Ryan, then it was bedtime.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale

Auckland

Place 49 – Day 295: Auckland – Keys, Noel Leeming Sale Show & Big Bug Attack!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day;

Curtis left the house at the normal time and shortly afterwards he realised that he left his car and house keys inside on the floor! The presented an issue as no-one else at home was awake. Curtis tried phoning and texting Kim as well as shouting for her and knocking on the door multiple times. Non of these methods worked, so Curtis told his boss he would be working from home, eventually!

Curtis was eventually let into the house by Kim after 40 minutes and she found it rather funny. On the plus side, Curtis got some great photos of the sky whilst outside.

Curtis then worked from home for the rest of the day and at lunch, started watching the first Leafs game of the season!

Curtis’ day was busy but only with a few admin-type tasks which seemed to take a long time.

Both of us;

When Kim got home, she had a shower and then we went down to the ASB Showgrounds which is a big exhibition centre. This was today filled with essentially a big technology sale, ran by the company Noel Leeming.

Kim’s workplace were attending and they recommended that Kim go and take a look, so that’s what we did.

We got free coffee when we arrived from the lovely people at Nespresso and then went into the event.

We saw Kim’s work colleagues and spoke with them for a while and then left to have a look around the event.

The event was huge with a lot of people but things were selling like hotcakes…trolleys full of items left right and centre!

We finally decided to leave and get some food as we were starting (it was 19:30!). We went to KFC as it was easy and close. The KFC wasn’t great and we had to get another wrap as Curtis’ completely fell apart…Luckily though, we got to keep both so we ate the filling of the first too.

We got home and watched the latest bake off episode before bed.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale

Auckland

Place 49 – Day 288: Auckland – Samosas

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day;

Curtis got to work and the phone rang shortly after, as he was setting up his laptop! This meant Curtis had to fumble around trying to get it setup before answering the phone.

The accountants, who only go to the office one day a week, arrived and they had Samosas for Curtis and his team! Curtis did pay for these as they were being sold for fundraising. Curtis therefore went home with 10 samosas.

Both of us;

Once we both were home, we went to the gym. We spent a good 45 minutes to an hour at the gym, using different machines the whole time. It was a good workout! We normally start on the crosstrainer but they were all full so we went on the treadmill instead which we didn’t really like.

On the way home we stopped at the supermarket to get a few things.

Once we got home, we made butter chicken and rice for dinner with naan bread and our butter chicken samosas.

We watched some videos and the latest great British bake off episode.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale

Auckland

Place 49 – Day 282: Auckland – Catching Up on TV

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day;

Curtis had absolutely no traffic on the way to work so got there 20 minutes early.

The morning was ridiculously busy! Curtis started the day with 5 cases and by 11:00 he had 12! Only 2 cases got done in the morning and then he had his lunch, which was much anticipated.

Once Curtis finished lunch, he planned to have a remote session but the remote software stopped working so it took a while to get that done!

Curtis left to go home and 16:20 and once he got home he wanted for Kim to get back.

Both of us;

Kim went to buy a fan after work and then came home.

We put on a wash and then made dinner together.

We made sausages, potatoes, green beans and gravy!

For the evening, we caught up on Suits and The Great British Bake Off before sleeping.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale