Fishing

One of the best things about being in Wellington, is that the city is super compact and does not have much urban sprawl. You can be out of the city and among the sheep within minutes. The last couple weekends Carsten and I drove no more than fifteen minutes out of town and around to the other side of Wellington harbor to go fishing.


That gap in the hills is the exit to the ocean from Wellington harbor - nothing between us and Chile! The city is off to the left and around the corner in the picture. It was a perfect day for fishing - calm, sunny, and warm (and this is supposed to be winter??!!). This is us in all of our hunter-gather glory.



The good fish weren't biting (only undesirable "spotties"), so Carsten decided to do some diving for Paua which is similar to abalone and is a NZ staple. They have one shell, and use their underside to stick to the rocks where they hang out until guys like us get them. Apparently you have to sneak up on them or they grip the rock really tight. He managed to pull up about six of appropriate size (just smaller than my hand), warning me that they looked nasty, but were quite tasty (he was right on both counts - check out the flexibility of this guy!).



After the catch, we went back to my place and had some teriyaki paua stir-fry. The area is also littered with mussels, but they're really cheap to buy (and of superior quality) at the supermarket, so "picking" them isn't really worth it. Paua shells are super colorful inside and are used for jewelry, decorations, etc all over NZ.

Bonus material:
As I mentioned, I started working at ACC last week - turned out to be Thursday rather than Wednesday, cause their HR staff was rather harried. My team seems like a good group - I am likely the youngest and am one of many internationals (there are only 4 true kiwis of the 10 on our team). I'll be working mostly with claims data to analyze and evaluate the ACC budget for different health care sectors (primary care, rehab care, etc) as well as look at individual providers that are behaving as outliers, and hence may be charging or billing inappropriately. Thurs and Fri were not very intense - especially with the goodbye party for one of the team members - but I'll be diving in this week for sure (which conveniently is a 4-day week thanks to the Queen's Birthday today). Also, next Saturday, I'll be attending my first All Blacks match, when they play France here in Wellington!! The Frogs (as the French call their team) did not bring many good players, so it should be a fun to watch the ABs romp.