This week I took Dad and Liss out to the airport and they left NZ again, back to the UK for the both of them via Thailand for one of Dad’s best friends’ wedding. Before they left I did get to spend some time with both of them, talking about various things and generally having some fun. We took some pictures as well, but the ones that would have been good on my camera turned out kind of blurry, which is a shame. It looks like Dad won’t be back in NZ again before I leave for Japan, so I guess I’m house-sitting until I leave. It has worked out pretty well being able to live here again, but I am a bit sad that I haven’t been able to share it with Dad a bit more.

This week I’ve done a bit more work setting up my machine for some more work that I’m looking to take on. Assuming everything goes well, I should be able to complete it before I leave for Japan, so it should be OK. I got dicked around a bit at the initial meeting, they made me wait for about an hour… I don’t think I’m ever going to let that happen again. Anyway, things are progressing on that front and I got a bit of other work done this week, so it’s been fairly productive. I went to a Canterbury Software Cluster meeting this week on leasing software that was pretty interesting. It certainly gave me a bit of an added perspective on some other options that there are when it comes to getting a software solution into the hands of the customer. I also got to sit in on a meeting with Dad and one of his developers, which I found to be pretty interesting (being the huge geek that I am).

I got another golf lesson this week and what is looking to become a routine coffee, chat and Borders visit. We were going to go out to Clearwater and watch some of the golf that’s been going on there, but the day we were going to go out there the sky decided to open up and pour (also cancelling an outdoor concert of Hera‘s that I was going to go to), so I ended up just watching some US golf on television with them. This week’s “Sunday family tea” was actually held around at Grandma and Grandad’s place, since Dace was absent it was them, me and Mum, which was nice.

Speaking of family, I also saw Mum earlier this week when I went around to her place to chill and have some fish and chips and watch Brokeback Mountain, which I hadn’t yet seen. Now I have and I have to say, I thought it was pretty damn good. I think it’s interesting that the film managed to get such critical acclaim, despite the fact that there is still a hell of a lot of homophobic sentiment in the wider population and in the media. I think that this film is a great illustration of a good love story that just happens to have a homosexual relationship… it doesn’t matter that it is what it is, that’s just how it is. Anyway, I’m glad I finally managed to see it.

More family this week: I also caught up with my cousin Dylan and talked him through a few things for getting himself a new laptop, as he’s going to need one when he heads over to the US later this year. I like Dylan, he’s a great guy. It always cracks me up when I remind certain people that he’s my cousin – Dylan went to St. Andrew’s as well (he’s got to be loving their family-gets-in policy) and so there are a whole lot of people that we know in common. We look nothing alike, have different names and interests so it’s no real surprise that no one can pick it, but I do find it funny when people remember (or are reminded) that we’re cousins.

Keeping with the family theme, I also managed to spend some time with Dace this week. He came over and we talked some crap and played computer games together, which was really fun and nostalgic in a good way. Dace and I used to spend hours and hours together – playing backyard cricket, mucking about with Lego and playing computer games together to name a few things we used to do. It was really cool to spend some time doing that with him again and hopefully we’ll do it again and I’ll see a bit more of him before I leave again.

I also spent some more time around at Ian’s for a couple of sessions learning some more about XNA and going through some more tutorial material. I think this is definitely the right decision to get started on this. I hope that I’ll be able to continue working with this, even when I’m in Japan.

I also did the usual pizza and media thing, this time I spent some more time with Daniel which was pretty cool. We watched a bunch of anime and I introduced him to Eureka as well – Media Pimp strikes again! I really do love Eureka, it’s an awesome show and I can’t wait for the next season to come out. Although I’ll probably have to find an alternative means of viewing it, since I’m pretty sure they’re not streaming it to Japan yet. Flipside I suppose is that I should be able to watch anime on television as it comes out. ^^