Here I am ...

I've been busy with putting together advertising texts and images.  Busy with family matters.  And with other complicated things too.

Basically I've been messing with my life/work balance ... that's to say I haven't really had any balance as my life is a blend of 'both' and 'everything'.

Then today ... I began pulling out all the equipment and cables I travel with.  Charging camera batteries, adding my USB modem to my camera bag and finding sunhoods for lense.  And that cable that hangs from the window in Genova, enabling me to receive an internet connection that has to fight its way through the massive stone wall built centuries ago, the one that was inspired by a Genovese desire to keep the Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa out in the 1100s.

As it turns out, that city wall is still an effective barrier today.

Miss 10 changed schools a few months ago and the route is no longer 2 trams and an hour each way.  These days, when I take her, we ride through the park and arrive after 10 minutes of cycling.  This morning I came home raving about the air out there. 

It's Spring and it rained all night.  That beautiful juicy, sweet-smelling rain that inspires me to open windows while I work at my desk.  This morning we woke to moist warm air that smelt of flowers, wet beech trees, and oaks, and the earth too. 

Nature was in the ascendent and it was divine.

Steel-grey clouds have filled the sky for now, and as I write this, a massive torrential downpour is happening.  The rhubarb will be loving it.  And I am too.

Cousins ...

One of the things we Kiwis miss, here in Belgium, is extended family.  On Friday we had the chance to catch up with my niece and her family.  We were so grateful to Beckie, Malcolm, James and Alex for stopping in during their fabulous tour of Europe.

Miss 10 was bemused by the idea that she was finally spending time with 'family'.  She knows very few of her New Zealand people.  And they loved each other.  It was truly lovely 3 days spent in the company of good people.

Student Loans, New Zealand

If you have a Student Loan from New Zealand, and you've no idea what to do about the rate at which interest charges are making it grow, listen to this interview ... it's important and finally, something helpful.

Kristina Andersen - Student loans ( 9′ 56″ )

07:10 Kristina Anderson is the country's only specialist adviser on going bankrupt to clear student debt. Student debt has now passed $14 billion and Anderson, from Auckland's Tax Hub Ltd, says it's time the country confronted the issue.

Know that a student loan can turn into 6 figures easily ... one person overseas has a $350,000nz  student loan debt that is mostly made up of interest charges and penalties.

My $20,000nz student loan would have been $100,000nz by 2020.  It's not as difficult as you can imagine.  The New Zealand government needs to deal with this.  New Zealand is a small island country with 4.5 million people ... and we're a people who have traditionally left for Europe after graduating.

Graduates often return to raise their families, bringing all that they've learned and earned while off the Island.  As seen in something as simple and divine as NZ's truly superb cafe scene.  There's not enough work for our scientists, for our graduates. 

Belgian students pay about 1,000euro per year to go to university.  New Zealanders, so far from the rest of the world, need to leave to get the experience that has made NZ an outstanding innovator in the world.

I'm so excited, and a little tearful, that this horrific situation is finally being addressed.  Perhaps some of the 'kids' stuck out here can finally think about going home without being arrested if they try and leave again.