Brian A. Thomas .com

Okay, so we have a 5 year plan to move out of the US.
We have a few main points of looking at so far…
Wellington, New Zealand. I would prefer somewhere along the Kapiti Coast if I could get a job there as well since it is so far from Wellington’s CBD, but still part of [...]

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Big congratulations to the All Blacks for winning the Tri Nations Cup against the Wallabies 28 to 24 in Brisbane Australia.
I don’t follow Rugby enough to know if the All Blacks made the right choice by going with Graham Henry as head coach again over the Wallabies coach Robbie Deans. At the time it looked [...]

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Creekstone Farms Premium Beef in Kansas wanted to start testing all its meat for Mad Cow disease (currently only 1% of our meat is tested for the incurable disease that lays waste to the human brain), but the Bush administration stopped them because larger meat packing firms feared that if Creekstone Farms Premium Beef succeeded [...]

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I just saw a trailer for yet another ping pong movie, and then one for soccer, and I started thinking, I have seen movies based on lots of sports: all the aforementioned, golf, football, basketball, a few others, but never one for rugby. Oddly, the very next trailer I clicked at random on Apple’s Trailer [...]

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I am back on the wanting to move to New Zealand bandwagon again.
As much as I like the idea of moving to Nelson, New Zealand, I think we would likely do Wellington. Sara was hot for the idea for a short while, but has cooled off again… It is far from everyone we know, but [...]

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Clinton won both Ohio and Texas. To be fair, she was expected to win both by a large margin, and her margin in Texas wasn’t much and the caucus isn’t counted far enough yet to see how delegates are distributed. None of the news organizations seem to agree on exactly how the counts are distributed, [...]

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I think it is telling when the “better educated” people, as the media polls call them, favor Obama and the “less educated” people prefer Clinton. That should speak volumes as to whom the Democrats should elect. Obviously the “educated” people know who is the better choice.
If we get Obama vs McCain, I will vote for [...]

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If I were to move to Australia instead of New Zealand, since I have always loved Koala’s and Kangaroo’s (but if there is one thing that I learned from the Crocodile Hunter, it is that nearly every deadliest creature in the world lives in Australia so that part isn’t cool). Anyhow big city order there [...]

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EDIT: As I jumped from 33rd to 1st, this isn’t a Nelson, New Zealand Blog… at least yet. So if you are searching Google or whatever, ignore this entry… hopefully you see this show up before you follow the link. Original post below:
I am presently the 33rd Google result of looking for: Nelson, New [...]

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Okay, enough cons of moving to New Zealand. I have said the whole time, I still would move there after Ari graduates pre-school if money wasn’t the problem, and if Sara would agree. Anyhow, from beautiful Nelson, New Zealand (my first choice if I were to move to New Zealand) comes the Lantern Spectacular, a [...]

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Check out this video of some Kea’s doing really amazing stuff:
Apparently Kea’s are among the smartest birds out there and cause havoc with cars in car parks in New Zealand’s ski areas. Kea’s are a non-speaking parrot.

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I created a New Zealand category and moved most of the old posts taking about my New Zealand obsession to there. (Asperger people focus on obsessions, mine tend to rotate from thing to thing as one may have noticed… I haven’t decided on my next obsession yet. )
Also, a follow up to the cons [...]

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This post will cover the few cons of moving to New Zealand… of course despite these, if money wasn’t an issue, and if Sara was willing…
On the con side I already mentioned the far distance from friends and family and the too Socialistic for my tastes aspect, but let’s view those in more detail…
Friends, well, [...]

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Okay, we are not really moving to New Zealand (aka Aotearoa), but it is fun to fantasize.
Hence I present the pros and cons of each city I am considering in order, and then on the pros and cons of moving to New Zealand as a whole.
Nelson (go there in Google Earth). Wow. Simply wow. So [...]

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Here is a great commercial for New Zealand… God I want to visit so bad for a month or two…
The opening scene was done by Weta Digital, the people behind the The Lord of the Rings special effects. Of course as you may know, Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand, though I [...]

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Since I am in a New Zealand mood here is the New Zealand national anthem (prior to an All Blacks game):
The lyrics (the first part is in Maori…):
E Ihoa Atua,
O nga Iwi Matoura,
Ata whaka rongona;
Me aroha noa.
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau to atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa
God of nations! at Thy feet
In the bonds of love we [...]

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I haven’t played the If We Were In (insert city name here) Right Now game for a while.
Here the high is actually 46 with a low of 36. By the weekend the temperature will drop to 28 for the low with 40 for a high. Fairly mild for this time of year.
For other cities:
Auckland: High [...]

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New Zealand, despite having some of the harshest marijuana laws out there, has become one of the growing number of countries to have relaxed their regulations for growing industrial hemp. Like Canada, it requires a special license.
Hemp, recall, is a non-smokable form of cannabis and can’t get you high. It makes better paper than wood [...]

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The official Chronicles of Narnia- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe teaser trailer is up. The trailer does bring to mind the Lord of the Rings movies from the moment you see the lady coming up on the horse drawn cart to some of the rest, of course this could be partly because it [...]

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The last three days I spent in Wellington couldn’t have been better. The weather was ideal: clear skies with a few clouds, mild temps, and a low breeze blowing off the harbor — apparently kind of a rare environment for Wellington. The days were relaxed, nothing was planned, and I got to meet quite a [...]

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