Tom & Hazel Arrive in Wellington

Tom & Hazel have arrived in Wellington at last having spent the last 5 days in Delhi and Jude and I picked them up from Coimbatore today and drove back up the hill.

Tom has already met Ben and Jake who will be going to school with him - it quickly deteriorated to become a light sabre battle - I suspect that Star Wars will feature heavily in our lives during the next 10 months!!

Tom & Hazel Leave for India (at last!!)

Tom & Hazel flew to Delhi last night - you can see Tom trying to raise a smile at the prospect of an 8 hour flight!  I have spoken to Hazel today and they have arrived at their hotel in Delhi.  Tom didn't sleep at all on the flight and Hazel is sounding tired as a consequence.  Tomorrow they will visit the High Commission and hopefully clear our freight through customs.

Before an 8 hour flight:

And after:          

British International Student Presentation 17 Jul 13

The culmination of quite a lot of work was the British International Student Presentation which we gave to the entire course, faculty and families on 17 Jul 13.  After a great deal of work over the last month creating the 40 minute multi-media presentation we were thrown a hospital pass when Army Mark was taken into hospital the day before in order to have his appendix taken out.  Clearly not very good for Army Mark, but also not much better for Air Force Mark and myself without the slides which were in the Army House somewhere and our Directing Staff breathing down our necks.  Thankfully, years of working to tight deadlines had prepared us for this eventuality and a quick raid on Mark's house and hastily re-arranged scripts, slides and final rehearsal and the Air Force pulled a blinder!

On the day of the Presentation we were joined by the Defence Section from the British High Commission to whom we are grateful for helping to wave the British Flag and for free dinner.

The Infantry Division in the Attack

The first Tutorial is drawing to a close and the Air Force Officers have been spending their time planning how to deploy an Infantry Division in the Attack.

 

 You will notice that I am correctly dressed for directing a Division in the Attack!  Clearly the commander needs to switch quickly between directing the capture of vital ground and sipping cocktails and a 3-piece suit provides him with the attire to achieve this.

 

I cannot believe that I usually defend a 30 km airfield perimeter with a Squadron of 170 RAF Regiment Gunners and the planning yardstick is an entire division for a frontage of 20 km - mmmm.. me thinks that budget cuts might have gone a bit far in the UK!!!