Seasons Greetings

It is the time of the year: Christmas with the all those awful songs, present hunting, tree decorating, cookie baking and drinks...but it is still very hard to get in the mood with 25 degrees. No more homemade cookies made by Esther's mum, so she is forced to make them herself. They turned out rather nice :-)
No turkey or ham this year, but a BBQ, doesn't sound too bad, does it?

We bought ourselves a nice HUGE Christmas present. It is a great lifestyle plot (no house) just south of the village Cust, about 30 minutes drive from Christchurch. Well, the "huge factor" is of course based on the size of the plot: 4 hectares... can you believe that??
2009 will be focused on building our own house, or to be precise: having it build.

Search for "257 Earlys road, Cust, NZ" in Google Maps.
Since a couple weeks Streetview is available for many roads in NZ. It's great to wander around a have sort of a live look at so many places. Unfortunately is was cloudy when they took the pictures in Cust. To prove that we will have mountain views, I attached some pictures. :-)

Have a great Christmas!!

1 YEAR NZ

On 18th October, we passed a milestone: 1 year in New Zealand, can you believe it??
As we are really lazy with updating this weblog, I will upload a lot of pictures so you have at least something to look at.

In the first weekend of October, we went for a walk near Castle Hill. It's about 1,5 hours drive from Christchurch. It's a great to wander around the weird rock formations as you can see on the pictures. Looks a bit like Dartmoor in the UK.









14th November is Canterbury day. It' s a public holiday and we were both off work. The biggest A&P Show (for the Swiss: like the OLMA) in NZ is held in Christchurch on this very day. Many farm animals have their own competition: from chickens, sheep, cows to alpacas and even ducks and pigeons. There are also many farm machines...and they are huge! And of course, there is not just one machine, but lots and lots, incredible!! We walked around for about 4 hours and still haven't seen all of it.
It was a great day out on a hot summer day!




Some more random pictures...

Do you know what a Cicada is ? They are about 4cm long and make a hell of a noise!! It's quite a tropical sound and it took us a while to figure out what the source of that noise is. Those little beasts can produce such an amount of decibels that when walking in Hagley Park here in the city, you almost have to cover your ears.



Still amazing how empty beaches are over here. We really appreciate that parking next to beaches is free, space is available and there are no traffic jams to the beaches...and it's just a 20 minutes drive from home :-)

Enjoying the warm and sunny weather on the deck with a game of table tennis and a gorgeous cool beer. That's the life guys!!


We will update the weblog very soon as we have more news...be did purchase something HUGE!!!!

Long overdue update...

Hello people,
is has already been 3 months since our last update. But you know, it's true what they say: No news is good news. We are doing fine, enjoying ourselves and just do what Kiwis do, try to be outdoors a lot!
Winter has come and gone and it definitely turning into spring. Days are getting longer and we will change the daylight saving time in a week. We went for a walk in Hagley Park to have a look at the thousands of daffodils. Everything is in bloom and looks amazing. Unfortunately, spring also means that George is suffering from hay fever again.




Some updates which were long due:
We received our Permanent Residence status and are allowed to live and work in New Zealand. It also means that we are entitled to vote, which we can do for the first time in November for National Elections. It also means that the collection of stickers in our passports grew again by another two.

We also got our refund from customs (import tax) we initially had to pay, but than later was returned to us. Customs admitted that they were wrong and send us a check. YES!

Esther is already working more than 4 months again at Davis Ogilvie. Colleagues are friendly and the work load is growing, getting more and more interesting and challenging.
George has a new position within his current company; he is now a Systems Administrator Operations. It is a step up from his previous job and he will be doing more challenging work now. An extra advantage is that he doesn't need to do shift work on a weekly basis (only to fill in for a collegue if he is away). He also get's the opportunity again to administer the much loved *cough* email system Lotus Notes...

George joined a group of people for a friendly pick up game of frisbee in Hagley Park. The grass was rather muddy and wet as you can see in the picture. George soon discovered that not doing any sports for a decade seriously impacts his general fitness!
As Esther's fitness level was also not so well, we decided to buy a cross-trainer. The main advantage is that we can exercise at whatever time we like and during any type of weather. It works surprisingly well for us; we use it a couple of times a week, more than we used our rowing machine in The Netherlands.

Rural living training :-)
As you can see from this image, we have been training for our future lifestyle outside "the big smoke" (any big city in NZ; Christchurch in our case). From couch-potato to stable-boy in a day! We helped out at the Studfarm of Cathy De Vries, one of George's co-workers at Foodstuffs.
We are starting to look around for a property outside Christchurch with some extra space (between 2 and 4 hectares would be perfect). Buying some land and building our own house is probably not financially possible at this time, so we are mainly concentrating on some land with a good quality house already on it.

Last weekend, we went on our first ski-trip in New Zealand. Mount Hutt ski-field is only a 2 hours drive from Christchurch, so we got up early on Saturday and together with some other Dutch friends drove up the mountain. We decided to try snowboarding and booked a lesson which taught us the basics in 3 hours. The weather had been excellent all day, so we enjoyed it all immensely. Snowboarding is completely different to skiing, hence you fall a lot in the beginning. But at the end of the day, we managed to slide down the practice hill without too many difficulties. This years skiing season is ending soon, but we (especially George) enjoyed snowboarding so much that we will take some more lessons next season.

Autumn / Winter in NZ

After a perfect Spring and Summer (lots of sun), we finally have our first Autumn and Winter. The temperatures are dropping steadily towards the 5 degrees celsius (daytime) and 0 degrees nighttime. Although today, as I write this, the temperature is around 18 degrees and we are sitting on the deck in our t-shirts. We experienced our first real "Foehn" (as the Swiss call them); a warm wind coming from a particular direction. Besides changing the weather significantly, as in warming it up, some people get a headache. We also got the first snow here on the Canterbury Plains last weekend; we only got 2 centimeters of "wet" snow in our garden, but other parts of the city got 5 centimeters of "dry" snow.

The downside of it all is that the humidity is climbing inside the house. As we have a lot of (single sheet) glass in our house, warmth leaks away faster then it does in the average European house. At one point the bedroom was around 8 degrees celsius with the relative humidity of 80% when we got up in the morning; not healthy at all! So we did what every Kiwi does; turn on the electric heaters to get it back to normal. We do realize the average house over here is not comparable with what we are used to in The Netherlands or Switzerland; thermal isolation of the walls, roof and floor is not a thing the Kiwi expect in a (affordable) house. If it's not in there the owners probably won't install it as it is to costly for most of them. So we will just have to wait until we get a place of our own to be able to enjoy a well insulated house. For the time being, we are looking into buying a secondhand dehumidifier to get rid of some of the excess humidity.

George's birthday was on the 25th May. To celebrate this we invited some friends and colleges from his work. As it was the first birthday in NZ, someone suggested that George has to drink beer from a yard glass. This is a Kiwi tradition when you turn 21 and officially become an adult. About 6 cans of beer went into the glass to fill it up and then it was George's turn to empty it as fast as he could. It took him about half an hour, but he did finish!!! Although he didn't move or say much for the next hour :-)

The 2nd of June was a Public Holiday (Queen's birthday, even if she is far away in the UK), so we had a long weekend. We decided to spend the weekend at a place called Lake Tekapo; it is about a 3 hour drive from Christchurch and is located in the middle of the South Island. The lake is one of 8 lakes in a chain which is used to generate power using hydro-generators. About 60% of the total NZ energy pool is generated in this way; surely a very nice amount. The Lake has a small settlement with some shops and quite a few rooms to rent. On the weekend we were there, a yearly mountain-bike-race was being held; they had to ride one side of the lake, wade through a 9 degrees celsius river and ride back along the other side of the lake. The fastest ones did it in just under 3 hours; if they didn't finish within 7 hours, a special bus would pick up the rest along the route to prevent them getting stuck in rapidly declining weather. We came there not to ride the bike, but to walk en enjoy nature; we walked up to the Mt John observatory to enjoy the view and to see if we could do some stargazing that night. Unfortunately, the weather prediction was not favorable (cloudy), so we decide to come back another time. We really do would like to see the night-sky here as it is rumored to be one of the best spots on the South Island to do so. We stayed at the Riverside Cottage accommodation which was situated next to the river and only a 3 minute walk from the lake. The rooms were very comfortable (warm) and the views amazing. Needless to say, we will definitely return to Tekapo do some more "tramping" and stargazing.

At the moment, the Kiwi's are concerned about the energy-supplies stored in the "hydro-lakes"; due to the fact that they where not replenished by rainfall, the levels have dropped significally. But because it is election-year, they don't want to scare the voters by saying we have an energy-crises. Everybody knows the recent governments haven't done enough to make sure the rising demand in energy is being met by investing in more energy-production-facilities in the previous years. And now there are already rumors of power cuts in the evenings if the situation gets worse. Meanwhile, the Labour government and the opposition parties are outbidding each other with personal(private) tax cuts; they try to win votes by promising more money per household in tax returns instead of investing it in future like more hydro-schema's or subsiditing home-insulation. This is typical NZ; look for the short-term benefits, don't plan ahead! :-/
Our house is heated by gas bottles which also heat up the warm water. In case of powercuts we will sit in the dark but not in the cold!


There are many fountains in Christchurch, but one of it really stands out. It is situated on Victoria Square and resembles 3 flowers, dandy lions to be specific. The special thing about this is the fact that in a place called Romanshorn (Switzerland) is a similar fountain. That place is about 5 km away from the village where Esther grew up and her family still lives. Quite a coincidence!!

After all the hassle about having to pay GST on our own stuff from the container, we read something on the internet about changing the law again. Apparently, customs had so many complaints about the new law that they decided to reverse it. We will file a complaint and try to get a refund!

Back to a regular rhythm

The Bed
We bought a new bed frame with a Tempur mattress. After sleeping on borrowed mattresses on the floor, we were delighted when the new bed was delivered. After George got home from work, we started to unpack the parts and realized that they did not give us any bolts. It is not an IKEA bed but it definitely reminded us of it... We collected the bolts in the shop on the next day and slept heavenly in our new bed. :-) Although the colder it gets, the harder the mattress becomes; but after laying on it for some minutes, the mattress warms up and it molds itself to the shape of your body (but is still supportive!). We noticed that we are tossing and turning a lot less then we did before.

Customs/MAF
It took customs 3 weeks to calculate how much import tax we have to pay. After waiting and calling them to check every now and then, they came up with 663,66 NZ dollars...quite a devils number. Well, just get is payed and deliver our belongings!
The MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) had a look on the packing list and checked about 20 items such as garden tools, garden furniture, tools, shoes, vacuum cleaner, flower pots, but also Christmas and other decorations and some random items. Of course, everything was clean and fine. Just pay another bill of 360 NZ dollar to cover their effort....

Unpacking
Our stuff finally arrived on Tuesday 29th April. It is exactly 7 months since we moved out from our home in Den Bosch. The container arrived on the 7th April. It was 6 weeks on the move from Rotterdam to Singapore and than down to Christchurch. But it took more than 3 weeks from the harbour to our house. If you calculate the speed for the last 3 weeks...20m/h!!! How frustrating is that...
But ok, the stuff is here and the house is suddenly filled with 194 boxes and packages. Obviously we packed our stuff quite well, the only damage we have is one broken flower pot and 2 broken glasses. All other things seem to be fine and in working order.

Esthers' Job
Tomorrow 5th May, Esther is starting her new job as a GIS Analyst. She had 3 interviews and got 2 job offers out of them which is great. One with the Christchurch City Council and one with Davis Ogilvie, an engineering company. Comparing both offers, the one at DO was the better offer. Also, she will work 4 days a week, which leaves a day more spare time. Davis Ogilvie & Partners (www.dop.co.nz), is an engineering company with about 140 employers. For NZ, this is quite a big company but compared to Arcadis (former employer in NL with 8000 employees) it is rather small. GIS is still a small part in NZ, but it is a growing field.

Permanent Residency
We also applied for the Permanent Residence (PR). At this moment we hold a Work Permit for 3 years, we needed that in order to be able to start working. The PR application can take a couple of months to be approved. The checks will be a lot more thorough than for the other permits. So, another envelop with lots of papers and original diplomas etc. including our passports were dropped again in the drop off box at the Immigration office.

Autumn has finally started. We even had some snow on the Port Hills last night. The gas heater is working hard. But we still have enough lemons on our tree in the garden!

Looking back at the last six months, we actually achieved quite a lot. We haven't done too bad and are allowed to be a bit proud at our selves! It still feels like the right decision to be here and we have no regrets at all.

How long does a summer last?

Well, in our case, 6 months and counting! We arrived in Auckland on the 18th October and enjoyed many warm days on our journey through NZ. January was extremely dry. Even Kiwis say that this summer is warmer than average.... must have something to do with Esther...she always has great weather on her vacations! We are in the middle of autumn now, but sitting on the deck in the sun can still be too hot!

George is already working for 6 weeks at Foodstuffs. He got used to the work rhythm quickly.
George: The colleges are really nice and understanding even though I still don't understand some Kiwi-slang. Fortunately, Foodstuffs has a lot of different technologies, so it is very interesting to work there and see their solutions to some processes. (Lekkerland - Henk van Gemert; they have some nice AS/400-machines running here (had to do an IPL today!))
Even if there is an emergency at work, the Kiwis still remain calm; very nice if you're used to the sometimes hectic European way of reacting.
Another nice effect of New Zealand are the traffic jams; there are virtually none! While I still have to drive through the city (8 km), I only have to stop for red lights, not for slow or busy traffic. There are of course busy streets, but you have lots of alternatives to avoid those streets so.
Coincidentally, Frank (a Dutch friend of ours) is also working at the same company.

Esther also had some progress on the job hunting business. Until now she had 3 interviews: 2 at consulting engineering companies and one at the Christchurch City Council. NZ is aware of GIS but they are just beginning to use it and getting to see the advantages of it. As in many things, NZ is a few steps behind comparing to Europe. In this case, it is rather a good thing, meaning Esther's GIS experience can become very handy :-)
Hopefully one will turn out to become a nice employer!

We finally moved into our rental house. It is great to live in a stand alone house, not having neighbors on the other side of the wall, being able to walk around the house and enjoying the garden. Writing this, I am sitting on the deck in the sun, surrounded by green! I can see the sea and I have a view on the Port Hills.
Since we still wait for stuff from the container, it feels a bit like camping in your house. We borrowed two mattresses, some kitchenware and two chairs from Frank and Jessica. At least we can sleep, eat and sit. But it would be nice to have a table again soon. Until then the printer box must do.

On Monday 7th April, our container arrived at Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch. As soon as George got home from work, we drove to the harbour to have a look at the mighty container ship. To our big relieve, It was there and they were busy unloading the containers! Hopefully, our 20 foot container was there too, somewhere. Unfortunately, it was already getting dark, hence the pictures are dark, too.

We had to fill in some forms for customs and the MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) and were told that since a change in law last November, we do have to pay import tax on our own belongings now. Simply too ridiculous for words.
It used to be like this: Customs checks what type of visa one holds at the moment the container arrives in NZ. If you hold a Permanent Residence or a Work Permit longer than 12 months, than you do not have to pay import tax. In all other cases, you do. Now, they only look at the arrival status of the person. We arrived on a Tourist Visa, that is all they see now. Our new '3-years Work Permit'-status has no influence at all....
How do they establish the value of the tax? We had to put a value on each item on the packing list, how much it would be worth selling it here in NZ. Actually impossible to do and therefore a lot of wild guesses. And of course, all our stuff lost a lot of value. :-) Books are not in English, TV, computer, mixer, hairdryer, washing machine etc. all have a European plugs and are not really useful here in NZ, all our furniture is old, used and cheap, kitchenware is used and old, shoes and clothes are old and worn, DVD's have a different region code, just anything one can think of to lower the value. Have a look at our packing list!
Anyway, how on earth should we know exactly what item is in which box, we packed 6 months ago!
Grrr, it is bloody annoying paying for something which wasn't required 6 months earlier.
And NZ keeps complaining about how hard it is to get emigrants! Yeah, make is more difficult and costly doesn't help, eh?


Do you know what Kiwis mean when the say the following: (no prizes to win here, Google makes it to easy)
* rattle your dags
* chilly bin
* sparrows fart
* sweet as
* jandals
* wop wops
* choc-a-block
* dub dub dub