Hello there. Another official announcement: our status is officially changed from tourist-no-work to allowed-to-stay-and-work.
After dropping all the papers and the passports in the drop off box at Immigration, we could do nothing more than wait and see. Fortunately, we got the permit and visa within a week which is really fast. Normally it takes about 4 weeks, but the headhunter has a contact at immigrations who "greased the wheels".
As long as George works at his new job, he may stay and work for a maximum of 3 years (only at this employer at this job). If he wants to work for another employer he has to apply again for a work permit.
Based on partnership, Esther also got the work permit and visa for 3 years, but she may work in any occupation. It is an open work permit which makes it far more flexible to find a job.
Strange rules, but what can you do...
At the same time we also applied for residence. This application could take a couple of months to be checked and approved. The big advantage to have a permanent residence status is that you can stay in NZ forever even though you don't have a job.
So this means that George starts to work at Foodstuffs next Monday (3rd March). It will probably be an intense week as he will be speaking (and listening) to English speaking people the whole day every day. The advantage that a lot of IT lingo is already in English is nullified by the fact the kiwi have their unique accent.
We will be moving to our next home on the 30th of March. After searching the web and the real estate agents for a suitable house (read: insulated and at least one proper form of heating available and also as less draft as possible as winter is coming) for about two weeks, we finally found a really nice house. We will rent it for at least 1 year. It is situated on the lower hills of Christchurch, just check out the view!! It has insulation, gas cooking, gas heating and a very large deck with french doors. And we have our own garden on the slops with a lemon and pear tree, some grapes and some space to grow vegetables, great!
Our container filled with all our belongings is also on the move. It is on a journey from Rotterdam to Hamburg, London and Singapore. There it will be transfered to another ship and continues its way down to New Zealand. We expect the container in the first week of April. We can't wait until it is here, it will be great fun to unpack all our stuff.
Last Sunday we had a nice walk (still 4-5 hours) in the hills of Banks Peninsula with Frank and Jessica. They are two Dutchies already in NZ for over a year now. The fact that our bodies were not entirely happy with us doing the walk, was made clear when it started aching at some places :-(
We are out of shape.....something to work on in the (very near) future.
The quality of the bread is quite different to what we are used (yes, especially the Swiss have high standards in bread). So we bought a bread baking machine. We now can experiment with it to figure out the best combination of flour, seeds and yeast. In the picture you can see our first attempt. It is really compact and heavy as a rock, the dough didn't quite rise as it should, but it does taste really great. A good start to continue the experiment and improve our skills!
As of last week, parts of New Zealand are in a official drought. In January, it didn't rain at all. A lot of people (mostly in the city) are complaining about it. But according to the "older" generation, it was like this every summer up until a decade ago.
Farmers are not allowed to water most of their land. Cattle is being brought to the slaughterhouse sooner than expected because there is not enough food for all of them.
Here in Christchurch it finally started to rain last Tuesday and it lasted for 5 days. So I guess the Canterbury plains are being replenished.
These last two weeks, we are filling in paperwork for the New Zealand Immigration Service. We need to do this so we can get a work permit so we can work over here. The forms are sometimes a bit confusing so it takes longer than we anticipated. (One wants to get it right in the first attempt)
You are only allowed to live here if you are healthy. That means another form for the medical exam, blood test and X-ray of your chest. We have been measured, weighted, pulse taken, urine sample, eye test, the listened to our heart and lungs, etc. The doctor asked questions for about half an hour and filled in the 12 pages of the form. The astonishing thing here in NZ is that you walk by a doctors office and you get an appointment the same day if you want to. No problem if you are not registered by this practice...try to do that in the Netherlands. The same thing at the Lab for the blood test and X-ray. Walk in and leave again 1.5 hours later, all taken care of. Amazing!
Both of us were declared healthy. Always nice to know!!
Talking about efficiency: Being Swiss, I needed to get a police certificate of good behavior, proofing that I am a good person and haven't done anything illegal. You can do that online, pay by credit card, send the form and a copy of your passport by mail and it will be sent to you within 2 weeks. I think that is really quick. For the Dutch, Immigration will apply for one in our behalf. Why they get the special treatment... I don't know. At least it is one thing we do not have to organize ourselves!!
We also need to prove we are in a genuine and stable relationship :-). They do accept the international version of our marriage certificate, but it is not enough, we need to have far more compelling evidence :-(. Among them a letter of support from relatives or other people who can confirm our partnership, power and phone bills, tenancy agreement, joint bank account statements showing transactions and photographs of us together, especially with family or at significant events.
We understand they want to be sure it is not a fake marriage just for getting a permit, but it takes some time to get all those papers together. Look at the forms and pile of paper in the picture.
The moment we get the work permit, George can start his job at Foodstuffs. It will be difficult to get used to a work rhythm again, after a sabbatical of 7 months.
We are also looking for a bigger house; now that it looks like we will be allowed to stay, we can ship our container with our belongings towards NZ. But the apartment we are in now is too small to accommodate all our stuff.
So for the last 2 weeks, we are looking on the internet for houses to rent. There are a lot of houses being offered, but choosing one is not so easy. We have begun to understand that most pictures taken of the properties were taken when the house/garden were being refurbished, so what looks a nice house on the internet is sometimes a very poor excuse of a house. We Dutch (and surely the Swiss) have better houses for our pets!
And even if the house is ok, there are more people interested than just us. So the landlord decides who gets to rent the place.
As said before, we started to look about two weeks ago, but that is really not the kiwi way; they start about 2 weeks before their current lease ends! We should have known, organizing a place to rent is also short-term business...
The next couple of weeks will be interesting: work permit, moving to a bigger house, shipping our container, etc.
We'll keep you posted!
Hello there. Another official announcement: our status is officially changed from tourist-no-work to allowed-to-stay-and-work.
We will be moving to our next home on the 30th of March. After searching the web and the real estate agents for a suitable house (read: insulated and at least one proper form of heating available and also as less draft as possible as winter is coming) for about two weeks, we finally found a really nice house. We will rent it for at least 1 year. It is situated on the lower hills of Christchurch, just check out the view!! It has insulation, gas cooking, gas heating and a very large deck with french doors. And we have our own garden on the slops with a lemon and pear tree, some grapes and some space to grow vegetables, great!
Last Sunday we had a nice walk (still 4-5 hours) in the hills of Banks Peninsula with Frank and Jessica. They are two Dutchies already in NZ for over a year now. The fact that our bodies were not entirely happy with us doing the walk, was made clear when it started aching at some places :-(
The quality of the bread is quite different to what we are used (yes, especially the Swiss have high standards in bread). So we bought a bread baking machine. We now can experiment with it to figure out the best combination of flour, seeds and yeast. In the picture you can see our first attempt. It is really compact and heavy as a rock, the dough didn't quite rise as it should, but it does taste really great. A good start to continue the experiment and improve our skills!
