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.
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
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!
George is getting the job offer. That is brilliant news!! It means that we can move on to the next step...organizing our work permit and looking for a bigger place to live.
Today, George had his first job interview. It is for a IT Operations Analyst position at Foodstuffs, which is a company very similar to Lekkerland, his previous employer back in the Netherlands. To make a good first impression we first had to by some decent clothes. Be free to judge the result ;-)
The interview took about 100 minutes and went very well. Now we have to wait until they decide... to be continued!
Christmas has come and gone, but didn't really feel like it. We are so used to the fact that christmas is in the winter. I guess that it is a confirmation that the christmas we know in Europe and North America isn't 100% about the birth of christ etc. It's also about getting together in a well lit en warm place eating nourishment for the dark winter-period. Probably a thing the tribes in Europe have done for thousands of years. But before I get all philosophical I better stop right here ;-)
Sale is a big issue here, it is just crazy. When we arrived it was the big Spring Cleaning, after that many different types of Christmas sales (must end Monday, or must end Friday...just to start the next sale next day). After Christmas there was a 3-day long Boxing day sale followed by the End of Year sale, everything has to go, must end New Years Eve, big clearance sale.... And now it is simply Summer sale..... I guess there are no days without any sale, meaning that the sale prices are just the normal prices. So actually, there is no sale at all...
It only takes a 10 minutes drive to the nearest beach which is at New Brighton. No traffic jams, free parking next to the beach and not many people. (All the Dutch are getting very jealous right now I guess) The beach is very long and you can walk for miles if you want to. What does one need more?? New Brighton Pier is also located at the same beach. Every Sunday, a local artiest uses the beach as a huge canvas. He "paints" only with a wooden stick and a rake. Amazing effect and great to look at from the pier. He starts at low tide and finishes just in time. A couple of hours later the piece of art is swallowed again by the water.
There is the thing with the weather forecast: it is never accurate! Today it was supposed to rain but when I look outside it is blue with lots of sun and warm wind, a perfect summer day! Here in NZ, nobody takes the forecast seriously, nobody talks about it (unlike the British ;-) ) and nobody changes their plans because the forecast is bad, the weather will change anyway :-)
The excellent customer-service over here keeps surprising us. You really get the feeling that you're still a Customer (indeed with a capital C!) instead of a person bothering the employer with too difficult a request/question, like we experienced in The Netherlands more and more these past few years. For example; when you send a letter (or an online job-application in my case) you get an email the same day saying they have received it followed by an physical card two days later informing you of the same thing. You actually get a confirmation they received something from you! That is a thing most companies in The Netherlands have thrown out of the windows in their budget-cutting frenzy.
Another example is going to a bank to open an account. No problem even if you are not a NZ citizen. You just walk up to the information desk and he or she will create your account(s) on the spot. Even a credit card is possible. Not a word about can't / won't / do not have the right to do it. They just do it (that Nike-slogan was probably invented by a Kiwi!)
Here are some pictures of NZ-wildlife: First the Kea, cheeky parrots. Then the Pukeko (blue and black feathers) These are really funny creatures, wobbling on their long legs, reminds me a bit of the road runner (mipmip!!). The flower is from a Rata-tree. Those trees are also called Christmas-trees, simply because they are in bloom around Christmas.
Last week we went looking for suitable suburbs to live in the case we get a job and the work- and living-permits. There are some nice neighborhoods in the south of the city, so we will probably look in those areas for a place to rent. On the internet the houses seem ok, but from some of the houses we have seen up close, the quality is not too good. Most houses are not or at most poorly insulated (but the building-laws have recently incorporated that demand). Then there is the almost 10% interest you pay on a mortgage; that is a lot of money considering the rent is not tax-deductible like in The Netherlands. As the housing market is still slightly unpredictable, we will probably rent for a year or so before looking for something to buy. We both have to have a good job if we are able to afford to buy a house anyway.
We hope the job-hunting will be more fruitful in a couple of days when most of the NZ workforce will be returning to work. The number of jobs being posted on the recruiters websites are starting to grow again. We heard that a lot of jobs are not online, but are being spread through the social networks, but we have good hope the headhunters will come up with some good ones.
Some good news on the digital front; we've upgraded our online account (higher data-limit), so we will be on Skype in the evening. And while we have no jobs, probably also in the mornings. So keep watching your Skype!
The Bed
Customs/MAF
Unpacking
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!
