Good on ya, Mate!

Hi there!
Once again a long overdue update :-(
We could make up the excuse that we were too pre-occupied with our House built, but that would not be entirely true.
Although we are finally making some real progress, later more in that topic, we just have been enjoying our life over here. Sorry...? Enjoying in the Wintertime?? Well yes! Although most Kiwi thought it was a crappy winter, it was not that bad at all. OK, it was a bit wetter than it was last winter, but we did not have any snow at sea-level. It did not freeze for days or even weeks at a time as it sometimes can in some parts of Europe.
Being here now for just under 2 years, it was a good time to stand still and evaluate; our general conclusion is that we have been very fortunate. We both have had (and still have) jobs very similar to the ones we had in The Netherlands. We are building our own house on our own piece of New Zealand. And our quality of life has certainly improved with a significant amount. Not that we were (financially) worse off in The Netherlands, but living among the New Zealanders has given us a refreshingly new look upon life.
Their way of life has some downsides (which I will not be discussing now), but the one major advantage is that they still try things even though they know they might fail.
A good example is the starting/running of your own business. In The Netherlands there are a million rules and regulations before you can start (and even end) a business. While the subsidizing schemes are a nice way to get started, they also bind you to following certain rules to the letter. I can imaging they tend to suffocate a starter. Over here starting or running a business seem to be a far easier. We read about people who have run their own business in their early twenties and when they failed, they still are eager to try again. I guess NZ is not as over-regulated as The Netherlands are.
Part of that 'positive/easy going' attitude certainly is rubbing off on me (George) as I have become a bit more mellow ;-) ...much appreciated by Esther!!

Now for the promised bit: The House!
On the 5th of August we finally received building consent from the Waimakariri district council. This means that the builder can finally start building.
The following pictures show some of the preparation work (driveway, pump shed, pumps, electricity water testing and water tank) we and some contractors have done during the last couple of weeks:

Driveway has been formed

Concrete slab for the pump shed

Pump shed tied down to avoid blowing away, we couldn't fix it yet to the concrete slab as there is no power on the site...

...hiring a portable generator the next weekend solved that problem.

25'000 liter water tank, should be big enough!!

Our well holds a submersible pump, going down 40 meters

Fuse box in the pump shed

Pump with pressure tank between water tank and house

Our way of how to get a water sample...MacGyver would be proud

Building site on 30th August 2009

Finally George won something for the first time in his life: a snowboarding jacket from Burton/Speights (local beer brand)....No picture yet as it is still in the mail. As the beer slogan says ; Good on ya, Mate!

cheers
George and Esther

West Coast

25th May was George's birthday. As is was a Monday, we both took a day off and made a long weekend out of it. Esther booked a B&B on the West Coast, about 15km north of Greymouth. It's quite a hidden place, with direct access to a private beach. 2 days of relaxing, walks on the beach and in the forests (where we came across some blue mushrooms) and a tour in Monteiths Brewery with beer tasting of course, awesome.
The pancakes rocks are also in that area. We have been there before on our holiday in 2006, but at that time it was pouring down (as it usually does on the West Coast) and we couldn't see much. This year somehow the weather is all mixed up. It keeps raining on the East Coast and the West Coast has a brilliant sunny winter. So this time, we actually saw some layered rocks.
The 4th and the 5th were taken on the way home to Christchurch. It's only a 3 hours drive but the scenery keeps changing. From beaches to forests with fern trees to lakes (Lake Brunner) to mountains (Arthur's Pass) to the flat Canterbury planes.

Building a house takes some time

Hi there!
Another long overdue, but hopefully highly anticipated update from the land of the long white cloud.

What have we been up to you might ask....well . . . as most of you already know by now, we have bought a piece of land in the hopes to built our own house on it one day. Slowly, that dream is becoming reality. After the summer holiday (end of January) we started talking to 5 building companies about our plans. We roughly sketched what we had in mind a made a long list of wishes to be included. As the economy also slows down here in New Zealand as everywhere else at the moment, those companies are rather keen and tried hard to win us as a client. This was good news for us as it gave us some room for negotiations. After many meetings and several drafts we finally could choose one. We have signed a contract with a builder called Orange Homes.
For the Dutch: yep, huis van Oranje :-)

At the moment we have two horses called Sandy and Shirley on our land (owned by a colleague of George). They are doing a really good job keeping the grass down....and fertilizing it at the same time..there is horse shit all over the place. The picture was taken in February. As you can see the grass is quite brown. Now, after some rain it is all green again (see first picture).

We are still amazed. Besides owning a piece of New Zealand, we will also have our very own house here, hopefully finished before Christmas 2009!
But before the whole building process can start, there are some minor hurdles to take. Well, that is what you get when building rurally! Because of the proposed central position of the house on the land, we will need to extend the power, telephone and water from the their positions near the roadside. Also, we need to have a gravel driveway put in going from the roadside to the house. If we don't do that there is an increased risk that some (concrete) trucks might get stuck in the mud. Of course, there is not one company that can do all of those jobs themselves, so we need to find (affordable) contractors for all the different type of jobs. So we do a lot of calling and emailing to get some quotes and compare their prices. When we get all of those quotes together we need to go to the bank and ask for a mortgage that will pay all of those bills and at the same time will present us with affordable mortgage repayments. To give you a rough idea of what the house will look like and its proposed position on the plot, we have uploaded some scans of the sketches!
We should receive some detailed drawings from our building company in the next couple of days.
Look out for an update on the build soon.

Esther had a Golf Day from work. As only in New Zealand, that means playing golf for a whole day and being catered with sandwiches, beer and wine...on the golf course while playing. Obviously, it was an awesome day!



Easter weekend just finished. Although it is autumn, we had great weather with lots of sun. We went for a 3-hour walk in the Port Hills yesterday and today we walked on Sumner Beach. Not too bad.
No Easter Bunnies yet, if there are some Lindt ones left, we will buy them this week for half price...can't wait to knock their head off!

Cheers
Esther and George

Short vacation in Cromwell

We spent a couple of days in Cromwell, Central Otago.
Some keywords: Sun, wind, walking, wild thyme, remote, views, vineyard, peaceful, rabbits, fun!
Needless to say how amazing the scenery is...
Enjoy it for yourself and have a look at the pictures!

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!!!!