*With apologies to Alistair Cooke
Kia Ora again from the southern hemisphere. Once more to the keyboard, exactly one month to the day (by sheer chance!)
Well what has been happening? Firstly some little snippets about NZ. One thing that’s very evident to incomers to NZ is the genuine willingness to help that the Kiwi nation fosters. An article in the paper the other day was entitled something like ‘Not My Problem’ and it highlighted the difference between NZ & OZ when it came to attitude and helpfulness. The example given was of a woman arriving late at the wrong hotel for an important conference. She was distraught and in need of help. The OZ receptionist’s attitude was ‘not my problem’ and the observation was made that if this had happened in NZ the woman would have been comforted, taken to the correct location and handed over to someone there to further assist her. This was an attempt to highlight the differing attitudes and the author of the article ended with a comment similar to ‘it’s probably due to the Oz ancestors having a predilection to stealing things whilst NZ ones don’t’, (naughty).
Another ‘bit’ in the paper caught my eye, and it typified the fun attitude of the kiwis. Recently the decommissioned frigate, Wellington, was deliberately sunk off the south coast of the North Island as a diving attraction, and as a living reef and home to marine life.[a link for anyone interested] What isn’t so evident is that, as well as 3000 tonnes of warship, 24 bottles of ale have been stashed inside the ship ‘bow to stern’ by Bennetts Brewery. Any diver who is lucky enough to find one and returns it to the brewery will receive 24 bottles as a reward. Only two have been found so far (I just thought this was worth mentioning).
So, on to us.. What has been happening? Well, we submitted an expression of interest (EOI) to the immigration service regarding getting permanent residency and have been selected from the pool last Wednesday. Its just a preliminary first step towards being allowed to remain in NZ indefinitely. Quite a few more hoops need to be jumped through before anything is definite, so we will keep our fingers crossed. The NZ immigration service is called the Department of Labour in NZ and on a related note, we were approached by them to be a case study for the immigration website and some road shows up and coming in Dublin and Glasgow. What the heck, I thought, why not. A quick sit down and a chat to a camera?? No, a film crew arrived at the house, once again, very nice lads, one kiwi and one English (now that didn’t necessarily make him a bad person!). During the filming, I kept pointing out that Scotland had just beaten England at Murrayfield!!). I now hunt down English people here just to remind them. They filmed us in various scenarios, looking at the view, enjoying a glass of wine and just getting on with life. Then we had the interview part. I have to say at the outset that Adam had made it very clear he was having none of it and Liz was more than a little reluctant and decided to say nothing..(Ha!) Being a gregarious lot, naturally the wine and beer was opened and consumed. Well, a couple of glasses of wine and Liz was on a roll, they eventually ran out of tape and the crew left sometime after nine o’clock having been fed and watered, promising to return, with partners for a barbeque once I got things set up (that’s a whole other training issue!). As part of the process, Liz and I are to be filmed enjoying a glass of wine in a pub or café one evening and walking around the city enjoying what it has to offer. All this activity will eventually be cut down to three, two-minute films on their website, under the headings of ‘Work, Live and Play’. I’ll keep you all updated with website links once the ‘stuff’ is online.
Things are taking shape in the house, we are awaiting the arrival of our deck furniture as I type this. Liz is hard at work turning the house into a lovely home that we can enjoy and entertain in. I have to say that we are currently looking at heating, insulation and such related things, as we experienced our first visit from the type of weather that hangs around Antarctica the other day and not having the luxury of double glazing and central heating, it came as a bit of a shock (especially first thing in the morning!).
Adam is happily reunited with his ‘stuff’ and is now able to update his CV and, now that we are settled, able to have a serious look for work.
We are settling in well here and beginning to make friends, getting invites and going to barbeques. Life is good and getting better… However, I can’t get the TVs to work, and I think the big aerial on the roof has been tweaked to allow for Sky digital, oh well, I’ll just have to get Sky installed…
