Peking Duck

In my father’s garden a wok is standing on the ground. Don’t ask me why… it’s just there :-) Two “garden ducks” are also living in his garden. A duck-couple that lives there for 6 months each year. Very nice, as long as they don’t invite the whole family to come along. The female likes to take a bath in the Wok, therefore the title: Peking Duck. Wok, China, Peking, Duck, Peking Duck. Funny, etc. Heheh.

Today we went to Christchurch once more. My talk with the third recruiter went OK. Emma already had a telephone interview with the tax guys on her mobile. Next week they will tell her if she has made it to the next hurdle. I got a call from the bus manufacturer from Ashburton, already this Wednesday at 2:00 PM they will interview me. All because of an unsolicited job application! Emma has an interview next week with a photo studio in ChCh, for the job of studio manager, whatever that may be. Oh well, not the same thing as office manager, I guess :-) You can come across some very funny jobs here, if you just walk through the door of some companies and ask for a job.

Anyway, things seem to be getting on the right track. First a well-deserved weekend though... the job of looking for a job can be pretty tiring at times.

Job hunting

Yesterday I dropped by Designline, an Ashburton-based company that manufactures buses. I should be able to put my experience with electro-mechanical stuff to good use there. They have accepted my resume and they would have a look at it. Emma has applied for a job with the IRS (Inland Revenue, the tax department).

Today we went to Christchurch. I have visited two recruiting agencies and Emma just walked through the doors of several companies, offering her CV there. Unlike in Holland that is a pretty common thing to do here :-)

Here, when you apply for a job and a company is actually interested (or should I say: is willing to look at your CV at all), you’ll have to fill out a pretty extensive form, on which you will have to write by hand everything that is already abundantly present on your printed CV. All this, in order to provide someone else with the data which he will probably have to copy into a computer data base again :-) You also have to fill out a medical statement. It seems unusual to me that this should be done beforehand, in Holland they usually only ask for it when you are actually being offered a job. Oh well, we didn’t leave Holland to keep on doing things the same way as we were used to :-)

Emma has dropped off CVs at three different companies. At my visit to the recruiters the first one didn’t like my CV very much. The second one showed a much more positive attitude. He also was already thinking about a particular job I could fit in. Tomorrow I will go to ChCh again to visit a third recruiter. After that we will go cruising through ChCh to look for a nice neighbourhood and for suitable rental houses to live in.

It might not be very wise to go rent a place when we do not have any income yet. On the other hand, it is very important here to have a social network when you are looking for a job, because a lot of them aren’t advertised. If we keep on living a 1.5-hour drive away from ChCh, we will not be building a social network there very soon. A bit of a catch-22, really. Anyway, just looking for houses won’t hurt...

So this is how discounting works

We went shopping for an electric shaver. We came home not with a shaver, but with an iron. We have found a pretty nice store here: Briscoes. Briscoes is a kind of small elite K-mart that sells mainly tableware and small electrical appliances. They know how to do discounts pretty well too.

A top-of the-line iron, original price $150 (€75, US$100), on sale for $99, completed with an extra discount of 40% on all irons, except for those who already had a discount, except the ones that were discounted especially for the sale. Are you still with me? We didn't understand it either, the result however was that we only had to pay $60. These kinds of discounts happen quite often over here, so when you shop around you can obtain your household goods for a pretty cheap price :-) I still didn't get a shaver though…

By the way, the picture is of the sunset we have enjoyed this evening during dinner, just by looking through our dining room window!

Happy birthday to me

Today, September 17 2006, I celebrated that I am already walking on this earth for 37 years now. This milestone is pretty special, because 1) the earth has been able to put up with me for all this time, 2) I am now exactly half the age of my father, 3) it is my first birthday I am celebrating as a New Zealand resident! Hopefully many birthdays will follow :-)

To celebrate my birthday I have had a delicious piece of carrot cake, loaded with heaps of whipped cream (for once it was allowed heheh). In spite of all doom tidings the weather wasn’t bad at all today, so I went with Emma to one of my favourite spots in NZ: the Rakaia Gorge. Only an hour’s drive from Ashburton, too!

During the trip to the gorge our NZ car reached a milestone: 100,000 km on the display! We ended the evening by dining out in an Indian restaurant for NZ$46 in total, not that expensive and very tasty. All in all it was a pretty nice day.


Next week we will start working on the things that because of the jetlag, chatting, bank-searching, exploring the town and its supermarkets, buying some essential stuff, updating the web log etc. we didn’t really get around to do: job hunting! “IT jobs are all over the place in Christchurch!” Or are they…? Only THREE IT job ads in the entire Saturday newspaper??? Hmmm :-/ I think I’ll have to be pretty creative to find something. Oh well… makes it fun doesn’t it. We’ll just have to see… (and call, and email, and write, and even threaten, when necessary ;-)

The truth about banking

After comments of some people that the web log hasn’t been updated for THREE WHOLE DAYS already!!! ;-) we feel obliged to fulfill this craving need, so here’s another update :-)

The past few days we have tried to get rid of our jet lag. We’re on our way but not completely there yet. We have to convince our bodies that night and day have been swapped over. We’ll just have to keep on trying.

Erwin is chatting away trying to catch up for lost time with his father, and Emma is still too drowsy to try to drive on the left side of the road. Tomorrow she’ll try to hold the steering wheel in her own hands.

Our first exploration into the world of NZ has started. We have been visiting some banks to be informed about the local banking system. With most banks you have to pay a fee just to have an account there. For Dutchies like us that is a pretty strange concept. In Holland you don’t have to pay anything for having an account or for ATM transactions. You do have to pay a yearly fee though for having an ATM card, and since everybody has one, you could consider that as a standard fee for the account itself. Anyway, here in NZ you have to pay a fee for having an account, and most banks charge a small fee for every transaction as well. Those small fees can add up very quickly, so it is really worthwhile to shop around to find out the differences between banks and choose the one that is most suitable for the way you are going to use your account.

To celebrate Erwin’s birthday we’ll have a drive through the countryside tomorrow, so we can enjoy the view. His birthday is on Sunday actually, but the weather is supposed to be bad at that time so we'll just celebrate early :-)

We are new Kiwis now!

It has finally happened! We have made it into NZ safe and sound, we received the long-desired stamp in our passport and now we can stay here indefinitely.

The second flight was just as long and tiring as the first one. However, at the end, just before landing, we could enjoy a great view of the NZ Southern Alps. At this time of year they still are nicely covered in snow, too. Soon afterwards we landed at Christchurch International Airport, and there we were!

It was pretty much a waiting game at the airport, because at the immigration counter we needed to receive a “residence permit” stamp instead of a “tourist permit” stamp. After that we had to declare whether or not we had any wood in our suitcases. We did have wood in them, something in every four of them, in fact. So all of them had to be opened. However, finally, walking on real Dutch wooden shoes we entered NZ as new inhabitants. YESSS!!!

My father (who has lived in NZ for 25 years already) and his wife Martha were waiting for us at the other side of the doors, and together we drove to their house in Ashburton at a distance of 80 km (50 mi) from Christchurch. Now we can rest, update the web log, sleep, and after that… go job hunting!

We're halfway through!

This message has been written in Singapore :-)

At 6:30 AM we left Wijchen to go to Schiphol airport. During the trip with the car we enjoyed a GREAT sunrise. Beautiful shards of mist across the meadows, complemented with trees lit by orange light. It seemed like Holland was trying to tell us something like “Hey, I’m beautiful too, you know!”

A few minutes past 8 AM we arrived at Schiphol and to our surprise we could walk straight through to the check-in counter. There was not a single soul standing in front of us! That has never happened to me before in my life, and neither to Emma. We hadn’t secured the zippers on our suitcases yet, because normally we always do that while we are waiting in line for the check-in. This time the lady behind the counter had to wait for us, instead of the other way around. Hah! Sweet revenge at last ;-)

When the check-in was complete we went for a drink with everybody who had come to see us off. We said goodbye, had a weep, went through security, gave a last wave from behind the glass and off we went.

The plane departed a bit behind schedule but it arrived in Singapore on time without any problems. There were 80 films to choose from!!! Oh wow, never seen that before :-) After arrival in Singapore we went to our day hotel and slept for a while, afterwards we took a stroll through China Town and now we are back at the airport waiting for our flight to depart.

To be continued…

Bye!

We’ve had our last meal, the suitcases are packed, we are ready for it! Eeeeeek! It is kind of an eerie feeling… the finality of it all is becoming a bit intimidating. Oh well… that’s the adventure of it… we absolutely don’t know what we are getting ourself into, and that makes it exciting and fun. So we go for it!

Our flight schedule is (all times Dutch times):
Singapore Airlines,
Flight SQ323
9 sep 11:50 d Amsterdam
10 sep 00:30 a Singapore
Flight SQ297
10 sep 15:05 d Singapore
11 sep 00:45 a Christchurch

On September 9 we will be in the departure hall of Schiphol airport between 8:30 and 10:00 AM, for check-in and to hug everyone who feels the need to be hugged by us ;-) At 10:00 AM we will pass through airport security.

See you, mail you, write you, web-log-you, call you, chat you, msn you… we have left the building country!

Do cars go to heaven?

Our car surely hopes so. This morning it passed away to the eternal motorway in the sky (or spoil a nice car’s high expectations and call it a scrap heap).

There it went, our loyal wreck-on-wheels, aged 16, with its outdated Warrant of Fitness, brake-indication-feature, will-the-trunk-open-this-time-or-not-feature, guess-your-speed-feature, pull-the-fuel-door-open-yourself-feature, empty-out-the-glove-compartment-with-just-one-move-feature, and to top it all off, its sophisticated anti-theft-feature: it would take 30 min to cool off before the starter motor would start again.

We will really miss it …

No time to loose!

After moving out of our own house and moving in with Emma’s parents one would expect we would have more time to ourselves, being unemployed and all. Well… forget it :-)

Saturday we went to Arnhem for the NZ-meet, Sunday we went to Zwolle to visit friends of Erwin, Monday we went to Den Bosch to visit Emma’s brother, Tuesday we went to Gorinchem to visit friends of Emma and after that to Oss to visit Erwin’s brother, Wednesday to Aarle-Rixtel to visit a colleague and afterwards again to Den Bosch but this time to visit Emma’s sister. In the mean time we have to arrange our insurance, talk to the customer service of businesses that misunderstood our subscription cancellations (cancellations because of migration seems to be a poorly understood concept for a lot of businesses… Dutch Telecom insists on reconnecting our phone line to our new home… yeah right... in NZ???), as well as arrange extra baggage allowance with Singapore Airlines, where our fax first got lost and later was found again. And a post office that was closed for maintenance, exactly on the day Emma went there to cancel her Postbank account.

Oh yeah, we have to keep this web log up-to-date, too. If it goes on like this I think we will arrive in NZ suffering from burn-out ;-)

Come ye, come ye, NZ-o-philes

Today we went to a “New Zealand meet”. A what?? A gathering of New Zealand addicts, if you wish. On the Internet there are several forums and news groups dedicated to New Zealand, like http://move2nz.com/. A lot of participants of these forums are thinking about migrating to NZ, are in the process of migrating to NZ, or already have migrated to NZ.

A lot can be learnt from exchanging information with each other about how to build a life over there, what kind of documents you need to satisfy the NZ Immigration Service etc. After reading all the posts from everybody it can be nice to meet face to face as well. Enter the NZ meet. Today the Dutch groups organised a meeting, which we attended just seven days before our actual planned departure.

The meeting place was located at Sonsbeek Mansion in the city of Arnhem. Arnhem is pretty close to Wijchen (where we were staying), but there were also people present from the far side of the Netherlands (which, The Netherlands being about the size of Conneticut, isn’t that impressive for our American friends, but for the Dutch, it is)! The mansion was situated within a very beautiful park, and the hall in which we had the meet was very nice too.

I must say it is a lot of fun to be able to just talk about NZ the whole day without people dozing off on me. Today I have learnt some new stuff about looking for jobs in NZ, and I have met a few people I didn’t meet met yet at previous “NZ meets”. We also met some people who are planning to move to the city of Christchurch, just like we are. It would be fun meeting them all in NZ after everyone has finished migrating, to see how everybody is doing.