Christmas in the park

While all of the Netherlands is still busy preparing for the Dutch national celebration of Sinterklaas at December 5 (did you know that Santa Claus was derived from the Dutch early migrants in New York who were celebrating Sinte Klaas amongst each other?), in New Zealand everybody is preparing themselves for Christmas. A good way to get in the mood is to visit the free annual event called Christmas In The Park. This year it was held pretty early, already at November 25.

CITP is held in Hagley Park, the central park of Christchurch. On a large field a stage is built up where between 7:45 and 10:15 PM the cream of the NZ crop of singers and comedians is performing live, only to be topped off by a visit of Santa Claus himself and a finale with fantastic fireworks.

Already from 3 PM many people are enjoying themselves picnicking together on the field. When the clock approaches 6 PM the field really starts to fill up. The event is popular with people from all ages, whole families including fathers, mothers, grannies and grandsons are having a great time together. 120,000 People were expected to show up this year. Emma and I went to see the last half hour of the event. I couldn’t see if the number of visitors was indeed that large, it was pretty crowded though. There was a great atmosphere and the fireworks were nothing short of breathtaking (quite literally, even). We had so much fun that we are planning to see the event in its entirety next year. If we still live near Christchurch by then, that is :-)

OUR icebergs!!!

I don’t know if you’ve heard this already, but for the first time in 75 years icebergs are floating off the NZ south coast. The icebergs have travelled from the South Pole via Australia to NZ. Standing at the NZ south shore you should be able to see them through binoculars.

A whole tourist industry that flies the tourists over to the ice bergs to have a look for a meagre NZ$500 has been set up. All heaps of fun of course. However, Australia doesn’t wholeheartedly agree.

You see, the structures have floated past Australia first, so they are Australian icebergs!!! :-) Some Australian wise guys have even flown by helicopter all the way from Ozzie to the icebergs and have planted the Australian flag on it. Some pretty unique individuals are living in OZ, if you ask me…

Reunited

Because the container was due to arrive in Ashburton Friday morning at 9:00 AM, I already went there Thursday night to sleep “en famille”. That way I could spend the whole Friday on moving. For this one occasion not having a job came in pretty handy :-)

At 9:30 the container arrived on a big truck. Chained up the container was skilfully put on the ground. I was assigned to check the unloaded goods against the inventory list, to make sure everything had arrived in good order. All the items that the MAF wanted to check (our garden furniture, the Christmas decorations because they wanted to make sure there were no pine cones in there, a Chinese bamboo umbrella and a few Dutch Maggi stock blocks) were put aside. The MAF requires that this be put aside on a sheet of plastic or on a slab of concrete, so it won’t contaminate the environment. To comply, the movers first put all the boxes on the grass, and when the time came that the MAF was due to arrive they spread out a large sheet of plastic and moved the stuff over to the plastic :-/

After some time it became pretty clear that the NZ movers weren’t as good in stacking boxes as their Dutch colleagues are, because heavy boxes were stacked on top of fragile stuff without hesitation. They also stacked the boxes in a way that it was never going to fit in my father’s big enough garage. Seeing where this was heading my father started to interfere with the process. I’m glad he did, because after about three hours the job was done with everything fitting perfectly :-)

At 11:30 the MAF officer came to check out our suspect boxes. Everything was in good order, well-cleaned, no problem at all. He was very glad we only brought one box with Christmas decorations. He told us that American migrants usually take twenty bloody boxes of Christmas decorations with them… :-) He gave the movers a compliment that they really knew how to comply with the rules, everything placed on plastic and all. Yeah right… ;-)

I must say it was a strange experience to see our own belongings here in NZ. We have lived here without them for the last two months and we didn’t really miss them that much, actually. Our furniture doesn’t belong with my NZ experience; it belongs to my memories of NL. My brain had some difficulty flipping that switch. Nevertheless I am very happy to have our own computer, my guitar, the DVD/CD player and some extra clothes and books handy again. Emma is very happy to be reunited with her sandals and her own tailor-made pillow. The rest will remain in the garage for now, because to put it all into our one room in Christchurch would cram up the place, kinda… :-)

Appointment... not

It seems to be a looong long way from the port of Christchurch to NZ Van Lines (the moving company) in Christchurch, because it has taken a full two weeks before our stuff has arrived there and they are able to deliver the container to Ashburton. But, tomorrow Friday 10 November it is finally going to happen.

NZ Van Lines will transfer the contents of the container into a truck at 9:30 AM. During that procedure also the MAF will check out the stuff they want to see. At about 11:00 they will depart from Christchurch, to arrive in Ashburton at about 12:15. I have asked if I would be allowed to attend the MAF check, and they agreed. After the check I then can follow the container truck to Ashburton in our own car. Good.

This afternoon I called NZ Van Lines to ask them if everything was still going as planned. Boy am I glad I did. In their boundless wisdom they have decided not to transfer the container’s contents, but to drive it to Ashburton directly. At 9:00 AM they will be due to arrive in Ashburton and the MAF will then perform the check over there, during unloading. Oh yeah, they should have told me, that’s right. Oh well, they forgot. Sorry mate. Rigggghhhhhtttt.... if I hadn’t called I would have been at their office in Christchurch at 9:30 tomorrow, while the container actually already would have had arrived in Ashburton, at a 1.5 hour driving distance. Not particularly handy, if you ask me…

This is something Dutch people really have to get used to over here: appointments are not set in stone. For example, it often happens that if you take half a day off work because a craftsman (plumber, electrician, etc.) is coming to do work in your house, he has rescheduled the appointment without notifying you, so you are sitting there at home waiting for nothing, after which you can take another half day off for the rescheduled appointment to take place. Oh well, we’ll just have to learn to live with that I guess :-)