The new job works out pretty well

Since 3 weeks now I am working for Dynamic Controls and I have to say: I like it a lot. Great team, great job. Even two other Dutchies work for the company :-) Which is not so surprising, actually. People told me that in Christchurch 14% of the population is Dutch or of Dutch descent (in the rest of NZ that percentage is 7%).

As a technical writer I have to write technical manuals. I am the technical writer of the company, so they have given me a lot of freedom to manage things the way I want. They do trust me with a lot of responsibility that way, which is very nice.

When they hired me they were afraid at first that my English would not be good enough to write English manuals, but since then it has become clear that their manuals the way they are now contain far too complicated English to be well understood by people who do not speak English as their native language (which is 90% of their European market). To solve this, they will probably switch over to Simplified English, an international aviation language standard that has to ensure that the aviation manuals are not misunderstood globally.

Misunderstandings of technical manuals can have serious consequences. In a nuclear power plant in China a sign read “turn handle 1½ times”. The engineer thought he had to turn the handle one half times: 0.5 instead of 1.5. The result was a lot of damage to the power plant. So who’s to blame? A bad reader or a bad writer? Introducing the simple language standard will be left completely up to me, so that is quite a nice challenge to be working on.

Dynamic Controls is situated on the exact opposite side of Christchurch of where we live at the moment. Not particularly handy. However, Emma’s workplace is just down the street from mine! Every day we can drive to work together. The only drawback to that is, that if one of us is allowed to leave work early (especially Emma gets that a lot) it will be a waiting game until the other one finishes too. Oh well, we don’t have to buy a second car this way. And driving together is enjoyable as well.

By the skin of our teeth

In Holland we were insured five times over. Health insurance, house contents insurance, anti-burglar strips fitted on the door, smoke detectors in the house, even a fire extinguisher on every floor of the house.

So we arrive in NZ. So we rent a new home. Internet not connected yet, so no easy comparison of contents insurance possible. So I’ll wait with that until we are reconnected. Also I have had no time yet to get some fire extinguishers here. But oh well, what’s just one single week? And so it happens…

For a few days we had someone staying with us. On a Saturday morning she went to town. We stayed at home. There was a bit of a strange smell in the kitchen, but we couldn’t really make out what it was. We had just bought a brand new fridge (for the first time in our lives), so I thought it was still fuming out some factory oil or something.

At noon we wanted to get a little nap. The smell still was present. We almost had fallen asleep, however, Emma wasn’t really at ease yet. Once more she went to search for the smell’s origin. It turned out to be the room of our houseguest, because she had forgotten to turn off her electric blanket!

I turned off the blanket and almost walked away, but just to be certain I looked underneath the blankets too. I couldn’t believe my eyes! The electric blanket had charred completely, taking with it two duvets, a woollen underlay, a cotton underlay, and the foam mattress!! Because some fresh oxygen could reach the smouldering mess now, it immediately started to smoke badly (and yellow??). “Emma! This has to go outside!! NOW!!!” Within 10 seconds the whole shebang lay in the back yard.


Boy oh boy. The charring had almost reached the carpet underneath the mattress, and it had almost reached the surface of the topmost duvet too. If Emma had discovered it two minutes later it would have started to really burn. With the NZ house building style (a lot of wood) the whole house would have burnt down. All that in the one week of our whole life that we didn’t have insurance. We did come to NZ to build ourselves a new life, but that new wasn’t the idea, really... :-)

Man, did this event scare us. Just to think about what could have happened, even more so if we already would have fallen asleep… We were “lucky” beyond imagination. We are very grateful for the outcome.

OK, it is a pity about the burned stuff, but that’s all it is: stuff. And not even a lot of stuff at that. No one has been hurt, which is the most important thing of all! Thinking about it, makes me realize that life is one big collection of events that just barely go right… I think I have destroyed four pans in my life by burning food in them beyond recognition, once I came home from work and the stove was still on with nothing on it, on several occasions Emma has left the iron on at full heat for the whole day (now we have one that shuts down automatically), on Gloucester Street (the room we lived in for the previous two months) I myself have left the blanket on for a whole day. Stupid stupid stupid, but it happens… it just does.

Immediately I arranged for the first house contents insurance I could lay my hands on. The best way to make sure nothing bad happens to you is to be insured for it anyway… just like taking a tyre repair kit with you ensures that you will not have a flat tyre at all ;-)

The NZ way of putting someone on hold

When you are renting a property in Holland, the house is completely empty when you move in. The first things you will be doing is lay down carpet, hang drapes, put wallpaper on the walls and paint the doors and framework of the house to your own taste. Not so in NZ. In NZ you rent a house including carpet, drapes and electric stove. You are not allowed to adjust anything to your own taste; you are not even allowed to put a nail into the wall. The landlord is responsible for doing all that. If you are lucky, the carpet is somewhat to your liking and not very dirty. If not, you’ll just have to live with it, or rent another house.

Our little rental home has a few problems of its own: a few net curtains are torn, there is something wrong with the electrical wiring, there is no key to the garage door, one window cannot be locked and a large bin with garbage of the previous tenants is still standing in the garden. Our agent from the property rent shop promised us before we signed the rental agreement that all of that would be fixed by them shortly. However, we haven’t noticed any change thus far, so I called the agent to find out what’s up.

I don’t know if you ever have gotten annoyed when someone puts you on hold for a long time, well, with the rent shop you don’t have to worry about that because you will never be put on hold. If the agents are talking to someone else on the phone (which is almost always the case), you will be automatically transferred to their voicemail. That is very efficient, because you can leave a message so they can call you back. The only problem is, they never do.

During the last week I have called the rent shop about 15 times. On the voice mail I have left my home phone number, my work phone number and my mobile phone number, however, they just do NOT call me back. Each and every time I call, the receptionist tells me very politely that I can leave a message if I want to. Well, not really… put me on hold, PLEASE put me on hold…

A rowing highway

So we thought we would be living in a quiet neighborhood? Well… forget it! At about 500m/1500ft distance the Christchurch kayaking club is located. The number of kayaks on this small piece of Avon is therefore pretty high. That in itself isn’t bad, it is even pretty relaxing to watch. However, there are also kayak-training sessions.

During those training sessions a trainer is biking along the river, shouting instructions to the kayakers through a megaphone. Inside our house with single glazing that can be heard very well, especially when the windows are open :-)

When of all times is the best time to train? Of course, Saturday morning at 7:00 AM!!! We don’t wake up anymore by blazing traffic; we wake up by blazing trainers. Oh well. At first I was a bit annoyed, but I have gotten used to it now, up to a point that I would miss it when they would stop doing it. Last week even a Canadian canoe with 20 people inside came floating past. All that can be seen just from inside our living room :-)


For as long as our lease of this house runs, I think we will be enjoying ourselves tremendously here!

Moving house

In NZ not only New Year’s Day is a bank holiday, January 2 is one as well. That extra free day came in really handy this time, because on January 3 we would receive the keys to the new house, so we have spent the day before packing. We only had to pack up one single room, but boy oh boy, it is just amazing how many stuff you are able to stuff in there if you want to ;-)

January 3 we used to clean up the new house and to receive the Telecom and electricity technicians to connect the wiring. Before connecting anything the electrician asked me if had put any boxes on top of the stove. Of course I hadn’t, silly! Well, he said, you would be surprised how many people do this, and forget to check whether the stove is off, too! As soon as the electricity is turned on, the house fills up with a bit of a strange smell…. ;-)

After the house was in order, the time had come to pick up all the stuff that had been waiting patiently in Ashburton. January 4 at 5 PM I rented a truck of 22 m3 / 29 yrd3 / 775 ft3. At the rental company they asked me whether or not I had ever driven such a thing before. They told me extensively how much money every dent would cost me. Apparently they didn’t trust me very much ;-) I didn’t foresee too much problems, as I had already driven a small truck before. It still took me a while to get used to the thing though… especially the gearbox was pretty cumbersome to use.

From the parking lot of the rental company I drove to Ashburton while Emma stayed behind in Christchurch to do some extra cleaning in the new house. Thursday evening and Friday morning I loaded up the truck together with my father and Martha. That turned out to be quite a job with only three people. Not even everything fitted inside. We made sure all the big stuff was loaded in the truck so we can pick up the rest bit by bit every time we visit Ashburton.

On the way back I had the feeling the truck was pretty heavily loaded. It was swaying very slowly from left to right (unlike the day before, when the movements were much more sudden). At times I was afraid it would topple over in the road bends, so I drove very cautiously through those. Oh well, I have made it in one piece, and so did the contents of the truck ;-) That was a big relief, because some parts of the road were really nasty. For example the Rakaia bridge, a narrow 2-lane bridge of 2km/1.3mi length, where the lanes were barely wider than the truck itself. As other trucks started to approach me from the opposite side cold sweat started to drip down my neck :-)

In ChCh our Hungarian flatmate helped us unload, together with a Dutch fellow migrant we had already met in NL through a Dutch New Zealand forum.

The last box...

At 5 PM, just in time, we were ready to return the truck. All the way I had driven without any damage, however, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings, because on the parking lot of the rental company…. everything went OK too. Without even the smallest scratch I returned the truck and received back the complete bond.

Picked up the last stuff from our old room, made the bed (well, bed... the mattress on the floor) in our new bedroom, crashed down on the bed and dozed off. The first night in our new rustic housey on the riverside.

Happy New Year!

To celebrate the end of this year a large party was held in the central square of Christchurch. At the end there would be a large firework display from the top of one of the surrounding bank buildings. Since we had loved CITP so much, we were determined to be present at this event from the beginning. However, the weather wasn’t really motivating… bleak and chilly.

Summer really has been a slow slow starter this year. When Kiwis find out we have just recently migrated, they even apologise to us about the weather, ensuring us that this is the “worst summer EVER” and that “this has never happened before.” Let’s just blame it on the icebergs… :-)

Anyway, because of the cold weather we weren’t really in the mood to spend a whole evening outside on a square, so we decided to wait until 11:30 PM to go and enjoy only the fireworks. Unlike in Holland, it is forbidden here to light your own fireworks on New Year’s Eve. That is only allowed on November 5, Guy Fawke’s Day, the day when they celebrate that Guy Fawke tried to blow up the English houses of parliament in 1605. Nowadays that would be considered an act of terrorism, but back then it apparently was decided a deed of heroism. Two whole weeks before November 5 it has been noisy in the streets of Christchurch because of people lighting their own fireworks, but on New Year’s Eve of all eves it is not allowed. Oh well, off to the square then… :-)

When we arrived at the square it wasn’t really crowded there. It was busy enough, but far from packed. Looking at the stage we were very glad we didn’t show up earlier: some pretty heavy rock music was blasting off it. Great for the people who like that kind of music, but in my opinion not really suited for a celebration for all ages. A small crowd had gathered in front of the stage, but the vast majority of the people clearly were only interested in the upcoming fireworks. All this created a bit of a strange atmosphere on the square. But oh well, we had gotten hold of a nice spot with good visibility, and the fire works were again very nice, although I must say that I found the fireworks at CITP just a tad nicer. After the fireworks display we immediately went home again. More people apparently had that in mind: the crowd was really draining out of the square ;-)

After we arrived home we sent a few text messages to wish our family a happy new year (half a day early for Holland heheh) and we slipped into bed to have a belated good night’s sleep.