The keys have arrived

The problem of having no keys to the garage is solved. Remember that I wasn’t able to reach our property rent shop because they absolutely refused to call us back? Well, 5 weeks had passed since then and I still didn’t have the keys to the garage. So I called again. Again the agent was busy on the phone talking to someone else, and again I was offered to leave a voicemail. Just not to be called back? No thank you.

I was leaning towards writing them a spicy letter about this, but over here it is wise to only do that as a very last resort. Keeping the relationship good is very important here, becoming angry or taking legal steps just gets you nowhere. Not in the long run, anyway. So before I wrote the letter I went and paid them a personal visit.

They seemed to be very glad to see me. So, how is it going? Do you like living in the house? Nice spot, yes indeed! Oh you needed the keys to the garage didn’t you? Yes we’ve had them lying here for four weeks already. Here you are. Do you need some extra keys of the front door, we found those too (no thank you, we already had enough copies made ourselves). Voice mail? Well, no, not that I know of… ????!!!!! OK, let’s just say their telephone switchboard is broken very badly ;-)

Kiwis are not really telephone people. Emma notices that on the job too. When a customer calls them with a request, and after some searching they are not able to fulfil that request, Emma is blandly being told “don’t call back”. It is not a matter of forgetting to call back, it is a matter of choosing not to. Customer service apparently does not include calling someone.

If you want to get anything done over here you have to keep on calling yourself, and when that doesn’t work, pay a visit in person, several times if you have to. For some reason they only help you when you are actually standing next to them, otherwise you are simply being ignored. Oh well, we have the keys to the garage now, which was the whole point of the exercise :-)

Classic car parade

Today a car dealer had organised a classic car parade. Great advertisement for his business, but also very nice to watch. Everyone who owned a classic car could join in. And they did! At least 150 cars took part in the parade along a route through Christchurch. They happened to come through our street as well!

By the time the cars were due to arrive here the street started to fill up with spectators. We didn’t have to go anywhere to watch it though; we were able to see the spectacle from our veranda, oh sweet indulgence ;-) The weather provided a nice sunny backdrop as well, so all in all it was an afternoon well spent.

Conversation down the drain

Well, how to explain. Everyone has their share of stupidity at times, don’t they. Right? RIGHT??? To cut a long story short, my cell phone fell in the loo this week. Sure, go ahead and laugh. My lovely wife Emma did the same. A bit of sympathy for her embarrassed husband is something too hard to fork out apparently :-) My colleague comforted me at least by telling me that this happened to a lot of people before. Not that I know any of them, BTW… :-)

Anyway, how on earth do I manage to land my mobile in the toilet? Easy enough. Usually the thing is attached to my belt. As I walked into the restroom and performed an agile turn-around action I heard a sudden splash. When I looked into the toilet bowl I saw my heavily gurgling mobile crying for help. A quick mobile grabbing action could not prevent the display to fill up halfway with water.

At least I could entertain myself now during the act of sitting on the toilet, a kind of dry-your-cellphone-while-you-are-draining. The extended toilet visit also gave me the opportunity to ponder about what would have happened if it had fallen in after… oh well never mind.

In spite of all good care the dried mobile still wasn’t giving any sign of life. I was preparing myself mentally to part with it and to get a new one. Just to be sure I waited a few days to let it dry up on the inside too. And whaddaya know… after a few days it worked like a charm again! Even the staining on the display is disappearing. Unbelievable! People, when you want to buy a water-resistant mobile… Siemens! :-)

Surfin' NZ

We are living here on a nice quiet spot near the river, but we also live only a 5 minutes drive from the beach. We didn’t make use of that yet (I think it still has to sink in), but today we finally went to the beach to have a stroll.

In NZ you don’t go to the beach to bake in the sun all day. The hole in the ozone layer makes that impossible. Unlike in Holland everybody here is aware of the dangers of sunbathing, and they comply with the rule to stay out of the sun. You don’t see Kiwis sitting in the sun that much, and when they do, they never sit there for long. The sun is really burning on your skin here so you really notice when it is time to go sit in the shade.

As a result the beach is not filled with sunbathers. There are people swimming, surfing, kartsailing, kitesurfing, etc. Enough activity going on, although you cannot say it is crowded on the beach: there is at least 20m/65ft of space between you and the next stroller, if not more. And compared to other beaches of NZ the Christchurch beach is already a busy beach; if you’d take a walk on the beach of Ashburton you would be hard pressed to spot anybody at all.

Christchurch has a real pier too, and below it a local artist was busy creating a work of art in the sand. Looked nice for as long as it lasted, because before long the high tide finished off the artwork before it was even finished :-)

I think we can be found chilling here more often in the near future.

Waitangi day

February 6 is a public holiday in NZ. On that day is celebrated how the state of NZ came to be, because on February 6 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi has been signed. During that period both England and France were planning to colonize NZ. The original inhabitants, the Maori, were more afraid of the French than of the English, so they asked the English for protection, in exchange for sovereignty. England accepted, and thus NZ has become the only colony ever to sign a treaty with the English, all the other colonies were just bluntly taken. NZ does not even have a constitution; the treaty is the document on which the country of NZ is founded.

The treaty was made up and signed in two versions: the Maori version and the English version. Both versions are not identical though, so already from the day the treaty was signed the two parties have been bickering over which version is more valid, and what the text actually means. And I must say, in the past the English didn’t really care if there was a treaty, they did with the land and its people as they saw fit. They have committed horrible crimes against the Maori. During the last few decades there has been a change for the better though, and the current NZ government really tries to come to a good solution and to right the wrongs from the past.

Of course some Maori think they can never be compensated enough, while others think that all the bickering has gone on far too long, that we have the future to worry about, and we have to try to make the best of it; we are all living here now and nothing is going to change that anyway. And then there are some European Kiwis who think that the Maori are already being over-compensated and over-favoured.

Therefore Waitangy day is a bit of a celebration with mixed emotions. One person celebrates the founding of NZ as we know it, the other sees the day as the ultimate day to protest against the government. This year, for the first time ever, the day was really a celebration for Kiwi and Maori alike, celebrating the fact that they are all living together in this beautiful country. Hopefully it will stay that way.

Whatever happens, it is a day off too and to me those are always welcome :-)

48

My molar teeth have the pleasant habit to slowly die on me once they have had a filling. After they have died they become infected. Not very nice. This time one of my wisdom teeth had taken its turn to pass away. So it had to go. I only would have to go to the dentist to have it pulled out, right? Simple as that. Well, not really. I, of course, had to be a special case.

It turned out that the nerve in my jaw was running very close to the root ending of my wisdom tooth. If, during pulling, the tooth would break, the dentist would be forced to drill out the remains of the root. That would increase the chance of nerve damage. If the nerve would be damaged, I would end up with a permanent anaesthetic of my jaw and my tongue. Thab woulb be nob sow hamby :-)

The solution would be to get the tooth pulled by an oral surgeon. Even though the oral surgeon would be a lot more expensive (at least NZ$700, more than any medical insurance will cover here), the chance of having my jaw nerve damaged was not a very nice prospect, so I decided to get it done by an oral surgeon regardless of the cost.

Called the surgeon’s office. No appointment possible until the first of March. Not good. I already was taking antibiotics to get the infection under control, but having to continue this for a full month didn’t look very appealing or wise. Even more so because the infection did hurt a lot, and kept on doing so, even with the antibiotics.

When I called my dentist last Friday for the third round of antibiotics he had had enough. He called some mates of him to speed things up. It turned out that one of his mates was an Indian dentist of about 40 years old. He had been a full-blown oral surgeon in India; however, his education and work experience there weren’t recognized here in NZ (which is REALLY stupid. The NZ government is shouting all over the place that they have a shortage of skilled workers. Once the skilled workers arrive in NZ they have to re-do their complete education…). He had just finished his NZ dentist education, so now he was working as a dentist, but with all his surgeon experience. Therefore this guy was perfectly capable to remove my wisdom tooth without any problem. He could see me on Monday already.

I have never met such a nice, funny and yet very skilled person. He removed the wisdom tooth without any cutting (in Holland a Dutch oral surgeon already had removed my other wisdom tooth, and the procedure turned into a bloodbath because the tooth was so brittle and had to be cut out. Better tooth this time, or a better surgeon??). In 10 minutes the whole procedure was over and done with… for NZ$250 instead of $700. Finally I don’t have to stick to liquid food anymore!

And here it is: