The good, the bad and the ugly

So, we have had sixteen months of living in a foreign country. Which sounds a bit strange as they speak the same language and have the same queen as us, but actually it’s a lot more foreign than we gave it credit for before coming over here.

By which I mean the customs are different, the social life is different, the climate is different, the seasons are the wrong way round, the shops are different, they work in kilometres instead of miles, their computer keyboards are laid out in the American way, but their spelling is the same as English so you have to keep changing the spellings and the telly is pants!

New Zealand isn’t the promised land, it does have crime, it does have illness and is hit by financial crashes, but in a lot of ways it is kind of isolated from the rest of the world (and not just geographically).

Kiwis are kind of breed of their own. From what I can gather, they are mostly hard working, very outdoorsy sort of people that tend to socialise a lot more at people’s houses than pubs (there aren’t really “British” style pubs out here), believe that if you’re not dead you’re “bludging” time off work, and are generally quite friendly and welcoming, but quite hard to get to know “properly” and become real friends with. The New Zealand way seems to be work hard, play harder.

There is a wealth of history even though New Zealand as we know it now is a baby in terms of established countries. But it's quite a historic country in a lot of ways. It was the first country to give women the vote; it was the first country in the British Empire to have a female mayor; it was the first country in the world to introduce the 8 hour working day; it was the first country to become nuclear free. There are many other firsts, and many of them were positive.

Like many other "empire" countries, the invaders or colonisers as they would have preferred to be called made a lot of mistakes. And that still causes issues now. There are many arguments that will probably go on for many decades to come, about the abuse of the established Maori population's rights as they see it. And there are wrongs on both sides of the story, but for such a young country I think that it has come a long way in resolving things, but still has a long way to go.

The green message is in some ways extremely evident, but in other ways sadly lacking. Recycling (I believe) is mandatory in most of new zealand, with recycling being free and landfill waste being paid for. You get X amount of rubbish stickers when you make your rates payment each quarter and any other you require after that are $2.50 each per 5kg bag. The idea being that the more you recycle the less likely it is that you will need to be excess rubbish stickers. There are also subsidies available for composting or mulching systems.

A major paint manufacturer out here has some serious green credentials, so it's not just dinky out of the way one man band job that no one's ever heard of; there are big campaigns to "buy kiwi" to support NZ businesses as well as reducing the carbon footprint.

But the insulation regulations are way lower that we would expect, double glazing is almost non existant on the North Island and top of the South Island (when you get further down the South Island it starts to get very nippy) so you can find it there.

The use of solar, hydro, wind and geothermal power is much lower than I would have thought it would be considering that New Zealand is in the "ring of fire", is surrounded on all sides by sea as well as having many many lakes and rivers, and gets way more sunshine that many other countries (even in the winter it's not 'cold' here - here meaning the east coast), there are bits of nz that get very cold in winter!

When I win the lotto I will put some money into developing these things!!

The deputy manager of our house

Well folks, I completely neglected to tell you about the newest addition to our household, our new kitten Mia. A friends cat had an unplanned pregnancy and as we have been looking for a new mog for Billy to be friends with since next door moved out taking their cat Tiger (Billy's best mate) with them, as he has been a right clingy sod.

So we said that we would take one of the little balls of fluff from Sulle (our friend). So Christmas Eve, Mia arrived with a little gift tag on her collar and she has been impossibly cute ever since. And she knows it. I don't think she is necessarily the brightest candle in the box, but she's so endearing you can't help but love her on sight.

Having done his "I'm boss cat, don't mess with me" bit, Billy has now accepted her as his slightly eccentric surrogate sister and she loves using him as her own personal climbing frame. She has absolutely no fear, is an intrepid explorer, jumps from heights with no safety net and has a fascination with chewing feet. And her own tail. It follows her. It's a conspiracy don't cha know?

Hatches, matches and dispatches

2008 was a strange year. A first year of settling in, missing home, going through all the special dates - birthdays, weddings, engagements, anniversary, funerals. They say that when you are grieving you have to go through a year - all the special dates, before things start to get easier, and I think it's kind of the same when you move to the other side of the world!


It's a strange thing, moving so far away, because you can still keep in touch via email and messenger, so you're kind of "in on the joke", but you're not there, at silly o clock in the morning contemplating the merits of self cleaning portaloos, or listen to rants about the Weimar Republic (Ray!), or who to make up a good rumour about ("never let the truth get in the way of a good rumour" - can't remember what rule number that is in Blews constitution - anyone??).

So last year was kind of busy on the hatches, matches and dispatches front: Maggie & Neil got engaged, then maggie got pregnant; Lee & Nicky got married; Kylie & Darren got engaged and Kylie is pregnant; Claire & Rich got engaged, then Claire got pregnant (sensing a theme here?) and then they got married; Jodie & Richard are having their second baby in March time; Lorraine is having her second baby in March time; Andy & Tamar got engaged; Jane & Mark got engaged and are getting married this year; Katherine and Marc are having their first baby in July (I think). I don't think I've missed anyone out. Maggie and Neil welcomed a baby boy into the world last week.

And sadly we said goodbye to some good friends, Malcolm and Colin, who both put up the bravest of fights over a long period of time. And other friends lost relatives as well so although we didn't know them personally, it is always hard as we want to be there for our friends in the sad times. We may not be able to provide hugs in person, but there is always lots of love and best wishes travelling down the phone and modem lines.

I also know that a few of our friends are doing battle health wise, so our thoughts are with you too.

However great phone, email and messenger are, there's nothing quite like celebrating or commiserating with your friends in person, but we think of you all regularly and you are very much in our hearts.

I had some bad news on the job front - having been told just before Christmas that I would get taken on after christmas (I was temping). I then had my hours halved in January, found out that they were looking for someone minimum wage and were interviewing people without telling me. Then had a morning off due to a migrane and got phoned and told not to come in the next day as they had found someone they could pay less. So needless to say, having worked my arse of for them for nearly two months and got them out of the poo, I am somewhat pissed off!

So I'm at home at the moment, trying to keep myself amused and not feel like a failure. It wouldn't bug me so much if it was because of the recession, but it's not, they're just being tight. Grr.

Well, the snow back home looks lovely - well, if you don't have to get anywhere that is. When we were living in Kirkby we often got snow in the winter and at the first flake of snow the entire transport network grinds to a halt! Aah Kirkby - I NEVER HAVE TO GO BACK THERE AGAIN!!!!!! (sorry, just needed to get that off my chest!)

I know you're all envious of the heat, but don't be too jealous, because with the heat, come severe fire warnings - this is a country that massively relies on it's forestry industry, and prides itself on having lots of lush wooded areas and lots of scrub in between - perfect fire transportation. Two weeks ago a fire started on the Mahia Peninsula (about an hour and a half from Gisborne), and the fire service (mainly volunteers I hasten to add) are still working their bums off to try and stop it flaring up again.

Having said that, no one has been hurt as a result of the fire at Mahia and only two houses (I believe) were destroyed, so that was a blessing. Sadly, Australia has a massive bush fire at the moment and they are really struggling, so we can be very grateful that it is a relatively enclosed area at Mahia (they are pretty strict about putting lots of fire breaks in).

I think that oz is maybe a better place to live if you're going to live somewhere hot, as they all have air conditioning, where as relatively few homes here do. 30+ degrees is not so great when you're trying to get to sleep!

Speaking of sun, the attitude of a lot of people here to the sun never ceases to amaze me, consider that there is a bloody great big hole in the ozone layer above New Zealand. Having had applying suncream drummed in to me from a young age (living in Britain, which less face it gets about two hot days a year these days), it's crazy to me to not wear suncream and cover up when it's that hot. But plenty of locals (who are more than old enough to know better) still sun worship or don't take care in the sun. One of the traffic controllers at Dave's work got third degree burns as he was out in the sun all day and didn't apply suncream or use a hat, or cover up or stand under the shade provided (all of which the company pays for). And they wonder why New Zealand has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world??? Crazy