Advertisement
Published: April 24th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Hmmmm...spit or swallow..
Jo-Ann samples Ata Rangi's finest! Well, I can’t believe it’s been almost 5 weeks since our last update to you all. Apologies for the radio silence but things have been fairly quiet as we put everything into finding work and somewhere to live - there really wasn’t much to update on!
On those subjects, work and housing that is, we have had some success at last! Jo-Ann started work 2 weeks ago working for First New Zealand Capital - they’re stockbrokers/fund managers - on an initial 8 week contract. They’re testing the water to see if its viable to expand their team so if it works out it could turn into a permanent role, if she wants it, of course…..
I start on Tuesday 26th as a Project Manager at the Bank of New Zealand. It’s based in the Channel & Process Optimisation division (quality jargon-tastic name!) and it sounds like a pretty challenging role. Although its still financial services, I’m looking forward to learning about banking and it’ll be a welcome change from pensions!
The home-hunting has proved far more challenging - partly due to the massive amount of rental properties available in Wellington, the competition for the best ones and our
Leyland the midfield maestro...
The big South Wairarapa derby...not Inter v. Liverpool. fussiness!! The main house-hunting day is a Saturday as most ‘to lets’ are advertised in the Weekend Dominion Post newspaper. The last 3 Saturday’s we’ve been up damned early, bought the paper first thing and hit the town to find our new home. The first time we tried to do it by bus and had a bit of a shocker trying to get places quickly so the last two times we’ve hired a car. This has also proved to be quite an experience as New Zealand has some of the worst drivers in the civilised world - they’re very, very nice people but so many turn from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde when they get behind the wheel!!
Anyway, we found a fantastic 2 level townhouse in the sought after district of Thorndon and we thought we had it in the bag when we faxed in our tenancy agreement form. However, others had beaten us to it and they wanted to sign for 2 years minimum and we were only going for 6 months in case we didn’t like it so we got beat!!
With Jo-Ann working the last 2 weeks, I’ve been a kept man and have
The land of Elves....Kaitoki Regional Park
...the set of the Rivendell set from Lord of the Rings. Liv Tyler was nowhere to be seen.....damn! busied myself with house-hunting by bus and foot. I thought I’d found the place for us last Thursday (another townhouse in Thorndon) but it wasn’t up to Jo-Ann’s high standards so it was back to the drawing board!! However, we saw a great apartment yesterday (again in Thorndon!!) so hopefully our application will be accepted this time - it was slightly below our budget so if there’s a bun fight with the competition then hopefully we can outbid them. Fingers-crossed…..
We’ve been staying with Simon, Liann and family for 7 weeks now and we’ve had a great time but everybody needs their own routine and their own space so it’s definitely time to move out. I’m sure they’ll welcome a return to their family routine as well. The 2 hour commuting to work doesn’t help either - 15 minutes to the train station, 35 minutes on the train followed by another 10 minutes walk to work!! If we get this place in Thorndon, we’ll have a 15-20 minute walk to work….nice.
Hmmm….what else has happened….oh yes..
It was little Dominic’s 1st birthday last week and we had a BBQ to celebrate and the lucky blighter got 2
Fore!
Angus hacks it up at Silverstream Public Golf Course while the greenkeeping staff eat lunch in the background. birthday cakes - one on his actual birthday and another on his BBQ-party day! He got some damned good pressies too even if I managed to buy him the same dumper truck as his Grandma…oops.
Simon plays football, sorry soccer, for the mighty Featherston United (Featherston is a small town about an hours drive north east of Wellington in the wine region of Wairarapa) so we went over with him one Saturday. We took the car away when he was playing and visited the Ata Rangi vineyard in Martinborough and then had lunch there. We tasted some fantastic wines and we bought a couple of bottles - time to get your wine guide out again, Dad - a Petrie Chardonnay and a Walnut Ridge Pinot Noir, both from 2004. Apparently they won’t reach their true drinkability for another few months so we’ve hidden them away so we don’t swally them! On the way home, we stopped to have a swatch at another Lord of the Rings location - Rivendell, home of those foxy elves and that guy from the Matrix, which is just up the road from where we're stayting just now. As usual, it was almost impossible to
visualise where the set would be and how it looked but it was nice to visit!.
The night before we’d had quite a few beers with Simon and his touch rugby team in the Wellington Sports Café. We played pool and watched the Wellington Hurricanes beat the Waikato Chiefs on the huge screen. The Hurricanes have had a good season so far despite the defeat to the Bulls that we went to. However, they screwed up again on Saturday and lost at home to the Otago Highlanders - I could console myself with the fact that the Highlanders are my second team so it wasn’t all bad. They’re based on Dunedin on the south east coast of the South Island which was major Scottish settlement when the Brits dropped in on the Maori in the 1800s (apparently due to its dodgy weather!) and still maintains strong links with the motherland, hence the name of their Super 12 rugby team. Dunedin is known as the ‘Edinburgh of the South’ and its streets are laid out and named like their counterparts in Auld Reekie - there’s Princes St, Dundas St, Frederick St, Hanover St, etc.
Simon and I squeezed in
Another cake?!?!
Cake #2 arrives... 9 holes at the local 'course' where the cattle and sheep cut the grass....no kidding! I also managed a proper 18 holes myself at Manor Park, just one stop away on the train from here. Its a good course with tight holes and great greens - shame my golf didn't exactly match the surroundings!
I also managed to get in some more test match cricket, popping along to the Basin Reserve following my bloody hard numeracy, verbal reason and psychometric testing session at my future employers! It wasn’t exactly an exciting game and I was one of about 900 people there (well they will play their test matches Monday to Friday) but it was a bargain, nay a bobby dazzler, at $10 and it was nice and sunny again.
Poor, Jo-Ann...slogging away in the office all week and there's me, enjoying myself...ha, ha! NHot for long though....
The weather is funny here and very unpredictable. It’s now well and truly Autumn here and I’m depressed to say that New Zealand also follows that great British tradition of crap weather on holiday weekends. Easter weekend was pretty dodgy with wind and lots of rain on Good Friday and
this weekend is not much better. It’s Anzac Day on Monday, a public holiday to commemorate the sacrifices of the Australia New Zealand Army Corps - the equivalent of the UK’s Remembrance Sunday - and it’s a tradition to go away for holiday weekends here, not that we’re going anywhere!. Today has a very strong and blustery southerly wind with rain showers and hail mixed in - it’s supposed to be 12-14 degrees outside but Simon’s footie game was called off 15 minutes into the second half due to a Jessie in the other team turning blue and curling up in a ball on the pitch complaining of hypothermia! In saying that, the hail had been on for 15 minutes and the southerly wind had reduced the temperature to 4 degrees. The southerly is a legendary wind in Wellington as the nearest land mass to the south is Antarctica…..nuff said, really!
I’ll sign off now with some random photos of nothing in particular. I promise not to wait so long until our next update!! Please pass this to anyone I haven’t put on the distribution list as I can’t remember everyone!!
Stay lucky……
Advertisement
Tot: 0.118s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 74; dbt: 0.0747s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb