Yep, I finally got my UK passport*. It was a vanity project, really -- I don't need it, and it wasn't cheap, but having two passports makes me feel like Jason Bourne.
Actually, it would have helped in Auckland en route to Japan, but that's because it has an RFID chip and I could have used the automated lanes. This was only an issue because I'd gotten confused and was watching the wrong entry on the departures board, and ended up having to race to the gate and was the last one to board. However, apart from that it would not have helped at all and in fact coming back through Auckland, the NZ officer said that since I had a resident visa I could use the NZ passport lane, anyway.
Now that I think about it, because the visa is in my US passport I will have to carry that to get back in NZ, but now that I have a British passport I am required by law to use that when entering the UK, so I've just damned myself to carrying both passports! What was I thinking?
* I'd like to say I made the photo intentionally fuzzy for security purposes, but of course there's nothing sensitive on the passport cover! However, the RFID chips have no encryption and will respond to any RF reader in their proximity, so I better get a better passport holder. (Oh wait, those don't work.)
What is it about airports and prestige? I get that large cities such as London and New York have prestigious airports, but they started with the city and then built an airport to match. (LA is a sprawl, and has an airport to match.) Politicians seem to consistently get it backward, and believe if they just build a large airport then the city will follow. Perhaps they've watched "Field of Dreams" one too many times, but it makes no sense to me.
Case in point, Wellington airport wants to expand. They currently have plenty of capacity (i.e. can handle more airplanes) and the runway is long enough to accommodate most,jets, but they can't handle long-haul flights because a jet with a full tank takes a lot longer to take off than the same plane with a small amount of fuel. That's why international flights out of Wellington only go to Australia or Fiji.
(Currently, the longest flight is from Auckland to Dubai, at 14,000km and just over 17 hours.)
Unfortunately, in the 1950s they'd built the runway on some swampland on an isthmus so there is no way to lengthen it except by reclaiming the sea. They even put together a cute video (albeit 5 minutes long) on how they're going to do that. And the price tag for extending the runway 100 meters (about one football field)? Well, as they put it, only US $2 million per meter!
Now, while that's peanuts compared to the estimated US $2.6 billion (with a b) cost of the new LA Rams football field, it's still a hefty pricetag, and the private owners of the airport want taxpayers to foot half of the bill. In fact, taxpayers have already paid nearly US $2 million just to apply for consent from the government -- do you see the circular logic here? The government is paying to get approval from the government. So what do the taxpayers get for their money? Well, by all accounts, nothing.
Air New Zealand, the nation's flag carrier, who should be advocating for better facilities, said, "Long-haul flights out of Wellington are a pipe dream" and "no airline could make money out of it." That's pretty damning words from a major partner who stands to gain no benefit by not extending the runway. Qantas, the other major airline that services Wellington, also said "if the extension went ahead the airline was not interested in utilising Wellington as a hub for anything other than domestic and trans-Tasman flights." Double-ouch.
But wait, the supporters cry (including Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown), it doesn't make sense for Air NZ (whose hub is in Auckland) and Australia's Qantas to operate long-haul flights from Wellington. Instead, they point to some as-yet-unnamed airline to use the long-haul flights to service their hub in some as-yet-unnamed Asian country. That is, they not only want to build the extension over the objections of their two major partners (who account for 6 out of the 9 daily international flights) but they're doing so based on a pipe-dream of finding another major partner.
But wait, they carry on (without listening to anyone trying to reason with them): Singapore Airlines just announced a direct flight from Wellington to Singapore with a stop in Brisbane to refuel! That proves there is demand for long-haul services from Wellington to Asia! Well, yes, except it doesn't. Singapore Airlines has specifically refused to commit to long-haul flights from Wellington, and the economics of a flight from Wellington to Brisbane to Singapore is a lot different than a Wellington-Singapore non-stop!
So there you have it, another attempt to "jump start" the process and, rather than focus on making Wellington a great city, the focus is on doing other things great cities do. Of course I could be completely wrong and in ten years, when I can fly non-stop from Wellington to a host of Asian countries at hyper-competitive rates, I may be eating my words. But as a newly-minted Kiwi taxpayer, my immediate concern is on the government proposal to give NZ $150 million to a private operator to build an airport that nobody wants.
Then again, this is the same government that just spent $26 million on a referendum to change the flag that nobody wanted. The next general election is in 2017. Unfortunately, I won't have the right to vote until 2018.
I'm back from Japan, and have about 400 pictures to prove it. Sadly, I didn't see much -- I was working through the week -- but on Saturday we went to Arashiyama, in Kyoto, which was stunning. We also took a rickshaw around Nara which was equally beautiful. Unfortunately, Picasa doesn't seem to have sorted these in any order, and I haven't bothered to label any of them, but if you want a random, non-descript journey through a very small section of Japan, I highly recommend sitting through the whole thing.
I have a disconcerting number of medications with the label "Caution not to be taken." Considering most medications come with dire warnings that say "Do not operate heavy machinery," I assumed this was yoda-speak* meaning there were no precautions, a sort of positive affirmation that this medicine would not make you sleepy, nauseous, vomiting or pregnant.
I was, of course, wrong. It means (according to NZ Medicines Regulations 1984, amended) "For external use only." The colon between "Caution" and "Not" has been lost, which is odd because it's grammatically important, and you'd think pharmacists would actually be sticklers for accurate warning labels. And while yes, "taken" can be used to mean "swallowed" it can also mean a heck of a lot of other things!
"Caution not to be taken" sounds more like you can use as much as you want (which I know is certainly not the case with some of my potent steroid creams!) It sounds like I can drive 150 on the motorway and then blame the medication when I'm pulled over: "I'm sorry officer, I took this medication and didn't realize one of the side effects was that I would lose the ability to use caution."
"For external use only," on the other hand, sounds like I shouldn't put it in my mouth or any other orifice. It's the same number of words, and even fewer characters. It doesn't require a colon to make sense, and it's hard to justify any bad behavior while using a medication labelled "for external use only."
And before you ask, yes, the Medicines Regulations of 1984, amended, allows for either warning "or words of similar meaning" so pharmacists are *choosing* to use an archaic, obscure, inadequate and incorrect warning on all medication for external use. Why?
* Technically that would be, "Caution not you take."
As you might have seen, the New Zealand flag referendum was finally decided on March 24. And if you didn't see, don't worry, a quick Google search revealed that *no* news agency carried this story. None. Not even in New Zealand.
The result, as expected, is that New Zealand is keeping its flag, and just flushed $26 million down the toilet to do so. Considering how bland and white-washed the 'competition' was, it wasn't surprising. As one person noted, this was less about identity and more about marketing.
In the past 50 years, only two countries have changed their flag without changing their government: Canada in 1965 and South Africa in 1994. South Africa was obviously signalling the end of apartheid and the 'rainbow flag' signified inclusion of all people. Canada was obviously cementing their role as the world's leading supplier of maple syrup.
To look at the alternative NZ flag, it had something to do with a silver fern, but with a blue patch to differentiate the country from the All Blacks rugby team, which is funny since the rugby team is probably better known than the country. Oh, and it got rid of the union jack to appease the folks who think we should have an elected head of state, even though we're still keeping Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.
So all in all, it was quite the farce. However, in thinking about the flag in terms of identity and New Zealand's place in the world, the kids had the best idea for a new flag:
This is a quick note, mostly for me to keep track of everything on my plate at the moment.
1. Work is crazy busy, in part because I'm still coming up to speed and I'm terrified of making a mistake. This is true on every project I've ever joined, but usually I can control my environment so people don't see my mistakes and I can fix them before anyone knows. I can't do that here, so as I result I've been putting in ridiculous hours trying to make sure everything is ok before releasing it. Ironically, on this job they would prefer me to release often and accept mistakes as the cost of this, but they don't understand my particular phobia. (Remember, shyness is defined as the fear of making mistakes in public.) Of course once I'm over the hump and know what I'm doing both of these issues will go away, but in the meantime I'm working very late hours and neglecting the family.
2. Work is about to get even more busy, because out of a team of five, they just fired one! (And he was one of only three technical people!) They aren't planning on replacing him right away, either, so I know a lot of his work is going to fall on my shoulders shortly.
3. My partner's ex is *still* dragging us through court, since last May! We filed our last brief in January, he requested an extension in February and then in March, half an hour before the hearing, he directed his lawyer to change his request entirely! So now we're having to put together another affidavit to explain to the court (again) what an ass he is, and hopefully we'll get an order next month.
4. The house we just rented in February is being put up on the market! Seriously. When we signed the paperwork, the owner didn't want to sign a 12-month lease but assured us they had no plans to do anything and we asked for some money if he did kick us out within 12 months, but it was a negligible amount and we rally just took them on faith. When will I learn? I *believe* the owner is just testing the waters, and is not serious about selling, because Wellington is experiencing a bit of a property bubble at the moment. That said, obviously if he gets a good offer he will sell and since we don't have a lease, we have 90 days to move. Watch his space.
5. I'm going to Japan! My boss from the UK is there for a month visiting his family, and he suggested I come up for a week to do some design work with him. It's high season in April (think cherry blossoms) and getting flights and accommodation was a nightmare (it's a 40-minute train ride from his house to my hotel!) but I'll be going 2 April. I know it will be a hellish week, just like Oxford last month, of non-stop working , but I will get one day to see the sights, and I'm really looking forward to it.
6. I'm once again responsible for the community seder (Passover dinner) at my synagogue. (Last year I did it jointly with another member, but she had a baby and is out of action.) It's in four weeks and most of it is just organising volunteers, caterers, cleaners, etc. so that's going smoothly. However, I completely forgot to order the matzoh and kiddush wine, which is rather critical for a seder! Hopefully I'm not too late, and just waiting for the shop to call me back now.
7. And of course, on top of that is all the usual stuff that I've been completely neglecting: We don't have a working dryer, the TV has no signal, the garage is an overflowing disaster (and I've lost the remote), we never did build the sleepout, and about 1,000 other things on my to do list...
If you can read that, you should be a banker. What it's saying is that when I moved to the UK and transferred my dollars to pounds, I got approximately 1 pound for every two dollars. Had I waited a month longer, I would have gotten 1 pound for every $1.50 (or less). In other words, I would have gotten 25% more pounds for the same number of dollars. I was pretty gutted at the time.
However, thanks to the "Brexit" (Britain's referendum on whether or not to stay in the EU) the pound has been hammered again, Being in New Zealand this shouldn't affect me, except I've still got debt in the UK. Since I'm being paid in US dollars again, I'm paying off that debt much faster. This is, for every 100 US dollar payment I would normally pay off £65 but I'm now paying off £75!
As you can imagine, 18 months without work leads to some serious austerity measures. Fortunately between my partner getting a part-time job and our international student payments offset some of the costs, but we both dipped deep into our savings. (My partner's ex has not paid child support in two and a half years, and New Zealand lets him get away with that because he works out of the country and they decided it wasn't worth the hassle!)
Oddly, the last 'luxury' was free range eggs, and we were staring down the barrel of homelessness before we finally started buying battery farm eggs (which were half the price). My partner has already said the first thing she is going to do when I get paid is go back to free range eggs.
Of course, the eggs don't represent luxury, they represent the ability to make a choice. (Of course it could be argued a better choice would be to raise our own chickens, or to not eat eggs in the first place!)
Apart from the eggs, we've lived very frugally: no holidays, no major purchases, no cable TV. Clothes came from charity shops and gifts were often handmade. That said, we still did a heck of a lot, but there was always a sense of a brick wall waiting for us to smash into it.
Now that I have an income again, the brick wall has been averted, but the only extravagance -- apart from the eggs -- is to take the kids to California to meet my family, and the only reason that's possible is because I will be travelling to the US and UK for work.
Otherwise we continue with the austerity measures until the savings have been adequately topped up, in the hopes that next year we'll be in a position to buy a house.
(On a related note, we took the kids to see the new house today and they loved it. One even asked if we could move earlier! I just pointed out we have a lot to pack in the next two weeks...)
When we rented this house, we were hopeful that within a year I'd be gainfully employed and the property distribution between my partner and her ex would be settled, so we could buy a new house. Needless to say, neither of those happened. But we were perfectly happy in our rental except for the cold downstairs, so I offered to make a deal with the owners.
Rather than let the rental go month-to-month, which is normally what happens after the first year, I offered to sign another one year lease in exchange for them putting in a heat pump downstairs. It seemed reasonable to me, as we knew they intended to reoccupy the house at some point, so they would benefit from it, too.
They responded they would be reoccupying the house in May.
May is a terrible time to move house in NZ. It's winter and nobody else is moving, so there is very little on the market. Almost all house moves occur in January, before the school year starts. We got this letter right before Christmas so we decided to start looking straight away.
Remarkably, the house we tried to rent the year before--but someone else pipped us to the post--was back on the market! It wasn't perfect, the kitchen was dated, the carpet was cream colored, they didn't accept pets and the cat the vet said would be dead 18 months ago is still going strong. But it had two living areas, four bedrooms, two and a half baths plus a study. (Initially we were going to convert the study into a fifth bedroom and get another international student, but then I got the job offer working from home so it will be my office.)
It's also much closer to the shops, library, recreation centre, swimming pool. It's near the main road but at the end of a cul de sac, which is surprisingly quiet. The only sounds you hear are the birds and the stream that runs through the front yard.
Our international student returns Jan 29, the kids go back to school Feb 2, we move Feb 5 and I start my new job Feb 9. I will also be going to the UK for a couple of weeks (courtesy of my new company!) but the dates haven't been decided. 2016 definitely seems to be the year it all comes together.
And hopefully 2017 will see us buying a house, although realistically we'll want to stay in Karori until the youngest one finishes primary school* in two years, and I'm not sure we want to buy in Karori or someplace more convenient for the colleges.
* In New Zealand, primary school is often years 1-8, although in some areas primaries are 1-6 and then intermediate school years 7-8. College is years 9-13, and please don't ask me why they call them colleges. In Wellington most of the colleges are single sex--only two are co-ed--and for some reason the boys colleges are on the opposite end of town as the girls! So in two years we'll have to decide which college to send the youngest to and then move into the catchment area for both the girls and boys schools.
Our international student, who has been with us since February, went home for the summer holidays (in December!), leaving a hole in our family as well as our finances. She'll be back end of January so we can deal with the family part it, but as for finances we spoke to the university to see if they had any summer students, but they didn't. On a whim, I posted a photo of the room to Airbnb.com. Less than an hour later, I had three guests coming that night!
Of course, Airbnb doesn't let multiple people book the same room--I got separate enquiries from a couple and a single woman. As the eldest child has been staying with her dad for the past six months, I made the command decision to rent it out. That also meant I had to take out all her stuff and clean it from top to bottom; I had to do the same for the international student, as well. Did I mention we also had friends coming for dinner that night, and we had put out an open invitation to the community to celebrate Hanukkah with us that evening?
So I spent the next six hours cleaning, doing laundry, making dinner and organising! By the time our Airbnb guest arrived, I was shattered. Worse, my partner was (understandably) upset that I had put all of her daughter's stuff in the garage. I was already shattered and we were bickering all evening. Hopefully none of the 15-odd guests noticed.
The Airbnb people couldn't have been nicer. The single girl was a 25-year-old French student spending a year working and travelling in New Zealand. The kids enjoyed her so much, they asked her if she could stay longer! The Dutch couple were also very nice, but they arrived late and left early so we hardly saw them. Since then we've hosted around a dozen people, from China to Latvia, who have all been lovely. We weren't sure how the kids were going to handle it, but they seem to have enjoyed having visitors as much as I have.
Financially it was also quite successful, earning about $800 over the holidays. (We could have made much more, but it is our holidays as well so we blocked off quite a few days, and turned away several requests because they wanted to stay more than a week and we didn't want to make that kind of commitment.) As the holidays draw to a close, we have one more couple coming this weekend (from Germany) and then our international student returns on the 29th.
Comparing Airbnb to my B&B days is apples and oranges. One was a full-time job and I worked hard to make it a 'luxury' experience. The other was letting people share my home, meet my kids, and have dinner with us. It was much more laid back, but also much more intimate, and I could get into discussions with guests I could have never done in the B&B. (The woman from East Germany was particularly fascinating!) The Airbnb guests were also much more open; they played board games with the kids and watched movies with us.
Of course there are some Airbnb horror stories out there, although all the ones I saw involved rental properties, not family homes, plus each guest has 'reviews' from other hosts and you can reject a reservation request for any reason. I found it a very positive and rewarding experience, and if you have a spare room (or even a spare sofa!) I highly recommend you sign up and see what happens. As long as you're honest and set the expectations, your guests will be happy.
