davetapson

One of my buddies is trying to entice me to do this - given that 'Wh' is pronounced 'F' I'm wondering about the name... https://www.whaka100.co.nz/index.html 100km (that doesn't worry me), 3200m ascent (given what I've seen of NZ, that worries me...)

Just normal visitors visa - just wanted a quick trip where they could fly out, sit for 6 weeks drinking tea on the deck and then back. They were kind of stressed and tired so I thought that doing all the Parental visa stuff (medicals etc) would be too much and the visitor visa would be fine. Getting a mail from INZ on 23 Jan when they were expecting to be getting on a plane on the 25th really knocked the stuffing out of them. They seem to have got over it tho, now it's just a waiting game... Edit: I'm going to suggest to them that they start the Parental Visa thing when they get back so that any time they feel like getting on a plane in the next three years they can. Depends on how they cope with this trip - my father is in his mid-80's.

Visa woes - as in 'whoas' not 'voos'. Although woes as well. My folks have been having a bit of a tough time of it in Grahamstown so decided to haul them out here for a bit of R&R. They applied for visas through vfs early Dec, sent in passports, got them back etc. Mean time I'd booked flights for 25 Jan. 23 Jan they get a email from INZ "We need more docs." (Including my birth cert. Which they have, we've just emigrated?!) Change flights to 16 Feb. Three weeks, how long can it take? INZ: "Oh, and this is the Beijing office of INZ and it's Chinese New Year so we'll be closed for a week and then I'm taking leave so I'll only be back on 7 Feb but send the forms by the due date (generally all responses to INZ have to be done within a week) or else." Then Corona virus. Office closed. Phone INZ "What's up?" "Office closed until Feb 17 - are picking up family and medical emergency visa's and processing them elsewhere." Me: "Office unlikely to be open 17 Feb. What then? " INZ: "Dunno, haven't been told." Time to change flights again. Changes are probably going to cost half again what the flights cost. Lesson learned: Get visa, book flights.

It's kind of half half. Cricket practice is at school, but matches are played as part of the East Coast Bays cricket club. There is a soccer League at school, but it is run by a club. The senior schools seem to have pretty good sports facilities.

My 9 yo daughter got lost walking home last week. We were sitting waiting to drop my son off for cricket practice and she was bored and asked if she could walk home, and please would I pick her up if I passed her. I said yes - it's not far and we've done it often enough. Got home. No kid. Damn, rushed back to school, called my wife, paced the entire neighbourhood. After half an hour, called the police. Complete panic - thinking the worst. Anyway, my wife called our friends to get them out looking and one found her walking back from the direction our old house was - just about the same time a police patrol rocked by. He reckoned he broke into a cold sweat at the thought of bundling my daughter into his car with a patrol car watching! It's so instinctive for us to believe the worst immediately, whereas the truth here is that very much most likely it's just that your kid has got lost and it's a matter of finding them. She was walking back to school, and we would have found her there. The police were calm and accommodating - they routed my call straight to 111 (911), no problems when I reported her found. Professional and sympathetic. Also lost my son a while ago when up at the Te Paki dunes (making a habit of this!) - we decided to move from the bottom of one dune to another about 200m away. My son wanted to walk over the top so we said ok. He walked just one crest too far, and then down, then turned away instead of towards where we were. When we figured he was lost, it was just a matter of finding his footprints and following them. It wasn't pleasant, but at least we knew it was just a matter of finding a lost kid who had left a clear track, not that someone was likely to have abducted him... It's quite hard to get out of the 'really, really **** things can and do happen to you as a matter of course' mentality...

Doesn't have to be quite that much, but if you want to live in a four bedroom house on the (South to mid) North Shore, yep. My accountant lives towards Titirangi and pretty obviously thinks we are stone-cold stupid to be paying around that on rent. We probably are.

Me too. Either they're taking the p1ss or just know saffas too well... But given that there is a biltong kiosk around the corner from work, it's not like you really need to smuggle it!

Tip given to me by my brother who does a lot of travelling - buy the sim card in the duty free on arrival - there is is way less FICA/RICA/Fkn about. That's what we did when we arrived - I'm not sure they asked for anything other than our passport and maybe ticket. You buy the 'travel' version that comes preloaded with airtime/data/sms's etc and then just convert it before it expires or find an alternative option that suits you better and get that at your leisure. The nice thing is you can bung it in your phone and you have local connectivity even before you leave the airport. The other tip he gave which is suprisingly useful is carry copies of a rates/utilities bill and a bank statement. Doesn't matter if they are from a different country, they seem to be largely acceptable for FICA/RICA type stuff where ever you need.

An interesting comment I heard on the gangs is that the police have a working relationship with them. They found that if they curtailed gang activities too much, Australian/Chinese/Russian/Ukrainian gangs would start to move in, who are more difficult to deal with. So essentially the police say, you gangs do your gang stuff, but if it starts encroaching on civilised society, we will react. So the gangs pretty much face each other off, and keep out foreign gangs. Is a real pragmatic Kiwi approach to things. My wife watched the police close down a gang mob in Manakau - she said that they were really proficient, and all done without violence.

An ugly is definitely bike part prices. Need a set of Crank Brother cleats. $50. What..!?

It seems definitely to be a problem, but (from what I've seen, and only my opinion) largely confined to Maori areas which as immigrants we (I?) don't have much contact with, so doesn't much affect us (me?). Was up on Karikari peninsula and the schools near the local marae all had anti-P slogans which would indicate it's an issue. Seen the same sort of thing in other similar areas. You can't buy any drug with pseudoephedrine here - Advil-CS etc - as they are a source for P feedstock and have been made illegal. It's a bugger, esp. if you get hayfever. We have a surgeon friend who does shifts in a South Auckland hospital. He says it's like a different world, and the poverty (and all it brings) is unreal. So NZ is no different to anywhere else - you have both sides of the spectrum. It seems that the two don't encroach on each other in quite the same way as SA. It's probably a similar phenomenon as Tik on the Cape Flats. It's not a particularly great drug, but is accessible to low income folk, and a local industry grows up around it. (I have an Agric degree, so I'm qualified to make this kind of statement... ) For those that wonder, P stands for Pure which allegedly is a word play on an advertising slogan that called NZ 'Pure'. Apparently is methamphetamine.

Yeh, checking in was part of the plan, but accommodation at that time of the year is just impossible to find (anywhere!) so we stopped for a milkshake so's the missus could have a quick shufti, and then back on the road. I suspect that it might be part of our retirement plans, unless we (I) can figure out how to make a living there. Which brings us to an Ugly - during high season, if you haven't booked (for Hobbiton / Caves / Accommodation / anything) you are pretty much fresh out of luck...

Took my kid to Sanders Reserve to check out the the tracks there - was a bit ordinary, but reinforces what an astonishing place Auckland is to live. We're riding the tracks, the view is fantastic, there are kids in boats and skidoos dragging each other around on various things in the inlets just below, boats out all over the harbour. There are folks riding horses on the horse trails, dog walkers walking dogs on the dog trails. There is an unmanned and unvandalised office park building with toilets and showers, all clean, all working ("Please don't take dogs into showers"!) The Hauraki Gulf is also an amazing resource to have on hand. That said, @Intern, we rolled through Whaka on the way from Napier through to Auckland when dropping the oldest kid off at Rythm & Vines. It's a seriously damn fine spot. The missus had her 30th back in the day at the upstairs room of The Craic...

Interesting,esp. regarding processing times. I suspect this is why having an agent may be of benefit. You may find that they have better access to the immigration dept, and even if not, at least they can give you realistic processing times based on the throughput of their own applications.

We used New Zealand Migration Services (on Wayne's recommendation). I think NZ$7500 if I remember right. They were pretty accommodating to our changes (from me being main applicant to my wife, issues with step-daughter who is too old come with as dependent etc) and as far as I can tell, all the advice they gave was good. Chased us up when we were slack. Tel: (021) 7944 942 (Cape Town Office) Tel: (011) 881 5666 (Johannesburg Office) Tel: (0064) 9 415 4072 (Auckland Office) Fax: (021) 7944 668

We used agents - not cheap but it gets done right, and quick. They would be able to advise you on how best to emigrate. We ended coming in on my wife's qualifications as suggested by them. I doubt not having a qualification will stop you getting a job - they're pretty pragmatic, but they do love giving strange little tests for you to do in the hopes of figuring out if you can do what you say you can do.

Don't stress about biosecurity. Just clean everything that will catch attention (i.e. stuff that touches the ground outdoors - bikes/camping gear) properly clean. That's all it takes, not hard, just tedious. You can bring in carvings etc as long as you sling a coat of varnish/sealer on them. British Internatonal moved us, but I'm not sure that we'd recommend them - although they may have been less worse than others we've heard of.

Worst thing of all is that I wasn't just in the wrong lane, I was on the wrong side of a two road motorway. When I finally figured out what was going on I managed to find a crossing point and jink onto the correct side. I still got to wonder what folk thought of a someone driving against the traffic. This included a cop cruiser who turned his lights on as I came past, but I noticed didn't turn around to stop me... But the worst thing is parking lots, because they tend not to have lane markings - you never know where you are supposed to be. Except to figure out that the side of the car you are sitting on should be in the middle of the road. Which is hard to figure out at the same time you're trying to change gear with the door latch.

There is of course the chance that if early enough in the morning to still be a bit dopey, dark enough not to be able to see the road markings and quiet enough that there is no traffic (at that moment) that one might turn to the wrong side of the divider, and then wonder why the hell the oncoming traffic is driving in your lane... [emoji51][emoji51][emoji51] Was camping in Florida and booked an early morning fishing trip. Blood still runs cold at the memory.

The missus lived in Whakatane for a year or so back in the day - loved it, and has been meaning to show us her old stomping grounds, including White Island...

Damn. You walk around on live volcanoes, occasionally they go boom.

Hey Intern They tell me that White Island is erupting...?

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Damn, that's hi-tech scary...! He probably thought you'd have a camera on him too...

Two. That's just showing off... Been down to the SI then?