davetapson

Same for us - not much damage, just a puddle in the back of the garage where water seeps through the cinderblock wall which is set into the hillside. No drains or waterproofing, because why would you in a country that turns to mud for six months of the year...?

Interesting. Our kids moved from Mairangi Bay Primary (38) to Murrays Bay Intermediate (139), within walking distance of each other, and I can't say that I've noticed much of a difference. Also you never hear much of Takapuna Grammar, but it looks like it could be awesome, if that sort of thing is your cup of tea. Heh - last time she was globe-trotting with her entourage, she was show having a meeting with some international body (WHO, UN? Can't remember) and somebody, maybe Barry Soper, commented "yeh, she's organizing her next job, she'll resign before the next election and take this job." So watch this space...

It kind of kills the helping the budget thing, but if you turn the transfer into a layover, then the longer flights become more pleasant. And assuming the layover is somewhere pleasant. When we were looking for flights to SA over Christmas, I found cheap flights via the US(!) which would have given us the advantage to visit my brother - I was told that it would be a step too far, probably correctly so... 🙂

Ha - the old schooling debate. Saffas are really wound up by this - us included. Kiwis, not so much. Bottom line, if you live in a decent area, the schools are likely to be just fine. I work with a guy who has 5 kids, who have just about all gone to different schools and he has no real feeling for any of those schools - they were all 'fine'. You will pay a premium to live in a 'desirable' school zone, particularly if the Chinese community find the schools desirable - they will pay over the odds for any pile of junk just to ensure they have an address in the school zone. It seems more important to choose a school that suits your kids character e.g regimented for kids who need structure (Westlake Boys) more flexible for those who don't (Rangitoto College) smaller for kids who are not mainstream (Rosmini College) There are private schools (Kristin College) that are allegedly a cut above the rest. We would probably send our kids there if we're had the means, but I'm not sure it would really make a difference. If you have aspirations, you'd probably want to find an address in Auckland Grammar zone... 🙂 Edit: and it's actually about the teacher, not the school - good school, bad child/teacher fit and it's a misery. And that combination is just a roll of the dice...

Yeah - in SA you hardly even notice if the light is on or not, just react appropriately. In NZ they are clueless when the traffic lights are off. Everyone stops, Then somebody makes a dash for it - and the three people behind him see his bravery and make a dash for it too. Then somebody else has a go... 😂

Yep, my mom too. Miss the queues, no stress about finding terminals/boarding gates....

Having done both, direct flights are (IMHO) the only way for old timers. Those Emirates flights are brutal.

Not quite, but nearly. Took best part of a month off to go back to check on aging parents and fit in a few days on a houseboat on Kariba... 1. Loadshedding. It's no joke. Those guys spend more time figuring out when the power is going to be on/off than thinking about any other single thing. Cell phone/data drops when there is no power - it's a problem. Folks use lightbulbs that charge up when the power is on, automatically come on when the power drops - last about two hours. The first couple days I didn't hit one mall with the lights on (Benoni, East London, Port Alfred). A dark mall is not the most inviting place. Non-essentials shops must be taking a serious blow. And the likelihood is that this is as good as it will ever be, so good luck there. 2. Booze. Cheap. Real cheap. 3. Food. At the supermarket (Woolies), not cheap. At restaurants, still relatively cheap. 4. Fuel. Not cheap. R25/l. That's not far off here? 5. Dorpies - have become seriously Africanized. (Yeah, don't get your knickers in a twist, if you know, you know.) Economies of small towns look pretty shot. Roads between Port Alfred and the N1 (Smithfield, Springfontein) were basically empty. Where is everyone? 6. Christmas in PA - should have been vaalies everywhere, pissing everyone off with big vehicles, driving too fast, spending too much money, jet ski's etc. Nothing. Empty. Umhlanga the same thing, ostensibly from the sea being e-coli'd, but looking at 'talfred, I suspect that the folk that would be there are probably on Manly/Browns Bay beach instead, Maybe Clifton, but not even sure of that. Any left are probably at home trying to figure out the load-shedding schedule. 7. Roads - potholes becoming a problem. 8. Morale, esp. old folk. Pretty dire. The future is not pretty, and doesn't look like becoming pretty. 9. A number of times restaurants didn't have items on the menu - they must be running with really low stocks - I suppose having the power off half the time makes maintaining cold chains tricky. Nice for a holiday (if not somewhat depressing), can't really see the appeal of staying unless you have circumstances that swing the decision. Zim: chugging along on USD's ( can draw them from the ATM's) - there are still some seriously rich white folk as determined from the houseboat demographic - I think entwined business wise with the ruling folk. Bob's legacy being re-thought. Seems he was a moderating influence on the 'Generals' who are now un-moderated and behaving like their brethren down South. With Zim, every time you think "oh well, at least it can't get worse", it does. I think SA is following that pattern. 18hr load-shedding. Think about operating under those conditions. Local yokels becoming seriously disenchanted. Sydney: (took a couple of days to recover there on return from the flight halfway around the world to catch the flight halfway around the world) what an awesome spot. Somewhat jealous of what they have. When I'm rich, I'm buying a flat there. Edit: Tips - 1. We've been locked up here for years. Check your kids passports - they only last five years from issue. 2. Aus eVisa's on Brit passports are a piece of psss - (don't) smile at your phone, take a picture of your passport, you're pretty much done. Instantaneous. 3. Aus holiday visas on SA passports, esp. for kids, is a pain in the arse, should you be trying to get them three weeks before you leave because you didn't check to see if their British passports were still valid. 4. Interestingly enough, it takes less than three weeks to renew a British passport. Except if they don't like how you've scanned 'any other passport you have' and want you to re-scan it. Only NZ$200 odd for courier per transaction. Scan carefully. And then it takes longer than three weeks too. 5. If you are travelling single parent with kids out of SA, the same 'have you got unabridged birth certs and an affadavit' malarky still applies. Seems that photo's of unabridged birth certs are acceptable for both SA and Aus Home Affairs. 6. It might be worth masking up on flights or at least in congestion areas in airports - else you might catch covid. Don't ask me how I know...

Got weather from the NE which is apparently unusual. Got a corner of the lounge/outside courtyard that is perfectly positioned to catch that, and lo and behold, the roof is leaking. Sometimes I'm glad to be in a rental.

When I first got to NZ, it seemed to me that there were a bunch of REALLY ugly Toyotas driving around. Then I heard that in Japan, they try out all sorts of models, and if they don't work, they can them straight off. Sort of using the Jap car buying market as a consumer group poll. Maybe only the successful ones, or pretty to the Western eye models make it to SA. and the ugly, discontinued ones make to to the NZ second-hand Jap car market...

Toyota Estima's are popular here - ugly as sin, but often converted to campers. Buddy bought one with one of his mates for $2k, took out the back seats to fit bikes (I think they can stand upright) and it's their 'go to places and ride' machine.

Ha, vans are seriously under-rated. Edit: A year or two before we left SA I was rear-ended in my Polo by some dolt in a Kia Rio. He was doing 120 (according to him, so lets say 130), I was stationary in backed up traffic turning onto the N12 off the R21. Given the circumstances, the Polo (and I) suffered remarkably little damage (yep, it was written off) but what surprised me was that the Kia looked surprisingly intact afterwards too, and the driver seemed somewhat ok as well. I gained real respect for Kias, maybe not so much their drivers.

My father uses these guys. Whenever I ask him what his package is it seems amazingly cheap. I know nothing about them, no endorsement. It seems to work fine in Grahamstown. https://www.axxess.co.za/

There's also, if you're brave, the option of just buying and then selling. In theory, over a month or two, you should lose little value.

Question: I can't get a refund paid by SARS as I have bank accounts registered in SARS mobi app and they won't refund overseas until the bank accounts are removed - but it is not possible to remove the accounts via the mobi app. I need "to get my tax representative to go to SARS and ask them to remove the accounts" Any idea of the best way to get a 'tax representative'. I have no other requirements of a tax representative than to go to SARS and tell them to remove my accounts... hopefully then, I'm am shot of the whole sorry mess that is SARS. PS: I have removed my accounts using eFiling website. The accounts are sill registered in mobi app. WTF?

Used to ski regularly when I lived in the UK - the typical week at a time thing they do in Europe, occasionally two. I learned to ski, then tried snow boarding, but the learning curve on snowboard is steep (although apparently shorter) but after catch edges for two days decided I'd prefer to spend the rest of the week skiing. My thoughts are that you want your own clothing. (I bought a mountain climbing dungaree thing that was on special at the time and wear that with a fleece and goretex type jacket - I've been in blizzards, and it's been 100%. You don't need the flash stuff. I've skied in jeans/fleece before if the weather is fine. And you want your own boots that fit properly. Ski's change over time, they are worth hiring, if you can hire the flavour of the moment, or whatever you feel like trying at the time. That said, I did buy carving ski's which are languishing in a mate's attic in the UK that I'd dearly like to have here. I can't get over the price of skiing here - it's flpn huge. I learned too late tho' - too much inbuilt fear/self preservation. You need to learn when you are 5 and don't know better... But skiing, and drinking beer at a pub by the river on a sunny Sunday afternoon are about the only things I miss about living in the UK... Edit: the skiing mad Kiwi I used to work with when I first arrived used to go to Japan. He said it was cheaper and better.

Heh. Jake White had a minimum size reqt for players - if you aren't this big, doesn't matter how good you are, sorry. Watching the AB's against Ireland made me think maybe he had a point.

Yeah, it's a deathly time of year, equivalent of Feb in the UK. Days are getting longer but it's still getting colder. A girl who was working with my wife left for GC for greener pastures (they had been living in Mangawhai commuting to Long Bay couple times a week because rent was cheaper there...) It hasn't worked out as expected - houses apparently expensive because of the floods(?), husband has not been able to find work...

That said, this from my daughter who was running at Campbell's Bay this morning... WhatsApp Video 2022-06-27 at 9.11.51 AM.mp4

Made it past the Winter equinox peeps... things can only get better... RaggedConfusedHumpbackwhale-mobile.mp4

Tax residency is based basically on your intention to be ordinarily resident in SA. Given Covid and not leaving NZ for years, and that you've emigrated, that's currently a given. Should you decided to go back and live and work six months a year, then things will get more complicated. You can still log in to eFiling and file returns etc with no bank acc. https://www.sars.gov.za/individuals/cease-to-be-a-resident/ For those that are interested in financial emigration: In my 2019 tax yr return on eFiling I said 'no income from x date' reason 'emigrated to NZ'. Uploaded visa / passport entry stamp. Done. I had previously emptied out everything from there to here. They owe me a decent refund. They said they will pay it to my NZ bank account, but part of the deal is that I have 'to remove my bank accounts from eFiling, and set my address post codes to 0000'. You can remove your bank accounts from eFiling website, but they remain on SARS MobiApp. So as far as they are concerned, I have not 'removed my bank accounts'. There is no way to remove them on the MobiApp - you can add or change, no delete. So currently in a cycle of "I've removed my bank accounts, look, here is a screen shot of the website" "You need to remove your accounts from eFiling." all at a 21 day cycle which is their SLA. My last mail was "Please remove my accounts from MobiApp." I'm waiting to see what the comeback is on that. I used to merely loathe SARS, now I really, really, hate them.

Law of unintended consequences, something that social minded govts step into on a regular basis. We live in a multi-story house running up a slope - monster gas heater at the bottom at the entrance door. Turn it on and it turns the house into chimney - you can feel the got air rushing up and out, helping mostly global warming and to a lesser extent, us.

Our house seems to have several exclusions i.e. no insulation under floor because 'impractical to fit'. Practicality it seems is in the eye of the beholder. It does have that foil stuff so haven't fought them over that. Yet. Landlord is pretty good.

Looks like it's flying.

Another so awesome!! Congratulations guys, it's nice to see the Saffas coming right...