Very nice post Wayne - I can really relate to this. I found the first 3 months here like being on holiday. Wife was not working, so everything was ordered and clean, dinner was cooked and clean. And it was summer (last year), weather was perfect. Everything was new and a process of discovery. Now a year and a half later we are both working pretty much full-time, and daily grind has set in. Evenings involve coming home, helping kids with homework, cooking / washing up, and quite a bit of the weekend is spent washing, cleaning, vacuuming and other household chores. Winter feels like it has been quite long and wet, and is a bit of a slog. I still don't feel like I have a very firm footing here - job has gone well so far, but has had the feeling of being slightly flaky and could come to an end at some point, and it's been like that since the beginning. The depth of opportunity is obviously not like in the US, UK or possibly even Australia. In many ways the working culture here is quite mediocre if you ask me, but I'm hoping I can carry on making the most of the somewhat limited opportunities in my field. As for meeting people and building networks, I'm at the age and stage where the kids are very demanding, and so I tend to be a bit inward looking towards the immediate family. And cultivating these takes time and energy. Not something I always have a lot of at the end of a long day or week. That being said, we're doing fine, and my wife is very good in that way, but of course we miss the long standing friendships from home, and most of all the family connection, with neither of us having family nearby. The nearest family we have are uncles / cousins in Australia. I'm really trying to keep in touch with SA friends, but I'm finding the time difference to be a real problem. It only leaves very narrow windows of time on the weekend where it's convenient for a chat, and that time is usually taken up by family chats. This time difference has affected me more than I thought it would. It's like I feel slightly out of phase with the rest of the world. For me, day-to-day, this contributes more to any feeling of isolation than physical distance does. So those are some of the things I've grappled with. As with you, my kids absolutely love it here and are thriving. It's hard to imagine a better setup for them than they have here. So likewise there's no real interest in going back to SA from their side, apart from to visit sometime. We often have the chat about pros and cons of being here and all that, and my feeling is the scorecard is pretty even, until you bring kids into the equation. It's the real clincher. That being said, I do worry that the education system is somewhat narrow and rigid. Or maybe the place is too safe. I sometimes wonder if going to orderly and conformist decile 10 schools on the north shore is really going to bring out the best in them as human beings. I work with a bunch of guys from all over, but many youngsters from eastern europe and russia, who came over for the job. It's been interesting to see their experiences. I think in the end, most of them will leave. Without the family focus, or a specific focus on outdoor activities, there just isn't enough here to keep them. Making a go of the whole thing, it's so much a case of having a flexible open attitude, being effortful, patient, and taking one day at a time. And savouring the opportunity to have a whole new and different life experience. Like our kids do. As for access to outdoor amenities this place just can't be beaten. Auckland is not really that much of a cycling city - there are some tracks here and there, but not like Wellington for instance where there are trails everywhere. So I only really ride to work sometimes. There's a lot of cyclists out there, but cycling as a pursuit doesn't seem to have the same uptake on a large scale. Maybe there's too many other things to do. And indeed there are any number of awesome options, many of them taking advantage of the fact that there's nowhere in auckland more than about 20 mins from the water. In my case I've become totally hooked on kite hydrofoiling, and this is what I do at every possible opportunity. I'm grateful to have found an activity that is unbelievably awesome and totally accessible. I have a choice of about 6 regular spots anywhere from a 5 minute walk to a 20 min drive from where I live, plus a whole bunch of others further afield. Next weekend things really do shift a gear. We move onto daylight saving, which means time after work to play. And by the end of the month, sunset will be around 7:30pm, with 6 months of this ahead It's still quite a long time before it's remotely summery here, but at least the days are getting long. I don't really visit the hub much these days, but it would be nice to meet up with some of you in AKL for a ride, beer or whatever sometime.
