Our communication links to the Blog were seriously curtailed with the move from the motel to our house - we're hoping someone noticed! In the interim, things are a whole lot more settled even though for the most part we are to all intents and purposes, camping! The motel provided internet and so on just for 'sommer' and of course here in the house there was just an empty telephone jack point! We did manage to scrounge an old telephone instrument at one of the 'new immigrant garages' - it was pretty grubby and sad looking, but had the potential to work, so we did all the application moves and duly plugged the phone in. There was a day's waiting period, but when the 'switch on' time came, the phone remained dead - no dial tone, no beep, no buzzing just plain no nothing. As is always the case with such things, all this occurred late on Friday and then there was a weekend of 'no nothing' and 'no nobody' to call to attend to it!
Calls to Telecom here are free, gratis and for nothing which is a good thing since when you do call, they tend to need to talk to you for about half an hour. The friendliness and efficiency here with folks like Telecom is really startling - they chat away with you while they type in information and so on and sound genuinely interested in how you are liking NZ so far - there is no way you can pretend you are a local - the accent gives us away every time! Most kiwis are pretty good although we have been accused of being Zimbabwean - could any of you recognise a Zim accent? Is there a specific Zim accent? All the faults and things having been sorted yesterday meant that we could haul out the laptop and plug in all the cabling and install the Broadband package (which arrived by courier on Saturday morning at our front door) and Bob's your Uncle! (I did once hear of Bob's your Auntie Mary) So here we are on Tuesday morning with all the bells and whistles - I see that there are a couple of folks who have now mastered the whole 'comment' thing - we hear that there are folk who check the blog every day to see if there is news - we check the blog every day to see if there is a comment from someone! (it's also a way to get the e-mail addresses that we still don't have for you guys)
We are doing ok - having heard some of the horrendous stories of other folks who have come over here, we realise we are actually doing really well! I don't think we would have been brave enough to sell up everything in SA, use that money to buy a couple of one-way tickets and hop on a plane and fall into NZ to start looking for work - it seems that quite a few folks have done just that and although we think that is just plain daft, perhaps they were in a position where they felt they had no other choice.
We have a house, a car and enough in the way of 'camping gear' to keep us going for as long as we have to - crockery, cutlery, linen and furniture is all along the lines of the barest minimum required to sustain life - not too many things match or would take 'design of the year' prizes, but then who cares? The stove and dishwasher are part of the house so came along with it - we scrounged a kettle, a tumble dryer, a bed, two cane armchairs, a small portable TV, an iron and various pots, pans, cutlery, crockery and linen - the cutlery is a real hotch potch sans teaspoons! I am convinced that there is a teaspoon mecca somewhere where all self-respecting teaspoons aim to get to in the course of their lives on this earth - where do they disappear to?
We initially bought a packet of plastic teaspoons, but found they buckled in hot coffee, so on Saturday while I was exploring the 'two dollar shop' I managed to pick up 6 teaspoons for $2.00 which I thought was a real bargain!
Our biggest dilemma in the first few days was the fact that we had no fridge and no way of keeping things fresh - although I have a key for our neighbour's home and flit in and out there as if I have shares in the place, I didn't think padding over there in the middle of the night to get some milk out of their fridge to make a hot drink because we couldn't sleep, was going to quite cut it. As it turned out, we were invited to join them for a braai on Thursday evening and while we were there, Stephanie said we should check out Trade Me and see if we couldn't find a good second hand fridge for a song. We had toyed with the idea of finding a pawnshop, but were advised that these are few and far between and rarely have bargains - they tend to be really expensive so we shelved that idea.
Trade Me is along the lines of E-Bay and you can buy anything your mind can dream up for almost any price you can imagine and in any sort of condition. Obviously, in this case, you click on 'fridges' - 'upright' - under $100 - Waikato (our region) - 'go' and wait to see what comes up! Stephanie found one being auctioned at the time and bid on it for us - we set a limit of $105, and as she said she had to go 'over budget' to win the auction - by a whole dollar! So we now have a fridge which apart from needing a bit of a clean is in perfect working order and does the job brilliantly - no freezer section, so no ice for dop, but beggars can't be choosers! We collected the fridge on Friday evening, loading it into the 'new' car (the back seats fold flat along with the passenger seat, so the fridge fitted in easily) and handing over the dollars.
I did the last 'orientation' with the 'On Arrival' agent yesterday - not that I needed too much orienting - I have been navigating with a map on my lap since we got here - and used the opportunity to get all the forms from the nearest doctors so that we can register with them - that's how it works here, you register with a doctor and then he/she claims from the government for costs since everything in health care is free - also, apparently, everything really is linked, so if you have to go into a hospital or something for an emergency, you are already on the system and at the touch of a button all your little health secrets are up on the screen for everyone to see. I got all the forms from the agents for the house so that we can set up a stop order for payments weekly and also registered at the library. The libraries in Hamilton are all linked, so you can borrow from any one of them and return books, CD's, DVD's, sheet music, puzzles, magazines, talking books, and so on and so on and so on at any one of them, no matter where you borrowed them from. You are entitled to take out 20 items at a time and have 28 days in which to finish with them - all the renewals you want to do can be done on the internet and obviously, you can request things via the internet too, since they link your e-mail address to the credit card -like membership card which will be issued to me within 3 days.
There are quite a few new photo's which we have taken over the past little while and I will have a little look-see and post some more for you to see later - I'll publish this epistle now so that you at least know we are still in the land of the living!
Dis al!
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