T.A.F.L.A

Three and four letter acronyms - also occasionally used as F.A.F.L.A - four and five letter acronyms! These are incredibly common here and everyone uses them with gay abandon - assuming that everyone else actually knows what the hell they are talking about!
For example - most of the important things in life (when you are settling into New Zealand) are linked in some way or another with an acronym or two, so newies like us have to understand what they want from us!
We have had to sort out the IRD then a WOF and are at present busy with the EOI so that we can apply for our PR - once the NZQA has been done and they complete the IQA then they will see that Jo's work falls within both the LTSSL and the ASSL so we should be able to have the EOI appoved and will apply for PR - and THAT is the one that we want to sort out as soon as we can! Fortunately, we don't think we have to go the whole IQA route and we know for sure that we don't need to have an IELTS done before INZ approves most things!
People GENUINELY talk to you like this! You can imagine how stupid you feel when you don't know even one of the acronyms and haven't the foggiest notion what they are talking about and even less what they want you to DO!
Translation:
We have had to sort out the Internal Revenue Department number (tax) and the Warrant Of Fitness for the car and are at present busy with the Expression Of Interest so that we can apply for our Permanent Residence - Once the New Zealand Qualifications Assessment has been done and they complete the International Qualifications Assessment then they will see that Jo's work falls within both the Long Term Skills Shortage List and the Absolute Skills Shortage List so we should be able to have the Expression of Interest approved and will apply for Permanent Residence - and THAT is the one that we want to sort out as soon as we can! Fortunately, we don't think we have to go the whole International Qualifications Assessment route and we know for sure that we don't need to have an International English Language Testing System done before Immigration New Zealand approves most things!
The everyday kiwi speak can be quite confusing too - the way words are pronounced sometimes gets us befuddled but then there are also words that we just didn't know - like:
chilly bin - cooler box
ute - bakkie
jandles - slip slops
tea - light supper
brillo - umbrella
opp shop - opportunity shop - second hand shop for charity
The other evening one of our new South African acquaintences mentioned that her grandson was asked by a friend at school to 'speak some South African' - he said he was! (since he is English speaking) and they said - ' aw, gowahn - some REAL South African' and the kid realised they wanted him to speak some Afrikaans!
Here are some words which take some getting used to in kiwi pronunciation -
mare - mayor
fawah - four
pie - pay
mawah - (simple really just like four) more
frey - free
bedda - better
cahd - card
geeah - gear
owah - or
modifoid - modified
resowts - results
drawring - drawing
lawah - law
lorr - law
kay - key
Whykaddo - Waikato (the area Hamilton falls into)
Madda madda - matamata (a little town near Hamilton)
kee kee - kihikihi (another little town)
And so on and so on! Great fun!
Dis al!

Shop 'n Go

Part of the adventure has been discovering things that are new and different for us - I guess that some things are not at all different for you guys who already live in advanced and exotic places, but for us little 'plaasjapies' from Wolmaransstad, some things are quite jaw-dropping-amazing for us!
In the interests of economy, we do our 'big' shopping at Pak 'n Save - not at all glamorous, but for the most part, glamour never saved money and so when even this supermarket offers more ways of stretching the dollars, we are first in the queue - boots and all.
There is a bank of computer-like screens at the entrance to the store and then beside these, a couple of short 'aisles' of hand-held barcode capture 'guns'! Thanks to the marvels of the Internet and technology in general, we have been signed up as 'Shop 'n Go' customers for the past few weeks and now 'shop and go' with the best of them.
For those of you who could be as disbelieving as we were, we'll give you a basic run-down of how this system works and you can decide for yourselves!
On entering the store, you touch one of the computer screens and get shown the specials for Shop'nGo customers - if any of them interest you, you print them out and put them one side for scanning later. Then you scan your personal Shop'n Go card under the 'gun aisle' machine and Bob's your uncle, the machine comes up with a personal welcome note and points you to the barcode capture gun allocated to you for that visit. Armed with the gun, you go about your usual shopping, scanning each item into the 'gun' as you go. If you decide against something after you have scanned it, you simply scan it again while pressing the minus button and poof, it's gone! If at any time along the way, you start feeling a little anxious about the total you are so happily totting up, a touch of another button tells you what the total at that point is.
The specials which you printed out at the beginning of the expedition are scanned in, if and when you decide to add one of those items to your trolley - instead of the marked barcode. At the fruit and veg section, you load up the bag of broccoli or whatever and plonk it on the scale - the screen has pictures of the various available products (so you don't even need to be able to READ cauliflower) and on touching the appropriate picture, the price comes up for the bag you have placed there and then you simply hit 'print' and scan the label that the machine spews out into your 'gun'. Easy!
If you are really organised, your trolley is armed with recycleable fabric shopping bags up front, so you pick something up off the shelf, scan the item into your 'gun' and then just plonk it into the bag all ready to be loaded into the boot of your car. All the cold items go straight into the cooler bag bag and the others are sort of sorted as you go along.
Once you are finished with the list, you head to the special 'Shop 'n Go' tills where the lass or lad standing behind the till asks for your card, whether everything scanned in ok and the scanner 'gun'. Once this has been read, they put out their hand for the bucks owing and that's it!
There is a clause in the original contract which states that you can expect to be 're-scanned' at least every fourth time you shop, and definitely on the first visit. We haven't been re-scanned yet - we don't actually know why not. The first time I did a shop this way, Jo was with some of you in South Africa and I fully expected to be re-scanned, so didn't pack things into bags en-route. The lass at the till did the usual and when I asked if my purchases shouldn't perhaps be re-scanned since I was a dinkum virgin Shop 'n Go customer, this being my very first time, she just blushed and said 'no - you look really honest!'
Now that's the second time that someone has told me I look really honest - the last time was a police inspector in Wollies around the time we were doing all the paperwork for police clearance for visa applications. Maybe I should take up a life of crime - since I look so honest, even to the long arm of the law.
I am really hoping that you read this blog entry Bertus - since you are in the business of shops and shopping! We wondered if you would be thinking about this kind of service for your customers any time soon! Maybe not!
Dis al!

A very quick trip to South Africa

The little plane which flew Jo to Auckland from Wanganui airport - yes, we do have an airport! (Admittedly, it's a very LITTLE airport!)

The area around Wanganui taken from the air en-route to Auckland. New Zealand is very hilly and very green!

In contrast, at this time of the year, the Freestate is looking very dry and brown.

From the left - Melinda and Johann, Johann and Barbara, Marike and Eugene.

There is always something to enjoy - time spent with the kids is always special and although Jo only had a day to spend with all three of them, it was fantastic to catch up a bit with their lives. E-mails are great, but it's a whole lot better to connect in person!

WOF and the Boks!

Yes! I know that you have already had this picture on the blog! The point is that you need to take note of the little white 'sticker' on the bottom right of the windscreen in the photograph! This little scrap of paper is the thing that any law enforcement officer or similar will be looking for when dealing with your car. Known here as the WOF, you are illegal if you don't have a valid WOF and the WOF expires every six months. You read correctly - every six months! A real pain in the proverbial, but admittedly it does mean that you can feel fairly confident about your vehicle being roadworthy. WOF stands for the Warrant Of Fitness and every car that is older than six months, needs to have a WOF test twice a year. Since we have had our 'van' for six months, it's WOF needed renewing this past week and so we duly went off to a testing station. In our case, the AA does these tests a little cheaper if you are a member, so we appeared there and handed our little car over. They do a pretty thorough check and it is admittedly a whole lot easier than a visit to the dentist. The bill was also a lot less! We needed to have the rear brakes adjusted - apparently these required a couple of new parts which were not available in Wanganui that day, so this meant that the car had to go back the following day to have the parts fitted and the WOF finally signed off for another six months. Glad that's done since we will be on the roads over the weekend - a trip back to Hamilton is planned for the Bokkies rugby test against the All Blacks and we will be in the stands, waving both our 'old' and 'new' South African flags for all we are worth! Who knows, maybe you'll catch a glimpse of us on the box - there are so many South Africans living and working in Hamilton that the SA support should be stupendous!! It's going to be really great to catch up with our friends in Hamilton and we have decided to make a weekend of it - after all, the trip is about three and a half hours of winding roads, so we might as well stay over and 'kuier' a bit while we are there! We are just hoping that the Bokkies put on a decent show after the disaster of last week (which incidentally was quite expected since without a Bok loss, the whole Tri Nations would have instantly become a fait accompli) and hopefully we will be able to sing our National Anthem 'uit volle bors' without becoming too misty eyed! Go the Bokke! Dis al!

A few more pictures!

Although it's not the capital city, Auckland has the most people living in it. A very typical 'super city'.


Boats in Auckland - the city of Sails (for now)

The Coromandel area is really spectacular.

Picnic spot on the beautiful Coromandel.

Bridal Falls.

Lagoon at Raglan beach

Taranaki mountain peak

Tauranga beach

Quite ominous looking clouds over Ruapehu mountain.

Sheepdogs in action - we counted five working together on this day.

New Zealand autumn colours.

Snow on all the peaks in the Taranaki area.

Lakes and mountains.

Virginia lake pathway in the heart of our suburb.

A very interesting piece of sculpture done with a chainsaw, on display at Virginia Lake Wanganui.

One of the bridges over the Whanganui river in our town.

There are very few stretches of straight road in New Zealand!

The road engineers around here refer to this bridge as the 'banana bridge' - can't think why!

The main route South towards Wanganui from Hamilton has stretches of road which need attention! But even in winter, the scenery is very dramatic with winding roads in the mountains.

The Whanganui river meanders beside the main road into the town.

Gorges, gangs and grannies.

On one of our week-end drives around our part of New Zealand, we came across this typical scene which gives you a good idea of the landscape. It is often such a surprise when you have been travelling along seemingly level ground for ages and then suddenly, out of nowhere, there is a dramatic gorge with cliff-like sides, falling away to a fast moving river.
Jo is presently in South Africa attending to things wise and otherwise and in the course of his travels has managed to go up to the actual offices of the Department of Environmental Affairs, who we have been communicating with for months. The issue has been the Cites certificate which we need in order to have our piano's released from Auckland and the official there has been literally unable to operate either the e-mail function or the good old fashioned fax machine to get the said certificate to us here in NZ. He has apparently been unable to operate the snail mail function of life either and as a result, we have made zero progress in two months. Jo called this morning and tells me that he now has the said certificate in his hand and so that is a huge relief after all the frustration we have been dealing with. Evidently, the above mentioned official was nowhere to be seen or found in the offices of the Department - he probably turned a little white when he heard that Mr Botha from NZ was there to collect the certificate and promptly did a speedy disappearing act. Enough said!
Wanganui has been in the news recently for the council's stand on gangs - it is now officially, from today, illegal to be seen in public with a 'gang patch' displayed on your clothing. There are two big rival gangs in Wanganui and as they said on the news this morning, if you happen to live in one of the 'lower income areas of Wanganui', you are likely to come across either or both. Frankly, we have seen nothing of this sort of thing anywhere in Wanganui and although it could well be an issue which needs attention, we can't imagine that banning the patches is going to help too much. After all, perhaps it's better to be able to see the patches up front and then you know well in advance what you are dealing with! In any event, it really does appear to be prevalent in the Maori communities and like everywhere else in the world, the gang issue lurks around the unemployed younger guys. I just wonder what they plan to do about the 'gang patches' that are a permanent part of the wearer in the form of tatoos - many of which are on the faces of the gang members. Can you just imagine trying to enforce the 'eyes only showing, veil system' for these chappies??
Also in the news this morning, two big stories for the 'more mature ladies' - Dame Vera Lyn of Sweetheart of the War fame (We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when) has done some more recording in the UK - at 92 years old I tell you - and says she is amazed that people are buying 'her type of music' with all the new stuff out there being 'so very different'! She looks incredible for her age - she could easily pass for seventy something - amazing! And to think that her voice is still 'recordable' at 92 is just as spectacular.
The other 'old duck' in the news today is the Olympic swimmer from way back - Dawn Frazer, who at 71 lives with her daughter and family on the sunshine coast. They were apparently attacked in their home yesterday - victims of an attempted robbery. Dawn Frazer was not impressed with this group of youngsters and when one of them tried to strangle her, she promptly fought back and kneed him in the groin! When they all decided they had picked the wrong family to attack, she and her daughter chased after them and I understand that some of them have now been locked up! This evening's news had an interview with Dawn and she happened to mention that she has had a knee replacement operation, which means that the knee in question is now made of titanium! I would imagine that it hurt the would-be robber quite a bit! Good on ya Dawn!!
Dis al!