Trampolines and cars

Its been the last week of the school holidays this week. The other half has had to go back to work for most of it, but me and the girls have spent the week at home. I've been mostly marking assessments and the girls have been enjoying time just chilling and doing the odd bit of crafty stuff around the house.

On Friday we met up with friends and went to a trampoline park in Wellington. Things like this didn't exist when I was young (in the dark ages!) but they look such fun. I am extremely jealous that they don't seem to make these places for forty year olds.

It's basically a large warehouse filled with as many trampolines as they can squeeze in plus the odd foam pit and climbing wall.

On Saturday we went to the Car Show of the Century at the TSB Arena in Wellington. We spotted the first car on the harbour before we even entered the Arena. Obviously an amphibious design.

I love cars and was a huge Formula 1 fan when I was younger, so the opportunity to see the Maclaren from 1973 was fantastic.

The other half's favourite car was the "Treka". A New Zealand attempt at making a practical rival to Land Rovers and other farm off road vehicles. Although weirdly it was not a four x four. I personally couldn't see the appeal. I think is looks like a metal box on wheels.

I did like the modern Maclaren!

The girls liked the "driverless" cars. You apparently have the option of driving it from either side of the vehicle (as the steering wheel moves) or not driving it at all and allowing the  car to drive itself.

I do not understand the appeal of this. I enjoy driving and would not enjoy relinquishing control to a computer.

The whole exhibition prompted a lot of heated debate about the future of cars and we ended the morning at the Crab Shack. 

A good ending to the holidays.

(I am not happy with the quality of the photos in this post. All of them were taken on the i-phone. I think I will go back to my normal camera next week!)

Driving in New Zealand

I love driving. I am one of those weird people who actually enjoy driving on the M25. If your like me and one of your favourite things in life is putting the radio on really loud and changing gear in time to appropriate bit in "Sweet Child of Mine" then you will enjoy driving in New Zealand. For one thing Kiwi radio stations seem to like playing soft rock (sad I know but they seem to just play stuff from my record collection) and the roads are not crowded and go through some stunning scenery. Its no wonder that Jeremy Clarkson says New Zealand is one of his favourite countries.

There is a surprisingly large amount of traffic on the roads for a country that only has 4.5 million people in it. There are 6 million people in London alone so you would imagine that the roads here would be virtually empty. However it can sometimes feel like every single person in Wellington owns a car and decides to head home at 5 o'clock exactly most days.

It can get very busy and it has taken me 45 minutes to get from the airport to the motorway, a journey you should be able to do in 10 minutes. However once you get out of the city itself and onto the highway the traffic clears very quickly and its like driving on the roads in rural France (only on the proper side of the road and with no funny little French cars going at a dangerously high speed).

I have found adapting to driving here fairly easy. Its virtually the same as in the UK but with just one or two rather odd differences. They have a very strange give way rule at junctions which I still don't really understand. If you are turning right across the road and someone is coming in the opposite direction and turning left - they stop and give way to you. This has led to some very awkward confrontations at junctions when I am not sure whether to give way or keep going. This website will hopefully explain it better.

http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/overseasdrivers/driving-in-nz.html

The other very odd and slightly scary thing I have found about driving in New Zealand is the way that perfectly big highways can suddenly turn into terrifying roads climbing through mountains with sheer drops on one side. This weekend we decided to take the girls for a picnic to a forest the other side of the Tararua Mountain Range. The route we had decided to take was along State Highway 2 which we assumed would be a simple motorway trip. No its not. Once you get past Kaitoke the road starts twisting and climbing up the mountains. At several points you turn corners and are confronted with sheer drops on one side and little or no barrier. The wind whips through the valley and hits your vehicle with a lot of force as you turn corners. It managed to make our large people carrier shake so it must have felt much worse in the large camper van we were following. I didn't get over 30km/ph it was too scary. By the time we had got to the top my fingers were hurting from gripping the steering wheel to hard, and we still had to get to the other side. However I am assured the view was fantastic and probably worth the risk. I didn't get to see it as I was concentrating on keeping us on the road!

Top tips for setting up your new life in NZ - before you leave home...

These are our top tips for things you can do before you leave your home country in order to start setting up your new life in New Zealand.




Finding Somewhere to Live

Finding somewhere to live was something we were obviously very worried about. We were looking for somewhere to rent as we are still renting out our own property in the UK. Moving thousands of miles away to the other side of the world and then being homeless is not something we wanted to contemplate.

As we had no one we could stay with temporarily we did everything we could to find a permanent residence before we left home. However this is not an easy thing to do and in the end we found out that it is not a good idea to try and find a home when you haven't been to an area and seen it in person as photos and descriptions can be very misleading. Also letting agents and landlords are very reluctant to rent to someone they have never met and some will not even show you round without references and meeting you in person. So in the end we set up as much as possible prior to arrival in NZ is order to make renting a place as easy and quick as possible. These are some of the things we recommend that you do.

1. Look on the Internet for suitable properties and try to find out as much as possible about the different areas you might be interested in living. The best site we found for rental properties in is Trade Me (http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-me-property/index.htm) which is essentially the NZ equivalent of Ebay. All the letting agents we came across use this site for all their properties. Unfortunately you cant register with the site until you live in NZ but you can get to agents websites from Trade Me and then contact them direct.

2. Fill in tenancy applications with letting agents and give them as much information as possible, such as references and employer contact details. If you can set this up before you even get to NZ you will find that the agents will be much more helpful and things will progress much faster. Most letting agents will need a reference from past landlords and possibly your employer. Some also asked for a bank reference which is difficult to get from abroad so if you can get one from your bank in the UK this will help. Also a great tip is to get an extra copy of your police check certificate (needed for your visa) we found that this acted as an extra reference.

3. If you have school age kids then its a good idea to check out the local schools as this gives you a good idea of what the local area is like as a whole. They are graded into deciles. A school's Decile indicates the extent to which it draws its students from low socio-economic communities. Decile 1 schools are the 10% of schools with the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic communities. Decile 10 schools are the 10% of schools with the lowest proportion of these students. This website explains this in more detail -

http://www.minedu.govt.nz/educationSectors/Schools/SchoolOperations/Resourcing/OperationalFunding/Deciles/FrequentlyAskedQuestionsAboutDeciles.aspx

From this website you can get information on the decile rating of all the schools in NZ and their contact details.

http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/tertiary_education/27436

4. Research the areas you are thinking of living in. This can be done using the Internet. Google street views which appear on many of the property details allow you to take virtual tours up and down streets - and even to do your commute to work. Its also a good idea to join some of the online expat communities and ask people questions. The two I used the most are shown below.

http://www.emigratenz.org/

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/living_overseas - Yes I know this is a parenting website but it has a large community in NZ who are very helpful.

Bank Accounts

5. It is a good idea to set up your bank account in NZ before you get out here. This can be done entirely over the Internet and you can get all the details via email. You can also send money to this account before you leave. This means that all you need to do when you get to NZ is pop into a branch to get your card and pin number.

Temporary Accommodation

6. You are likely to have to stay in temporary accommodation when you first arrive unless you are lucky enough to know someone out here you can stay with. We ended up staying in a holiday cottage in Wellington. It was an absolutely lovely cottage but not exactly cheap and if we had more time and been more organised we might have found somewhere cheaper.

Lots of people choose to stay in serviced apartments or if the weather is good even camp sites in one of the simple cabins. These are cheap and must be like being on holiday in the summer. It took us just over a week and a half to find somewhere to rent and it was very stressful and hard work. I also think we were very lucky to find somewhere we could move into so quickly. I have heard it can take people up to a month to find somewhere suitable.

An example of serviced apartments. - http://www.lambtoncourt.co.nz/pages/start.html

An example of cabins. - http://huttpark.co.nz/accomodation

Our holiday cottage - http://www.travelbug.co.nz/visit/26319 (great house we loved it!)

Buying a Car

7. We have found its essential to have a car in NZ and its an excellent way of exploring the local area. We hired a car for the first 12 days and we were lucky enough to find a company that gave us the car seats for free. One of the things that surprised us was that these hire companies don't just hire out new cars. They manage to provide fairly cheap hire cars by using ones that can be up to 10 years old. So you can get a hire car at a very reasonable price.

Buying a car was a bit more tricky and again we recommend that you use the Trade Me website shown above as you can then check out the prices before leaving home. There are many used and new car showrooms about but as in any other country the prices you pay will be a inflated. We ended up buying ours through Trade Me and met a lovely family who invited us in for a cup of coffee whilst our girls played in the back garden with their kids. We learnt their life story and all about their planned move to Brisbane - people in NZ are very friendly!

A good way of checking out used cars in NZ is by using the AA lemon check service. They AA is the same company as in the UK and they will check the history of your car and do a mechanical check to warn of any faults or potential problems. This is their website - http://www.aa.co.nz/Pages/default.aspx