Previewing Auckand, Kawau Island

Change is afoot, and I will soon be moving to Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand (but not the capital - that's Wellington). Lots of people in Christchurch complain about Auckland being too big and crowded, and the traffic being bad, but relative to California traffic, it's really nothing, and the big size means it has a lot of stuff to do, most of the touring concerts and things only go there, etc. Auckland has around 1.66 million people, which is more than 1/3 of the country's total population, and that percentage is set to increase. Although the government tries to encourage people to live and work elsewhere, it's hard when that's where most of the businesses are, so the strategy isn't working very well. It's also quite ethnically diverse, with 23% Asian and 15% Pasifika peoples living there, in addition to other ethnic groups. 

I'm looking forward to a change. It will be more crowded and more expensive, but the trade-off is a bigger, more bustling city, with more to do, and new people to meet. The university environment here has grown stale, and when you're not growing anymore or being challenged, I think a change of scenery can be good. Plus, it will give me new stuff and new parts of New Zealand to write about! :)

I went up for a visit recently and rented a car, and was surprised that they gave me an upgrade to a brand new car (only 13km total on the odometer). I had never heard of a Toyota C-HR, and it was a bit cramped and had lots of blind spots, but it was definitely sporty and cool to drive one straight off the lot. The back doors open from the top, like some futuristic car. 

Speaking of cars, I need to give an update on my own car. I decided to sell my Subaru Legacy and upgrade to a Subaru Forester, which is the number one car in New Zealand. I sold the Legacy to a German backpacker who was happy with it, and I am very happy with my new one. It feels so luxurious to have a newer car with modern upgrades, like heated seats and a sunroof, plus Bluetooth and computer safety features. It also has a tow bar for the move north to haul stuff.

Back to Auckland...there was a cool night food market with lots of stalls and choices. I tried something new at a South African place - it was a really tasty marinated steak sandwich - then got cheesecake in a cup and a piece of peanut butter chocolate cake. 

There are way more birds in Auckland, which is great, and you can hear the tuis and see the wood pigeons in town - you don't have to go out of your way for an encounter. They're hard to photograph since they like to move when you get your camera ready, but I got a couple with the zoom. I can't wait to get to hear tui every day.

I took a ferry out to an island called Kawau Island, which is supposed to have some Australian animals there (wallabies and kookaburras), but unfortunately I just got to see the peacocks and other normal birds. The hike was nice though, and the views looking over the ocean were great. There were some remains from mining there too.

I also finally got to try the chocolate-covered ice cream bar that has been advertised in Christchurch but that I haven't been able to find at the grocery stores. Apparently it is just sold in individual packs at the dairies (convenience stores). It was butterscotch popcorn and it was delicious. Definitely worth the $4.50 price!

In Christchurch, I haven't done much besides tutoring and preparing for the move. You are reminded how much stuff you have accumulated over the years and what a pain it is to haul it around with you. I'm trying to clear out stuff, but I won't part with my books. There was a pop-up Krispy Kreme store at the mall for two weeks and when my coworkers said they had never had one, I had to get some for them. You couldn't just buy a couple though, so I got a whole box and got to eat a bunch of the leftovers myself. They taste just like I remember - so yum.

I also went out for a friend's birthday to a Chinese restaurant that serves dim sum for lunch, which I hadn't ever had before. They are like tapas in Spain - little plates with just a few items, and you order a bunch of them and share. It was a good new experience and different from the other restaurants we've been to - there was more gelatin in the dishes and thicker coatings, but the flavors were good. We ordered one Chinese-style dessert, which was glutinous rice in a carrot-shaped breading. I thought it was cute so snapped a photo of that one.

Changing Car, Changing Place

There's usually a rush at the end of any big project it seems, but it's rarely pleasant. In the midst of doing revisions of my thesis draft, I also had to get another car and move house again, so things have been busy.

I took the Toyota Camry that we had had only since the start of last year to the wreckers at the end of last year -- it was overheating constantly and the repairpeople said a blown head gasket wasn't worth fixing on an older car. This left me worrying that it would stop working when I needed to get to work, and I was also worried about insurance issues. So I found another Subaru Legacy, like the first car we had here, which is newer and only needs to have a Warrant of Fitness (WOF) check once a year instead of twice. The seller was nice and seemed to have taken good care of it. My friend helped me pick it up and take the old one to the wrecking place, where I just got a pittance for it. But it was better than nothing.

Finding a new place was another hassle. There's not much affordable in the Christchurch area and they just don't have studio and 1-bedroom apartments like in the U.S. One place I saw was literally a shoebox size room that had been carved out of an existing building. The bed was up a ladder in a little loft area with a huge skylight, so the sun would be blasting in the morning. There was no oven or stove, just a hotplate, and a tiny bathroom squeezed in. And that place was almost as much as getting a regular small house. I decided it was time to find a place with other people to bring down the price, so I happened to find a house with a separate sleepout building in the backyard that was a decent size with two medium-size rooms that I could keep the cat in. I have full use of the main house but have my own space as well. It's not ideal and has taken some getting used to, but it will work for now as I finish things up and make a decision about where I want to go.

I've been participating in a business course over the summer at the university and it has been a great learning experience. I wish I would have learned this stuff earlier, and I really think it should be required for everyone to learn a little about business whether or not they think they want to be their own boss someday or disagree with the whole system. It's part of the world we live in, and it's hard to change something you don't understand. I've found it encouraging how often I've heard other students talk about sustainability and the environment -- it seems like a trend that has staying power.

Autumn Red and New Car

I'm nearing the last stages of the thesis writing, and it's not a pleasant task to have to go through drafts you wrote years ago and update and edit them. It's not something we really teach or encourage undergraduates to do, then suddenly it's all you're doing at the graduate and professor level, because you have to get feedback and make edits on almost everything you write if you're looking to get published. In this environment, there are always seemingly more pressing things to occupy your attention (sometimes they are more important, sometimes not), so it becomes a challenge to stay focused and move through the additional research and writing. I'll get there eventually, but it will take a lot of effort.

Meanwhile, the mostly not-very-good summer has gone away and turned into a cold autumn. I can turn the heater up in my office, which is nice, but the walk to and from the parking lot is still cold and windy. The high next week is supposed to be 52F (11C) and rainy some of the days, so I'm not looking forward to those. The leaves changing color are still pleasant to see, although they really clutter up the car crevices and the parking lots and walkways everywhere. The garden only had a few crops manage to produce through the colder weather -- the cucumbers are still churning out a couple small one -- and my sunflowers had a brief but nice run for a couple weeks when it was nice out. They grow so tall!

We sold our car that had been pretty good to us since we bought it two weeks after we arrived because the auto shop said that it would have some major repairs coming up and wouldn't really be worth fixing since it had so many miles/kms on it. We sold it to a traveling American and it only took a week or so to get another one from an American backpacking couple who needed to get rid of theirs. It's a little 'newer' and has its own quirks, but we got it new tires and a tune-up, and hopefully it will last us for as long as we need it. It rides like a Cadillac compared to our old car though, which is a bit hard to get used to. And I've never had a white car before, but at least it's two-toned. There was a big spider living just above the driver's seat that came out while I was driving one night and it stayed there for several weeks, but we let it build its web back up and finally were able to get it out of the car and send it on its way into some plants.

A friend highly recommended I attend a spoken poetry evening with a famous Palestinian poet, Rafeef Ziadah. Admittedly, I don't know much about the issues, but she was so passionate and her stories were quite moving about the losses she and others have suffered. It is great to hear poetry performed live, and her musical accompaniment was also very good.

Rafeef Ziadah

Kraft Mac & Cheese (albeit freezer kind) finally makes it to NZ!! $5 though...

Can't resist clearance chocolate Easter eggs!

Autumn sunsets

Corsair Bay and Visitors

I've been busy writing and thankfully doing pretty well on the academic track: was accepted into a conference in Australia (well, two really, but I can't make the second one), received good feedback on an article submitted months ago, finished a helpful seminar for postgrad students where we learned about some of the ins and outs of academia from an insider's perspective, and am almost finished with a chapter of the thesis. I'm realizing just how little you can actually say when you have to integrate theory and support from outside the primary texts. I'm very excited about the opportunity to go to Australia again. We wanted to check out Tasmania while we were here, and now we will be able to. We're going to spend a week in Melbourne first since everyone has recommended it, and it looks like a cool place from the little I've read in the guidebook so far. Tasmania has some good wildlife spots, so I want to visit some of them despite the fact that it will be winter and likely very cold, possibly even snowing!

We checked out Corsair Bay on the other side of the Port Hills during a nice sunny weekend. Days like those where you're out enjoying the natural beauty remind me of what's nice about New Zealand.

Our car started stalling really badly while driving so we had to take it in and get something in the air line fixed. That was several hundred dollars of fun.It was out of commission for a few days, so we had our first experience taking the bus to school from our house, and it wasn't too bad, although it takes almost an hour (car takes 20 minutes). There were a lot of school kids taking it, and they would come on in big bunches and sit on their phones or chatter amongst themselves. Most wear school uniforms here, so they can't really not stand out.

We had some American visitors come over for dinner, and beforehand we drove them up to the Port Hills for some good views. It was nice to hear about what's going on in the U.S. from folks 'on the ground' and compare with some of the features in New Zealand. They also graciously brought us some supplies from back home, including D's favorite Pasta Roni and Mexican food supplies like chili powder and sauce which will be great for cooking, and we loaded them up with some delicious Whittaker's chocolate. I've got two more planned visitors in the next year and am looking forward to showing them around, too.

Someone here wanted to know about how to work for a U.S. company and deal with tax issues, and I found a helpful site that explains about 1099s for foreign contractors. Taxes are often confusing, but especially so when you're coming from a country like New Zealand where a lot of people don't even have to worry about them or file tax returns because the government handles everything (their tax code is a lot simpler).

I found out that here they have flatmates but not roommates, and that they think sharing a room with someone, even in college, is weird. Of course, it's not all like the movies they see, but it does take getting used to sharing a tight space with a stranger.

Valentine's Day Earthquake and Aftershocks

Although there is not much in the way of "New Zealand cuisine" to serve visitors, we have taken to buying a few products that we have found to be unique to New Zealand, or at least tastier versions of what you would normally buy in the U.S. Unfortunately, a lot of them are full of sugar!

• L&P soda, a lemon-y kind of ginger ale
• Fresh Belgian chocolate milk (like drinking a luscious chocolate bar)
• Honey (most famous is manuka, but other flavors are unique because of the trees in the area)
• Hokey pokey ice cream (hokey pokey is just caramelized sugar pieces, but it is so good)
• Whittaker's chocolate (amazingly good chocolate with no additives)
• General dairy items like full fat cheese, milk, and cream
• Gold kiwis (sweeter and much easier to eat than green kiwi fruit)

Our car failed its recent Warrant of Fitness (WOF) test so had to be taken in for repairs. We opted to go to a AA shop this time (similar to AAA) and I felt a lot better than some of the other places we've taken it to. Unfortunately, while attending the Asian Noodle Market and Sparks fireworks in Hagley Park, someone(s) decided to break into our car parked in a residential area and steal the new Bluetooth speaker in the glove box. Thankfully, I had taken everything else out before our trip to Australia, so that's all the jerks found. A lot of the police were managing the park, so I assume people thought it was a prime time to go around to all of the hundreds of cars parked around the area. I reported it to the police for statistical purposes, but since our car's speakers finally gave out, now we have no means of playing music or audiobooks in the car.

There have been a few summer days hot enough for us to turn on the A/C for the first time since we've been here (the heat pump is also an A/C). Since it isn't terribly expensive to have it on for a few hours, we have chosen not to suffer when the house gets up to 26-28 C (79-82 F) and turn it on occasionally. What can I say? Americans like their comfort.

I stumbled upon an expat migrant website for New Zealand where people who used to live here detail their negative experiences and warn others that NZ isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's nice to know you're not alone, but we still have a ways left here, so I don't think I'll dwell on that site. I also went to a training session at school where a Pasifika woman gave a presentation on how different island cultures look at the world differently, and that this often impacts how they can fit into a society and university built on an independent, autonomous, and individualistic way of operating. She said that their cultures value interdependence and caring about others before yourself, and that studying for an exam alone and having to push aside concern for anything currently happening with your friends or family just isn't right to them. It was a lot of food for thought and made me think what a loss it is that these kinds of worldviews are considered less than and not shared with the dominant culture, which could use more compassion and empathy in many of its relationships, from business to family ones.

Valentine's Day Earthquakes

But the big news around here has been the Valentine's Day earthquake and aftershocks. The first one hit around 1:30pm and was a 5.8 off the coast of Christchurch and shook the house for quite a while (in quake terms, I'd say it was about 10-15 seconds). We had been in the kitchen cleaning out the pantry and our cat bolted into the bedroom and went under the bed, staying there all day. Then there were aftershocks, then lulls about every hour. There was even one while I was just falling asleep. Can’t escape them! I was quite scared and just when I would be settling down, another one would come. Most were off the coast which is not far from where we live in the east, so we really felt them. I just don’t feel safe in this country with their poor infrastructure. The earthquake was big enough to hit international news. The cliffs in Sumner had some falling sides and kicked up a ton of dust, so of course that was what made the news. There were 83 quakes on Valentine's Day alone.

Earthquake knocked second layer of books off shelf

The rest of the week we had aftershocks that we could feel at least once a day. While we were at an open-air Shakespeare play of Hamlet, there was another one, and it was the first time I had been sitting on grass during an earthquake. Admittedly, it was a lot less scary because you're outside and it feels like a rumble but you don't have a creaky house making all sorts of noises to put you in panic mode. But just as the aftershocks had finally stopped for a few days, there was another big one (4.3) that woke most of the city up at 3:30am on February 29th. It's hard to get back to sleep when your adrenaline kicks in. I can definitely see why people left the city and were tired of putting up with all of the commotion.

Open-air performance of Hamlet

Cost of Living as International PhD Student in New Zealand

At the end of the year, it seemed right to do an overview of the fixed cost of living as an international PhD student in New Zealand, now that there is over a year's worth of data. No warehouse stores or coupons, so it is more difficult to get a bargain. Costs are annual unless stated otherwise and in NZ dollars.

School
$7,200 Postgraduate PhD tuition and admin fees

Medical
$600 - Medical insurance for university international students
(basically equivalent to travel insurance)
$58 - Doctor's visit at university health center
$25 - Dentist visit (10-minute cleaning and X-rays) subsidized by university
(normally ~$80)
$80 - Hygienist visit (30-minute cleaning) at separate location
$22 - 3 months of generic drug at university pharmacy
(with prescription, not covered by ins.)
$36 - 6 months of oral contraception at university pharmacy
(with prescription, not covered by ins.)
$1/pill - most other medicines at any pharmacy (e.g. pain relief, allergy)

Vehicle
$200 - Annual government car registration
$115 - AA car insurance, Third Party policy (not required but good to have)
$60 - AA membership
$2,000 - Gas costs (~$70-100 per fillup with older car) with two roadtrips around islands

Utilities
$19,240 - Rent ($370/week in lower-income neighborhood)
$8,000 - Groceries and household supplies ($120/week for low-carb groceries for two)
$2,000 - Electricity costs ($150/month summer, $300/month winter)
(being away during weekdays)
$900 - Internet, unlimited data, slow speeds ($75/month)
$265 - Contents/renters insurance
$240 - Cell phone plan, 500MB data, unlimited texting ($20 topup/month)

Returning to New and Old Things

I enjoyed flying back over the Southern Alps covered in snow. What a lovely view of New Zealand.

What's been happening in the month since I returned from Australia...

In the Neighborhood


Construction finished on the new Pak N Save store next to the old one. The good news is we spotted insulation, so hopefully it was actually used! (Rare sight to see insulation in New Zealand.) We went to the old store on the final weekend -- of course they didn't advertise this the previous week lest people wait for the sale -- and it was almost bare because they had a 20% off everything in the store to try to clear the stock. It definitely worked, and we bought a bunch of extra items in preparation for holiday parties.

On our street, a couple more houses were demolished. No idea if and when these will be replaced.

At Home

Our landlords were nice and got us a new dishwasher without us asking when we mentioned that the spring had broken on our door so it would slam down. They are easily the nicest landlords we've had, and they said they can put off doing earthquake repairs for a few years if we want to stay.

Our car failed its every-6-months Warrant of Fitness (WOF) because two of the rotors were going. Getting new rotors and an oil change set us back a bit, but that's cars for you.

It snowed in August! It wasn't enough to stay for long, but it was fun to see it falling. The heat pump struggled mightily to keep working (again, they are not designed to work in freezing temperatures!) and the electricity bill for that day was almost $20. You can see how people end up with massive energy bills in the winter here. 

Our cat is really happy we are home. He likes impeding work and setting a poor example by lounging on blankets.

Healthwise

I picked up some kind of cold at the last conference, but it wasn't too bad and I was on the mend by the time we got back to New Zealand. Everyone else seemed to be getting sick though with either colds or flus. It is strange being sick in July since that is winter here. D got sick once and now is sick again with something else.

I went to a dental hygienist that a friend recommended and got a cleaning (called a scraping and polishing) for $80. They weren't as good as places in the U.S. and didn't seem to realize that you have the patient wrap their mouth on the suction tube occasionally so the saliva and water don't pool at the back of their throat and cause choking. Just a thought. The cleaning took a half-hour and I was on my way. Possibly couldn't help stopping at the only Wendy's in town that happened to be across the street to get two value Frosties...

We decided to finally buy a parking pass to be able to park on-campus because it was getting too cold to walk all the way from off-campus in the freezing cold and wind tunnel by the library. I have been enjoying this luxury a lot this winter.

Learning

Several dozen of the Arts postgrad students are taking a no-fee 10-week "tutor training course" designed to help us improve our tutoring and teaching skills. Some of us wish that the instructor were actually from the Arts and not the Sciences, but this is whom the university offered. I found it interesting when we were given the children's story Goldilocks for an activity that the story is not universal; then I began wondering what sorts of stories and fairy tales kids learn outside of the Western context and what messages we actually absorb from all of our early reading.

The Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Arts gave a presentation entitled "What if Studying the Arts were the Best Thing for the Economy?" where he, a music guy, lamented having to give these kinds of talks defending the Arts instead of ones celebrating all the great things about them. The good news is that at least in New Zealand, earnings potential and employment rates are pretty much the same for most Arts and STEM graduates after a few years.

I'm learning more about Digital Humanities at the new weekly seminar series on campus. When one presenter asked the audience if they knew what OCR was, and a group of middle-aged lecturers all answered no, it really reminded me why I want to push for basic digital literacy as a requirement for university students everywhere! It’s what runs our world; we should have some say in it. I did some informal polling among some of the postgrads on our floor and none of them knew what OCR was even though they've all benefited from it. I just assumed everyone knew. It stands for Optical Character Recognition and is when the computer converts an image of text into text that can be read by a computer and manipulated in a lot more ways. This happens when items are digitized and then the text becomes keyword-searchable, able to be copied and pasted, etc. If you have a picture of a text (like the page of a book), you might be able to read it, but you can't do much else with it because the information is locked in the image. OCR isn't always perfect -- it's very difficult to do this accurately with handwritten things, old manuscripts, and anything not standardized. The presenter also mentioned scanning images into 300dpi TIFF color files, and though he didn't ask this time, I'm pretty sure a sizable portion of the audience didn't know what he meant.

How I got away with it for this long I don't know, but I finally read Edward Said's Orientalism and it was really good and surprisingly readable and accessible. He wrote it in the 70s but it could almost be written today, so much of what he discussed regarding stereotypes about the Middle East are still used. I'm using his perspective for the journal article I am writing and it is perfect since there are a lot of references to Islamic and Arabic culture and practices in my text. I think Orientalism should be required reading at university level and our education system should actually teach students about non-Western areas of the world in modern times, not just in ancient history where it's "safe".

Public Speaking

I participated in the university's Thesis in Three competition where you boil down your research and why it's important in three minutes. I also convinced several other Arts postgrads to do it and use it for presentation practice. Unfortunately there is a bias toward Linguistics students who win every year (didn't know this going in) so none of us made it into the finals. It was nice learning about other research going on though.

I had the opportunity to help plan for and co-teach a session at the skills center for students with English as a Second Language, and it went well. They are so appreciative of the chance to practice their English with native speakers.

Making Change

After I discovered that I hadn't been invited to be a representative at the postgrad focus group that was set up because of my complaining about the lack of culture last year, I was finally invited and am getting the chance to air my complaints and propose solutions, as well as meet some of the postgrads around campus. On my wishlist is to have a holiday party with hand-mailed invitations (because getting another email is so easy to ignore). We'll see if that happens.

I was also given the opportunity to sit down with the newly-hired International Student Experience Advisor (I think the university is finally realizing there's a problem) and tell her all of my issues with being an international student. She is lovely and really wants to improve things if she can get some resources. (She's also been outside New Zealand so knows how things are supposed to work!)

Some of us went to the New Zealand International Film Festival's screening of She's Beautiful When She's Angry about the birth of the women's movement in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s. It was good, and fun to see older women being interviewed now about their past experiences and then have the scene jump to them back when they were in college and agitating for change. Putting faces and personalities to the big authors (Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, etc.) was cool.

Socially

The Alumni office invited me to go schmooze with alumni and donors at a party and I got a little peak into how the university positions itself to them. I met a couple interesting people and had a long discussion about what's wrong with New Zealand politics. It was great!

There's a new young lady from China in our postgrad room so I'm excited to learn more about her country from a female perspective. She seems really nice and not as shy as other international students. I also met my first person from Kazakhstan, and I'm having to put aside all the stereotypes from the movie Borat which is probably the only encounter most Americans have had with that country's name. It shows you the power of popular culture in shaping our perspectives.

A Book A Day

Last week I had several instances of reading a book in a day, which was quite satisfactory. To procrastinate on working on my project proposal (wherein I have to outline everything I'm going to write about and provide a background to the topic), I started reading Ursula Le Guin's The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (1989) and continued the whole day until I finished it. Admittedly, I have not held her in very high esteem after I was let down by her classic The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). It just wasn't the groundbreaking feminist science fiction novel I was expecting, and her use of the male pronoun always bothered me. This book was a collection of 1970s essays as well prologues to her books, with her going back and providing commentary on them from her 1989 perspective. It gave me some good insight into her perspective on both the science fiction field as a whole, and her works as a part of it. I liked a lot of what she had to say about the genre, and she admitted that she later realized what a big deal it was that she used male pronouns and regretted it. So, I am looking forward to rereading that novel (checked it out of the library today) as well as her other ones from the 60s and 70s. They will undoubtedly be important novels to compare to Dune, and I'm hoping I will like them.

The next day, I read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895). Nice, quick science fiction with a tolerable frame narrative. Normally you forget the narrator is telling a story by the time you return to them, but this book is short enough that you don't.

The following day, I started with Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845). It is supposed to be the closest to science fiction of his short stories. It was certainly an interesting premise (check it out for free from Project Gutenberg -- love stuff out of copyright!). Then I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), where three young men stumble upon a land populated only by women and girls. I found several similarities to Dune and marveled that she was writing this so far ahead of the "official" start of science fiction, especially with all of the attention to women's issues. It was great to see the men floundering when they were trying to explain how great their civilization was but kept having to avoid or explain away problems like poverty, crime, and diseases. Unfortunately, most of Gilman's critiques about society and gender still ring true today.

So I'm steadily working through my science fiction classics list. I moved it to a spreadsheet so I could sort it by year, and am trying to read in chronological order when possible to see the genre's evolution. Most of the books are available at either the university library or city library system, although some I might have to break down and buy elsewhere. It's difficult not to accumulate a sizable book collection here, especially working in academia, but I keep in mind the trip back home and how much paper weighs.

We watched Pixar's WALL-E movie and I was able to enjoy some of the references to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have found that watching movies at different stages in life can render a new response and perspective on them. Maybe it's having more life experiences to compare them with. Just something I've noticed when rewatching movies that I haven't seen in a long time.

We've gone to the first two of the Lazy Sundays free concerts in the park to try to get out and enjoy the summer weather and some live music. Yesterday on our way there I picked up my first found money! A 10-cent piece on the sidewalk. Since they got rid of the penny and nickel, I guess people hold onto their change more carefully.

We took our car in today to get it tuned up ahead of our roadtrip down south. Oil change, new air filter, and new tires (spelled tyres here) since the old ones were almost bald and not very safe to drive on. Also got a wheel alignment and the tech commented on how off it was (it took them an extra half hour to fix). It's probably the first time it's been aligned in a long while. No word back on the check engine light problem, but otherwise it is ready to go. With gas dropping to 1.79/liter ($6.78/gallon) and the weather in the 70s, it's a good time for a summer vacation.

Buying a Car

Yes, we've only lasted 2 weeks before buying a car. But we bought a car! First one we've bought on our own. Fingers crossed that it turns out okay.

It was one of those butterfly effect things - we went to New World yesterday to pick up milk and I spotted an ad/posting board by the front door and checked it out. There was an ad for a Subaru station wagon for sale from someone who was leaving NZ soon. The price had been crossed out with another price hand-written in and then (negotiable) written next to that. So I smelled some desperation. I thought it wouldn't hurt to look at it, so I texted the number and we set up a time for her to drive it by in the morning. 

I did some research online for tips on buying and made sure it was priced around its Kelley Blue Book value and would suit our needs. Then I had three nightmares about meeting three different weird people selling their car, so woke up feeling like I'd already lived through the ordeal three times. Not so fun. She drove up and we asked questions about its history and test-drove it around the block. New Zealand requires a Warrant of Fitness (WOF) every 6 months for older vehicles so there's less of a chance that it could be a complete mess since it just had its WOF done. I haggled her down a little on the price which made me happy and we were off to the bank to get the cash and then the post office to change the registration. That's right - you just pop into the local post office, fill out 2 simple forms, send one off to the national vehicle licensing office, and the other is processed right there. Luckily I thought to bring my passport with me which they needed for ID. 

New Zealand doesn't require you to buy car insurance since it has a national insurance policy of sorts, but it is recommended that you buy third-party insurance which covers damage to the other person's car if you hit them or in uninsured driver scenarios. After driving the seller out aways back to the farm where she was staying/working(?) and driving to the cattery to check on our cat, we went to the AA office (just two A's here!) and purchased third-party insurance. It was only $137 since the car is pretty old and it's not covering replacement of it. We found out we can use our foreign driver's licenses for a year, so no need to buy a local license as of yet. We bought a membership as well (similar to AAA again) in case the car breaks down and we need some help. Nice to have in a pinch.

D did a good job of driving it all around for the first part of the day. Then I drove it out to an apartment viewing...and while turning right onto a side street from the main road accidentally went into the right lane!! There were a lot of pedestrians on the street corner and lots of traffic, so I was a bit under pressure, as well as a lone pedestrian in the median on the side street, and boy was he surprised to see me going the wrong way! D was raising his voice in exasperation and I hurriedly pulled back into the left lane shortly. Man, with no cars there, it felt so natural. Hopefully I will get the hang of it with practice - it definitely is strange having most of the car to the left of you while you're driving.

Ultimately, we decided to get a car for the reasons cited by other travelers online - New Zealand is really best explored with a car because otherwise you are stuck to buses and trains which restrict your travel to the places you want to go significantly. The Metro bus is limited to the main parts of the city and not super cheap - $2.50 per trip with a Metro card. While gas is around $8/gallon, now we can drive to some of the nearby natural attractions at our own pace and eventually go around the island when the summer comes. Let's hope this Subaru lives up to its brand and lasts.