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)
Showing posts with label international. Show all posts
Showing posts with label international. Show all posts
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Halloween Party
I
submitted my article finally. What a relief! It was a lot more work
than I anticipated, even at the end with the formatting and last-minute
realizations that I'd left certain critics out. Fingers crossed that the
reviewers like it. I was only 9 words under the word count. I've now
moved on to another article about pedagogy (teaching) and Digital
Humanities. Then there is a conference in three weeks where I am
presenting on Wikipedia and editing bias...I'll get to writing my thesis
eventually.
On the plane ride back from the conference a couple weeks ago, I sat next to a guy doing his PhD in Tourism at Lincoln University, and since they actually put some effort into making international students feel welcome and giving them the chance to meet other people, he works in a kind of international development role and puts on activities for them. Anyway, he invited me to their last get-together for the semester at a Mexican restaurant this past week so D and I went and had a good time meeting other international students from Lincoln. A couple of them even used to go to our university but much prefer Lincoln because it is smaller and has a more welcoming environment. The food was not quite what we expect from Mexican food, but such it is in New Zealand. There was a student from the U.S. there and we were talking presidential politics across the long table -- several of the students from China were just listening intently and after we said we should stop because we were boring them, they said oh no, we weren't boring them; they find it fascinating how Americans get all into political discussions. They were a nice bunch of students, very full of energy and excitement. It's nice to have a break from the normal routine and hear about what other people are doing with their lives.
Despite a week with cold weather, Halloween turned out to be a nice, warm day. We brought a taste of America to New Zealand with our Halloween party, and folks enjoyed the theme, the food, and the carving of pumpkins (first time for most of them). We played some Halloween Pictionary and took the pumpkins outside in the dark to light them up with tea lights. I think this part really amazed some of them -- to see their own carved creation lit up with fire! And we got lots more trick-or-treaters this year -- I believe the balloons and sign on the mailbox helped. Still had to flag down one group that were about to pass us by. Very reluctant over here.
 |
| Felt really good to haul these back to the library! |
On the plane ride back from the conference a couple weeks ago, I sat next to a guy doing his PhD in Tourism at Lincoln University, and since they actually put some effort into making international students feel welcome and giving them the chance to meet other people, he works in a kind of international development role and puts on activities for them. Anyway, he invited me to their last get-together for the semester at a Mexican restaurant this past week so D and I went and had a good time meeting other international students from Lincoln. A couple of them even used to go to our university but much prefer Lincoln because it is smaller and has a more welcoming environment. The food was not quite what we expect from Mexican food, but such it is in New Zealand. There was a student from the U.S. there and we were talking presidential politics across the long table -- several of the students from China were just listening intently and after we said we should stop because we were boring them, they said oh no, we weren't boring them; they find it fascinating how Americans get all into political discussions. They were a nice bunch of students, very full of energy and excitement. It's nice to have a break from the normal routine and hear about what other people are doing with their lives.
Despite a week with cold weather, Halloween turned out to be a nice, warm day. We brought a taste of America to New Zealand with our Halloween party, and folks enjoyed the theme, the food, and the carving of pumpkins (first time for most of them). We played some Halloween Pictionary and took the pumpkins outside in the dark to light them up with tea lights. I think this part really amazed some of them -- to see their own carved creation lit up with fire! And we got lots more trick-or-treaters this year -- I believe the balloons and sign on the mailbox helped. Still had to flag down one group that were about to pass us by. Very reluctant over here.
 |
| missing items weren't ready yet: cheesecake, boo cups, and garlic bread |
 |
| forgot to capture pumpkin cheesecake at the beginning |
 |
| boo cups had melted ghosts but were still tasty |
 |
| "feely boxes" with marshmallows, cold noodles, & crushed pineapple |
 |
| got the biggest squash/pumpkins we could |
 |
| they carved up pretty nicely |
 |
| These are ours -- I was going for a round mouth but failed! |
 |
| Some of our friends' happy pumpkins :) |
Monday, August 24, 2015
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
First Week of School
The first week of school went by quickly. My note-taking job involves sitting in on two classes each week and typing notes out. One is a law class where I will learn about New Zealand's common law system (it is one of the few countries without a written constitution, taking after Britain), and the other is a political science class on international relations. I especially enjoy hearing the U.S. get mentioned as a passing reference rather than being the whole focus of everything!
I attended the first lecture for the class I will be tutoring for, a literature class dealing with themes of science and technology (a science fiction class in disguise, essentially). Having never taken an SF class before, I am very glad to be able to take this one (technically being paid to take it as it's part of my tutoring contract) and both learn a lot and pay attention to the teaching and preparation side of things. The first day focused on the science vs. arts debate and whether or not there is actually a huge difference or if they have more in common than we've been led to believe. Less than one hundred years ago, the arts were considered to be the higher-ranked field of study, if you can believe it. (This is why it's important to learn history, folks!)
One of the co-lecturers for the class is in charge of the Digital Humanities at the school, and I asked him several questions about it since I haven't been exposed to that before. It sounds really interesting -- instead of rejecting all of today's technology and the internet, Digital Humanities seeks to bring these things together with the fields in the humanities. One benefit is to be able to comment and critique in the space where people are at nowadays (online) and likely bring back the funding that has been lost to more "practical" fields. Examples include analyzing the algorithms that Facebook uses to show items on its News Feeds, using a computer to search through and sort all of the digital information (emails, documents) related to a study of a politician's time in office, or scanning copies of old, fragile manuscripts and making them clickable with links to historical information. I told the lecturer about my background in web development and he said it would be a good asset for future job hunting to have some Digital Humanities experience. A few days later, he emailed to tell me that the department has some funding for someone to help update that section of the website if I were interested. Sweet!
I went to a postgrad presentation on whether or not brass instrument players' native language affects their tongue movements and the tones of the music. Very interesting and an under-researched area of music production. I also signed up for a couple clubs at the big Clubs Day; we'll see how that goes. They are mostly geared toward undergrads, but there are quite a few postgrads who join as well. The closest to my area they have is the Linguistics Society, then there's the Science Fiction & Fantasy Society, and the United Nations for Youth which I'm hoping is similar to Model UN in the U.S.
At our second Operation Friendship dinner for international students, I admit that after meeting a young lady from Italy and commenting on her lovely accent, I asked if she knew how to cook Italian food. Of course! she said. Fortunately, she's the one who asked for my email address and wanted to hang out in the future, so I didn't have to admit that I would love to hang out and have some homemade Italian food! Everyone had fun playing the card game "Spoons" which I hadn't played in a long time, and I made it through the whole round without ever missing out on a spoon.
In my last two cooking classes, we made braised pork, butter chicken, and Garam Masala fish; then curry chicken, fried rice, steak, wontons, and dumplings. The class wasn't what I expected, but I have learned some things and hopefully will be able to practice them in the coming weeks and months.
I attended the first lecture for the class I will be tutoring for, a literature class dealing with themes of science and technology (a science fiction class in disguise, essentially). Having never taken an SF class before, I am very glad to be able to take this one (technically being paid to take it as it's part of my tutoring contract) and both learn a lot and pay attention to the teaching and preparation side of things. The first day focused on the science vs. arts debate and whether or not there is actually a huge difference or if they have more in common than we've been led to believe. Less than one hundred years ago, the arts were considered to be the higher-ranked field of study, if you can believe it. (This is why it's important to learn history, folks!)
One of the co-lecturers for the class is in charge of the Digital Humanities at the school, and I asked him several questions about it since I haven't been exposed to that before. It sounds really interesting -- instead of rejecting all of today's technology and the internet, Digital Humanities seeks to bring these things together with the fields in the humanities. One benefit is to be able to comment and critique in the space where people are at nowadays (online) and likely bring back the funding that has been lost to more "practical" fields. Examples include analyzing the algorithms that Facebook uses to show items on its News Feeds, using a computer to search through and sort all of the digital information (emails, documents) related to a study of a politician's time in office, or scanning copies of old, fragile manuscripts and making them clickable with links to historical information. I told the lecturer about my background in web development and he said it would be a good asset for future job hunting to have some Digital Humanities experience. A few days later, he emailed to tell me that the department has some funding for someone to help update that section of the website if I were interested. Sweet!
I went to a postgrad presentation on whether or not brass instrument players' native language affects their tongue movements and the tones of the music. Very interesting and an under-researched area of music production. I also signed up for a couple clubs at the big Clubs Day; we'll see how that goes. They are mostly geared toward undergrads, but there are quite a few postgrads who join as well. The closest to my area they have is the Linguistics Society, then there's the Science Fiction & Fantasy Society, and the United Nations for Youth which I'm hoping is similar to Model UN in the U.S.
At our second Operation Friendship dinner for international students, I admit that after meeting a young lady from Italy and commenting on her lovely accent, I asked if she knew how to cook Italian food. Of course! she said. Fortunately, she's the one who asked for my email address and wanted to hang out in the future, so I didn't have to admit that I would love to hang out and have some homemade Italian food! Everyone had fun playing the card game "Spoons" which I hadn't played in a long time, and I made it through the whole round without ever missing out on a spoon.
In my last two cooking classes, we made braised pork, butter chicken, and Garam Masala fish; then curry chicken, fried rice, steak, wontons, and dumplings. The class wasn't what I expected, but I have learned some things and hopefully will be able to practice them in the coming weeks and months.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
"Thanksgiving" Week
This week's theme was being aware of being international.
In order to keep my U.S. phone number, I switched it to a prepaid account and have to top it up every three months to keep it active even though I'm not actually using it (haven't turned it on since the first week I arrived). I tried to top it through the T-mobile website and that failed. I tried it again and it failed. I discovered it is free to call toll-free U.S. numbers through my Viber app, so I called the refill number which the online chat rep had advised and tried that way which failed. I called my credit card company to make sure it wasn't on their end. I then called T-mobile's customer service number and after three people and having to go through a credit card verification (which was the reason it was failing), it finally worked. So, the point of sharing this is to advertise the good news that while abroad, if you have internet access, you can call your credit card and other customer service companies for free through their toll-free numbers with the Viber app.
While we missed out on the Black Friday shopping experience, one of the Walmart-like stores here, Warehouse, which has a red logo, had a "Red Friday" 1-day sale on Friday. There were more people there than usual, but Warehouse hadn't quite learned the tactic of placing the deals throughout the store to force you to go through the store and decide to pick up other things. All of the deals were on pallets up at the front. So we grabbed the two folding tables we wanted, checked out, and were out of there in 15 minutes. Not too bad.
That evening, we went to our first Operation Friendship dinner for international students hosted by a local church at one of its member's houses. We also had to bring a wrapped gift for a gift exchange since it was the last one of the year. There was a sizable group - 45 - with international students from all over (Iran, India, Korea, Malaysia, Serbia) and older folks from the church. They encouraged mingling through a meet-as-many-people-as-you-can game. Dinner was a potluck of leftovers from someone's Thanksgiving party and other dishes like casseroles and vegetables. Dessert included chocolate cake and ice cream which I haven't had in a long time. I enjoyed meeting a variety of new people and had a somewhat intense conversation about U.S. immigration policies with a guy from India. He said it was good to get a different perspective than the media's.
This theme has been increasingly apparent as I realize how much we are all at the mercy of what gets reported in the news. I may be quite ignorant of a lot of what's happening in the rest of the world - especially since we aren't subscribing to a newspaper anymore - but most people know or at least think they know what's going on in the U.S. because certain stories make headlines. Yet I find that people's opinions are so often just based on a tiny snippet of information and nowhere near the whole story, or are missing a crucial opposing viewpoint, at least in terms of my perspective as it's my home country. This is good in a way because it forces me to reflect that this happens in reverse when I see media coverage of something happening in another country and think I have it figured out or form an opinion based on one article. It doesn't mean we can really help it, but it can help us keep an open mind when someone challenges our beliefs or opinions.
Saturday was the American Club's annual Thanksgiving party where they supplied the turkeys (super expensive here - $50-$70) and we all were supposed to bring a plate of food to share. I made pumpkin cheesecakes (gluten-free with some yummy hokey-pokey flavor cookies for the crust) in cupcake liners and they turned out great. We met up with the cool British couple and their kids whom we had met at the Halloween party last month. The guy even lent me a couple of his British science fiction books to check out. I let myself indulge a bit and got a big plateful of food and tried several desserts (pumpkin pie with whipped cream, warm berry pie with whipped cream, some kind of meringue-type cake, and a brownie).
As I've been weeding the flower bed along the fence, I found that the massive dandelions were obscuring a bunch of strawberry plants with some ripe strawberries on them. Sweet! I picked a decent handful today before the critters can get to them. Free fruit is always a treat.
Tomorrow begins the last month of the year. December already!
In order to keep my U.S. phone number, I switched it to a prepaid account and have to top it up every three months to keep it active even though I'm not actually using it (haven't turned it on since the first week I arrived). I tried to top it through the T-mobile website and that failed. I tried it again and it failed. I discovered it is free to call toll-free U.S. numbers through my Viber app, so I called the refill number which the online chat rep had advised and tried that way which failed. I called my credit card company to make sure it wasn't on their end. I then called T-mobile's customer service number and after three people and having to go through a credit card verification (which was the reason it was failing), it finally worked. So, the point of sharing this is to advertise the good news that while abroad, if you have internet access, you can call your credit card and other customer service companies for free through their toll-free numbers with the Viber app.
While we missed out on the Black Friday shopping experience, one of the Walmart-like stores here, Warehouse, which has a red logo, had a "Red Friday" 1-day sale on Friday. There were more people there than usual, but Warehouse hadn't quite learned the tactic of placing the deals throughout the store to force you to go through the store and decide to pick up other things. All of the deals were on pallets up at the front. So we grabbed the two folding tables we wanted, checked out, and were out of there in 15 minutes. Not too bad.
That evening, we went to our first Operation Friendship dinner for international students hosted by a local church at one of its member's houses. We also had to bring a wrapped gift for a gift exchange since it was the last one of the year. There was a sizable group - 45 - with international students from all over (Iran, India, Korea, Malaysia, Serbia) and older folks from the church. They encouraged mingling through a meet-as-many-people-as-you-can game. Dinner was a potluck of leftovers from someone's Thanksgiving party and other dishes like casseroles and vegetables. Dessert included chocolate cake and ice cream which I haven't had in a long time. I enjoyed meeting a variety of new people and had a somewhat intense conversation about U.S. immigration policies with a guy from India. He said it was good to get a different perspective than the media's.
This theme has been increasingly apparent as I realize how much we are all at the mercy of what gets reported in the news. I may be quite ignorant of a lot of what's happening in the rest of the world - especially since we aren't subscribing to a newspaper anymore - but most people know or at least think they know what's going on in the U.S. because certain stories make headlines. Yet I find that people's opinions are so often just based on a tiny snippet of information and nowhere near the whole story, or are missing a crucial opposing viewpoint, at least in terms of my perspective as it's my home country. This is good in a way because it forces me to reflect that this happens in reverse when I see media coverage of something happening in another country and think I have it figured out or form an opinion based on one article. It doesn't mean we can really help it, but it can help us keep an open mind when someone challenges our beliefs or opinions.
Saturday was the American Club's annual Thanksgiving party where they supplied the turkeys (super expensive here - $50-$70) and we all were supposed to bring a plate of food to share. I made pumpkin cheesecakes (gluten-free with some yummy hokey-pokey flavor cookies for the crust) in cupcake liners and they turned out great. We met up with the cool British couple and their kids whom we had met at the Halloween party last month. The guy even lent me a couple of his British science fiction books to check out. I let myself indulge a bit and got a big plateful of food and tried several desserts (pumpkin pie with whipped cream, warm berry pie with whipped cream, some kind of meringue-type cake, and a brownie).
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| notice how plain the picky eater's plate is |
Tomorrow begins the last month of the year. December already!
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| uncovered strawberry plants |
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Transporting Your Pet Cat from the US to New Zealand
Transporting your pet cat (or dog) from the United States to New Zealand is a major pain and quite expensive. But if your pet is family, you do it anyway. Although Air New Zealand requires that you contract with a pet transport company anyway, you still end up responsible for a lot of the legwork yourself. I wanted to provide a summary of all the steps I went through in moving my cat plus the costs I paid so you know what you're getting into beforehand.
Links:
New Zealand Government Biosecurity - personal pets
Air New Zealand - travelling with pets
USDA APHIS office contacts by state
Kansas State University Rabies Laboratory
Links:
New Zealand Government Biosecurity - personal pets
Air New Zealand - travelling with pets
USDA APHIS office contacts by state
Kansas State University Rabies Laboratory
1. Get your cat microchipped. (~$75) My cat had been microchipped years earlier with the US standard which is 125 kHz. The New Zealand standard is 134.2 kHz, so I thought I would have to get him a second one. Thankfully, the pet transport company said it was okay to use the US microchip (keeping in mind that vets in NZ will not likely have a reader that can read the US one if your cat gets lost).
2. Get your cat a rabies vaccine 6 months to 12 months before departure. (~$75)
Every vet visit must also include a full regular exam to check the pet's health and see if there are any fleas or ear mites, so you must pay the exam fee plus anything extra that needs to be done.
3. Get your cat an approved travel carrier/crate. ($60)
The cat must be able to stand fully upright and have room to move around. The pet transport company can give you further guidance on how big you need to get for the size of your cat. I ended up buying a small-dog size carrier from PetCo that had the holes for them to be able to zip-tie it to seal it, as well as the appropriate latches along the sides and the door.
4. Prior to 3 months before departure, get your cat's blood drawn for a rabies titre test. Also get your cat a FCRVP vaccine. ($79)
The other vaccine was required by the quarantine facility I selected.
5. Mail the blood tube to the Kansas laboratory authorized to run rabies tests for international transport. ($64)
It was significantly cheaper for me to package the blood tube myself and give to UPS than to have the vet mail it for me (they quoted me around $150). The people at UPS were confused on whether or not they were allowed to ship it since it's hazardous material and had to consult with managers, but thankfully I had already researched it on their website and as long as it is packaged according to their instructions (inner seal, outer seal, absorbent padding, etc.), it can be shipped just fine. After checking their procedures, they finally agreed with me and accepted it.
6. Pay the Kansas lab fee for their rabies test ($85).
This fee can be paid online.
7. Mail the results to your nearest Official Vet office to receive an official endorsement/seal of approval. ($127)
After a few weeks, the Kansas lab will send the test results back to your vet's office. Assuming your cat tested in the acceptable range for the rabies antibodies, you now need to mail that paperwork plus some other paperwork to your state's USDA APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) office for their seal. I had to call and email several people to figure out which office was the one that handled pet transport seals.
8. At least 6 weeks before departure, make a reservation for your cat at the quarantine facility in the city in NZ you are moving to. ($500 deposit at my facility)
There are only a few authorized quarantine facilities in the main cities. To pay the deposit, I had to make a wire transfer at my bank. Facilities have limited capacity, so I booked my cat's spot months ahead of time.
There are only a few authorized quarantine facilities in the main cities. To pay the deposit, I had to make a wire transfer at my bank. Facilities have limited capacity, so I booked my cat's spot months ahead of time.
9. At least 6 weeks before departure, apply for an import permit from NZ authorities. ($150 [$167 NZ])
They now allow this paperwork to be submitted electronically, so you scan and email the required paperwork to them.
10. In the 30 days prior to departure and at least 2 weeks prior to the 2nd treatment, get your cat its 1st external and 1st internal parasite treatment. ($82)
You must use Frontline for this, so make sure your vet carries that. I had to go to Petsmart and buy an expensive 3-pack and bring it to the vet's office since they normally use Advantage. Your cat will have to swallow one or two pills of Dropal for the internal treatment.
11. In the 4 days prior to departure, get your cat its 2nd internal parasite treatment.
This can be done at the same time as the next step.
12. In the 2 days prior to departure - can also be on the day of departure - get your cat its 2nd external parasite treatment and its inspection and official certification by a vet that your cat is ready to fly. ($140)
As I was not flying out of my home city, the pet transport company allowed me to get both parasite treatments done by its vet office. I also had to go with them to the USDA office to have them read my cat's microchip before they would sign off on the paperwork. Fortunately we were one of the first there in the morning so it didn't take too long, but I was told that sometimes there are lots of pets ahead in line and it can take hours. The pet transport company also took care of notifying the NZ authorities at the port of arrival that my cat was on schedule.
13. Pay the myriad other fees associated with transportation. ($1570)
These were all calculated and paid to the pet transport company ahead of time. Customs/USDA ($450), Cargo on Air New Zealand - varies by pet weight and kennel size ($670), and Pet transport company handling fee ($450).
14. After 10 days of quarantine, pick up your cat and pay for the remainder of the quarantine fees. ($700 [$825 NZ])
Since I didn't have a certain type of work visa, the NZ authorities charged a 15% customs tax on my cat!!
Total cost in US dollars to transport my cat from the US to NZ: over $3,700.
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