If you’d said to us this time last year that we’d be living in New Zealand, both have decent jobs, have a great car, be living in our own home with stunning lake views and almost an acre of land, and I’d have just bought a chainsaw. Then I would have thought... perfect. It is good, but it’s far from perfect. We came here with our eyes open and so far we haven’t been surprised by anything, good or bad, but the concerns that we had about certain things have rung true and in most cases been a little worse than anticipated.
I know everyone goes on and on, and on and on some more, about the lack of central heating but crikey it’s a big thing. As winter approached we ordered a load of firewood, and I sat in my shorts in the sun chopping sticks. We kept looking at the different shaped logs and figured that if we ‘d been back in UK we’d probably have varnished a couple and stuck them on the mantelpiece. We had a few practice fires in our log burner and thought it worked a treat. Well it does, if you’re in the same room, it’s been on a few hours and it’s summer! Once winter came around and we were in our new (new to us) open plan home, the old log burner didn’t seem as toasty. After about 2 hours it would be warm enough to take your coat off after coming home from work, but that was only in the lounge, the rest of the house was pretty cold, and in a morning -ouch!! We have a fridge that has a digital display showing the temperature of the fridge, we also have a weather station that shows the indoor temperature of the room. One morning I came downstairs and the fridge said 6 degrees and the room temperature was 5 degrees, it was official, I could have started the day warmer if I’d have left my clothes in a neat folded pile in the fridge!! We succumbed. We bought a super ser - remember them. We bought an electric blanket - at least we’d be warm in bed. We bought a pack of thermal vests... each. Another problem being that you’d leave work in the morning cold as, arrive at work and guess what? No bloody heating. The only time in the day you’d be warm would be the journey to and from work in your car and when you went to bed. We had been more than aware of the lack of heating and you can get around it, but it does drag you down a bit.
So what else is bad? Well the driving ain’t too hot, but it’s more funny than bad. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre? No, it’s more manoeuvre then signal if you’re lucky, mirror? No chance. And you can guarantee that if we drive into town at night we’ll see a car coming the other way with no lights on. “Don’t need ma lights bro, I can see where I’m going, saves more elec tricity for the stereo”. Whoops, is that a stereotypical Maori joke, well they get away with them all the time on the radio. The racism is truly shocking here, sometimes it’s like living in a 1970’s sitcom. We had an Indian lad on work experience and the comments to him and behind his back were nothing short of disgusting, but it seemed it was all normal.
Another thing that has been a little hard is that after spending years of planning, all the ups and downs of the immigration process and all the energy put into the move, now that we’re here that’s gone. We’re here, we’ve done it, we’ve got what we wanted, so now what? Well obviously relax and enjoy it, fair enough, but there’s still a hole. Hopefully it will get smaller and not larger.
The good stuff? That’s a real long list that most people already know so I’ll not bother with that, besides this post is more about taking off the rose tinted glasses, but overall I’d still say the worst thing about NZ is the fish and chips, so I guess it’s not that bad.