Under a southern sky

Taipei again

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 08:05:08 GMT

This blog, being mainly about travel has tended to be neglected recently - for the obvious reason that I have not been doing much travelling. at least not in New Zealand.

I have however paid a third visit to Taipei in Taiwan so wanted to talk about that trip a little.

Auckland and Taipei couldn't really be more different. Taipei is a big high rise, noisy, polluted city in the tropical zone, Auckland is mostly low rise and spread out over a wide area. with many trees and areas of bush its almost a garden city. Taipei is surrounded by steep hills that rapidly alpha blend in to the distance like an old Yes Album cover. These hills are high and bush covered, they enclose the city and capture the smog. they increase the rainfall so that the city seems always to be covered in low cloud. In summer it is hot and wet. This time when we visited it was cool and wet. Cool being a relative term as it was still about 24 C outside.

Auckland is surrounded by the Pacific. with the North Island of New Zealand being at its narrowist the city has open ocean to the east and west and two large harbours - the Northern and Eastern Waitemata and Southern and Western Manakau. The result is a city in the shape of a superman S and probably the largest coast to area ratio of any city. The result is a very maritime climate with ocean squalls appearing suddenly crossing the city dousing everyone with large buckets of water before passing and leaving blue skys, warm sunshine, white fluffy clouds, clean streets and fresh air.

In all my visits to Taipei I have never seen the sky, complete cloud cover all the time. I am told that the best time to see blue sky is just before a Typhoon when the cyclone pulls all the cloud out of the city.

Tapiei easily has more inhabitants that the whole of New Zealand. And most of them drive to work on a moped or scooter. Most live in tall apartment blocks, and eat out - it being much cheaper and easier to grab a bowl of noodles from a stand that carry a weeks shopping home on a moped.

High population means a lot of competition for jobs. this results in low wages and massive over staffing. A good example would be the 4 night staff on the desk of our relatively small hotel. or enough waiters to serve a complete table of 8 in one smooth movement.

I like the place a lot, I wish I could spend time there not on business, exploring, preferably with the help of a native as my Chinese language skills have not improved. But I could not live there long. Stepping out of the airport in the Auckland's warm spring air, huge blue sky and open spaces reminds me once again of just how good a place this is to live.

Around the world 1

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:32:28 GMT

After 2.5 years in New Zealand I am travelling again. This time for my work at Navman. Thanks to a trip to Taiwan followed by meetings in London I will be flying right around the world from west to east.

As I write this it is Monday morning in Taipei. This is my second time here, I visited on business a couple of months ago but didn't get around to writing much about it.

I am here because Navman's new owners Mitac are a TW company and based here although they have factories and offices in several places in mainland China as well. We will be discussing next year's products.

Taipei is a big, (5million people) sprawling city. It is full of tall apartment blocks, roads, slum districts, taxis, scooters, heat and humidity. Surrounding the city are tall, steep sided, bush covered hills, dark green and misty, behind those are further hills mistier still and so on back giving the city a childs drawing style backdrop.

It is hot now - about 35C and humid, but not so bad as my last visit in the height of summer. Then you could not see the horizon for the smog/cloud, and barely see the TP 101 - then the worlds tallest building from a few miles away. Today you can see further and the sun is a watery spot in the sky rather than invisible.

The flight from AKL to TP goes via Hong Kong and takes about 12 hours of flight time, but in fact I left the house at 8pm Saturday night, watched movies all night, changed at HK in the small hours and arrived at the hotel about midday on Sunday. (5pm Auckland time) so we were getting closer to 24 hours actual travel time.
Our agent apologised to me on Friday that I could not be booked into Premium Economy seats and had to have Economy seats - but to be honest I couldn't tell the difference. they all look the same and on Air NZ the leg room in economy is fine for someone my height.

In flight food is still terrible, but in flight entertainment has improved since we first flew out as all the seats now have personal LCD screens and you can watch movies on demand. I watched Oceans I3 and Next, which were good, and the first half hour of Pirates of the Carribean 3 which was dull and suffered greatly from the transfer to the 6 inch screen.

In TP we had the Sunday pm free so we went to the big Mall at the base of Taipei 101, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_101. Which was up until recently the worlds tallest building.
The Mall is huge and has tall open spaces with long drops that in the UK would have to be closed off due to kids throwing things off. It was full of big name designer stores like Versace, Armarni etc none of which I had the slightest interest in.
We dined at Wasabi, a Japanese all you can eat buffet style restuarant and I enjoyed as many of the dishes as I could until I could barely move. Then we went up to the observation deck on the 89th floor, 1/2 km from the ground..
The lift is very smooth and travels at nearly 60kph taking only 30 seconds to reach the top - the only indication of the speed is your ears popping and the cool graphical displays.

The views are, well, slightly disappointing. Although you are high up it is hard to get a real sense of the height. Yes the cars are tiny and the people like ants, yes you can see out over the city, look down on office blocks taller than the sky tower etc. but the cloud, smog and haze and surrounding hills mean that you do not have any long distance view, you cannot see for miles and miles. Also the city you look down on is not beautiful. apart from a few big prestige buildings most of the city is row upon row of offices, factories and apartments, few green spaces, no sense of layout or design. This is down to Taipei's history of instant and urgent growth at the time the Chinese government were exiled here by Mao's communists. its Noisy, dirty, run down in places, rampant growth in others and you feel that a lot of people are just struggling to get by.
The view from the sky tower is so very different. its not so tall, but you can see much further, you see the ocean with picturesque islands, you see focus around the city centre, the leafy suburbs. but most of all the air is clear and you can just see.

I like being here. I think the people are fascinating and I like to talk to them, exercising my 5 words of mandarin to their generally good English. It would be good if we were not going to be stuck in a windowless meeting room all week and could get out and explore but thats business. I couldn't live here though.

Moturua, trees and orcas

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:04:10 GMT

Claire has been involved for some time in a local environmental project to preserve and recover the Kaipatiki bushland just to the North of where we live and around the uppermost part of Auckland's Northern Waitemata Harbour. This involves occasional outtings for tree planting, talks on environmental issues, bush preservation, home composting etc.

It is through this group that Claire met the Author of the book that they are collaborating on. The book is about how to arrange your own garden to attract local wildlife, birds etc. keep out non native weeds etc. It will be released sometime around Christmas and Claire has provided the photographic illustrations.

Anyway last weekend, through a contact at Claire's other job we were invited to join a tree planting session on a small 80Ha island off the East coast, some 50km North of Auckland. Moturua is one of hundreds of small islands in the Hauraki Gulf. Most of the larger ones are occupied and farmed, a few such as Tiritiri Matangi Island and Kawau Island are nature reserves. Moturua was once a single farm, given over to pasture with most of its native bush and trees removed. However it was lucky enough never to be infected with rats, or other non native wildlife and this represents an achievable target for regeneration.

We set out early Sunday morning for the hour long drive up through Warkworth and out to SandSpit, one of those places whose name tells you all you need to know about it. From there a 20 minute ferry to the island along with about 100 other volunteers. Everyone was dressed for serious weather, boots, waterproofs, woolly hats etc. Apparently the last few trips out have been disturbingly rough and they have not always been able to land on the island. There is no wharf there and the ferry just ploughs up the beach allowing everyone to wade off the front gangplank.

We were lucky, the spring weather was definitely here and we had mild breezes, warm sun, blue sky with fluffy white clouds. For the volunteers the ferry cost only a 'gold coin' donation (i.e. 1 or 2 dollars) . compared to the usual 15$.

We stepped ashore dry shod, up the white shelly beach to a grassy area with a few huts and some long tree nurseries for our induction into the art of tree planting.
Technical bit: to plant a tree, you dig a small hole, put the tree in it and then fill it in again. - hey this is the level of gardening I can cope with.
There was other stuff about clearing the grass, spacing them 1 spade apart,etc.
we started in lines along the bottom of the slope and worked uphill. After about 3 hours I had planted about 50 trees and was feeling very virtuous, hot and thirsty.
The trees were mixed native plants most of which I still don't know the name of, but they included ponga, flax and manuka (tea tree).
In total they are planting about 12000 trees a year and areas of the island planted last year with these little 20cm high seedlings already have a good 1-2m tall ground cover.
Because it is pest free the Island is used as a creche for Kiwis. Eggs or young are collected in the mainland forests and brought here to hatch and live in safety until they are about 1 year old. By then they are big enough to fight back against rates and stoats.

After picnic lunch accompanied by the ever present sausage sizzle we lay or walked along the beach, or in the hills, and generally relaxed.
We had a huge treat on the way back, Mimi spotted a black fin in the water which turned out to be one of a pod of about 10 Orca (killer whales). The ferry pilot stopped and we cruised around slowly for a while with everyone spotting whales, and going ooh ahh like kids at a fireworks display every time one surfaced or dived showing tail flukes.
The whales are quite recognisable, black tops, while underbelly sometimes with while side patches, The big dorsal fins show kinks and notches that make the whales clear individuals and it seems most are well known in the gulf and have names.

Claire had her big camera with her, although unfortunately not here zoom lens. She got some nice pics and I will put them on our flickr pages soon.

Watching the whales is special, everyone feels it. at one point I turned around and instead of watching the whales I watched the people. everyones face was grinning, lit up with smiles and wide eyes.

This was a good day.

When is something featured enough?

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:17:48 GMT

A couple of months ago my son found a phone lying on the hillside. Someone had dropped/lost it. cool he though. it was a Nokia N70 - A nice high end Symbian (Series 60) smartphone valued at several hundred dollars. It has a camera/video, plays music, has a web browser (if you have GPRS on your contract), Synchs phone book with your PC and dozens of other features.

He needed a phone as his old favourite (a Nokia 6600 - Also a Series 60 note). had recently been dropped and broken.

He gave it to me. (sold it actually) saying that it was too complicated for his needs anyway and he didn't want to spend time learning how to use it. He now has a second hand basic phone which he solely uses for calls and SMS. I like it. but then I am a geek. Still out of all the features it does have - there are a few important ones that it doesn't. I cannot link into my home wifi network

My wife also has a Smartphone for a while. A Sony Ericsson P800. Also Symbian but this time using the UIQ touch screen interface rather than phone keys. She used it for a while - got tired of the battery going flat so quickly and eventually replaced it with a Nokia 1160. - one of the simplest phones around. The only thing she misses ironically is the camera.

I've had various pocket pcs from time to time, some with GSM built in. They are not very nice to make calls with. Too big and clunky to be a good phone, to small and picky to be a useful day to day tool. It turns out that the most used features are the games. Internet connections through GSM are just too slow for casual web browsing and the browsers are missing features that modern web sites expect - such as flash players and plugins.

My point is that devices should really try to do one thing really well - so long as that one thing is worth having. The argument against this is that people do not want to carry lots of objects around - that there is a limited space in peoples pockets. and therefore everyone one is competing for the same small piece of real estate thinking that they have to do everything.

The counter-argument is that people are different and have different needs, but also that form factors are different and are optimal for different roles. Diversity is a stronger driver than convergence. There is not one ring to rule them all. Hence the best media player is totally focussed on being the best media player and has a user interface wholly targeted on that role. The best simple phone is probably still a cheap Nokia Series 40 UI. The best PIM for business folk is probably a BlackBerry with good push email, contacts and calender, synch etc.

My dream device is still something the size and weight of a small paperback book. with a screen (or two ) sufficient to show just that book. It would also act as a write on notebook, wireless web browser, photo viewer, media player and possibly even a small presentation device. The UI is totally focussed on the balance of output = 80% input = 20%. If it had a camera and ran skype with video feed that would also be good. It would also only cost about $250

---- still waiting.

During the office tidy up last week a load of old pda type devices were being thrown out - free to whoeever wanted. In the bustle I grabbed a Sony Clie - A little clamshell Palm device with 3.5 inch screen and a qwerty keyboard inside. It has wifi and can browse the net and the Palm UI is pretty straightforward.

Our new range of devices are pretty cool. but the honours really have to go to the simplest one - the F10. It could look a bit better - a buttonless black box. but it is cheap and will get you from A to B very efficiently. It has taken two years here to get to this 'simple' interface and I think with another year of throwing bits out and improving others we might start to get to the point where anyone can pick it up and start using it - no questions asked.

Autumn

Thu, 03 May 2007 20:26:20 GMT

With the move through April and into May Autumn has come upon us.

In the Southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed so April is like September and May like October. However it is more complex than that. In the North the seasons are not aligned with the equinoxes. So summer starts on June 21st the longest day and runs into late September. In England you often get Indian summers.

The reason the longest day isn't the hottest is because the Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical and its closed approach to the sun doesn't occur at the same time as when the earths tilt is pointing at the sun. Closest approach is later in August. Its these two separate factors that make spring and autumn so different climate wise.

Here closer to the equator the tilt effect is less pronounced and the seasons are spread more evenly either side of the equinoxes. Hence when they tell you that summer starts on Dec 1st they are not just rounding the 21st down to the beginning of the month - it really does get warmer sooner.

Similarly the move in Autumn starts sooner. And the Easter holiday here is usually regarded as being rainy and not a good time to go away - although this year was an exception.

So for a few weeks now I've noticed a freshness in the early morning air. Last week I saw my breath for the first time and now have pretty much given up wearing shorts and sandals. Today was properly foggy. The sun still rises though and the wind blows away the clouds giving comfortably warm 18-22 C days.

The Native bush trees are not deciduous - they do not lose leaves in winter as its rarely that cold, almost never frosty and snow is unheard of except in the mountains. This doesn't mean they are coniferous pine trees which are what we think of as evergreens. They Kauri, Rimu etc have normal leaves but just keep them and shed a few in rotation when they feel like it. This means the bush is always many shades of green.

There are plenty of European trees here also. We have Oak and Silver birch in our garden, lines of willows and poplars are abound. These all now think its time to shed leaves so although we don't have vast forests of reds and golds we do have patches and leaves to kick through on the ground.

This is still the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The Guava tree in the garden is full of many small damson sized fruits, purple skinned filled with soft astringent mush and a few big seeds you can spit out. Not ideal for eating but making an aromatic magenta jelly (jam) thats a good complement to peanut butter.

The banana bushes in the garden are ripening so fast now we can eat several each day and still the Silvereyes and Indian Myna birds stuff themselves. the bananas are unlike the usual shop commercial variety. They are shorter and fatter ( about 1cm long) with green/yellow skins that split open naturally as soon as the banana is ripe. The flesh is firm and flavoured with a texture more like an apricot than the floury bananas you might be used to. The sugar content is lower too so they taste more like fruit.

Feijoas are in season. These plum sized green fruits have a similar soft, juicy, aromatic pulp to the Guava and are sometimes called pineapple guavas. They make a nice brown pickle/chutney.

The grapefruits on the tree opposite our deck are getting fat - but are still green. We will have to wait another month before the citrus fruits are really ready.

photos

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:59:57 GMT

I've started putting some photos on Flickr. here http://www.flickr.com/photos/avowkind/

Having a pro photographer in the house means that I don't take many myself but then Claire doesn't do the boring day to day stuff. So I decided to grab some of them and put them where you all can see.

skype me

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 06:53:54 GMT

if you are an old friend from blighty you might want to say hi sometime

my skype id is avowkind

Long time no post

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 07:21:08 GMT

I can't believe that 8 months have passed since my last post. All you readers must think we have disappeared off of the face of the Island.

I guess the main reason I stopped posting is with the moving into the new house I felt that the main adventure of emigrating to New Zealand was over. I didn't want to ramble on about boring day to day stuff that you all have. I didn't want to turn the blog into a private journal either.

Anyway 8 months have passed and I think there is probably enough news to fill a few posts over the Easter break.

First of all the family.
Mimi and Ben had exams at the end of 2006. These were NCEA levels 1 and 2 the NZ equivalent of O levels and first year A levels (AS). As expected Mimi did really well gaining many credits, Excellents and Merits. as well as picking up the Science Cup in the school prizes. Ben just managed to pass the year - but, given his aversion to academic subjects we were reasonably pleased.

This year Mimi is in her final school year and studying Chemistry, Physics, Bio, Maths (Calculus) , History. She is aiming to get the best results to get into Uni and then get more level 4 course credits to get scholarships to pay for it.
Mimi was working regularly in the 'Wild Bean Cafe' at the local BP garage. She earned enough to buy her own laptop, clothes etc and is planning a trip to Wellington. She left the job to concentrate on school work at the beginning of this year.

Ben is really concentrating on his music. The band he is in is called Where's Gary's Duvet. and you can listen to them on their myspace page Where's Gary's Duvet

Its a punky ska band and very entertaining. Ben is playing lead guitar and looks every inch the rock star. They play gigs a couple of times a month and have had sponsorship for studio time to record pirates.

We've hardly seen Ben over Easter as he has had so many parties to go to. He has a very good social life in the City.

Milly is loud, brash and into hip hop. she is every inch the teenager - in both good and bad ways. She is into singing and looking forward to playing in the show Annie soon.

Rachel is now 10 and the fittest member of the family - the first watkins into sports. She completed her first TriAthlon a couple of weeks ago. Thats running, swimming and cycling.

Photos of everyone are to be found here on Flikr.

Claire has continued working on her photography, especially for the book she is illustrating 'Tempting Tuis' a book about creating gardens that attract native wildlife. Claire is still really missing England.

Life at Navman has been busy and interesting. The company has been up for sale for a year and was finally sold to MiTAC. a Taiwanese company. There has been some changes but life in the software group has continued pretty much as usual. Our 2006 products have been selling well and getting good reviews. I am now working on both the new products for this year and thinking about 2008 products for which I will be technical lead.

Summer / Christmas holiday we went on a tour of the Northland. This was pretty much the same route I took when first here on my own so you can read about it in the early postings. we stayed at opononi, drove down bayleys beach and generally enjoyed the sun,sand and forests.

Apart from that money has been tight so we have not been travelling around the country much. However I did win a prize at work of a Mystery Tour from Air NZ. This took us to Nelson at the top of the south island and we enjoyed just being away from the kids, touring and visiting the World or Wearable Art museum.

We are just at the end of summer now. NZ is still a beautiful place to live.

hey long lost readers - get in touch. avowkind@gmail.com

The House

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:49:40 GMT

The house is white - well cream, well ok then magnolia. Its obviously been repainted especially to sell. Its this pale colour all over so has no subtleties, no complementary colours around the windows etc. The feeling is of an Ocean liner.

There are two floors. worth mentioning as many NZ houses are single storey. its also on a flat (ish) section so both floors occupy the sound ground area - also unusual as many local houses are built on slopes and have different sized upstairs and downstairs.

The two floors are actually two separate flats. before we bought it the house was rented out separately. There are two electric meters, two separate sets of wiring and water, and the connecting stairs are on the outside.
This is not a problem for us. Mimi and Ben have moved in downstairs - effectively making the granny flat a 'teen' flat. They have their own fridge and cooker, sink etc although they still mainly come upstairs to steal our food.

The downstairs flat is smaller than upstairs becuase one end of the house is a big double garage. This holds our laundry, as yet unpacked boxes and is now a rehearsal space for Ben's Band (Quoth).

Upstairs there are 3 bedrooms. all medium sized. a longish, galley style kitchen and a large L shaped lounge that leads onto an upper deck facing North.
The house is bigger than the one in England but not so big as the rental in valhalla.

Purchase price was $415K Not really cheap, not really expensive either so we are happy.

Settled

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:37:08 GMT

Hi Everyone

Its been three months since my last blog entry. Thats due to a number of factors.
1. life has been busy, more about that in a moment
2. can't get near the laptop thanks to the kids using it all the time.
3. plain lazyness.

Well I can't claim its because there is nothing to write. Since the last entry we have bought a house, moved in and started living as proper kiwis.

It started when we realised that at the end of May our 6 month contract for the rental house would be coming to an end and we should really start looking around for a new place to stay - somewhere cheaper. While scanning the realty agents windows Claire found a place very close to the kid's schools that looked rather affordable. This was a house to buy rather than rent but it looked really nice so we decide to investigate the money options.

The house agent gave us the card of a mortgage broker who came around to go through the finance options. As in most countries you can really only borrow 80% of a house cost on a standard mortgage. however many of the banks are prepared to lend a large chunk of the remainder if you have sufficient income to cover the repayments. That said the costs go up fairly quickly so any sort of deposit is worth having.

Now we have been making mortgage payments on various houses in the uk since we first got married so there was a fair bit of equity on the house in Kineton. I had thought that the paperwork and fees would make it uneconomic to try and tap into this equity but the value of the money here in reducing the percentage of mortgage required persueded me to investigate further.

It turned out that when we moved the mortgage to First Direct a few years ago the house was valued at 150k, the mortgage was only 80k so I would be able to extend this to 100k without needing any new valuations or surveys etc. 20k pounds is 60k dollars at the recent exchange rates so that would cover quite a lot of deposit money.

Anyway we then took several more close looks at this house - along with some friends with better knowledge of building issues. They both pointed out the possibility that the lower floor was up against an earth bank which didn't seem to be properly drained. The rooms showed some signs of damp and the likelyhood was that there would have been many thousands of dollars of remedial work required.

In the end we decided not to go ahead with that house.

Anyway as we now had started to have an idea of what we could afford and the process had started with getting an extension on the uk mortgage we continued to look at local houses. Well we eventually found this place - 31B Salisbury Road, Birkdale and after much palaver, negotiations and wrangling we bought it.

We moved in in July almost exactly a year since the family arrived in NZ. we finally own a piece of the land of the long white cloud.

Cooling down

Thu, 11 May 2006 09:34:28 GMT

Its been rainy today and tonight's the first night of the year that I considered putting on some heating.
The choices are:
1. get some wood and light up the fire - erm probably not worth it for one night and can't find the matches/firelighters.
2. get out the electric oil filled radiator and burn some joules.
3. have a hot bath and an early night as there is nowt on the TV.

Well we opted for 3 but C got to the bath first so I'm just filling in some blog before my turn.

This rented house - although huge and has great views etc suffers from the main lounge having loads of full length windows so once the temperature drops there is nothing to keep the heat in. No big drapes or double glazing. The fire is in the middle of the house so in the winter you have the option of being chilly in the nice lounge or decamping to the Rumpus Room. The new house - which is progressing ok so far, has normal sized windows and is less exposed ( Nice view = wind ) so I hope it will not need much heating - especially as there is no fire or radiators there at the moment.

The drop in temp also upset the van which refused to start this evening on the way home from work. I should point out that most days I have been cycling up and down those hills to and from work. but thats also getting chilly now and at this end of the week I was feeling pretty tired.
Well the battery appeared to be flat so I called the AA and was pleasently surprised to be fixed up about 15 minutes later. One of the advantages of being in the city I guess.

Yes after regular cycling since the new year I now have firm thighs and buttocks but unfortunately no significant change in the belly. I guess the regular beers here work against that.

Tax Returns and house prices

Thu, 11 May 2006 09:24:15 GMT

NZ tax return forms have started arriving. Claire and the Kids all got one as they have IRD numbers and don't have permanent jobs. I apparently didn't get one as my income is all through Navman and on PAYE.

However I was advised to fill in a tax return anyway - you can get one online at http://www.ird.govt.nz The reason being that I have not worked a full 12 months of the tax year - exactly 11 as it turns out. However the tax deducted for PAYE is a straight income/12 figure so I in effect have paid tax for the month I was not here.

Sure enough filling in the tax form shows that I am due a small but welcome rebate.

Lots of kiwis use property as a sort of pension fund. The reasons were explained to me by our mortgage advisor, I'll try to recap them here but don't blame me if I remembered it wrong. feel free to comment if you disagree.

1. when buying property there is no GST (VAT) and little in the way of transaction costs.
2. when you sell a property you don't pay capital gains tax even if its a rental.
3. property values have historically risen fairly steadily and in recent years in the right place quite spectacularly.
- the right place seems to be either in nice suburbs in the city or anywhere with a sea view.
4. you can offset losses on rental ownership against your tax.

This means that a higher rate tax payer, someone earning over $60k can afford to charge less in rent than the mortgage on a house as the loss reduces their net income and saves them 39% in tax.

That sort of explains why we are paying $600 a week to live in a house which would probably cost double that in mortgage payments if bought today.
Of course should the government introduce capital gains taxes on the property investments the whole system would probably collapse. In effect the tax breaks you get on private pension plans in the UK exist on property investment here.

Another effect of the system is that house prices are relatively expensive e.g. 4-5 times a good salary which keeps people renting for longer in their careers. In a sense the older property owners are taxing the younger workers.

This makes it difficult to decide when its a good time to buy a house. After a period of house prices rising steeply the concern would be that they have peaked and will start to fall back - raising the spectre of negative equity etc. ( you can reasonably easily get 100% mortgages at the moment as the banks have lots of spare cash) . The central bank has steadily raised interest rates for a while now in an attempt to cap inflation and also dampen down property price growth. The main effect of the high interest rates was the recent high value of the NZ dollar making it less attractive to move money from the UK to NZ. Interest rate levels here are a very slow acting stick as most people are on mortgages with fixed rates for 3-5 years.
It seems that last year these changes finally started to have an effect, the house prices appear to have peaked for a while and have fallen back a little. as the bank doesn't seem inclined to raise rates again in the near future the dollar has fallen back to a more realistic value so its now a good time to bring money from the UK.

For us its a good time as we are balancing the cost of renting ( money lost for good) against buying (money invested in property). As the market comes off the boil the supply rises against the demand and some rental places are being left empty. This provides a good incentive for some landlords to sell up or cash in. I think thats why we got a fairly good deal on the house we are trying to buy.

Our choice is a fairly large house that was on the market 3 months ago for 450k and is now at 415k. Perhaps if this falls through there may be others with even better bargains. we shall see.

First year down under

Sat, 06 May 2006 08:02:31 GMT

I can hardly believe it but I have now been here in NZ for a year. Its a great country, Auckland is a good city to live in and the job at Navman is tough but rewarding.

We now have PR ( permanent residence). Well almost, we have received the approval in principle letter and now just have to stump up the $1200 for the Migrant Levy. PR means that we can stay longer than the 30 months covered by the work visas and if we leave NZ we are able to return anytime within two years.

As our 6 month contract for this house was coming to an end we started looking around to see if there was somewhere in the area that was a bit cheaper. Claire found one house that looked pretty good but it was not a rental but for sale. We thought about it and decided to talk to a morgage broker to see how much we could afford for the same amount as we currently pay in rent and realised that we might be able to find somewhere to buy.
That would please Claire who doesn't like the restrictions here of not being able to paint rooms, put up shelves etc.

We negotiated a good price for the house and visited it several times bringing along a couple of friends with building experience. They pointed out some flaws in the building - places where damp would be an issue etc. and in the end we decided not to take it.

Well a week later we found another place that was much better and potentially affordable so after some more inspections we made an offer that was accepted and so now we are in the process of getting a mortgage. If all goes well we could be moving in in 6 week.

Under Your Nose

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 11:49:47 GMT

Claire's photo exhibition 'Under your nose' started this week at the Pumphouse in takapuna.

read all about it here http://www.watkinsclan.me.uk/uyn/intro1.html

We had a preview evening on tuesday to which many friends, work collegues were invited. We were also pleased to see representatives of the local council and the British Consulate. Bubbles and nibbles were served and everyone was very complementary about the pictures.

If you are nearby please drop into the gallery to have a look.

Clocks Back - 12 hour time difference now.

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 08:59:48 GMT

Its been a long time since the last entry. No excuse really but I've had my head down working most of the time.
The kiwi summer has passed the hot humid sultry peak of mid february and after a week of rain we seem to be back into the pleasantly mild autumn weather. The clocks went back this morning so for a couple of weeks we are precisely 12 hours difference from the UK.

We have not been away for a while. Thats partly a lack of cash. but also that there has been quite a bit to do in Auckland. We have enjoyed several free summer concerts including a free North Shore rock concert which was great fun. Ben got stuck into the jamming tent and Milly hung around the stage collecting autographs. As a result Ben was encouraged to join a Rock School and will be training regularly with a band next term.

Mimi is busy studying and gaining credits for NCEA level 2, She also now has a job working at the BP garage Wild Bean Cafe. This involves a couple of evening and a very early start on Sunday mornings.

Both Mimi and Ben have made lots of friends in Auckland and are often now off somewhere doing their own thing at the weekend. We had a text from Ben last night - I'm ok mum, but I am at the hospital and might have broken my leg. Ben had been dancing rather energetically in the mosh pit as some concert and got his foot stamped on. He is ok but now has to hobble around on a pair of crutches - somehow he still manages to make this look cool.

At some point in the last month we passed from novelty to normality for living in New Zealand. The area is now familiar, we have the school and shopping routine, Milly and Rachel have brownies. We know whats on which TV channel. The number of new experiences has dropped back to normal levels and thats the main reason why there has not been much to put in the blog.

At Navman we are coming to the end of the project that I have been working on since I first arrived. the iCN 750 and 720 will be going public soon and I am now into the planning stage of the next product. I've have a new position - Software Architect for the User Interface group. So I have clearly settled in there and made a good contribution.

The Permanent Residence (PR) process continues to wend its slow way forwards. We eventually collected all the medical forms and the police checks arrived even a letter from NZIS reminding us that we had to submit before the middle of march or we would lose the invitation to apply so I packed all the papers into a huge envelope and posted it off. A week later they sent us most of the docs back and pointed out we had sent the wrong sort of birth certiifcates - they needed ones with full parents names on - which we did have but I had put the wrong ones in.

I even managed to send of the application for a fresh copy of my degree certificate from aston - the original lost somewhere in the move. Thats sent in too and now we just wait to see what will happen next. PR will mean that Mimi and Ben can work officially and that we can leave and return to NZ whenever we want - even after the current work visa runs out.

Claire has published her first book for Red Rocket. http://www.redrocketbooks.com/ This is a school reading book all about sets. Claire illustrated the book with photographs of feathers and shells etc. Its only a tiny book but it does have her name on the front. Meanwhile she is now working hard in preparation for her first NZ exhibition. This will be at the Pump House Takapuna from the 18th April and is titled 'Under Your Nose'. Its a set of photos all taken here in NZ and unlike most photography that you see around here which focusses on landscapes this focusses close up and under your nose. so there are abstract patterns from Nature. On top of that she is also working on a book with a friend about building native plant gardens. That should be finished in about 6 months time.

Cicadas , Mossies and other bugs

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 19:42:15 GMT

I thought I should just mention the Cicadas. These are insects whose main purpose in life seems to be to sit in the trees and buzz, click, twang, or otherwise make a racket.

I was surprised to find that these are not like the crickets/grasshoppers that you would hear in the grass in England although the sound is similar. They are short stubby insects living in the trees. At this time the air is filled with their sound - a constant sussuration that comes in waves and beats as thousands of the beasts get in synch. Actually one Cicada is a pretty noisy animal so perhaps there are only a few hundred out there.

The noise could be annoying but after a while your mind fades it out into the background and it becomes a soothing white noise, like surf or the wind in the trees - definitely a sound that becomes associated with these warm summer days. During the night I woke up thinking that someone had left a tap running - but it was just the Cicadas again.

I should also mention the biting insects. Now these are universally called Mossies - although few appear to be real mosquitoes. Most are tiny black gnats the size of ants that appear to be able to suck a mouthful of blood from your leg without even stopping a fly past. The best time to get bitten is dusk, especially if you are near still water - like the upper harbour rivers. However as we leave the windows open all night to stay cool there are often a few that will come in specially to dine on my pale rump.

I actually woke myself up the other day by slapping myself on the ear. The mossies make a distinctive high pitched whine as they fly past - if the noise stops you know they have stopped for a meal. My subconcious must have heard the noise and acted in self defence.

Fortunately the various sprays or roll on anti bug sprays do appear to work quite well - our favourite is Bug Off. however you have to be careful not to get it on any part of the body a human might want to kiss as it tastes terrible. Lots of people also have Anti Mossie lamps that plug in like those air fresheners and pump out something the mossies don't like.

Claire seems to attract the biters more than me - or maybe its just that she reacts more to the bites - some remain as nothing more than tiny itches - gone and forgotten in a few minutes, others can generate a reaction and swell up to big hot red patches. I guess it depends on whether the beast has clean teeth or not.

More Medical Woes

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 07:03:36 GMT

No - nothing wrong with us personally. Just issues with the process of getting medicals for our PR application.
Before Christmas we all had medicals with our new local GP. As well as the basic checkup there are two extra parts to the medical: A blood test and an X-Ray. Now I have mentioned before that we were trying to avoid having to do the X-Rays as Claire, Mimi, Ben and I all had X-Rays before we left the UK.
I eventually got an email from the NZIS person dealing with our application that they could contact the UK and get a verification of the results of the X-Rays from them. Ironically the X-Rays are valid for 12 months while the medicals themselves are only valid for 6 months.

Meanwhile we trotted off last year to the diagnostic medlab to get the blood tests. That took a couple of tries as the first time we arrived we had had breakfast and were supposed to have been fasting.
Meanwhile also Milly has turned 11 and is now also required to have an X-Ray even though she has been in the country since before she was 11.

I then settled down to wait for our Police checks to arrive back from the UK which they did last week.

Eventually we get everything done and realising that things were not progressing Claire took all the forms, results x-rays, passport photos etc to the doctors for him to finish signing off everything so we could send in the PR application.

Got them back last week - a slight panic as they thought that they had lost Milly's forms. Anyway I was checking through them this weekend and noticed that 1. the results of my blood test had not been copied onto the main form and signed off. and 2. we had not got the blood test forms signed when the original tests were taken.

Now this latter is pretty important as the person taking the blood has to see your passport and confirm that the person being tested is the person applying for immigration. Sensible as otherwise if you had an illness you would just send someone else. However when we had our blood tests taken the new forms had only just come in and the doctor gave us a separate request slip for the tests. This resulted in us not getting the ID part of the check done at the time. This was of course my fault for not reading the notes carefully enough.

Well the doctor said we should just take the forms back for signing - which we did this morning but as I guessed they would not do that as it had to be done at the time the blood was taken. Also blood tests for a doctor are free while immigration tests have to be paid for - and we didn't pay previously.
The upshot was we had to have the tests done again. This time with the correct forms and ID and a fee of $80 each. this for me, mimi and claire.
Except that while this time I apparently did not need a fasting test Claire still did - and also a urine test. And as she had had breakfast and also a recent period she will have to go back next week for the test.

I only hope that we can get all this completed before too much time passes and something else goes out of date. for example ben is now 15 and probably also requires a blood test.

The only good news is that all these tests keep coming up healthy - so no worries there eh?

Catching up

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 03:24:30 GMT

Its been a busy summertime and I have neglected the blog again. I shall try to back fill a few articles so please excuse the strange reading order.

Its Sunday today, and the weather is warm and sunny with enough wind to keep the place fresh and not too muggy. Thats nice - the last couple of weeks have been either raining and cloudy or hot and steamy - giving us the feeling we are living in a proper tropical climate. High tide was at lunchtime today and although the wind has whipped up some big waves - even in the harbour the water was warm and comfortable to swim in. All the kids including Milly and Rachel are getting confident swimming in the sea now and Milly even jumped off the 3 metre high warf pillars the other day.

We are in the middle of our second long weekend. Last week was Auckland Anniversary weekend and we had monday off. However I worked Saturday as we were approaching a beta release at Navman. This weekend is Waitangi Day - celebrating the signing of the treaty which essentially made New Zealand a British Colony - it was an agreement that land sales from the Maori Tribes to migrants would all go through the crown. This was supposed to be fair to the Maori and also to the newcomers and although you wouldn't get away with it today the treaty compares well with other deals made during the colonial era.

Waitangi day in the past has been the occasion for Maori protests but recently seems concerned mainly with a lot of speechifying.

Mountain Biking Ha Ha Ha

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 07:39:20 GMT

Ian has this book of mountain bike routes and there is one that runs through the Russell Forest a few kilometers North of where we are staying. So Ian suggests a ride out. Its about 3 hours round trip he says and ungraded. hmm.

Mimi and I have not really mountain biked before so we imagine a bit of a hard cycle up a shady forest track maybe with some slopes down to compensate. We'll leave mid morning and be back in time for a late lunch so no need to carry loads of food. Just a litre bottle of water each. In the end its 11 am by the time we start and only Ian, Jan, Mimi and myself are going, the smaller ones prefer to play on the beach.

Arriving at our start point we certainly look the part - with shiny sunglasses, shorts and helmets and we set off at a gentle pace up the track.
After about 100 metres the track gets too steep for me to ride up - being unfit and I get off to push.

30 minutes later I have pushed the bike to the top of the first track where we find a DOC (dept of conservation) signboard showing we have reached the START of the 3 hour section. I have already drunk half my water and consider that perhaps I should wimp out and ride back down to the car, driving it round to meet the others at the end of the circuit.

I am persueded to continue a bit further maybe as far as a camping hut as the next section looks more level. Indeed it is and for about 10 minutes we ride on a downhill slope to a stream where I refill my water bottles and feel sufficiently refreshed to press on further.

Unfortunately we now hit the mountain proper and for the next three hours I basically push the bike uphill for 100 paces and then rest until my heart rate returns to a non life threatening level. This process vaguely resembles the fat burn/Aeorobic selection on a cross trainer - something I have previously only done for about 20 minutes.

We are now deep in the forest following an old logging track and still climbing higher and higher. Occasionally we get a break in the trees and catch a glimpse of a panoramic view which for a few moments makes it all worth while. Its gone 2pm and I am starting to think about the missed lunch and whether Claire might start to worry about us being overdue.

By 3pm I wondering whether I am ever going to actually ride my bike or simply push it the entire way up the mountain. In fact, apart from a few 100 metre down slope runs, that is what we end up doing. Actually Ian, being fit and having a good bike could probably indeed climb most of this track its just the wimps like me holding them back. Mimi is being fairly staunch about the trip too and although also has to push the bike a lot is not complaining - except about lunch.

Eventually we reach the END of the 4x4 track - or in our case 2x2. The guide says now we scramble up a slope onto a 'partially ridable' footpath.
Not having remembered to bring block and tackle or climbing ropes we do indeed have to scrample up a precipitous slope dragging or carrying the bicycles. The path leads us up and up still further until we arrive in a mature kauri grove - cool and majestic.

And finally by about 4pm the path turns down the slope. The catch is now that the descent is both too steep to ride, winding and covered in roots and branches. we actually have to carry the bikes down for about another hour.
Strangely enough I don't lose my sense of humour over this and have to admit a certain masochistic level of enjoyment about the process. The forest, and I mean forest rather than bush is delightful and we are visited by Fantails and a black and white bird we later discover to be a TomTit. This bird appears to sit in the tree and looks at us in amazement as if to say what are these mad creatures doing up here but I understand that he was probably more interested in the insects that we were stirring up.

There is a very definite feeling here of being distant from other people. At one point I call out for Ian who has gone too far ahead. My voice echoes around the deep valleys for several seconds - yet I feel that there was no-one listening.

Eventually the path drops down into a river valley and after a foot cooling session, more water - no worries about the freshness of the water here - or rather we're too thirsty to mind, and one final push up the hill we read the road. Well a sort of road - its another logging track.
At last we can freewheel downhill on a reasonable slope. Ian goes on ahead to fetch the car and in about 20 minutes we have covered several miles with almost no work.

And so we arrive home. Tired, Hot, Very Hungry and slightly smug about having completed the trip in only 7.5 hours. Claire has been busy asking the neighbours about how soon she should call the mountain rescue but has also prepared a most excellent sausage casserole for the weary travellers.

So to sum up Mountain biking means pushing your bike up a mountain...
and then carrying it down again.
maybe with a short ride at the end.
Would I do it again? Maybe - but I would make sure I had a map that had some contours on it and that the track was realistically rideable.

Did I have fun - yes.

New Year 2006 - we get there first.

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:22:58 GMT

New year's greetings , an extremely windy one so far!

Yesterday we spent new years eve on the beach. This time in Devonport. If you imagine Auckland Harbour as a letter C then Devonport is the top right end of the letter. It is a long peninsular that sticks out into the harbour on the Northern side. Although it is part of the North Shore city It does have a different feel of its own - Like St Ives or another Cornwall holiday resort.

The Ocean on the Eastern side of New Zealand is much calmer than the West coast beaches like Muriwai and Piha, Thats because the prevailing winds are either from the North West or the South West. Devonport is even more sheltered though as the big volcanic island of Rangitoto shelters the harbour from the Ocean proper.

With light winds and the tide out the shallow water by the beach warmed up to Bath temperatures and we all enjoyed a good swim with even Claire being tempted into the sea. There were hundreds of tiny fish swimming around and Rachel and Ben tried out Rachel's new goggles and Snorkle.

Claire had made a cheese Fondue which we brought with us in a saucepan and when the sun started to get low we moved from the beach up into the old volcanic hill at the tip of the peninsular that is called North Head. We heated up the fondue with our camping cooker and enjoyed dunking french bread into the cheese while enjoying the view over the North shore city with a glass or two of wine.

Ben had brought with him a big piece of cardboard and the kids amused themselves sliding down the 45 degree slopes on it. Mysterious music from around the corner turned out to be a young asian woman with a huge piano accordion being videoed on the edge of the volcano with the blue sky, blue sea and green peaks of Rangitoto in background.

North head guards the entrance to Auckland harbour and from Maori times to WW2 has been fortified. This now leaves a mix of tunnels, gun emplacements and earthworks over the whole hill which make good hide and seek locations.

After the sun set we went back down into Devonport to a pub called the Patriot. this is a UK themed pub and although I didn't notice any particularly british beers being served they did have Walkers crisps. These do taste different to NZ 'Chips' and are one of the few items we miss.

We listened to a good band for a while - a trio playing guitar, drums and whistles and singing Pogues songs. The plan was to wait until near midnight and then go up Mount Victoria - the other volcanic peak in Devonport to watch the fireworks from the Sky Tower and Viaduct Harbour on the other side of the harbour. However everyone started getting really sleepy so in the end we went home.

Claire and I saw in the new year standing on our deck watching the fireworks across the water in hobsonville.

Milly absconded during all this, as true to form she managed to get herself invited to a party and sleepover! I do not know how she does it!

Christmas Day on the Beach

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:03:08 GMT

As it was clear that celebrating a 'traditional' English Christmas would feel pretty wierd here we had decided from the start to go to the other extreme and were determined to have a Christmas on the beach this year with Piha or Muriwai - the big open west coast beaches as the likely target.

Christmas day dawned cloudy and showery. Apparently this is a regular feature here - after a very warm mild spring there are a couple of rainly weeks over christmas before the summer gets going properly. This must be a Kiwi version of the 'it always rains on bank holidays' syndrome.

The kids woke early as expected and found their stockings filled with presents. Well to be precise not filled. As most of the relatives had sent money rather than gifts, and as we are as always tight for cash there was a definite thinness to the stockings this year.
Actually for the most part they were not stockings either. Only Rachel had managed to pack her big red santa boot stocking and still be able to find it. Milly instead outlined a big square space on her carpet with ribbons and put inside a note saying 'Santa please put presents here', and then a second note saying - 'Milly'. this seemed to work ok.
Mimi had made a big top hat out of coloured fabrics. This was going to be her party hat but she underestimated the size of her head and it didn't fit properly. It held the sweets and satsuma ok though.

Ben put up his stocking but it was outside on the deck and Santa didn't notice it there. Santa left the presents in a bag outside the door and when Ben woke up he was rather disappointed to find the stocking empty - at least until he tripped over the bag leaving his bedroom.

So this year no big expensive presents for anyone. Rachel got a Polly Pocket roller coaster hotel - from TradeMe. Milly got her ears pierced and received some more earrings from her siblings. Ben got a guitar stand - but he has a birthday in January and has Big day out tickets for that. Mimi got some Clothes, a Watch and some books.

The kids gave me a hip flask - a well remembered request from last year. and mum some chocolates and a hand made voucher from Ben for a Breakfast in Bed.

After the presents opening we had Pancakes for breakfast - my treat for everyone, and then packed up a picnic to go to the beach. The original plan was to have a barbeque but at this point the weather was still doubtful so we baked the sausages in the oven and took them wrapped in foil.

By the time we got to Muriwai the sun had come out and the sky was blue with big fluffy white clouds. The surf was about 1metre high and looked rather inviting. We ate the picnic in the woods behind the beach and then settled down in the small stretch of beach between the life guard flags. The West coast beaches can get some big waves and there are also rip currents in some locations. The lifeguards mark an 'active' area of the beach that they supervise. You can swim elsewhere but you are not so likely to get rescued if you get into trouble.

We don't yet have surf board. but we do have short polystyrene 'body' or Boogie boards. The waves were perfect for these and we had a brilliant time. The sun was warm - not too hot, the water fresh - but not too chilly. The only downside being that the surf tends to wash off any sun block we were wearing so Ben and I both came home rather pink.

We came home by about 6pm and then started the dinner. The roast took a couple of hours but by 8 we had a good meal with tons of roast potatoes, veg, pork, and pavlova for pudding.

All in all everyone voted this one of the best Christmasses ever.

Party in the Park

Sat, 10 Dec 2005 19:41:10 GMT

Saturday evening and we all set off to go to the 'Coca Cola Christmas Party in the Park'.
This is a big free event held for the last 12 years in the Auckland Domain which is a large park in the city centre - Auckland's Hyde Park effectively.
Its a fund raiser for YouthLine an NZ Charity.

We parked the van in Newmarket about 800 m from the park and walked along broadway in the early evening carrying our picnic, bottles of water, blankets etc. Ben brought a friend and his fire staff. We could tell we were going in the right direction as there were plenty of others heading that way - including several girls dressed as fairies.

As we reached the park we climbed up over a steep bank to be greeted by an impressive sight - several thousands of people all ensconced in a natural arena, a fair ground, balloons, banners, flags and a big stage at the far end. I've not been in such a large crowd since Womad.

We found a spot some distance away from the stage - but up on a slope so we had a good view, and we ate the picnic as the sun gradually set into a pink and blue sky. Mimi and Ben disappeared off with some seperate groups of friends. Milly and Rachel span cartwheels on the grass and generally enjoyed the holiday atmosphere

The music is generally provided by 'up and coming' singers and bands i.e. people I've not heard of and as this was a family show the content was more of the summertime special pop songs and pumped up carols rather than serious rock. It represented the sugary, bubbly product of the sponsor I felt - but it was appropriate for this event.
The charity workers were all selling either santa hats with led lights or glow sticks of various colours. As most people were buying one or the other of these the crowd soon became a very colourful light show.

After dark Ben went off to the outer reaches of the crowd and performed some fire staff. His mate passed a hat and I gather they made a few tens of dollars plus a can of some alcopop .

The show finished off with some big sing along numbers like 'Hey Baby, Ooh Ahh' and a fireworks display. There was very little wind and the fireworks soon generated so much smoke that they were barely visible - we had more of a cloud with an internal light shown.
All in all a fun event.

UFO - blimp escapee

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 05:11:42 GMT

Sunday afternoon and its sunny with not much wind so we decide to go to one of the parks to fly our solar balloon.
This balloon is made from a long tube of light black (bin bag) plastic about 10 metres long and about 1 metre in diameter. The idea is that you knot one end and let the wind fill up the tube then tie the other end - fastening the whole giant black pudding to a kite string.

The sunshine then warms up the air inside and the tube rises. We got this off the internet last year and its fun flying up the huge sausage or seeing it bounce around as the wind catches it

We took the balloon to the rugby pitch at Birkenhead park where we had a big clear open space to play, launched the balloon, and played it out to the end of the string - about 50 metres extent.

Unfortunately after a few minutes at full stretch the string broke and the balloon escaped. At first it looked like the wind would crash it into the ground near the nearby swimming pool and Ben and I chased after it. However it suddenly gained bouyancy and flew up to 100m and headed off to the east.

So the whole of Birkenhead, and then Northcote, and then Takapuna and then the Gulf of Hauraki and then the Pacific Ocean was treated to teh sight of a giant black phallic symbol floating gently over the North Shore. Every so often it would bend and fold, then straighten again so depending on your point of view it was a bannana, a V, an I, a -, or a boomerang.

A couple of light planes flew past it - not close enough to be a hazard but at a similar height - so I was rather concerned.

Eventually it disappeared out of sight. I guess by nightfall it will cool and end up in the ocean to puzzle some whale or orca.

Whats in the Kiwi News?

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 07:13:17 GMT

Regular top story at the moment is the rate of the Kiwi Dollar - its been steadily rising and is heading towards parity with the Aussie dollar and has risen over 40 uk pence. The main cause of this is the high interest rates. The bank keep raising the base rate in order to keep a lid on inflation. that is dampen down consumer spending and the ever increasing housing market. The result of this is that overseas investors keep buying the dollar which pushes the value up.

In theory this is good for kiwis on holiday - more spending money in the uk, oz or us, and it makes imports cheaper - but it makes it harder to export and kiwi fruit and agri products will suffer. that means a growing balance of trade deficit.

The story seems familiar from the UK. high demand for houses ( at least in the cities) pushing up interest rates and prices, High consumer credit - people buying now and paying later ( if ever), So pundits are talking about a fall, or crash as the economic system redresses the balance. I am wondering how long this can go on for and whether we might see a big house price drop and negative equity as we did in UK a decade ago. Its always a concern when institutions start offering to lend you 100% of the mortgage.

Another story is Apples into Australia - for various reasons NZ has not been allowed to export apples into OZ. Biosecurity is given as the main reason (fireblight) but for the most part its just a trade barrier to protect OZ growers. Well after 80 years a trade commision says that in principle apples can be exported there - but there are still plenty of concerns and conditions.

Kindergarten teachers are planning to strike over plans to extend the amount of time they have to spend looking after the little ones.

Sport - of course the All Blacks won all their games in the UK and NZ got the World Cup (Rugby) hosting for 2011. That means some nice money being spent on stadiums and another bunch of tourists.

Feet

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 06:45:24 GMT

Grubby feet are a fact of life here in NZ.

The kids live barefoot and for the most part so do the adults. I've been wearing sandals and shorts (no socks) for the last few weeks and these are kicked off as soon as you get to the house. Sandals tend to let in the dust and thats followed up by wandering down to the beach barefoot so my pale white tender feet are gradually toughening up as well as tanning.

You see lots of kids barefoot at school or at least walking home barefoot.

You have to be a bit careful on our beach - further out there are lots of oyster shells hanging onto the rock surfaces - these break in the waves and get quite sharp - I got a small cut in my toe the other day.