May 13, 2007
Almost there...
This is Te Arai beach. After a longish break with the blog (busy at work!!!), I find it pretty hard to come up with a good story to write... Well, our residence applications have been approved and we submitted our passports to get the stamps a week ago. They gave us 3-6 months estimated processing time for the first application stage, so we were quite surprised to receive a positive answer in a month!!! I gather they couldn't believe their luck when they saw our application!!! A couple of youngish, healthy, highly educated people with vast work experience are willing to pay taxes here?!!? Quick! Approve it now before they change their mind!
The whole NZ immigration process is very pragmatic, basically you have to prove that you are good stock (you don't have a chance if you have problems with kidneys, or heart, anything that could potentially eventually make you a "burden" to the NZ society). I heard stories of perfectly healthy and capable people (with jobs!) rejected, because they had a disabled child, etc. So apparently we're sufficiently germ-free for this society.
NZ has a problem of brain drain to Australia and UK (obviously). The salaries here are not that great, taxes are high, housing expensive and of poor standard. There are lots of stories of people going for their OE (Overseas Experience) to earn the money so that they can return to NZ to buy home or start a business. Lots of people don't come back. Meanwhile lots of new people (surprisingly mostly from UK) immigrate to NZ all the time. It is quite interesting how it all works. Hearing the British immigrants' stories, it seems like it is pretty impossible to live in the UK anymore (crime, uncontrolled immigration (?!?!), etc...) They come to NZ looking for the last safe haven on Earth (if only they'd check the newspapers, not the glossy immigration brochures!)
In any case, considering the geographical isolation, NZ has a pretty mixed population: increasingly more Asian and Pacific, though majority still Pakeha (white European), and, of course, a very significant Maori minority.
The trees above are Kauri trees. We found a magnificent walk in Waitakere ranges that goes through kauri forests. The area is an established natural reserve, protected since the end of the 19th century. If you think that Europeans landed in NZ just some 250 years ago (really), you have to be impressed that they managed to destroy so much of the natural environment so fast! Apparently there are only 2% of the natural kauri forests preserved in NZ, everything else has been logged and shipped away (you may find kauri houses in San Francisco, apparently!). If I'm not wrong, it really took them only a few decades to deforest most of NZ (cashing in the forest, establishing farmlands, etc)
Kauri villas make really beautiful houses with "good bones" (the house in the picture is not built of kauri!). I took this picture, because they are building a house on one section in our street. One morning I saw that the old house was lifted high on poles and I thought that they are going to relocate it. Yes! They do "relocate" houses here. They move the whole house, just lift it off, put it on a truck and deliver it to a new location! For example, you could buy a piece of land, buy an old kauri villa and trasnport it (I heard they do transport them even from the South Island to North Island!), put it where you like and then renovate. So much for the proper basement, insulation and what have you. If the house is too big, they can saw it in two, deliver the halfs and put them back together in the new location! Apparently timber costs so much these days, that you could never afford to build a real log house here anymore (hence most of the modern architecture is so in love with corrugated iron!). Pretty cool recycling, I'd say.
Up till now the weather has been treating us really nicely! Considering that this is supposed to be as mid November in the Northern hemisphere, we have it good! I could wear a Tshirt while taking a walk on the clifftop at PIha!
Posted by gkligyte at May 13, 2007 11:51 PM