Life in Welly

It’s been a while since our last entry. Lots of stuff had happened and lots of stuff ongoing. Mr Fatty and Ms Shortie got married and made their big move to New Zealand. So here we are in Wellington and we’ve already been here for 3 months and counting. So let’s continue our story…..

After we had gotten our Work Visas, we hastily made the decision to be wedded before coming to NZ. We brought forth our wedding plans by 7 months, sent out invitations to our closest friends and relatives and got married in 3 months’ time. Following the wedding, we only had 1 week before we were due to arrive in Auckland. We packed our bags - Mr Fatty packed light; only brought 2 pairs of shorts, while Ms Shortie tried to bring everything including the kitchen sink, and we flew into Auckland via Etihad Airways and Air New Zealand. It was a 13-hour altogether and both airlines were great. We made our way down to Wellington on a 7-day road trip, starting with a nice honeymoon meal at the top of the Auckland Sky Tower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, on to Rotorua to see the geysers, mudpools, soak in some Polynesian spa, feast on Maori food, then to Hobbiton where Ms Shortie felt right at home, drove through Lake Taupo which is actually a sunken giant ACTIVE volcano, then to Tongariro National Park for some trekking and snow fun, then on to Palmerstone North and finally reaching our destination: Wellington. We clogged a total of 1,300km though it’s just 635km from AKL to WEL.

We had booked to stay with a nice kiwi lady for 3 weeks on Airbnb and spent our first week here in Wellington searching for an apartment and exploring the city. Finally we found an apartment that made us go “wow”. We had to keep calling up the agent and told him how much we liked the apartment for him to let it to us over the other couple. Took us about 1 week to get all the admin work done coz the landlord requested that we get a Contents Insurance for the house. So Ms Shortie had to call up insurance companies to find out which was the best deal for us. And we scrambled to buy the basic furniture and household items whilst we still had our rental car. I would say we have gotten a rather prime location with Courtney Place and the cinema one block away. Courtney Place is lined up with lots of restaurants and cafes. New World, the biggest supermarket in the city centre, is just around the corner. So is Te Papa (the national museum), the habour, and a Sunday farmers’ market. There’s also an organic supermarket nearby. I would say this location is very convenient and Mr Fatty just takes about 15min to walk to work, while Ms Shortie takes 30min coz her office is a wee bit further away. But its good exercise. And it's pretty normal sight to see people dressed in formal attire with sport shoes on brisk walking to work.

Food

Warning: Eating out is expensive, at least $10 for a plate of fried noodles. But it’s a much bigger portion compared to Singapore’s so we could share and save up a little. There are also lots of Asian food around. Especially sushi. Quite a few Malaysian restaurants around too. So no need to worry about char kuay teow and wonton mee. So far, most food courts we’d seen have Chinese food, thai food, Japanese food, indian food and kebabs. And food here tend to be very salty. We also found a foodcourt that has cheap Chinese food and it’s just across the street from us. So you pay $12 and pile on as much food as you can on your dish! Also, there’s a big Asian supermarket where Miss Shortie can find all her ingredients to make mee soto! They even sell mooncakes now when mid-autumn festival is just around the corner! But, most of the time we buy our groceries at the Sunday farmers market and make our own dinner. Trying to limit eating out coz it's just too expensive! And most people bring their lunches to work.  

Just swipe your Eftpos card, no cash required!

The good thing about living here is you don’t have to bring any cash when you go out. All you need is an Eftpos card. It’s kinda like NETS just that they accept it anywhere and everywhere! You could pay using this at the supermarkets, dairy shops, departmental store, shops, foodcourt, furniture shop etc. So far the only place we came across that doesn’t accept Eftpos are some stalls at the farmers’ market. It’s very convenient and you don’t have to bring large amount of cash out so no worries of getting robbed! Our previous landlady told us she doesn’t have any cash with her at all coz there’s no need to have any! P.S. Ms Shortie tried paying for a $0.29 bill using Eftpos and they accepted! :D

Driving & Walking

Buying a car is cheap (~$3000-$4000 for a 2^nd hand car) but parking is expensive and driving in Wellington is not easy coz of the city’s hilly terrain and Ms Shortie absolutely hate red lights on a slope and not to mention PARALLEL PARKING on a slope!!!  Good thing is the city is pretty small so you could walk almost EVERYWHERE. It’s healthy exercise. It also seems like Wellingtonians are very healthy people. You’ll see people going to the gym or jogging on the streets even though it’s winter. Then again, it’s good to have a car so you could explore the outskirts.  

Renting

Renting is very common in Wellington and rent is usually paid weekly. There is also something called the bond which is paid to the government who keeps it until your lease is up and if you damaged anything in the house, the landlord could use that money for repairs. Bonds are no more than 4 weeks rent. It is also important to choose a house that is built to the earthquake compliance codes (I will come to earthquakes shortly) and if possible sheltered from the northerlies. The northerlies or southerlies are strong winds that blow from the north or south. We experienced a very bad southerly last month that left about 25,000 homes without power. Our landlord’s house was shaking and the lights were flickering. The wind was battling against our window and I thought the roof was going to lift off. 

I’m not sure if this is only in Wellington… you do not have to pay for the water you use; only need to pay for electricity. It’s weird to us coz we pay A LOT for water in Singapore but maybe because NZ has lots of water unlike SG.

TradeMe

TradeMe is probably the best way to buy/rent/browse for anything. It's the kiwi version of eBay. According to Mr Fatty, eBay couldn't make it in NZ coz TradeMe was here first and it was too well established and popular. We were looking for furniture and managed to get a nice sofa off TradeMe for $120 which is MUCH cheaper than buying a new one. We also found our apartment on TradeMe. :)

But there are some things which we didn't want to get second-hand, like our bed. So we went to look for a bed and all the shops we went to sold beds for minimum $2000. *faint* We finally found one for $359 and bargained for free delivery. J So now we have a mattress but no bed frame so we are sleeping the Japanese way – tatami style. Then we had to buy kitchen utensils, table, vacuum cleaner, dustbin, hair dryer, heater, pillows and duvet, etc. which amounted up to about $1,000. We saw an outdoor dining set, 1 table and 2 chairs for $59. It’s the cheapest we’d seen and we needed something so we could have our meals properly so we got it. It’s a mad rush trying to buy stuff before your rental car lease is up. After that, we noticed a lot of buildings have the same dining set on their balconies. Haha.

­Work-life Balance

I'll save this topic for the next entry coz I wanna talk about EARTHQUAKES!!!

EARTHQUAKES!!!

NZ would be perfect if it weren't for the earthquakes! And it's happening too frequently..... :( When we first arrived, we were told by many people that the big ones (like magnitude 5 and above) happens about once a year. I think we probably had like 10 or more since we came and 5 of them above magnitude 6. I can't really keep count of how many we had. Slightly more than a month ago, I experienced my first earthquake home alone and it was very scary. I was doing the laundry and didn't know what was going on when it happened. There were creaking noises and then when I looked up I saw my whole kitchen moving left and right and immediately knew it was an earthquake. BUT I didn't know what to do! We didn't prepare for what to do during earthquakes! Instinct was to get out of the house and run (in case the building collapse). But we learnt that that is the WORST thing to do! Because if you run outside, things will fall on you and it's more likely that you'll get hurt outside. So the best thing to do is to hide under a sturdy table and hold on to it's legs (aka Drop, Cover & Hold). Drop before the earthquake drops you coz its hard to stand up properly when the ground is moving. Cover - I think its for seek Cover aka hide under table and Hold on to your shelter coz it might move away with the ground. And also to prepare an emergency bag with water, food, clothes etc, and an emergency plan with your family members in case communication systems are down. We have packed 2 bags - 1 kept next to our bed and 1 near our main door. Anyway.......... after that first quake, we had a 6.5 one 2 days later on a Sunday evening and Wellington City was shut down the following day to check for building damages. The 6.5 one was scary.. our entire apartment was just rocking left and right and the kitchen cabinets flung open and shut. Many aftershocks continued for about a week. There were about 3000+ quakes recorded for that series. It was crazy..... After that, we hurriedly tried to earthquake-proof our home. Bought child-lock hooks to secure the cabinets, bluetack-ed our mirror to the wall, moved fragile items to lower shelves and put non-slip mats under them, and strategically place our table such that we can dive under it and hide. It was a good thing we did all these because......... 3 weeks later.... a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit, followed by a series of 5.somethings and 6s!!!! We were VERY lucky we were not in Wellington when it hit. In fact we were on the road to Ohakune to see the mountains and didn't even feel it. But when we were in Ohakune, 300+km away from Wellington, we could feel a bit of the aftershocks so I can't really imagine how it was like. We just hope that our apartment is ok and it was! Everything was intact when we came back except for a fallen bottle of toner. We did well in earthquake-proofing our house. Anyway after all these experiences, I think we agree that we should move to somewhere lower ground. It really doesn't feel nice to be rocked  around on the 7th floor....

Ms Shortie