As I said, there is enough writing material every new day here in the land of the kiwi’s. And I still don’t know where to begin in writing what is going on, what I do, what I notice being different, better, or funny, and all that.
First things first. On the housing front I haven’t made any real progress. I’ve riddled my office-buddy Gareth with questions about where, how, how much, what, what-not, and so on. I’ve contacted two renting agencies and might be viewing a house next week. The problem is that most viewings are on workdays so I would have to take time off. I’m still not used to the fact that I am working full time officially now. But I am also positive that it will all work out quite ok. I’ve seen some nice houses online and they all are AVAILABLE NOW so I’m pretty sure I will have a nice dwelling by the time Tania gets back from her South-America tour. Gareth’s biggest tip was to find a new place with some kind of archaic insulation.
This brings me to an important observation: I knew from some documentary that kiwi’s are the sort of people who wear shorts and t-shirts year long, and that is exactly what is going on. While I bundle up in 2 pullovers and a jacket I see school girls wearing miniskirts and flipflops and very low-cut tank tops. My supervisor commented “you’ll get tough like the rest of us” when Gareth and me complained about the lack of decent heating.
Somehow it seems to me as if all English speaking countries just have horrible standards when it comes to building structures. Nailing together four plywood walls doesn’t result in a nice and warm house … Canada, US, NZ, all horrible houses. And although someone told me that a “heatpump” is a very fancy apparatus that CO2-neutral and environment-friendly pumps heat around so that the whole house has perfect temperatures, that is unfortunately not the New Zealandish definition of a heatpump. It takes cold air from outside, warms it up and blows it into the house. Tania’s house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room has 1 heatpump in the living room. To heat other rooms we use small heaters.
I’m also not much further with obtaining a tax number and a bank account, but I’ll settle those Monday morning.
At work I now more or less can put names to most people in my “team”. It helped that we had a team-meeting Thursday and I could see who was actually in my team at all. I’m doing my best to interact with everyone I meet at the tea breaks and at lunch but as usual I find it difficult to mingle in with conversations between all the established staff. It is easier to talk to the newer employees of which there are a few luckily.
I read some book chapters about the trees/forests that I will be investigating and looked for some maps. One of the books was actually really exciting, posing all kinds of theories how the Southern beech species had spread over S-America, Antarctica, NZ, Aussi and a bit into Asia. I thought it was all quite clear but it read as a geological suspense novel... Next week I’ll try to talk to some people who might help me with selecting sampling sites. Ian, my supervisor, said that some sites will most likely be only accessible by either helicopter, boat, or both … (plus some hours hiking). It’s getting more exciting by the day!
First things first. On the housing front I haven’t made any real progress. I’ve riddled my office-buddy Gareth with questions about where, how, how much, what, what-not, and so on. I’ve contacted two renting agencies and might be viewing a house next week. The problem is that most viewings are on workdays so I would have to take time off. I’m still not used to the fact that I am working full time officially now. But I am also positive that it will all work out quite ok. I’ve seen some nice houses online and they all are AVAILABLE NOW so I’m pretty sure I will have a nice dwelling by the time Tania gets back from her South-America tour. Gareth’s biggest tip was to find a new place with some kind of archaic insulation.
This brings me to an important observation: I knew from some documentary that kiwi’s are the sort of people who wear shorts and t-shirts year long, and that is exactly what is going on. While I bundle up in 2 pullovers and a jacket I see school girls wearing miniskirts and flipflops and very low-cut tank tops. My supervisor commented “you’ll get tough like the rest of us” when Gareth and me complained about the lack of decent heating.
Somehow it seems to me as if all English speaking countries just have horrible standards when it comes to building structures. Nailing together four plywood walls doesn’t result in a nice and warm house … Canada, US, NZ, all horrible houses. And although someone told me that a “heatpump” is a very fancy apparatus that CO2-neutral and environment-friendly pumps heat around so that the whole house has perfect temperatures, that is unfortunately not the New Zealandish definition of a heatpump. It takes cold air from outside, warms it up and blows it into the house. Tania’s house with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room has 1 heatpump in the living room. To heat other rooms we use small heaters.
I’m also not much further with obtaining a tax number and a bank account, but I’ll settle those Monday morning.
At work I now more or less can put names to most people in my “team”. It helped that we had a team-meeting Thursday and I could see who was actually in my team at all. I’m doing my best to interact with everyone I meet at the tea breaks and at lunch but as usual I find it difficult to mingle in with conversations between all the established staff. It is easier to talk to the newer employees of which there are a few luckily.
I read some book chapters about the trees/forests that I will be investigating and looked for some maps. One of the books was actually really exciting, posing all kinds of theories how the Southern beech species had spread over S-America, Antarctica, NZ, Aussi and a bit into Asia. I thought it was all quite clear but it read as a geological suspense novel... Next week I’ll try to talk to some people who might help me with selecting sampling sites. Ian, my supervisor, said that some sites will most likely be only accessible by either helicopter, boat, or both … (plus some hours hiking). It’s getting more exciting by the day!
