The last couple of days were quite intense. I applied for the nice house and the next morning the lady from the rental management thingie called me that I could have it if I wanted. But I still had my doubts about it, it was better than the other places I’d seen, it had heating & insulation, but it’s a bit small and perhaps dark. So I told her I would think it over and call her back Monday. In the meantime I’ve seen another house that is much better, larger, in a nicer area (not so close to a big road) and just prettier. So I’ll apply for that one too and hope I get it otherwise I have to go back again to look at other places and it’s really annoying actually. I have to do it before or after work which basically comes down to taking off a whole morning or afternoon. I’m starting to regret I didn’t either come earlier to look for a place or started working a week later or so.
The other thing I learned is that I have to call or see everybody twice if I want to get something done. I should have known that perhaps from how that important letter only got to Germany after many attempts. I applied for a tax number on Monday and should have had it by Wednesday. I had to call this STUPID phone centre and it was like the German telecom where you have to say “YES OR NO” instead of pushing buttons and I HATE that because the machines never understand me. I mean, how difficult is “NO” to understand? It also didn’t help that Gareth was obviously overhearing the whole “conversation” between me and the machine and laughing at me. Finally I got hold of a real person, and apparently one of the slowest people of NZ.
Nina: Hi, This is Nina, I need my tax number please?
Slow person (in Auckland) cannot find it and finally says: I don’t know, perhaps you can go back to the Christchurch office and ask them?
Nina: Well, can’t YOU ask them? (it’s your job I guess to go and ask them, not mine)
SP: Ah, oh, well, perhaps I could call them yeah … and ask if they faxed it?
Nina: yes, if you could do that?
SP: Hmm, ok I’ll try. Let me write down your name again
Nina spells last name
SP: ooh, wait! Wait wait wait!
Nina: what’s wrong?
SP: My pen doesn’t work.
Nina: your pen doesn’t work …
Gareth: HAhahahahaha, ooh sorry …. Hahahahaha
Finally she decided this was difficult matter and she had to ask her boss if she/he could call the ChCh office. They would call me back. Haha, like I believed that and no they didn’t. So I took a bus from work at 3 pm, and as we were merrily driving down the road to ChCh suddenly SNAP the front window snapped and the busdriver yelled “HOLY FUCK!” and slammed the brakes and parked us in the grass. Luckily no one was hurt, but the window was completely shattered and we had to wait for the next bus.
Ok long story cut short, I explained my trouble at the CHCh tax office and the next morning I had my number.
The other difficult thing was a bank account. Alistair had said “you will find it a lot easier to open an account here than in Europe”. But that was not true. You have to give it to the Kiwis, they keep smiling and being very friendly but without a telephone or electricity bill with your address, no bank account. How do I pay my telephone bill without a bank account? Finally they agreed I could bring a letter signed by my boss that I would work at the institute for a while and was trustworthy. Then that was another surprise, because in Freiburg I would have written the letter, prof would have signed it, and end of story. So I asked one of the project’s seniors and it turned out that no scientist wanted to sign the letter and it had to go through human resources. Probably very logical but it’s some getting used to for me, being in an actual sort of officially operating research centre.
With that statement I could finally open an account. I settled for NZ’s biggest bank Westpac instead of my favourite Kiwibank, because I liked Kiwibank mostly because of its name and that is not a very smart way to choose your bank, and Westpac has an interesting savings account (some of you may know … I own a savings account in the NL which has no interest rate to speak of, it may actually be less than 0 for all I know, and my bank is going to stop that type of savings account anyways). Plus they have some deals with other banks overseas so I might expect some kind of service or at least free ATM use overseas at certain specific ATM machines.
And then I was so happy! I am a number now in NZ, I have an account with 0 money on it but with a very flash card. Oh it finally turned out that the “easy” thing about getting an account in NZ is that you get your card right away, you can choose your own pin (which I thought was indeed very nice) and you can theoretically start using it right away. Ok so that is easy yeah, no waiting 6 weeks for your card and then 7 more for your pin and then some months for your internet banking and so on.
