On Monday, we had a leisurely breakfast. David was at the table reading the paper, Josh and I were at the breakfast bar, and Bernice was at work. After awhile, we drove gathered up all or baggage and loaded it into the car. First stop, National Bank on the corner of Cuba Street and Rhangitaki or something like that. Well, they had no room at the end so to speak. There was no one available at the branch to meet with us that day and could we come back tomorrow to set up an account? No, not really. The Massey University bank branch had an opening so we drove out there to try the bank thing a second time.
Stepping out of the car on the Massey grounds just smelled so good and the only thing I can compare it to is Australia. Which makes sense, because David said the trees we were walking by were Australian gum trees.
Into the bank and onto setting up accounts. I am glad Josh was there because I didn't understand it all (one online account and one other account but the two are interchangeable). And the fact that the Rotary check won't post until 5 days or so because it is from an Australian bank. Isn't money, money? This means we can't get a car today because the bank is essentially saying we don't have money although they would give us $200 cash from the check we deposited. And we won't get ATM cards until Wednesday at the earliest. And we'll have to call the states to get money from our American account into our New Zealand account. But we got a free MP3 player for signing up.
Banking squared away, onto the Plaza to see about setting up the phone and internet. However, before we got out of the car in the parking lot, Josh used David's cell phone to call the power company. They said they could have someone out there to turn the power on before the end of the day and we were glad at the thought of being able to spend our first night in our new home.
Regarding the phone, we decided on one cell phone and one home phone with service that allows us to call the states for $5 for up to 2 hours at a time. Seems too good to be true, so we'll see how the first bill looks. We also got signed up for wireless internet. While Josh took care of this, I bought a hair dryer at Kmart.
Next, it was onto a quick lunch at the Verdict (the place where Rotary holds its meetings on Thursday evenings). David had forgotten his wallet at home so we picked up lunch (a light meal but it felt good to pay for something). Josh had a huge wrap and I had a tasty blueberry muffin. We had an appointment to look at cars at 2:00 with a fellow Rotarian named Graham. When Graham hadn't made it in at 2, we took a quick run down to the post office to pick up a phone book. When we'd returned, Graham was there.
The car meeting began with a question about our car budget. We said we wanted to spend between $6-7,000 NZD for an automatic. That pretty much got us laughed out of the room. You can get a Japanese import for that amount but the Kiwis don't look favorably upon the "Jap" imports as they call them. Graham had one automatic for $12,000 NZD that was a sporty, two door that was so not our style. The second car was a $6,000 NZD manual that was a Japanese import. Well, I don't drive a manual so that really wasn't going to work out for us. Graham said you wouldn't want to buy an automatic for less than $8,000 NZD and to be aware that the Japanese imports often have the odometers messed with. So, neither car was a real winner. We plan to keep our eye out for others.
Meanwhile, it's time to do some grocery shopping and we go to the Woolworth because according to David and Bernice, people will run over your ankles with their shopping carts if you go to the Pak N Save. We bought about $200 NZD worth of food and supplies like a toaster. This day must have been SOOOO BORING for David as we took care of all of our business. Josh's quote for everything related to purchases in New Zealand is that it is EXPENSIVE. Who could argue on some items like a $7.50 NZD pack of 10 ham slices or $8.50/kilogram of green grapes? We'll be eating a lot of canned fruit or the gazillion plums that fall from the plum trees onto the yard at the house.
Speaking of house, we returned there after grocery shopping to find that the power had not been turned on. A phone call later, and someone was out here turning it on fast enough that the milk did not spoil. David left and said he would drop by Tuesday at 5.
We were on our own for our first night in the house. We quickly and easily rearranged the lightweight (i.e. cheap) furniture to a more appealing location. We popped some pizza subs in the oven and Lord of the Rings in the laptop and had our first dinner. We were quickly zonked out though from all the running around and were probably in bed by 7:30 or 8:00.
No comments:
Post a Comment