Posts by Paul Campbell
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some more thoughts:
before you start wander around the house, take lots and lots of pictures of every little corner, every special place
There is a tardis thing that goes on with houses, old houses are always much larger on the inside than the new one you move to - it's why you end up with 8 boxes of stuff you can't figure out where to put (we had shelves built, lots and lots of shelves, an honest to god dining room converted into a library, and still had 8 boxes left)
You have to get really evil with those 8 boxes, they will stay there stacked in the hallway mocking you, resolve to get rid of one box every weekend until they are gone ....
Eventually your new house will do the tardis thing, as you find all the nooks and crannies it too will expand to fit
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It's almost 10 years since we started that process .... seems a lot less .... but then we chose a year where the kids would be starting intermediate and high school in NZ on purpose, and now my youngest is tidying up her last year before going off to Uni .... as I said time flies ....
NZ wasn't what we left after 20 years, it did take us a long time to adjust, the kids made friends much faster than we did, and all our old friends had grown up - respectable even .... it's going to seem like a small town for a while until you adjust, work on that accent, keep your mouth shut when you feel that urge to snigger or make that snarky comment, always have a story ready explaining why you're so glad you came home (you need a way to subtly make the "I'm not an American, despite the accent, I was born here" point - take your NZ passport when you got to the doctor/hospital/etc for the first year or so, this avoids stupid amounts of paperwork)
We started by getting rid of half our crap (a quarter of what was left got tossed when we got to NZ - so get evil about the throwing/giving stuff away, it's just stuff) - we do wish we'd brought that extra couch
- leave the TV (unless it's a digital one and you plan on buying a Sky box in NZ)
- do bring anything that is dual voltage (ie 240v, except for washers/driers/ranges etc) you can just put a new plug on it
- Dick Smith sell giant transformers, that may be a cheaper option than replacing that expensive stereo
- don't bring your wireless household phones, they will work but will be illegal, other phones are OK, again Dick Smith sells adapters
- do bring your wifi
- bring garden tools - but clean off all that dirt, same with the tent/boots/etc
- go through the xmas decorations, toss anything the kids brought home from school involving plant matter or wreaths (customs makes a beeline for any box marked xmas decorations)
- simple lamps with switches rewire easily (maybe just a new plug and a new bulb), stuff with dimmers, maybe not
- the magical on-line delivery system largely still works, but it's slower and more expensive - learn to balance the shipping cost to keeping the value under $300 to help speed through customs
- keep a US credit card and bank account (you will be filing US taxes if you have anything else in the US and will need to write checks to the IRS - remember there's a tax treaty between the two countries)We brought the kids measuring sticks with us - in our US circle of friends it was customary to paint a length of wood at the baby-shower to measure the kid with - so we didn't take any door frames with us
We rented a storage locker for staging, moved stuff into it over a period of 3 months as we pared down just leaving enough stuff in the house to stage it as it was sold, then moved into a rental for a few weeks (then off to Burning Man, driving across the US, dropping stuff as we went, left the truck in Atlanta with friends, down to a suitcase each, and around the world with the kids wheee!)
We paid someone to pack out the storage locker into a container and ship it - that part was good, the rest was a disaster, we got stuck in some limbo where the shipping agent and the shipping company were in some legal death feud and were holding our stuff hostage - don't trust that list of shippers the NZ Consulate gives away - I'm sure there's someone here who has moved recently, has had an OK experience and can recommend someone.
We left our cat too, we would have brought her with us if we hadn't gone traveling, she was old, she didn't adjust, we still miss her and wish we'd brought her with us.
Oh god! the exchange rate - I earn US$, you have my sympathy - I also moved to the US the week that Muldoon called that '84 election, I lost half my savings .... just remember we all always lose on the exchange rate, it's only people in John Key's former profession who make money there
We moved our US phone number to a Vonage account, it still rings here in NZ, as if we never left (sadly that includes calls from the Oakland Police Activities League and the Democratic Party) - now days I'd buy an Ooma box instead, it's cheaper in the long run (disclaimer, I contract for them, I'm biased).
Your drivers license is still on file somewhere (even my 1970s one in the little green booklet with the stickers in it) - head down to AA and reapply, you don't have to sit the test again, if you are a US AA member bring your card you get a discount
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(I think my point is that from here at least it looks like National playing for an Auckland audience, but not running a campaign in the rest of the country - there's all sorts of nuanced stuff going on in that issue that means nothing to most of the rest of us)
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um - but hasn't this whole Auckland party central storm-in-a-teacup thing been driven by electioneering on National's part, trying to make McCully and the Nats look positive and jumping in to do the right thing, and that evil lefty proxy-Labour council bad in comparison - at least many of the people I've talked about it with here seem to think it has little to do with reality unless you do think it's an election campaign by another name
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
This must be the massive trickle down of money to the local economy that was heavily touted from the outset...
Today's ODT reports a massive $300k trickle down to the local economy from last week's RWC game in Dunedin - given that the city council had to put up $250k (the NZRFU takes the gate and requires the city to provide all the services without getting a cent in return) - that's a profit to our local economy of $50k - about $2 a head for everyone who attended.
We're obviously not fleecing the punters hard enough
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yes thunderflashes are oversized fireworks (might damage a hand), while powergel an explosive (blow up a car, or a stump on your farm) - but in ignorant hands the powergel is probably much safer (can't set it off without a detonator while the TFs are probably black powder and can be set off by a careless smoker)
This is why I tried to call out the different things from that laundry list in my post above - some of them sound terrible (grenade launcher!) but are really stupidly safe (just a metal tube!)
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that's what the aforementioned thunderflashes are for - fake, reasonably safe, standins for explosives for training - I remember using them as part of "barracks" (compulsory military training in high school) in the early 70s
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Hard News: Te Qaeda and the God Squad, in reply to DCBCauchi,
two military flares, a smoke grenade, a thunderflash explosive, part of an anti-personnel mine, eight sticks of powergel explosive, a grenade launcher, and two military-style semi-automatic firearms.
That sounds perfectly harmless to me. T
I guess it depends - it sounds like a scary bunch of things but .....
Flares, smoke grenade, thunderflash, grenade launcher (basically am empty tube) - all no less harmless than an old fashioned guy fawkes night .... or last Saturday night at Burning Man
bits of an anti-personal mine - depends on which bits I guess, could be as harmless as that empty deactivated hand grenade granddad brought back from the war
powergel - safe without detonators - useful on the farm ... but not a toy, and understandably scary to the powers that be
Assault rifles - well we have pretty well known laws about those (no excuses IMHO)
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That would make sense - maybe to keep the chain of evidence they were being required to release who gave them the original information.
I wonder does someone (some foreign entity) have a fibre splitter in our main fibre trunks somewhere? - chances all the country's cell (and landline long distance) communications run on unencrypted ATM circuits up and down the country
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(BTW I have no inside knowledge of the case, I'm simply making the sort of speculation that a secret court ruling invites in an open democratic country)