bignoseduglyguy

Auckland

Having settled into my room at the lodge (motel), the first thing I did was go for a run. This is probably the last thing on most folks mind when they hit town having flown halfway round the world but it seemed as good to banish the stiff legs and check out the local neighbourhood at the same time. The local neighbourhood turned out to be like a lot of Auckland – hilly. No matter which way I turned, I seemed to be running uphill so after half an hour, I called it quits and headed back to shower. After doing so and grabbing a cool drink, I picked up my contacts book to make a few calls. One of the things I did in preparation for this trip was harvest as many Kiwi contacts as possible from friends and colleagues so I can meet local folks and get a feel for normal family life in NZ. Linda and Gideon are just such folks. When I rang to introduce myself, Linda immediately asked if I was up for company and promptly invited me to dinner when I said ‘yes’, saying that she’d be by to pick me up in an hour. At the duly appointed time, I was standing on the corner outside my lodge when I heard my name called across the street and turned to see someone waving, smiling and beckoning me to join them. Proferring hastily-purchased flowers and chocolates, I crossed over the road and was whisked away on a brief tour of the delights of Tamaki Drive and Mission Bay whilst Linda remotely organised the family preparing the evening meal back home via her cell phone. Given that I am a previously never mentioned husband-of-a-friend-of-a-sister, Linda and Gideon, along with their children Sarah, David and Amy, were gracious in their hospitality and I very much enjoyed their company over a pleasant dinner. As they had sagely prophesied earlier, the minute the meal hit my system and I sat back in the living room with a cup of tea – having wisely eschewed alcohol since London – my eyes grew heavy and I started to lose the thread of the conversation. As the minutes passed, my mind seemed to be undergoing a gradual shutdown and the harder I tried to concentrate, the more elusive clear thought became. Spotting my declining mental and physical state, my kind and understanding hosts simply guided me to the car and drove me back to my lodge. Once there, it took all my will power to stay awake long enough to make a slurred ‘good morning’ call to SWMBO and the sprogs before hitting the bed like a redwood toppled by a lumberjack’s axe. So, on my first day in a country that I have long planned to visit, my first impression was the dent I left in the mattress.

London Heathrow

After heart-wrenchingly tearful goodbyes with the family at home, I was not in the brightest of moods or thinking clearly when I arrived at the Emirates check-in desk. The agent looked weary after a long day but was pleasant and helpful, advising me that that I needed to transfer some of the weightier items in my gargantuan carry-on bag into my suitcase for, despite my concerns regarding paying for excess baggage, it was the carry-on that was the concern. After more than a little soul searching, I wrapped my laptop and my two folders of paperwork in clothes, zipped up the case and consigned the case to the care of the handlers and loaders. It was as it had irretrievably disappeared down the conveyer that I put my hand in my pocket – to find that the padlock for the case was still attached to the key on my key chain. With grim thoughts of luggage larceny and sobbing sprogs, I wandered off to kill the time before I boarded. After another lump-in-the-throat call to SWMBO, I was surprised by how low I felt and wondered why. After all, I was heading off to the other side of the world with great intentions to help provide those I was leaving behind with a better life. A beep from my belt signalled a text from SWMBO which almost reduced me to tears but said exactly what I needed to hear and set me up for the weeks ahead.

London to Dubai

The nose wheel camera view on my seat back screen was great but it was hard to focus on the image as the guy in the seat in front was constantly bouncing up and down. This performance was accompanied by the incessant kicking of my seat back by a willful child behind who was deaf to both my requests to cease and her mother’s. The unholy trinity of annoying neighbours was completed by the guy next to me. It appeared that he had grabbed a copy of each of the many free newspapers as he boarded and was trying to speed-read each page before moving onto the next paper.

These distractions aside, the first leg of the flight was a breeze. I passed the time either reading Annie Proulx’s ‘That Old Ace In The Hole’, which I’m enjoying, or watching on-demand movies on Emirates’ ICE system (Information; Communication; Entertainment – in-flight info; phone, email & SMS; movies, music and TV). I found the humorous mid-life meanderings of ‘Sideways’ to be just what I needed to raise my mood but found the Robin Williams vehicle ‘The Final Cut’ to be over-wrought second rate sci-fi nonsense. The choice of food was surprisingly good for economy and the Middle Eastern lamb dish I plumped for was notable for it’s taste as much as the large and succulent chunks of meat – top marks.

After eating and acting on my colleague’s advice, I stayed awake through the night and the rest of the leg deliberately, in order to hopefully induce sleep on the longest leg.

Dubai UAE

I am not sure whether I can actually claim to have visited the United Arab Emirates, for my sojourn in Dubai was brief – just under 45 minutes plane to plane – and hectic due to frantic passengers being repeatedly required to walk through incredibly sensitive arch detectors. I took every piece of metal from my person and the blasted thing still beeped. Having narrowed the possibilities to my trouser zip, fillings in my teeth or surgical steel pins in my leg, I was allowed to dash for my next plane.

Dubai to Auckland

Notebook entry written at gate: Feel tired but OK though I imagine that I will grow to hate my [next] seat after 12hr+ to Sydney and the last leg to Auckland.

Whilst Dubai security was preoccupied with my dangerous trousers and teeth and I was jotting notes, Saint Christopher was busy having a change of heart for, boarding for the long slog across the Indian Ocean, I was ushered to a lovely aisle seat, just behind the business class bulkhead. My neighbour, a thrusting young entrepreneur from Pakistan who is building a sports goods empire in Sydney, and I grinned like lottery winners as we stretched out our legs and settled in for the (very literally) long haul.

I passed the long hours with a series of cat naps punctuated by half-watched movies, the odd meal, regular offers of chilled water and a few attempts at getting my eyes to focus on my book. Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, beyond the Equator and south east of Jakarta, I glanced at the screen to see BBC Worldwide News announce the death by apparent suicide of Hunter S Thompson. This seemed strangely apt as the long hours with little rest had induced in me a weird drug-like stupor worthy of one of Thompson’s gonzo characters. Equally fitting of a place in an HST novel was the incredibly rude Englishwoman who, along with her bloated husband, took great pleasure in moaning about everything and making sniping remarks to the crew. She seemed totally unaware of quite how infantile and self-centred she sounded when, after being asked to pull her seat upright to allow meals to be served behind, she snapped back with “I’ve been sitting down for 12 hours, you know” oblivious to the fact that so had the rest of us whilst the crew had been on their feet looking after us. Elsewhere, I fell into sporadic conversation with the woman who, despite a full-blown Kiwi accent, emigrated from the West Midlands of the UK just five years before. Those who have heard the West Midlands accent will know that replacing it with another is no mean feat! This woman must be a saint because she made the whole trip with her charming one year old son (who was remarkably well behaved for the circumstances) on her lap without once raising her voice or losing her cool. During the early morning descent into Sydney, I suddenly became aware of the sound of a dawn chorus of twittering bird. After establishing that it wasn’t my iPod playing up, I realised that it was being broadcast softly over the PA system, presumably to signal the break of day to bodyclocks addled by lack of sleep. Sadly, this calming interlude was shattered by twin Arab boys, who screamed blue murder all the way down to the terra firma in Sydney.

After disembarking into a hot and humid Sydney terminal to allow fuelling and cleaning, I called the family and enjoyed the sound of happy sprogs who excitedly announced that it had snowed since I left. After catching up on news, I re-boarded for the comparatively short hop over the Tasman Sea to Auckland. The clouds over the North Island shone brilliantly in the sun and, seeing them stretch out southwards in great narrow wisps, it was not hard to understand how the Maori had come to name the island (see title of January 22nd’s post). The long flight had taken its toll and I felt a little subdued as I navigated Customs, Biosecurity (to prevent importation of biologically threatening organic materials) and Immigration. However, as I exited the terminal and headed into a cloudy but warm Auckland afternoon, I couldn’t help smiling: I was about to begin a trip that I had been planning for a good long while, one that could change our family life dramatically. Wondering if I could pull it off and whether the outcome could be as good as we have hoped, I pulled into the traffic on highway 20A and headed north to Auckland.

“New Zealand was the last place in the world to be settled by humans and its isolation and freedom from human interference came it a unique natural environment. The first settlers in New Zealand were the Maori who came from Polynesia. Their arrival from their homeland of Hawaiki is celebrated in myths and legends carried down by word of mouth through successive generations. The Polynesians were master navigators, using the stars, the direction of sea birds in flight, cloud patterns and the colour of the water as guides to make journeys throughout the Pacific Ocean.

The great navigator, Kupe was the probably the first man to sight New Zealand around 950 AD and then returned home to tell of his findings. He named the country he discover the Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. A few centuries later, around 1350 AD, a great migration of people from Kupe’s homeland of Hawaiki, following his navigational instructions, set sail for New Zealand. They came in seven great migratory canoes, Waka, built to withstand heavy seas and able to carry many people and their possessions over great distances. Present-day tribes still trace their origins to the various canoes and their descendants will still take you to the very spot described by tradition as the first landfall.”

Copyright © Peter and Pauline Curtis – www.uniquelynz.com

With a day to go before leaving, I woke up with a strange sense of anti-climax. Sitting down at the PC this morning to do my usual weekly round up of NZ-related mails and paperwork, it suddenly occurred to me that, with the weekend half over down-under, there is really nothing more to be done online before I arrive in Auckland on Tuesday. With this realisation, years of talking, months of research and weeks of preparations have finally brought me to a point we wasn’t even sure we’d get to. Somewhere along the way, between the first inkling that we might find a better life elsewhere and this, the eve of the trip, we have crossed an indefinable line; the line between dreaming and doing. Given that it is all unknown territory from here on in, I am feeling fairly relaxed and have few worries about the weeks to come, although the thought of being away from the family for three weeks is nagging at me, despite the fact that they are the reason for this whole venture. I’ll admit to a small concern for SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) having to cope with the four sprogs on her own, as previous trips have been peppered with pleas for long-distance telephone discipline for them and soothing words for her. I once ducked out of a seminar in Atlanta to receive a ten-minute lecture on how leaving a Fun Lovin’ Criminals CD with ‘Parental Advisory’ lyrics lying about whilst packing had led to a sprog asking SWMBO what ‘fucked up’ meant in front of company.

I’m interested to see how I cope with spending 24 hours on a plane without going nuts through boredom. However, the real concern I have is being seated next to the passenger from hell with no spare seats to escape. A few years back, on a fully booked flight back from Washington DC, I was seated next to a very pleasant but absolutely enormous lady who ‘overflowed’ into my seat, having neglected to book the requisite extra seat stipulated by the airline. This oversight necessitated me spending the whole eight hours perched on my right buttock, occasionally waking her to ask if she could lift her midriff so that I could get to the seat arm controls. Elsewhere, a Kiwi friend has advised on me on a sleep strategy that will minimise the jet lag. So, after setting my watch to local time as I always do, my aim is to stay awake until we transit Dubai, then try and sleep through the transpacific leg between Dubai and Sydney, hopefully leaving me ready for the last hop to Auckland. As for occupying my time, I’m still pondering the book choices because there’s nothing worse than getting 40 pages into a book only to find it’s no good and you’ve nothing else to read. The iPod is loaded with 1600 songs and I’m sincerely hoping there’ll be something other than a Jennifer Aniston rom-com to watch on my head rest screen.

With such ephemera sorted, it is a pity that the same cannot be said about the more tangible stuff like packing. I am pretty laid back when it comes to packing and rarely get worked up about it – which seems to drive SWMBO mad. That said, I am lucky in that SWMBO usually has a marathon laundry session the week before I leave, ensuring that if I get run over by a taxi in a foreign land, I’ll at least have clean underwear. After more than a few business trips, I have a good idea of what needs to be packed. To avoid leaving essentials behind, I use a number of packing lists as aides memoire; one for my suitcase, one for my garment bag and another for my laptop/briefcase. Even so, the bedroom looks like an explosion in a garment factory and yet, here I am, I’m sitting at the PC recovering from the inevitable ironing that needed to be done before stuff gets packed. On occasion, I have tried unsuccessfully to convince myself that there is no point in ironing clothes that are going to be crammed into suitcases on the flimsy premise that they will undoubtedly need ironing again at the destination. This is just as well because had I not ironed my dress shirts I wouldn’t have discovered that one of our cats had decorated two of them with muddy footprints. When all is said and done, if something needs sorting out or packing then I’m confident I’ll get round to it at some point before I head for the airport – after I have finished blogging and downloading tracks to my iPod, of course.

my lo-fi ears are listening to Low Down/Boz Scaggs

Since the last post, I have been leading what, to all intents and purposes, constitutes a double life. By day, I have been holding down my usual job and, for the last two weeks, standing in for my boss as well. This has kept me pretty busy, meaning that my eyes are often closing by the end of each evening’s tube journey. Consequently, I arrive home ready to crash out on the sofa and do very little. Sadly, this is rarely what happens. Instead, after a brief hello to the family and the odd chore, I retire to the spare room to pick up the threads of my other life – that of a potential émigré and job seeker. Whilst I will admit to a ‘belt and braces’ tendency to over-plan, it has been a long month; one typified by long evenings at the PC reading web sites, sending emails and, of late, making calls and confirming bookings. As from Sunday, my existence will one of a peripatetic serial interviewee and even I had underestimated the level of activity I have had to maintain in order to maximise my time in-country and ensure that I give myself the best chance of success.

Working with recruiters after such a long spell with one employer is an education. It seems that if they are not generating supreme positivity and enthusing and one’s CV, they are out of the office, or on a call or somehow otherwise indisposed. As a hiring manager myself, I understand the mechanisms of the recruitment process and am fully aware that a good recruitment consultant can make all the difference. Like estate agents, each wants you to commit to them and them alone, issuing dire warnings of conflict of interest and ‘client overlap’ if you even hint that you may be talking to another. However, if one is travelling 11682 miles to seek a new life, it would be foolish to leave things to just one or two people. That said, I think of myself as an honest person with some integrity and so have tried to ensure that any overlap, in terms of geography or market, has been kept to a minimum. As the trip draws closer, I have started whittling the list down, favouring those who keep in touch and who are showing an active interest. So far, all the strongest leads are, not surprisingly, centred around Auckland and Wellington, with a number of solid prospects that bear further investigation. We shall see what transpires soon enough.

It hasn’t all been hard sell and powerbroking though. Much fun and games have been had trying to find the best car hire deal. Having called pretty much anyone who rent cars in New Zealand, it soon became clear that the big name firms were looking most likely to offer a decent deal on my three week north-runs-south one-way rental.

click to enlarge

As shown in the map above, my intended route – which alters daily – means that I need to need to cross the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands. To avoid the hassle of shipping one-way rentals back across the Strait, hire firms require renters like me to leave the car at their Wellington port office, cross as a foot passenger and pick up another at the Picton office on the South island. One spin-off benefit that springs to mind is that the long-suffering D&C staff (those who clean, valet, delivery and collect hire cars) are not faced with endless vehicles decorated with the hirer’s lunch after rough crossings. Having chosen a firm to hire from, I thought that the haggling for a decent price would have been over but it just became all the more interesting because their local branch, national booking office and international call centre each quoted wildly differing prices. All this is academic because the price I ended up with is still pretty good value when compared to hire charges in the UK and US.

Choosing accommodation has been just as entertaining. No road trip in NZ would be complete without a stay in a motel. When I say motel, the variety of accommodation available under that title is pretty wide, ranging from basic backpackers’ hostels to swanky hotels. Putting thoughts of the UK’s Travel Lodges and the Crossroads soap from my mind, I have used my obligatory Lonely Planet guide and a motel directory to search out some choice places to overnight during my road trip. Some kind friends have offered up their poor unsuspecting relatives as possible hosts, pressing scraps of paper into my hands whilst promising to call them before I arrive on their doorstep. I just know that they’ll forget and that I’ll up doing a Hugh Grant-style embarrassed Englishman thing, trying to explain why I’m standing on some poor sod’s doorstep at dusk, surrounded by luggage and clutching petrol station flowers. No matter, I have the first week sorted with a lodge near the Auckland Domain – the city’s oldest park, which will be handy for my early morning runs – before moving onto the evocatively named Bureta Park Motor Inn (“Welcome to your place”) near Tauranga to start my second week. I chose the latter motel for two reasons. Firstly, the very pleasant reservations clerk offered me a nice room at a rate that was half that quoted by a grumpy and greedy competitor a mile away (“Well, it does have a sea view”!?). Secondly, who could resist the lure of a motor inn that boasts the ‘Rose ‘n Fern Bar’ which, according to the web site, is not only ‘comfortably casual’ but also promises a tired, lonesome English gentleman far away from home, ‘an air of olde England’. So, secure in the knowledge that I shall quaff fine ale and rest well that night, I’ll leave you for now.

As I have already mentioned, what the relocation TV shows don’t show you is the sheer grind of getting to grips with the bureaucracy involved. Of all the tasks so far, finding a discernible path through the labyrinthine convolutions of the immigration regulations must rank as the most frustrating. In this topsy-turvy world, rules change can and do to accommodate governmental policy changes and shifts in employment demographics, often leaving the émigré back at square one. This is a world where skilled manual trades-people and key workers rule, their tertiary qualifications and experience making them valuable assets to be encouraged and assisted. Likewise, applicants in certain high-tech professions and artistic high flyers are also keenly sought. Middle of the road folk like me, who have good solid business experience but no degree, have to plough their furrow through slightly tougher ground.
The main obstacle to migrating to any desirable destination is gaining enough points to submit an Expression Of Interest to an immigration authority’s pool. From this pool, a selection are chosen for qualification to apply for a work permit and/or permanent residence. Like their US and Canadian counterparts, the New Zealand Immigration Service is fairly strict and selective about whom they wish to welcome – too much say some, who point to the recently tightened language requirements as proof of bias. Those with family ties can apply through the Family Stream, others with significant assets can apply in the Investor Category but many seek to make the move as a Skilled Migrant, gaining entry with provable skills and experience that are in short supply in key areas. However, establishing whether one falls into any of the numerous Skilled Migrant categories requires one to navigate through a complex net of web pages and regulations. The Standard Classification of Occupations, Occupational Registration, Registration Authorities, Immediate Skill Shortage List, Long Term Skill Shortage List, Panel Doctors and the all-important Points Indicator and Expression Of Interest are just some of the documents the potential émigré must become familiar with.

Last year, after repeated calculations and rechecking of facts, we were pretty much convinced that we didn’t have enough points to qualify for the Expression Of Interest, let alone residency and came close to giving up on the idea. It was in this frame of mind that we visited a New Zealand expo in London with the intention of simply confirming that we didn’t have a chance of qualifying. My memory of that day is hazy but I recall that it seemed like a never-ending parade of glossy stands and scripted pitches. Many stands were aimed squarely at attracting the doctors, teachers, scientists and accountants most regions needed to maintain the social infrastructure. Another handful promoted particular regional development areas, drawing the crowds with enticing promotion videos and it’s-oh-so-easy seminars.

Mixed in amongst these were the battle-hardened recruitment agencies, some specialising in particular professions or business areas, others casting a broad net to find candidates for specific positions. One such recruiter took a keen interest in me and asked a great number of questions, jotting down my details and answers. Another gave me a card with a generic email and said to send my details for consideration. A third said he couldn’t help but gave me a name of a colleague in Auckland who might be interested. By the end of the day, I had handed out scores of CVs, completed many application forms and smiled at everyone I’d talked to. Tired, hungry and drained, we left the function and dragged ourselves into a TexMex restaurant nearby. Over chicken wings, fajitas and beers, we tried to make sense of the day and work out what, if anything, we had achieved – we were none the wiser we we headed home to pick up the kids. However, and to cut a long story short, from these inauspicious introductions I have now made good contacts with some leading recruiters in the major cities. With these good folks, I have been through telephone interviews to establish suitability, discussed career history to provide candidate credibility and kept regular contact to keep interest high and options open. In return, they have provided honest feedback, helpful advice and, in one case where recruiter is a recent migrant themselves, photos of their own emigration.

The general consensus is good; each is confident that they can place me in a middle management role in New Zealand. With operations management experience, documented successes in productivity improvements, not to mention training qualifications & experience, I apparently stand a good chance against local candidates. Furthermore, having experience of working in the US market as well as the European markets is apparently also in my favour. However, best of all, the recruiters have been able to allay some of my concerns over qualifying for permits and residency. It would seem that the most likely route to achieving our aims would be for me to secure a sponsored position with a large employer, enabling me to work initially under a shorter term work permit, with a view to applying for permanent residency for me and the family at a later date.

With Christmas out of the way and the southern hemisphere holiday season winding down, these recruiters fully expect to be able to generate some interest in the coming weeks and months. So the ball is now in my court, for it is highly unlikely that I’ll generate any interest, let alone secure a position, unless I show commitment and interest myself. Which is why, in exactly 28 days, I shall be enjoying a Sunday lunch with my family before heading off to Heathrow to catch that Emirates 747.

In four week’s time, all being well, I’ll step blinking from the air-conditioned cocoon of an Emirates 747 into the warm afternoon sunlight of Auckland. Ahead of me will lie a three week road trip across New Zealand, from Auckland in the north to Dunedin in the south – a trip in search of future opportunities for myself and my family. Eighteen months ago, after years of idle wondering and speculative talk, we decided that we would take a serious look at the possibility of quitting England to build a new life elsewhere. Though a variety of destinations including Australia and Canada have been considered over time, New Zealand remains the favoured destination.

Some of the motivations behind this decision are complex, individual and will not be explored here but, in general, I suspect that our reasons are not so very different from many would-be émigrés. Despite it being our lifelong home, we have become increasingly disillusioned with life in the UK and the grind of living in Central London. Property and property prices are one key factor. Over nine years, we have transformed a near-derelict council flat into a warm comfortable (if small) family home. Somewhere along the way and in an effort to recoup the considerable sums we had spent to make the place first habitable and then comfortable, we waived our political consciences and bought the flat. The local housing market is fairly buoyant thanks to the proximity of Canary Wharf. However, this and the fact that a new 21 storey luxury development 500m to the south will rob a fair amount of our south-facing daylight means that we are caught between Scylla and Charybdis – too cramped to stay but too expensive to go. In order to afford a decent-sized family home, we would need to move to move to areas that, whilst they might desirable or suitable, do not have the requisite employment opportunities to fund a family of six. No matter how hard we work, it would seem that we can’t build and maintain the kind family life we want here unless or even if both of us hold down full time jobs. And therein lies the rub. Dedicating every waking hour away from the kids working is self-defeating if the purpose of the exercise is to spend more time with them and provide them with an improved quality of life and better opportunities.

Phrases like ‘improved quality of life’ and ‘better opportunities’ are all well and good but what do they really mean in our case? Our hopes for our family’s future are not grand, expensive or fanciful, rather they tend to be simple ones defined by values we hold to be worthwhile. Our overarching desire is to provide our children with a safer, happier, more secure daily life than we can offer them living in a small flat in London’s East End. In real terms, this means that we are looking to raise them in a community that is less threatening and where they can be lead more independent lives; to live in a cleaner, more cared-for local environment that has more offer in the way of pastimes and pursuits; to explore and enjoy the outstanding natural beauty that a country like New Zealand has to offer and to experience life from a new perspective that will challenge as well as confirm our values and beliefs. Beyond these fundamentals, there are less tangible elements that cannot be denied as contributing factors: the expectancy and thrill of undertaking a leap into the unknown, the making of a deliberate move from the familiar and a change in circumstance that many would shy away from or simply not entertain.

Over the months, we have talked through the myriads aspects of emigration, first as a couple late at night when the kids were in bed and later, as a family, across the dinner table or in the car. During these conversations and after, we have given much consideration to exactly how such a move would affect each of us, balancing pros against cons, benefits over drawbacks and assessing the impact on our lives and those of our extended families. I believe that we have approached this task from a different angle than most do, in that we looked into the more difficult emotional issues before moving even considering the more practical aspects of moving half way round the world. The logistics of packing up a home and transporting it some 13,000 miles is nothing when compared to discussing the impact of such things on the 80 year old grandparents of our children. As for the more mundane tasks, it is strange but no sooner had we made the decision than a rash of ‘reality’ shows about families relocating suddenly appeared on British TV. There is no denying that these shows have a great entertainment value, such the woman who moved to Oz only to remark ‘It’s too hot here…and the money’s all funny’, but they are more akin to holiday shows, tending towards the rosier post-relocation aspects of emigration rather than the whole process. In my experience, they could never prepare one for the sheer amount of research and information gathering that is required when one doesn’t have TV researchers and professional relocation specialists on hand. But that’s another post.

For those wondering about No.8 wire, a brief explanation can be found on New Zealand Tourism Online’s Kiwiana page.