Posts Tagged ‘Ponderings’

Clearing the first hurdle

Saturday, November 12th, 2005

Unforeseen issues and last minute hold ups notwithstanding, come the
5th of December, I will be taking on a newly-created operations and
strategy role with a regional utility company in based Auckland. It
is a smaller company than my last but the role manages and oversees
three departments: the call centre, the dispute and complaints team
and the network management centre. However, with 150,000 individual
commercial and residential customers, not to mention vendors and
third party field teams to manage, the initial challenge will be to
lead further improvements in customer service and deliver new
services for customers within the next 18 months. I am looking
forward to the novelty of working with a smaller team again in a
different industry. In the longer term, one of the attractive
aspects of the role is that I would assume a greater strategic role
in larger regional operations. I was shown around the operations
centre and met a few folks who seemed pleasant and happy in their
work. After what I understand have been a few tough years, they
seems to be a close knit team who are keen to develop and progress.

Elsewhere, whilst things are looking hopeful and we are confident of
making a go of things here, the uncertainty over permits and visas,
together with some unexpected hassles has all added to an certain
level of underlying stress. Though our visitor’s visa are still OK
for another four months, I hope to have my work permit sorted within
the next two or three weeks which, in turn, will allow us to start
the long process of applying for residence visa for all the family.
The only major unforeseen problem that we have encountered thus far
concerns the shipping container that has all our worldly possessions
in it. After weeks at sea, it finally arrived at the port in
Wellington and was unloaded at the container base. The NZ shippers
contacted us regarding a few pieces of paper work and we thought that
all was going well. A week later, we were asked to provide a UK
prescription for just eight pain killer tablets that we declared had
been packed inadvertently by the shippers. Obviously, having used
the prescription to get the tablets, we were unable to comply. We
were then asked to get a private NZ doctor’s letter and prescription
instead. This we did and, on all information and advice, hoped to
have our container released. However, to our annoyance, it turns out
that all this activity took us over a previously unmentioned time
limit that is applied to shipped items belonging to those with
visitor’s visas. This, we were cheerfully informed, meant that we
are now liable for VAT on the shipment as Customs now deem our
belongings to be ‘imported’ goods rather than personal possessions.
The only upside to this is that clothes and personal effects
(jewellery, handbags etc) are not included in the calculation and
some element of depreciation will be deducted against the furniture,
books and kitchen stuff. If that is the only thing we missed in our
research, then we’ll take it on the chin and move on. It seems
churlish to complain when some, like the folks affected by the
Pakistan earthquake, are homeless with just what they can carry in
their arms and no money to start again.

Now we know where I’ll be working, we’ll be off on a recce next week
to find rented accommodation we can move into before the Christmas
holidays, which is also the big summer break here. From there, we’ll
be better able to search for schools and find a new home to buy.
With Christmas just six weeks away (where did the year go?), we’ll
still be house hunting, living out of cases with most of our stuff
still packed in boxes in the garage or shed and our friends and
family will be thousands of miles away. However, the best present
this year will be the very real possibility that our new life in Te
Ika a M?ui ? Aotearoa (the North Island of New Zealand) moves from
being a dream to a reality. We’re convinced that “she’ll be right”
as they say here. That said, we’re not quite there yet and I need to
ensure that my work permit application is correctly completed and the
application filed next week if I am to start work on schedule, so I’m
off to start on that before catching the All Blacks v Ireland match a
little later.

Frequent flying

Monday, November 7th, 2005

A while back, one of our brood managed to lose a large set of keys to
our house and car. This must have, in some way, been working on the
subconscious of my beloved earlier this morning because, in the depth
of the night and half asleep herself, SWMBO shook me violently and,
in a rasping whisper not unlike Golum’s, insisted that she ‘could
hear Keith Chegwin outside!’ Being woken at three in the morning to
be told that the moon-faced darling of 1970’s BBC children’s
television is creeping around our garden is not my preferred way to
prepare for a early morning interview. Incredulity turned to
comprehension when upon replaying the phrase in my head, my befuddled
brain realised that she had actually said that she ‘could hear keys
jangling outside’. The need for sleep notwithstanding, paternal duty
and a certain amount of nervous male pride ensured that I spent the
next 5 minutes creeping from window to window, scanning the section
for intruders, famous or otherwise, whilst trying not to recall
details of brutal ‘home invasions’ from recent local news reports.
Having relayed that fact that the jangling was coming from the collar
bell of one of SWMBO’s four cats, I returned to bed to prepare for my
interview with a few hours of restless tossing and turning, now
accompanied by persistent unbidden recollections of Keith Chegwin’s
incessant nasal chirping.

It is two months exactly since we boarded an Air New Zealand Boeing
747 left the UK. In the morning, along with other bleary-eyed
business folk, I will climb aboard a much smaller aircraft for my
third day trip to Auckland in as many weeks. However, tomorrow’s
flight will be different from my previous excursions up country in
that, this time, the cost of the flight will be covered by a
prospective employer, rather than our slowly diminishing family
budget. Whilst there is no business class champagne and caviar
breakfast option available on the thirty seat turboprop crop-duster
I’ll be flying, I might just chance my arm and ask Kevin or Kerry,
the regular cabin crew on this route, for an extra packet of
Macadamia nut cookies to go with my stewed tea.

Whilst I am certainly no jet set executive, I have been lucky enough
to travel to a variety of places on business over the years.
Business travel can be an absolute grind, especially when the
itinerary is tight or the schedules mean long flights with bad
connections. With this in mind, I try to find something new to
offset the drawbacks and provide me with a new perspective to enjoy.
On the outbound flight of my last Auckland trip, I was seated in
front of an Un Min, the airline industry’s contraction for an
unaccompanied minor. From the tone of the conversations he struck up
with both myself and another chap behind him, this small boy, no
older than ten, was already the veteran of many an internal flight
around New Zealand and Australia. From what I could gather, the lad
lived on a remote farm station and any journey to visit far-flung
family or distant friends involved, at the very least, a four wheel
drive and a small light aircraft and that was before he had left the
family property. Yet this seasoned flyer, whose trip home would
involve progressively smaller and smaller aircraft, was not too
seasoned to relish being given the job of handing round the sweets to
the other passengers, whom he proceeded to charm with a winning
combination of healthy outback complexion, cheeky smile and endless
barrage of questions.

With both my bicycles locked inside a bonded container somewhere in
the Port of Wellington, the majority of my terrestrial travel thus
far has been by car or train. Topography, geology and seismology
have all played a part in making road transport the main choice for
moving people and things up and down these long and varied islands,
with ships and boats fulfilling the crucial role of bridging the gap
in the middle and providing alternatives along the sides. I use the
all-encompassing phrase ‘road transport’ as we have seen all manner
of vehicles on the roads here and have become used to rounding a
corner to be confronted by some new form of wheeled vehicle the like
of which we have never seen. Even at the dinner table a week or so
back, I looked up and out of the window to see a London Route Master
double decker bus (No.18 route for those that want to know) driving
past the end of our road and down to the beach. This, we suspect,
was the ‘English Rose’, a bus used for tours and corporate events we
later saw plying it’s trade in Wellington.

As someone who, at one time or another, has piloted bicycles,
minibuses, vans, minicabs and trucks around the busy streets of
London and around the UK, it has taken me a while to adapt to better
suit the more relaxed, though arguably more dangerous, style of
driving here. Although I would describe myself as an average driver,
my spouse has maintained for years that I am prone to certain traits
that are to be found in the sub genus Homo Automobilus. These, I am
reliably informed, include resetting the trip odometer to ‘0’ before
each journey but never checking the final mileage, passing toilet
stops and rest areas to avoid being overtaken by those I have just
passed and demanding what other drivers are doing ‘on my road’. It
goes without saying that I utterly refute such allegations but am
happy to repeat them here in the interests of balanced reporting.
That said, in the early weeks here, I did notice that I was
constantly passing people on the roads. Over the weeks, it has
dawned on me that this ‘must pass’ mentality was a hang over from
driving on British roads where every mile might be your last before
becoming trapped in a 20 mile Bank holiday tail-back. Of late, I am
more than happy, when the conditions allow, to edge up to just shy of
the prevailing speed limit, set the cruise control to keep me legal
and let the car take the strain, knowing that we’ll get there soon
enough.

The vast majority of Kiwi drivers are perfectly sensible and
courteous but the tiny remainder fall into two distinct camps – the
dreamers and the boy racers. The former are those who make use of
the full width of the road, including the opposite lane and both
shoulders, as though driving was like one of those early video
driving games, which simply required one to steer down the black
ribbon between two sets of green pixelated markers. These folks mean
no harm but simply seem incapable of steering a vehicle within the
confines of a designated lane and clearly have less of a grasp
concerning New Zealand’s particular ‘give way to the right’ rules
than I do. The latter, allowed to drive from the age of 15, feature
daily in the newspapers here, where graphic tales of speed freak
antics and lurid reports on road deaths share the same pages as
details of the latest safety campaigns and editorials exploring the
causal factors involved. Shock tactic television adverts feature
tearful actors as bereaved relatives or families in magically
suspended cars suddenly dropped to earth to simulate a head accident
but the thrill, kudos and machismo associated with customised cars,
ear-shattering sound-offs and street racing by New Zealand’s youth
ensures the tolls continues to rise.

As with road deaths the world over, there are no easy answers and few
governments will risk their majority by taking on the road transport
lobby head to head. The inevitable corollary to this is that the
drive for such change invariably falls to volunteer campaigners and
pressure groups. Having been involved in a small way with the London
Cycle Campaign and Tower Hamlets Wheelers’ Bike Buddy scheme, two
stories in Wellington’s Dominion Post caught my attention this
morning which illustrate how the efforts of such groups can make all
the difference. The first concerned a novice cyclist who died whilst
out training for an upcoming charity ride. After carrying the bike
in a car, it seems that both the rider and their friend neglected to
reattach the quick-release brake cables after refitting the wheels.
Any but the shortest journey in Wellington will involve at least one
steep hill, so the consequence of this oversight was the cyclist
careered downhill, through a junction and into a pickup truck, with
fatal consequences. As “not a confident bike rider” who disliked
“riding in the city”, perhaps this rider might have benefited from
having an experienced bike buddy who, as well as helping them ride
confidently along the safest route possible, might just have advised
them to check the reassembled bike before heading down a steep
slope. In the second story, prompted by a coroner’s report,
Wellington City Council is considering lowering the speed limit in
the city centre from 50 to 30 kph in order to reduce deaths and
accidents involving vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and
cyclists. However, the union representing the bus and tram drivers
here claim that, because pedestrians stepping into the street leave
their members “nowhere to go”, the pavements should be lined with
chains or railings except at designated crossing points. This is all
well and good unless, as has been found in London, you are a cyclist,
when these railings are potential killers that prevent riders falling
away from the traffic and leave them more vulnerable to being
crushed. Without a unified and comprehensive approach, the city runs
the risk of reducing casualty statistics in one user group only to
cause them to rise in another. Who knows, I may just add my voice to
the debate.

Talking of casualties, we had our first opportunity to experience New
Zealand’s healthcare system when daughter two managed to over-extend
daughter three’s ankle joint in a bout of playground rough and
tumble. Despite the lack of visible symptoms, an increase in the
pain after a few hours raised concerns enough to indicate a swift
drive to the emergency room forty kilometres away was in order.
Despite some concerns over the extent of the reciprocal healthcare
agreement between the UK and NZ, we were dealt with pleasantly and
efficiently in a clean and welcoming environment, a welcome change
from the madhouse atmosphere and cast of social outcasts that made up
London’s busiest ER, which was nearest to our old UK home. After a
couple of hours waiting punctuated by a visit from a triage nurse and
a trip to x-ray, we were ushered into a consulting room to see the
doctor. Seemingly almost as young, blonde and smiley as her patient,
the lovely Dr Williams spoke with a soft lilting voice that could
only originate in the valleys of South Wales. The telltale signs of
junior doctor tiredness receded a little as she talked of home and
checked the ankle for damage. Having ascertained that the damage was
minimal, we said our goodbyes and left the good doctor to her work.
Whilst she professed to be enjoying her work experience and social
life abroad very much, I detected more than a hint of homesickness in
her tone and suspect that, on completion of her rotation, she’ll be
heading back to the UK. Come tomorrow morning, I’m interviewing for
a job that may just mean that, when March rolls around, we can avoid
having to do the same.

Interlude

Thursday, October 27th, 2005

A little earlier this week, whilst writing and listening to music, I had a quite unexpected moment. Looking up from the screen, my attention was drawn by the sunset and, walking to the window, I looked out on the most incredible rays of burnished golds and pinks, blazing through a Venetian blind of streaked clouds above dark blue and copper waves. As I listened to the beautiful ‘Benedictus’ from Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass For Peace and gazed at this fleeting treasure, I felt a small, warm hand reach for mine and looked down at my youngest. I scooped her onto my hip and we stood there together without a word and watched the sun slip from our sky, perhaps I’d like to think to rise over another father and his daughter beyond the ocean.




Must try harder

Wednesday, October 19th, 2005

Today, I have tanked, ploughed, crashed and burned. As the weeks pass and the interview count increases, it was only a matter of time before I turned in an interview performance that was less than sparkling and today was that day. This morning, after an solid hour of wide ranging questions from a formal interview panel of three, I was asked to simply name the case management software deployed in my last operation. Almost before the question was even completed, I realised I’d blanked and what’s more, as I looked from one patiently waiting face to another, I knew that nothing would bring it to mind.
In my career, I have given boardroom presentations, handled difficult negotiations and delivered training to hundreds of people. In these situations, I have faced unexpected questions, carefully considered challenges and requests for clarification and, by knowing my material backwards and being able to think on my feet, have crafted the appropriate response and replied accordingly. Knowing this, you might have some idea of how surprised I was to find my mind vacant and incapable of a coherent response. Whilst one half of my brain was still processing the novelty of the situation, the other was acutely aware that questions regarding resource management and budgeting were coming thick and fast and I was not doing a good job of answering them. I spent the second hour of the interview fighting a rearguard action to make up lost ground, trying to reclaim a little of my professional pride and salvage a few scraps of dignity along the way. The panel members were cordial and polite to a fault but I sensed that I’d had my chance and blown it.
I conspired to do all this during the first of two back-to-back interviews, so my earlier fumblings were fresh in my mind as I walked to the second. As this second meeting took the form of an informal ‘get to know you’ lunch in a bijou Wellington bistro with a key player from one of the national banks, how could anything go wrong? My cheeks, still burning from the disconcerting loss of memory and the subsequent scramble to re-establish credibility in the previous interview, flushed again as my lunch partner opened by saying how impressed he’d been by my CV. This had been forwarded by his colleague, whom I’d met with a week or so ago in Auckland and, after running a few checks with the recruiters, the chap decided that he’d like to meet to see if I’d ‘fit’ his organisation. We slipped into a very pleasant chat, he asking the questions and I, composure regained and confidence restored, providing the answers until our bijou food arrived.
Over quesadillas and braised kidneys, I was pleased to learn that we shared common opinions on a fair number of issues and, with my earlier troubles receding, I relaxed into the moment. Sadly, I relaxed a little too much and, whilst listening intently to my lunch companion, a momentary pause of my right hand changed the delicate balance of a kidney on my fork, sending the morsel into the rich sauce below. Ploop! Like blood spattering a condo wall in an episode of ‘CSI Miami’, the sauce rose to prescribe a perfect arc across my crisp white shirt. Idly noting that the spray had strangely missed my tie altogether, I pulled the kind of ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you’ face that Stan Laurel used to give Oliver Hardy, dabbed myself with a napkin and commenced my second face-saving campaign of the day. To be fair, we both laughed and the conversation continued as before, with no further mention of the incident.

I walked back to the car, dreading the third interview of the day, namely the debrief with She Who Must Be Obeyed. After explaining that she might want to keep the champagne on ice a while longer, we fell into a deflated silence on the drive home. As we headed north, I found myself wondering how my respective interviewers would remember this day. Would the panel I met earlier always reflect on ‘that nicely presented guy’ who completely blanked when asked which software package his team used? Would the key player from the bank decline to pursue matters further but be quietly grateful for the ‘I once interviewed this Pom…’ story he can tell around the campfire at next year’s team building weekend?

Only time will tell.

Turbulence

Sunday, October 9th, 2005

“Oh…Dear…Lord…”

My neighbour, whose fingers were clamped deeply and firmly into the headrest in front of him, was clearly not enjoying the flight and spent a good deal of it in the ‘brace’ position recommended on the card in the pocket in front of him. To be fair, a small propeller-driven commuter aircraft flying up New Zealand’s west coast is not necessarily where one would choose to be when springtime Westerlies are blowing in across the Tasman from Australia. Riveting though the in-flight magazine was, it was no match for the drama unfolding in the cabin during the one hour flight from Palmerston North to Auckland. After complimentary coffee and tea had decorated enough laps and the hostess had fallen over twice, the cabin crew gave up serving the in-flight breakfast snack and passed amongst the passengers with rosaries, lucky heather and next-of-kin forms. Massive air pockets sent the plane lurching earthwards, leaving me an inch above the seat straining against my belt, until our descent was arrested by vigourous updrafts that pushed me down into the padding like a large invisible hand. Combined with the gale howling the other side of the small Plexiglass window, these roller-coaster moments made for an interesting trip and the relief of being back on the ground was evident on the faces of my fellow passengers as we filed across the apron to the terminal building.

I had flown to Auckland for an interview with the deputy HR director of a large national organisation. The interview had come about as a result of a ‘float’ by one of the recruiters I am using. A float, I discovered, is recruiter jargon for pitching a candidate to a prospective employer without a particular role in mind. Whilst this might sound a bit hit and miss, New Zealand’s present economic climate, low rate of unemployment – most employable people are gainfully employed – and static population mean that even the best of positions might only receive two or three applications. This being the case, employers are keen to meet with a promising candidate in the hope that they can match them to existing or upcoming roles in their organisations. In this case, the float was a good one, not only from from my point of view but that of the HR director and operations manager I interviewed with as well. The organisation seems to offer what I’m looking for and, I’m reliably informed, their feedback regarding me was unusually positive, with a specific commitment to try and find a role within the organisation that I could formally apply for.

Suitably cheered by the positive response, I returned from Auckland only to find that I shall have to fly back again next week, for a pre-interview with another recruiter concerning a position with a utility company. Should this gives the impression that job hunting in NZ is simply a matter of jetting about meeting people, then let me set the record straight. Far away from our old lives and networks, I have found it hard to establish an effective daily job hunting routine and securing two interviews in two weeks belies the routine slog that brought them about. Given that we have no landline telephone and therefore no fixed internet access at the beach house, establishing some sort of routine has become essential to making any progress in my job hunting. Usually, this routine involves checking the career sections in the New Zealand Herald and the Dominion Post (Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays), highlighting suitable roles and creating a tracking file for each role or recruiter. In these files, I record all the ad details, emails, phone conversations and meetings regarding each role. Given that, as of today, I am actively working with seven recruiters on six separate applications, not to mention other agencies I am registered with or jobs I’m applying for direct, I need to be comfortable with my system and confident I am on top of all that I need to do each day. As someone used to having at least 2Mb broadband access, fixed line telephone and a home office space to work with, trying to work without such things has been more of a challenge than I had bargained for.

My iBook and my new Nokia 6680 are both Bluetooth-capable and this means, in theory at least, that I can get online and work anywhere I can get a decent phone signal and faster 3G access in the major cities. In practise, things are a little more difficult and this has proven to be the most frustrating aspect of life here for me so far. GPRS, that is to say a fast data connection via my cellphone, is pretty costly here and means a pre-pay phone like the one SWMBO is using is out of the question, so I chose the 3G phone hoping to benefit from a faster service on a cheaper account tariff. Without an established credit history, signing up for a mobile account without a credit limit has been a trial and, whilst I have applied for an open account cleared by direct debit each month, I have yet to hear whether or not this has been approved. In the meantime, I have discovered that there is nothing more infuriating than preparing a bunch of emails and attachments, only to have the connection drop halfway through sending your mails because you have reached your credit limit. I have four other options available; using the internet terminals at the local township library 5 kms away or the main library 20 kms away or driving 40kms to Palmerston North to use an internet cafe or the pay-as-you-go wifi access at one of the coffee houses. Of these, the wifi option is preferable as I can access all my own documents on the iBook without the hassle of having to transferring them.

This uncertain state of affairs has driven me to distraction and, to my shame, have caused more than a few periods of turbulence and dark clouds around the house. Difficulties and frustrations are magnified by the fact that, as a family, we are removed from familiar surroundings, estranged from friends and colleagues and in each other’s company twenty four hours a day. The kids have relished their time away from school and, in the absence of their usual TV programmes, have played together a lot more. The simple fact that they can now occupy three bedrooms, as opposed to the solitary room they shared in the UK, has helped to reduce sibling rivalries and tensions significantly but their noisy and boisterous games don’t make for the conducive work-like atmosphere. Likewise, having a boring Dad who is always asking for quiet and moaning about the noise can cramp the style of four energetic youngsters. The lack of a desk or office space means that I must either perch on the end of the dining room table or retire to an easy chair in the corner of the living room to work, using my iPod to blot out the mayhem and chaos that goes on around me. Occasionally, I retreat to the bedroom downstairs to concentrate or make a call, in the fervent hope that the person I’m calling can’t hear the fratricidal goings-on upstairs. Unused to spending so much time in each other’s company, spousal relations have been strained too. Be it a disagreement about whether we should get a second car (without a car, you’re pretty well stranded in rural NZ) or a misunderstanding about something that was said back in the UK, every conversation is a potential flash point. Without the routines and support structures we are used to, both of us are aware and afraid of getting into arguments that we can’t resolve easily, fearful of long silences at the dinner table and, despite the very necessary electric blankets, cold shoulders at bedtime. After the storm has passed, tentative peace talks usually identify the causal factor of any dispute fairly quickly and, with both parties agreeing a mutually acceptable solution, hostilities dissolve and the house takes on a cordial atmosphere once again.

Storms of the meteorological kind have also played a significant part in our lives over the last two weeks. The view from our living room window is made up of just three elements; sand dunes, sky and sea. Like coast dwellers since time began, we often find ourselves transfixed by the view. Here, a world away from the crowded view of our London flat, we marvel at the cloud formations that announce the arrival of another weather front and crashing breakers that deposit the Tasman Sea at our back door. Just today, I found myself struck by the fact that, at an elemental level, there is no physical barrier between the cold angry water that foams over the dark volcanic sand here and the warm, reef-protected lagoon off Rarotonga where we snorkelled amongst pipe fish and coral just a few weeks back. That said, as Captains Cook and Tasman and the other pakeha who explored and mapped New Zealand discovered, the coastal water here are influenced by the winds and waves of the Pacific and Tasman, not to mention the frigid waters of the Antartic and, as such, are prone to impressive storms around each equinox.

Conscious that the preceding paragraphs read like the moans of a ‘whinging Pom’ (see joke below), let me reassure you that we love being here and are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. How can one complain about a country where one can buy five double-scoop ice cream cones for $5 (£1.97) or a five minute errand takes an hour and a half because every one wants to chat and find out why you’re here? In our admittedly limited experience so far, we have found almost all Kiwis to be generous with both their time and resources. For instance, the local pastor, having learned of my lack of connectivity when the family attended church last weekend, immediately tracked me down and offered me the use of his Airport Extreme wireless broadband connection any time I needed it. This has meant that, in the last week, I have been able to work from his dining room table or, when I have just needed to send the odd mail, simply pull up outside his house, log onto his home network and hit the ‘send’ button in my mail application. We have received solid house buying advice from a waitress that tallied with similar advice from friends and a chance word in a $2 shop led to the loan of a cat basket when we needed to collect the cats from the cattery.

Despite our uncertain immigration status, the principals of both the local primary school and the local college have both been happy to enrol the three eldest girls, citing the need for them to get settled and make new friends as being more important than funding and paper work, at least for the time being. Both schools are made up of bright, airy single storey buildings laid out across large spacious campuses. Here, large playing fields with an abundance of climbing frames, play equipment and open air swimming pools with sun canopies are the norm even for the smallest schools. The classrooms are filled with artwork and project material that draws equally from both the Maori and Pakeha (European settler) cultures, alongside a multitude of All Blacks posters, which stand as testament to the strong national pride here as well as the fierce opposition the local teams dealt the British Lions in June. The general ethos in the schools seems to be one of work hard, play hard but have fun doing both. Come tomorrow morning, we will see if this is borne out as the eldest girls will start their New Zealand school careers, a little nervous of what to expect but excited too. Although the littlest has been attending an Early Years Unit at a London primary school since she was three, children here do not attend school until their fifth birthday so we’re hoping to sign her up at the local kindergarten in the meantime, so she can make friends and SWMBO can have a few hours to herself each weekday.

The landscape here is simply wonderful and we are truly lucky to be able to view the vast expanse of the ocean from one side of the house and the low mountains of the Tararua State Forest Park from the other. Any car journey affords great views of the hills across the rolling farms, wide flood plains and thick swathes of fir. The wide views and distant horizons have enabled us to see the complete arc of the most vivid rainbows we have ever seen. At night, without the light pollution that blights so many places these days, the sky is crammed with stars and, just over a week ago, we saw a shooting star streak across the sky, mirrored in the ocean below. The southern spring is slowly giving way to summer and the fields are filled with young lambs, calves and foals, all grazing on the rich grass of riverine meadows of Horowhenua, the region where we currently live.

Our nearest large town is Levin and it looks like many others here, based as it is around a main street that sits astride a State Highway. On each side, the highway is bounded by covered walkways and canopies outside the shops and stores. Interspersed with these are entrance to small shopping malls that run perpendicular to the road and often lead to large parking lots at the rear. More often than not, these are surrounded by the larger chain stores and supermarkets. The fact that these large stores are away from the main street helps to preserve not only the feel of an older high street but means that the smaller independent store have more than a fighting chance in grabbing their share of passing trade. At either end of the main street, the shops gradually give way to the larger commercial premises of car dealerships, builders merchants and other service industry outlets. The town boasts a great adventure park where the kids went wild yesterday until rain stopped play, a small aquatic centre where we swam today and a thriving cinema that shows world cinema releases alongside blockbusters.

Closer to home, Foxton is a small town built around a Main Street that is one block back from but parallel to State Highway 1. As the first settlement of the Manawatu, Foxton had aspirations to become the regional hub but, unlike most towns in the region, was not founded on a farming community. Founded by a Presbyterian missionary in 1848, the town only began to thrive when a flax mill was opened twenty years later, processing flax harvested from the surrounding swamps. The town eventually grew to support fifty mills and a thriving river port but Foxton’s growth was also it’s undoing. A wooden tramway (later railway) was built to connect it to the new settlement of Palmerston North, which lay 40kms inland. However, a depressed economy and the diversion of the railways to serve business interests elsewhere sealed Foxton’s fate, with it’s gradual decline ironically balanced by Palmerston North’s growth into a thriving university city. Today, a carpet factory, providing local jobs but itself under threat, is all that remains of this manufacturing heritage and the town is now reliant on tourism and crafts for it’s main incomes.

To the seaward side of Foxton lies Foxton Beach, where we are living in a house kindly lent to us by friends. The township is comprised mostly of homes belonging to retirees and beach houses (‘baches’), interwoven with the odd holiday motel and motor camp (caravan park). Intriguingly, I was told in conspiratorial tones by a local that a lot of single parents on low incomes move here, though quite what I was to make of that I am not sure. This little community sits in the mouth of the Manawatu estuary with a sailing club and slipway nestled alongside a bird sanctuary. Apart from the usual dairy (corner shop) and petrol station, commerce in the township also includes a second hand store that is never open, Mr Grumpy’s fish and chip shop and a small bar and eatery called Simply Balmy. All this is overseen and protected by a volunteer fire service who are summoned by what sounds like a nuclear attack siren, an enormous lifeguard station on the beach and a police station that is smaller than our living room. Whilst it is highly unlikely that I will find work locally or that we will settle here long term, it is a delightful area full of wonderful little towns and lovely people. Our time here so far has proven to be a marvellous antidote of to our many years of city living and a superb introduction to the country we hope to make our home.

Kiwi joke: How can you tell if an aeroplane at the airport is carrying Poms? The whining carries on after the engines are turned off!

Dislocated

Monday, September 26th, 2005

Six people, twenty two pieces of luggage, three international flights over twelve thousand miles, seven hotel and resort rooms, four yellow cabs, one Hollywood premier and a swim in a waterfall – the last three weeks have been like no other in my life. Whilst I set out with the intention of posting my thoughts, impressions and feeling as we travelled, the simple practicalities of taking notes whilst in transit, finding time to write them up and securing decent internet access have conspired to extinguish the little incentive I had left at the end of each day. Moreover, I was conscious that I wanted my emigration experience to be a participative, family one, not that of a stand-alone observer watching from the outside, dutifully taking notes. So, rather than a day-by-day account of the ‘what I did on my holidays’ genre, which would undoubtedly turn out to be the written equivalent of viewing someone else’s holiday slides, what you have below is a collection of notes typed at various points along the way.

Staring at my own reflection in the toilet of a Air New Zealand 747, thousands of feet high over Hudson Bay, it still hasn’t sunk in. The redundancy has happened, our home and car are sold and our belongings together with our pets have been shipped to the other side of the world. The tearful goodbyes and leaving parties must surely count for something, as must the swapping of email addresses and promises to keep in touch, but I feel strangely hollow right now. The ever-increasing whirlwind that we have been through seems to have numbed me to a point where I cant quite put my finger on what I am meant to be feeling right now. I feel tired but that can be put down to the cumulative effects of recent weeks activities – the last days of commuting, the packing and re-packing, the phone calls and the visits, the arguments and the funny moments. I feel restless after too many nights when my mind wouldnt stop churning things which then gave way to last few nights of fitful rest on a friends floor until, with the arrival of this morning, there are, as the youngest would say, no more ‘sleeps’ to be slept. Most of all I feel impatient, no make that keen; keen for us to be done with all the planning, all the preparations and be on our way.

After two days in Los Angeles, we’re finally at gate 27 at LAX waiting to be called for our flight to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The blinkered and zenophobic attitudes that are now part and parcel of airport transits in the US are enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth of any ‘alien’. Such Homeland Security hoop-jumping would be enough on it’s own but the local check-in agent here was keen not to be outdone. Despite Air New Zeland allowing us to check 12 bags and a child’s car seat in London, ‘Hello, My name is Raoul, how can I screw up your day?’ had other ideas. He of the name badge, nylon blazer and Supa-Size attitude insisted that we may only check 12 with his airline, regardless of any previous arrangement in London, for ‘security reasons’. Quite how a Mothercare fabric and polystyrene car seat poses a threat to the Free World is unclear but Raoul was unmoved by our logic. Unmoved that is, until we removed the smallest case, reducing the pile to the required twelve pieces, stating that we’d take it as carry-on luggage instead. With his frozen smile changing to a death mask, Raoul insisted on measuring it in the hope that it will be too big or over-weight but eventually. We tried not to smile as he begrudgingly accepted the cases & car seat to tag and send on their way.

Or so we thought. With the grinding inevitability that follows all Pyhric victories, Raoul has the last laugh. We arrive in Rarotonga in the early hours of the morning to find that we are short one piece of luggage – the car seat. Of course, it turns up later, after a day or so, just long enough to make sure we know who is really in charge. I should have known better than to piss Raoul off. I knew a military logistics guy who, upon being abused by a condescending officer heading for UK from the Falkland Islands, redirected the officer’s personal effects to a camp in Canada where they were snowed in until the spring thaw the following year.

I like many things about America and have a good few friends across the US but, make no mistake, there has been a definite increase in their very special brand of self-assured, swaggering arrogance and cosy insularity since 9/11. In recent months, when mentioning to a US-based colleague that we were emigrating from the UK, they would invariably ask ‘Which state are you heading for?’, as if the United States was the only option worthy of consideration. Strangely, there are a fair number of superficial similarities between the US and New Zealand: the grid-based street layouts; the canopied shopping strips of the small towns along the State Highways; the dollar sign and old Chevrolet pickup trucks are all reminiscent of small town America. However, within minutes of our landing in New Zealand, our progress through the arrivals hall at Auckland airport only served to highlight the difference in attitude towards visitors and the cultural mindset in general. Where immigration at LAX offered one queue for non-US passport holders and 8 channels for returning citizens, Auckland offered an equal number of channels and, for those like us with young children, a separate fast-track channel. Even with six passports and visas to be reviewed, scanned, processed and stamped, we were politely dealt with and on our way inside 15 mins. In a world that is increasingly wary of those who seek to leave their birth nation to seek a new life in another country, it speaks volumes that the NZ immigration officer actually smiled and wished me good luck in finding the job I need to secure the longer-term visas we need to remain in New Zealand.

There have been surprisingly few tears and tantrums thus far. We have had the usual arguments and moods but, as yet, no major explosions of emotions over leaving the UK for the unknown of our present life in New Zealand. Climbing wearily onto the plane for the middle of the three legs, the youngest was heard to say that she wanted to ‘go home’. Having been awake for the 12 hours preceding a 12 hour flight, it seemed that her idea of home was wherever she could lay down and sleep, which she promptly did for most of the flight.

With the snickety-snick of the hire car’s handbrake, we finally stopped travelling five days ago. For now, our home is a friend’s beach house, set at the end of a road amongst the wind blown sand dunes of New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. From the windows and the deck outside, we can watch large grey rolling waves, driven by the Westerlies crossing the Tasman Sea from Australia, break on the wide and wild expanse of sand that stretches for miles in each direction. The small township in which we are staying boasts a small bar, a smaller police hut, a fish and chip shop, a diary (corner shop), a service station, two schools, two churches, two bible camps, several hotels and camp sites, a sailing club and collections of small individual homes strung along quiet streets. Backtracking five kilometres back east brings us to the nearest small town which is pretty much the same but only larger by dint of the fact that it sits astride the State Highway, itself a simple two lane road with occasional passing places. Once the home to a thriving flax industry that is now reduced to one carpet factory, Foxton proclaims itself to be ‘Hometown, NZ’ on its sign and quite rightly, for it appears to be the quintessential small town with just enough of the necessary infrastructure intact to function and serve local folks immediate needs. Twenty kilometres south, Levin is a good example of the best of both worlds, the old fashioned canopied stores lining the main street and adjacent side streets interspersed with small malls and arcades of shops. Car lots and service industry outlets cluster at either end of the main street, just before the points where the speed limit signs allow the through traveller to accelerate back onto the rural highway. Tucked away behind the facades of the main street and down the side turnings, the chain supermarkets jostle with the small office buildings of the local professionals. This seems to be the pattern across a significant proportion of NZ with folks seemingly prize local services and streets fronted by family-owned stores, ahead of chain stores and out-of-town retail parks. Quite how long this state of affairs will last I’m not sure. With the weekend paper carrying a big feature story about the techniques supermarkets use to part shoppers from their cash, it would seem that the Kiwis may soon be subjected to the rampant all-conquering commercialism of the 24/7 megastore culture so prevalent in the Northern Hemisphere.

It has only taken a few days to drive home (pun intended) the fact that New Zealand is a car-driving, road transport-orientated country. We are covering distances that we’d rarely need to in the UK just to get to the places we need to be in order to get our new lives set up. The nearest internet access, for we have no phone line at the house, is 20kms away in a public library but limited to simple read/write activities. For the high speed, high bandwidth access I need for sending CVs, downloading tax documents and handling any volume of email, it’s a 2 hour, 100km trip to the nearest wifi hotspot (in a Starbucks coffee shop of course) in Palmerston North. Already our London-raised kids are becoming hardened to the fact that if you want anything more than the local store offers, it means at least a twenty minute car ride. Given that the location of our first proper home in NZ will be pretty much dictated by where I can secure employment, I suspect that there are a few prayers being said for Dad getting a job in the heart of one of the cities and a home in the suburbs. Having said that, none of us have really begun to adjust yet. That we are here for the foreseeable future and not heading home after a holiday is slowly becoming clear and I am sure that each of us will have moments when we might wish otherwise. I came close today when the umpteenth attempt to get a rudimentary dail-up connection via my cellphone at the beach house failed, the lack of my familiar broadband connection to the rest of the world only emphasising the enormity of the decision we made in coming here. A couple of hours and a few words of prayer by SWMBO later, I managed to get connected, albeit at an excrutiatingly slow speed and the dark moment passed. Tomorrow sees that beginning of another week and the continuing tasks of setting up home and getting employment, though if the first week is anything to go by, we’re in for more cultural adjustments and frustrations mixed with new acquaintances and humourous goings-on.

Because it is there

Saturday, August 20th, 2005

‘Because it is there’ was George Mallory’s now-famous response to the ‘Why climb Everest?’ questions that he endured before losing his life on his third attempt in 1924 – 29 years before it was finally accomplished by Aucklander Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. We have a good friend, Elaine, who lives in the Netherlands and visited us recently. Elaine has unknowingly provided me with my equivalent answer for all those who ask us why we are moving to the other side of the world without having secured a job or even residency. In an email yesterday, she quoted Charlotte Bronte and I find the quotation apt for describing the mixture of excitement and uncertainity within us all as we approach this new phase in our family life:

“Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank”

Joy and numbness

Friday, August 19th, 2005

A day of mixed emotions. Earlier today, the last major obstacle to our move abroad disappeared when we received a call to say that our solicitors had finally exchanged contracts on the sale of our flat. This means that, barring unforeseen circumstances, the shippers will pack and ship our entire home contents on the 5th September and we’ll move out on the 6th, the day before we leave the UK for the first leg of our trip to New Zealand. An hour later, the upbeat mood had evaporated as, oblivious to the traffic noise and rain, I hugged my father goodbye at Kings Cross mainline station. He was returning home to Yorkshire after a three day visit and, although we knew this moment was coming, I doubt that either of us were certain in the knowledge of exactly how we would feel when the time came. Speaking for myself, I feel numb and more than a little off-centre, as I keep hearing him saying ‘have a good life’ as he walked away from my without looking back. It was a simple statement without side but it resonates inside me still. His words drive home the fact that our decision to move abroad, fuelled by a desire to offer the kids a better family life than we can in the UK, also means the inevitable estrangement of our nearest and dearest. Whilst we have often discussed such partings and what the effect on those involved might be, I sense that it is only when faced with these moments of separation that we truly know what is in our hearts and how we might cope.

Pulled in all directions

Sunday, August 7th, 2005

This time next month, we will either be sleeping fitfully or watching cable TV in hotel rooms somewhere in Los Angeles, en route to the Cook Islands and ultimately our new life in New Zealand. Actually, as things stand at present, it is far from certain that we’ll have even got that far on our journey by then. Currently, we find ourselves in one of those Catch-22 situations where everything hinges on everything else and no-one involved seems particularly bothered about the outcome. Therein lies the naked truth of the matter: this is our family choice, not the removal company’s; this is our life-changing decision, not the immigration service’s; this is our leap-in-the-dark, not the estate agent’s. The place we find ourselves in is one of our own choosing and of our own making. We have wished all the chaos and confusion, all the bickering and spousal frustration, all the endless sibling disagreements on ourselves. As I type, we are awaiting news from our prospective buyer’s solicitor as to the date when we might reasonably expect to exchange contracts and move out. This is an improvement on last week, when we discovered that the same person had not only gone on holiday but had done so mistakenly believing that we had chosen not to go ahead with the sale of our flat. In turn, this has meant that we have had to delay the two-day pack and load session by the movers who will ship our belongings to New Zealand. As a consequence of this, there is a very good chance that our provisionally booked flights and connections will now have to be rescheduled, assuming that we can find six seats on the same flights and the same routes we had planned but later in the week.

Sitting in the sun-dappled garden of our friend’s house yesterday, I listened, as if to someone else, as we once again explained why we have chosen to leave all we know and love to move to the other side of the world without any guarantee that we will still want, let alone be able, to stay there. An outside observer might have caught an exchanged look between our friends or heard a slight hollowness in the oft-repeated phrases we trotted out yet, with redundancy just weeks away and a home far too small for a family of six, it still feels like exactly the right thing to do. As I cycled through London’s Hyde Park on the way to work one morning last week, a persistently vague thought began to crystallise and come into focus. As with almost everything in our lives, soon this journey will no longer be part of my daily routine and, although it will be replaced with journeys and activities as yet unknown, there are only a handful of such journeys in London left before me. In recent weeks, I have often find myself thinking “This’ll be the last time I do this” or “I wish I had time to do that before we go”, not so much with sadness as curiosity, as if I’d not expected to feel this way which, if I’m honest, is the truth. I had not expected to feel so attached to places, so bound to people, so linked to things around me.

Is this then an integral part of many an emigrant’s experience, a longing for things not yet lost, a mourning for an old life not yet finished? For me, it is not unlike the feelings I experienced when I knew a friend was losing his battle against cancer; bereft, disbelieving, empty and with so much to say yet unable to find the right words in the short time left. Now, almost a year after his death, I still keep his name and number on my mobile phone, as if I can still just call and talk to him. So, with the time for our departure coming up fast, perhaps I am seeking the emigrant’s equivalent of my friend’s telephone number, a talisman of my old life that I can carry into my new one. For me, with this thought comes a pleasing connection to a small act of kindness by a Kiwi friend a couple of years ago. She was travelling home to see her family before emigrating with her partner from the UK to Canada. Amongst her leaving gifts and good luck cards, I placed a small envelope which contained a small, faded yellow and green friendship bracelet which had recently worn through and finally snapped. This I had worn since the day my daughter made it and tied it around my wrist so, whilst I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, I was unsure of what to do with it. My friend’s departure provided inspiration and so, in the accompanying note, I asked that she bury the bracelet somewhere in New Zealand to act as a ‘magnet’ which, if the attraction was strong enough, would draw us there. I’m not normally given to such gestures or talk of destiny and usually find such sentiment mawkish in others. However, there’s no denying that I find myself more than tempted to believe that that small tattered bracelet, made with a daughter’s love and worn with a father’s pride, beckons our family southwards and will do so until we answer the call. It seems that we simply have to take this step to continue our journey as a family, no matter where it takes us.

Closer to the dream

Saturday, July 9th, 2005

Six or so weeks on from my last post, there now appears to be very little that stands in the way of us moving to New Zealand…other than the fact that I have not been able to secure a job that will allow us to secure right of residency visas there. Whilst this is often the single most important factor in any planned immigration, it is also the hardest to achieve remotely unless one’s professional skills are deemed to be in short supply and qualify for Skilled Migrant status.

After much consultation with friends, advisors and recruitment folks in New Zealand, we have decided to relocate regardless. The deciding factor in this is that I am to made redundant from my position in the UK at the end of August. Rather than focus on trying to secure a short-term position here whilst I continue to hunt for a position 12,000 miles away, we have decided to sell our flat and car, pack all our belongings into a 40ft container bound for the southern hemisphere, buy 6 return tickets and head for London’s Heathrow Airport. Although we have yet to book our flights, we are currently thinking of flying with Air New Zealand as they have generous baggage allowances for emigrees – essential for families that are 5/6ths female and fashion-conscious. Given we haven’t had a family break this year, we are also considering breaking up the journey with a couple of stopovers, perhaps a couple of days in California (Los Angeles is an Air NZ hub) followed by another four or five days in the Cook Islands. The additional costs appear to be small and I feel we’d benefit both physically and mentally from the break.

Once there, I’ll concentrate on getting a work-to-residency or skilled migrant position whilst the family find their feet. Rae and Peter, the parents of one of our Kiwi friends here in London, have kindly offered their bach (beach house) for us to use as our initial base. Located an hour or so north of Wellington, it will provide us with a ‘sponsored’ abode for our visitor and student visas as well as a base for house and job hunting. Furthermore, as I am not restricting my job hunting to just Wellington, the airport at Palmerston North 40 kms away may prove to be handy if I need to fly to Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin.

Despite all this activity and planning, we are still in a state in bemused denial. Other people emigrate, we say, not us. It is always us seeing folks off on their travels, not the other way around. Yet, all being well, it will soon be us climbing on board a plane, ready to swap years of dreaming and planning for new beginnings in a new country.