It wasn’t me!
Apparently today there was a bomb scare at the New Zealand parliament.
It seems that someone sent a box of Flies to the Beehive, and in it was a note: “this is a New Zealand cluster bomb” .
So all the reports say there was a bomb scare.
What seems really weird is that I cant find any reports that really seem to grasp that the box appears to have contained Cluster Flies rather than normal house flies. This is similar to a Trade Me posting (in the way that Trade Me every so often plays host to weird and wacky sales from even weirder and wackier people), where some guy is auctioning off a Flagon of Flies, which are also cluster flies.
(yes – they really do look that disgusting!)
Thing is Ive been saying to some of my friends recently that a solution will only be found to the whole cluster flies problem (still ongoing) if Parliament had a dose of them to worry about. I contacted MAF a while back – and got the typical bureaucratic crap and thick-as-two-short-planks answer of “seal all entrances to the house to stop them getting in.” Oh OK – I’ll make my house airtight and we all suffocate to death! At least the flies wont get in to feast on our dead bodies. Morons! Cluster flies can get through closed doors and windows -a nd flies screens are no match for the buggers!
So I would like to make it crystal clear that I was only joking, and I am not in any way responsible for sending a box of flies to Parliament.
I do hope they killed all the flies though – because if they didn’t – theres a possibility that they may hibernate and then lay eggs in spring. And then they are screwed.
At which point government can join the Wairarapa in hoovering up dead flies at the end of each day.
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Air New Zealand 1: Listener Magazine 0.
It seems that the New Zealand Listener magazine ran an article saying that Air New Zealand was heading towards become a budget airline on its flights to Australia. Personally I can actually attest to the fact that the flights have improved – you now get a choice of movies to watch and personal screens.
However here is the article. [Updated 19/6/2011, sorry the Listener no longer has a link to the article]
In answer, Rob Fyfe, CEO of Air New Zealand took out a 1 page ad in the papers last week (part of it shown here):
And for those of us who cant read that – take a look at the video here.
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The Great Internet Firewall of Australia
A couple of months ago we decided to buy a NZ Vodafone mobile broadband USB Stick (aka Vodem), so we didn’t spend loads of cash on hotel internet connections. Now I’m contracting, it’s a valuable tool most days of the week, as I can’t always connect my laptop to a clients’ network. It was easy, we went into the shop, paid money, got the stick. Installed it, and it worked. Simple. We were free to roam the internet where ever & when ever we wanted.
So arriving in Australia, we figured the same thing would be a good idea. Rather than pay the hideous data roaming charges from VF-NZ while in Australia, or the hotel internet charges, we decided to buy get an Australian SIM card to use in the Vodem. It should have been simple.
So how hard can it be?
Despite being the same company and exactly the same hardware, an NZ Vodem wont work with an Australian SIM card without the Vodem being ‘unlocked’.
So instead you can buy an Aussie Vodem.
Only it wont work with the NZ Vodem software either, so you have to uninstall that, and reinstall the (same) software that comes with the (same) make of Vodem only it’s Australian. Annoying, yet workable.
Only when you actually buy a pre-pay Vodem in Australia, you have to provide identification. Drivers license, passport, that sort of thing. All in the name of anti-terrorism.
What the hell?
And you have to sign this form which says that if you fib to the Govt about any of the details you’ve given you will be fined $5,000. Well, I’m sure that the prospect of a $5,000 fine will stop anyone planning a terrorist attack from fibbing about their name, address, email address etc.
Anyhow.
So the shop takes all these details, and then when you’ve got the Vodem working on your computer, before you can access the internet you have to ‘activate’ your pre-paid Vodem.
What the hell??
Did the free trade agreement with China just make Australia it’s latest colony?
Yep – having provided all the information once to the shop, you have to provide it all again on the Vodafone website to ‘activate’ your Vodem. Of course, none of the information you provide on the website is actually validated against the info you submitted in the store. So you could change it all. The only thing it validates is that your street address is legitimate. Which is easily done, as it wont let you put in an address it doesn’t know about. Which is a little pants really if Vodafone don’t know about your address.
So being an honest sort, I tried putting in my NZ Vodafone mobile number as the ‘contact number’. Since if there’s a problem with any of this info, I figure they will want to get hold of me. So the website accepts this foreign mobile phone number and I’m set to go.
Except I’m not.
After waiting the obligatory 15 minutes, unplugged the Vodem, restarted the computer etc., the Vodem still wont work. And I still can’t get off the ‘activiation’ page.
Can I get to the Vodafone ‘help’ page? – Nope.
Can I get to the Vodafone ‘store finder’ page? – Nope.
Can I get to the Vodafone ‘contact us’ page? – Nope.
I’m buggered.
It doesn’t work, and I can’t get any useful information.
Anti-terrorism is preventing me from getting help from Vodafone to figure out why my new Vodem isn’t working.
What the hell???
So after many hours, some swearing, wine, more swearing, and trying it on another computer I’m still buggered.
So the next day, when I should be sunning myself on the beach, off I trog down to the Vodafone store to get some help. The first problem, my computer is too new (WTH????) So we have to uninstall the ‘old’ software that comes preloaded on the Vodem and install the latest version of the software. Tum de dum de dum.
Then we try getting the Vodem working again. Yep, it still wont get off the ‘activation’ page.
After some head scratching the nice person in the Vodafone store rings her colleague in the mobile broadband team for help. And low, my ‘activation’ is pending, since I’ve put in an invalid phone number. And shock horror, I’ve not put in a valid home phone number either. I committed the sin of using the Vodem number as my mobile, and my NZ mobile as my home number. Both of which seemed sensible at the time. But ho hum, easily identified and fixed. Only that’s not good enough. There’s still a problem.
What else could possibly be wrong you ask?
Well, no one knows. It’s just stuck. The Vodem can’t be activated for some unknown reason. After the best part of an hour and a half in the store, I’m advised to give the mobile broadband team 24 hours to have a look at it. They’ll ring me, so can I stay in the hotel for 24 hours? Since they will only ring the valid Australian phone number (we used the hotel switchboard number) in my customer record, and wont make a call to an NZ Vodafone mobile. (WTH?????!)
You just couldn’t make this up.
To be fair, the lass in the Vodafone store was really good. She identified the problems pretty quickly, and worked patiently with me while we fixed those. Then she worked patiently with her colleague on the phone trying to fix the customer record.
Waiting 24 hours, in the hotel for a call which may or may not come in that time, so Vodafone can get my new Vodem activated didn’t sound like the best use of my time in Surfers Paradise.
So I said, “no thank you”, I’ll just have my money back and I’ll go down to Optus (another telecoms company here in Aus) and get one of their mobile broadband thingy’s.
Again, credit where it’s due, the folks in the store didn’t want to lose a customer. So they gave me a new Vodem SIM for free. Registered it. Got it activated. And we were away with internet access. Inside of 10 minutes, after registering my details against a different mobile phone number.
Wehey!!
If only it could have been that simple in the first place.
If only it could be as simple as it is in NZ.
This is one of those times where I’m grateful for living in NZ. It may have a supposedly lower standard of living compared to Aus, higher unemployment and all that stuff. But at least if I want to access the internet I don’t have to register my details with the Govt.
Just don’t get me started in how pointless the whole ‘activation’ process is. No validation and confirmation that registration details match? I wonder how many $5,000 fines are on their way to Mickey Mouse?
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Nice Beach: what’s with all the people???
Filed under: Beaches in New Zealand, Cost of living, General Budgeting, Life in New Zealand
Surfers Paradise. White sand beaches, sun, surf, lifeguards. Crowds.
AKA: You know you have lived in New Zealand about the right amount of time when you feel the beach shouldn’t have anyone else on it. Talk about being spoiled!
VS
We just had a paddle today – honestly I was too exhausted to swim safely – it’s been a tough few weeks and we had hardly any sleep last night. That and the sea do not make a safe combination. So we walked the <2mins from our hotel room to the beach, took off our sandals and waded in. It was bliss. Not too cold, clear blue skies and turquoise sea.
Only downsides are the fact that there’s a load of building work along the front as the council smartens up the waterfront entrances to the beach and if you turn round your view is of skyscraper apartment blocks and more of them being built.
It’s stunning without a doubt, and lets face it – you can’t really swim at the beaches in New Zealand at this time of year – it’s getting a bit “peaky”. So I intend to make the most of it while we are here.
As for the rest of the time: Hubby it turns out is only at the conference for 3 and a bit days out of the ten, so we have plenty of time to spend exploring. I will spend the time while he’s working his socks off planning his time off. There’s some theme parks which I feel should be worth a look – while NZ has one – its not really gonna match my personal requirements for White Knuckle rides – it has a single rollercoaster. Here we have Dreamworld, WB Movie world and a few water parks. Plus of course all the beaches, and Brisbane only and hour or so away if I really find I want to shop more than is available here. I might try it for a day. Just to see what its like.
For eating out we have bought an Entertainment Guide. This is something we buy in Wellington every year. It costs about $60, but that gives you money off vouchers for all sorts of restaurants, cafes and fast food joints. Sometimes its 25% off the bill, sometimes it’s a Buy one get one free which is REALLY useful when there’s just two of you. It’s a must for anyone eating out at all, as the savings can be immense. It’s also a really handy way to find new restaurants to try. Once you buy a local guide (Wellington, Auckland or Christchurch – which you buy from friends, work or companies as a fundraiser) you can then buy guides direct for other cities, including Australian cities. We saved $19 AUD tonight with a 25% off deal, so you can imagine the savings over 10 days, especially if we go for places where its buy one get one free.
Quite helpful when you are on a budget, and while Hubby is now working – there is a delay in getting paid as a contactor – so on a budget we are.
Next job is to find a place that does decent bacon and eggs for breakfast. There’s not much point in hoping for decent coffee – Wellington has the world beat in that area hands down!
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Welcome to the gold coast.
This is the first day of our ten day trip to Surfers Paradise on the gold coast. You may remember us booking this trip just after Hubby was made redundant? He is here to attend AusCERT – an IT Security conference held here every year that he has so far been unable to attend because his employers do not see the worth in professional development.
I do, and as I am now the General Manager / HR Department / Travel Booking Dept / can-I-please-buy-a-shiny-new-laptop-department – getting flight approval and training funds just got a whole easier. Something along the lines of
Hubby: “How about a week on the gold coast?”
Me: Absa-fragging-loutley-dammit! Where do we book?
So I’m writing this sipping a coffee (with DOUBLE cream in it!) on the balcony of the Holiday inn (21st floor) overlooking the beach and the city lights at night.
Its been a good first day – meeting lots of nice people and finding our bearings. Till about half an hour ago – but that’s a separate blog – I’m sticking with the good stuff right now.
We had our first chance to try the new SmartGate immigration booths at Brisbane airport. You no longer get scanned by a human – if you have a New Zealand or Australian e-passport which can be read by the scanners – you can use the system. Actually quite impressive. The cameras recognised both of us and let us in! Which in my case was quite a surprise because my passport photo is a shocker!
We also got the updated entertainment system on the Air New Zealand flight – so no more 1-choice of movie on the flights to Oz. Blessed relief for me – who despite being up since 3am to get a 6.30 flight is just incapable of sleeping on planes. So I got to watch Julie & Julia and commiserate over the pain of blogging. Brilliant movie by the way. If you are a blogger and reading this – please just go see it – you will be in fits of laughter seeing how we sometimes behave from the outside.
Although we were coming to the gold cost, we flew into Brisbane and took an “express train” to Surfers – because t-it was hugely cheaper than flying direct. A bit more awkward – I have to say the train journey wasn’t inspiring as most of it was though industrial areas, but worth the saving which amounted to about $600.
I’m currently watching a couple of people getting hurled round in a fairground ride just outside the hotel. The screams of terror are entertaining.
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So how do you pay off a £950bn debt?
Thats the current government debt in the UK. Give or take a few million. Scary Huh? Compared to New Zealand which has a current debt of $25.6bn. or about £13bn at current exchange rates. But remember – New Zealand is a tiny country. So how much is that per person?
In New Zealand that’s about £3250 per person (keeping in £ to make it easier).
In the UK it works out at about £15,570 per person.
Now once you put it into terms like that it may or may not sound so scary to you. After all – we had personal debts of about £14,000 when we started our emigration journey, and it took us about a year to pay that off. So effectively the debt that the UK government has built up is just like 70,000,000 “Avalon and Hubbies” going on a spending spree.
This is on top of peoples personal debts in the UK which now are thought to be in the region of £1,460bn – so more than the UK government has racked up.
But at some point it all has to be paid back – and therein lies the problem. The personal debt has been spent on property, cars, clothes, food, and lifestyle. As individuals you can decide how to cut back – what is essential and what you have basically been frittering money away on just because you could and becuase you wanted to.
But Government spending is harder to cut back on becuase we all demand higher levels of service and benefits form the government and don’t see why we cant have it. And when Governments take drastic cuts and tell the people that the money just isn’t there – riots like we are seeing in Greece occur.
I wonder how much this has affected the UK election results? Theres a helluva lot of money to be paid back, and it is going to take someone with the strength of an ox to make the decisions necessary to get the country out of the crap. Who do you trust to do that? Becuase believe me, paying off a debt of about £14,000 is not an easy task. For individuals the mechanics are straightforward – there are ways and means of setting budget s and paying down debt. But even so the decision yo have to make are not always easy. There will be arguments. There will be fights. There will be blamestorming sessions like you would not believe. And then there will be anger as one or other of you realise you cant buy the things you want to buy anymore.
How do you scale that up and handle it in an entire country?
The New Zealand government is giving it a shot: getting rid of government waste, getting rid of excess civil servants (but then that can add to the unemployment benefit cost), and generally taking a big red pen to lots of paperwork and numbers. But New Zealand has also been pretty protected from the Financial fallout, especially when compared to many European countries – including the UK.
I don’t know who the best hope is for the UK. I am personally glad it’s not likely to be Gordon Brown as he does seem to have been pretty lousy as a finance minister and caused a lot of this – and his decision to borrow his way out of the crap is just insane. If its insane for us to to it – its no more right for a government to do it. The golden rule of problem debt is:
Never borrow more to pay it off.
So while the UK election plays itself out and we wait to find out if the Conservatives and Lib Dems can find a way to work together – I think its worth sparing a thought for the fact that they one helluva mess to sort out and they may have some tough decisions to make that will not please everyone.
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Grateful to the BBC World today :)
It possibly sounds incredibly sad – but the whole family has been glued to the TV today watching the UK election results. It’s been total coverage on BBC World: today the world consisted of the UK and that was it. Its was lovely. Probably the only time Ive spent longer staring at a screen was watching back to back Star Wars movies.
So theres this odd situation living as an Ex-pat Brit in New Zealand: we get to watch the results come in during a very civilized daytime. We even managed to get a break to go our for some coffee.
New Zealand of course takes a lot less time to watch our election results come through. You need to stay up a bit late – but its all done and dusted the same day. One of the benefits of a small population: not as many votes to count.
The biggest problem to day has been the fact that too many people couldn’t actually vote because of high turnout, long queues and people not getting into the polling stations before the 10pm deadline. With at least one polling station running out of ballot papers – the election became quite farcical in some parts. In some ways I an personally quite please with this, as i think it will highlight the problems with every vote not being counted. My parents and brother applied for overseas voting – and haven’t received their papers, which is the same problem we had at the last election. We actually didn’t bother applying this time but I think this is exactly the type of election result where the overseas and last minute voting is essential and not allowing them to count lets down the country and it’s people.
So right now – we still don’t know who will form the government, but Gordon Brown looks to be trying his best to ignore the fact that hes just lost and seems willing to squat at number 10 as long as he possibly can.
I guess it may seem a bit odd that I am still so interested in the outcome – not having lived in the UK for over 5 years now. All I can say is that no matter how long I live in New Zealand, I am still English – and will always care what happens in my homeland.
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TopShop comes to New Zealand but still no Ikea.
Can’t say this would excite me enough to get me queuing to get in – but hem I’m not exactly the worlds best shopaholic. Apparently plenty of people were excited enough to wait outside. This isn’t a TopShop shop – its a concession with The Department Store in Takapuna, Auckland.
Still, no sign of a recession in that queue so that’s good news.
Now – about that Ikea store we really need?
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What is Swedish Rounding?
In new Zealand our smallest coin is now the 10c piece. Which means if you want to buy something with a price of say $1.99 you can’t get change and effectively get overcharged.
Swedish Rounding basically says that if it’s 5 or under at the end the shop will round down and it’s over 5 they will round up. It’s often dependent on the individual shop as to whether the 5 ( being the midpoint) rounds up or down
So what’s the problem?
Normally it really doesn’t cause a huge issue – for me it’s the principle of the thing that no matter how you pay for something the price charged should be the price you saw on the item. In effect this means that all prices would need to altered to be multiples of 10c which I an damn sure would mean everything goes up in price rather than down.
A good example of this is the the old 45c stamp for standard post in New Zealand. A few people got uppity (fairly I feel) that they tried to buy a single stamp – not needing more than one at the time, and found it cost them 50c. Funnily enough now there is no 45c stamp – the price went up to 50c.
Of course if you pay on an eftpos card or credit card it becomes irrelevant as the amount charged is the exact a
amount of the bill. Oddly shop staff often tell you the bill is a round dollar amount, but what gets charged is the exact amount. I have come across two notable exceptions to this. One was a chain healthfood store who tried to round up from $5.95 to $6.00 and got told to sod off. The other was Radius Pharmacy on Lambton quay who rounded up from $26.95 to $27.00. I didn’t notice that till I got home and did the accounts (many stores actually don’t show you the amount they plug into the cc machine which in itself was a bit naughty). I just assumed that as normal they were telling me the rounded amount but would charge the right amount. I’m not shopping there again
Okay it’s small change. Shops would have to round up 5c seventy or eighty times before I’ve lost the cost of even one coffee. And even then you should find that you get rounded down and save as often as you round up if yo are buying a bunch of things together. With single items though – well – how many things are priced .34 rather than .99?
But what about people on low incomes? And bear in mind that as a migrant that might be you. Low income people tend to pay cash more to avoid the eftpos fees, and don’t have credit cards. So already they are more at risk of getting rounded up than I am with my credit cards. $3.50 lost may not be much to me personally in the long run (though I still to object to it) but for many people that actually could make s huge difference. I wonder if anyone has ever sat down and worked out whether the amount saved by rounding down is the same or more than the amount overpaid by rounding up?
With a Hat Tip for Wafu for his comment which gave me the idea for this blog post.
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Random words from Avalon’s Blog
With a hat tip to Domestic Executive for the idea, here is a fancy Wordcloud from Wordle.
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