Let's talk about the People

Christchurch has a population of 350k-400k, but it has a very compact center, bringing in mind a city only half the size it actually is.

Christchurch center, close to my apartment:


















Even though more than 85% of the total population of about 4.3 million in New Zealand live in its few major cities, they still prefer to have their own separated houses and small yards, rather than stacking their apartments in large high-rises like most urbanized places do. This has resulted in a suburban sprawl that simply doesn't have an end to it, as well as to people being more and more dependant on their cars. I've seen plenty of houses for sale here, and the biggest selling point often seems to be the size of the garage, rather than the place itself. I actually met some city urban planners and saw the cool 3D-models they had created of the city, projecting its growth in different near future scenarios, their goal being to stop the spread of the small housing and focus on developing the central city further. Their biggest headache seemed to be that the people running the city way back in the day had divided most of the land into plots 10 meters wide and 50 meters deep, which doesn't really leave a lot of room for the imagination (or requires a hell of a lot of it, when trying to build something big). But still, unless the economy collapses completely, the downtown real estate prices in this city are unlikely to stop growing on a longer time scale. :)

Many of the houses on the 6km hike between my apartment and my office look very nice, they don't call this the city of gardens for nothing:


















Though there are also houses that do away with silly greenery and just look cool by themselves:


















Of course you also need something from the other end of the spectrum as a reference point:


















(That last one is actually just a less fancy house in otherwise quite fancy neighborhood, I haven't even gone to the "poorer" section of the city yet.)

The Kiwis don't mind having to own a car or two, though, as they seem to like the damn things almost as much as they like rugby, which in turn they like more than they like sex. A good third of the cars I see on the roads here are either SUVs or pick-up trucks. As it is a country full of mountains, it might be understandable, but it still annoys me.

The people themselves are usually friendly and rather laid back sort, not to mention curious as hell, which might bother some Scandinavian types. In many ways they remind me of Americans, just without the constant need to go "Hey! Hey! Look at me! Just look at how cool I am!" They also seem to like working for themselves rather than for some large faceless corporation, as tiny restaurants, shops and hotels are everywhere, whereas things like super markets are few and far in between.

I often pass this lawnmower shoppe and the sign always makes me smile. Lawnmower fight!


















On several streets there are stretches kilometers long of only hotels, motels, hostels, motor lodges, B&Bs and whatnot, all trying to outsmart the competition with promises of spa rooms, free internet access, cable TV and even some cheesy themes. Late in the evening most of the "No vacancy" signs outside are lit, which says something about the amount of tourists that swarm the country around the year. It is very popular among travelers to rent a car here (it's quite cheap) and drive around the islands on their own leisurely pace, as the public transportation to the more distant locations is often lacking at best. As a non-driver I have no idea how easy it is to get used to the left-sided traffic.


















Then a couple of more touristy shots:

People playing chess in the Cathedral Square.


















Yet another picture of the cathedral:


















The useless tram line I mentioned before actually goes through buildings at some points. (Check out the size of the egg that kiwi has :)


















Tomorrow I'll try and post some photos I took yesterday at a park close to my apartment, where the local Chinese community was celebrating the Lantern Festival. (Same party that got the people in Beijing to burn down their brand-new skyscraper earlier this week.)

Oh yes, and on next week's Sunday, 22nd of Feb, it's time to go up the irons, as Iron Maiden comes to Christchurch for the first time in more than a decade! My ticket is in my bed-side drawer, where is yours? ;)

Arthur's Pass

Double post, eh.

Yesterday me and about ten others from and visiting the lab went for a little hik...sorry, tramp to Arthur's Pass, a pathway through the mountain range that covers much of the South Island.

Very nice views, though at points the road leading there felt a bit dangerous, what with the happy-go-lucky driving style of the locals and the constant 180-degree turns sandwiched between a rockface and a very long drop indeed.

The weather up in the mountains seemed to change every 5 minutes, but the scenery was nothing short of fantastic:


































































































These Kea parrots are addicted to the rubber parts of cars, and steal your food the moment you look to the other direction. And even if you don't.


















What New Zealand outing would be complete without sheep? None!

Kiwis, eh

First weekend in New Zealand and what am I doing? Sitting here in my office, of course! It's not like I could be out there sampling the sights, sounds and flavors, is it?

Well, it is rather hot today, so I decided to seek shelter for a while, empty my camera and write this little post. Also, they have a very nice coffee machine in the lobby. :)

Recap of the week: arrived on Monday afternoon, horribly tired after over 50 hours of not sleeping, popped into my office, checked into my apartment and slept for 14 hours straight. Rest of the week I have been adjusting my day rhythm little by little, thinking a bit about what exactly it is that I should be doing here (workwise), and hanging out with a bunch of visitors from Europe as well as getting to know the city.

There are several Thai, Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English restaurants as well as two liquor stores, one around-the-clock convinience store and several coffee shops and bars within 200 meters of my apartment. And I can't hear any outside noise in my bedroom even on Friday evening! So far I like Christchurch very much. :)

Same in pictures:

After 50 hours of uptime this was the loveliest sight I could have imagined.
























The cathedral in the core of the city. My apartment is only a couple of blocks away from it.
























Avon river. It snakes its way through the city so that no matter where you walk, you always bump into it every couple of blocks.


















Punting on the Avon. There's a lot of tourist stuff around.


















Tourist stuff such as a tram line that costs 5 euros to get on, but that doesn't really go anywhere.


















In the city's botanical gardens I actually managed to find modern art that I like!


















First dinner after my arrival: banana pizza.


















HITLabNZ - this is where I spend my days, mom!


















Captain Cook. You can find statues of this guy all over the planet because he went all over the planet.

A migrating coconut

It's been a fun few days, meeting friends and downing way too much alcohol for it to be good for me.

My flight leaves in few hours, and since I've only slept some 5 hours and am notoriously incapable of sleeping on trains and planes, by the time I arrive to my destination, I should have discovered brand new levels of zombie-like existence.

Whatever.

Went eating and drinking out last night. Just now I took a look at some of the photos I snapped over the evening and these two made me smile.

Enjoying a nice drink after a heavy meal:

















Just don't ask this lady about size, mattering and stuff:

















Sorry Anu ;)

In Helsinki, leaving in two days

From the point where I first heard about the chance to go to NZ for 6 months to the point where I'm actually about to go: 11 months.

When I applied for the visa:

















And when I finally received it:

















Oh yeah, and now, after the bureaucratic hell machine finally produced the said permit, Surprise! I had yet another delay show up and bite me in the ass, literally.

A tennis elbow, only in my tailbone.

A week of antibiotics took care of it, but while it lasted, it looked like I had grown a third buttock. Sitting down and lying on my back were a bit on the impossible side, so some 30 hours of hopping around the planet in tourist class wasn't exactly something I was willing to try. One week of sick leave, one week of glorious postponement.

But now I'm ready to go, yet again!
















Spending a couple of days in Helsinki before leaving (flight departs on Saturday afternoon and arrives to Christchurch, New Zealand on Monday afternoon. 11 time zones, 28 hours in the air and 6 in random airports, longest stretch being a 22-hour Jumbo Jet ride from London to Sydney). Today I shall eat out and celebrate with some friends in a civilized fashion. Tomorrow I shall eat out and celebrate with some other friends in a bit less civilized fashion. Hopefully this time around I won't end up passing out on the floor of some random women's toilet.

Baaah~

Epic

I have received the visa. There is much rejoicing.

It was epic and it went something like this:

In the beginning of November 2008 I find out that I should apply for a special "Working Holiday Visa" that I could get online without too big a hassle and be on my way in a couple of weeks. It sounds good enough. I don't have to send my passport anywhere and it is free (When I applied for my visa to go to China earlier, they wanted me to send them money in an envelope).

But.

Uh-oh, you were in China last year? Naughty boy! Naughty, naughty boy! It gets a chest x-ray to prove it didn't get tuberculosis or it gets the hose again.

Right, not a problem. The hospital doesn't even ask any questions before radiating the shit out of me five minutes after I walk in, just suggesting that I wear a fancy lead bikini bottom to protect my privates (missed my chance for a free vasectomy there :( ).

"So, when do I come back to get the report?" I ask the radiologist after being microwaved something proper. I had brought the radiologist questionnaire form from the visa application website with me and given it to the nurses before my dose of cancer rays.
"Oh, we will fill it up and send it for you. You won't even see them yourself," the radiologist answers happily. "We do these things every day. It's covered by the fee you paid us."

So, a month passes. That's more than two weeks, I think. Sometime in December I finally get an answer from the NZ end to my inquiry on the status of my visa application. They haven't received the x-ray report. I reach for my phone.

"Hello? Hospital X, radiology department."
"Hello doctor Goodnsexy, what happened to my x-ray report?"
"I don't know, sir, let me put you through to some random person."
Waitwaitwait.
"Yo?"
"I had an x-ray taken there for a visa application a month ago, but I just heard that the embassy people never received the report. Know anything about it?"
"Wait a minute, sir." I can hear her lowering the phone and talking to someone else in the room. "Yea, so I still have a week or so of holiday left, but I'd really like to make them last over Christmas, so maybe I just need a sick leave or something, haha."
Bitch...
"Are you still there, sir? Oh, okay. Let me put you through to someone else."
"Third time's the charm."
"Whatever you say, sir."
I listen to the you-are-now-waiting-in-line-muzak for about a minute.
"Hello?"
"My x-ray?"
"Oh that, it's right over there, by the door. When are you going to come get it?"
"I'll come right away, if you don't mind. I'll also bring my gun, if you don't mind."
"Come sometime in the afternoon, between 15:30 and 15:45, I'm having a long lunch today."

By 16:00 I am a proud owner of a huge brown envelope that contains pictures of my more than naked body (which I think I will get framed and put on a wall later) and a sealed envelope, which probably contains the report. I go to the post office and send the smaller envelope to the embassy. I tell -- I pay -- them to use their fastest courier.

3 days later I receive a phone call from Hague.

"Hello sir!" Gosh, she sounds really happy..
"Hi."
"We received some stuff from you. Why'd you send it to us?"
"You are the closest NZ embassy to me, your own website told me to send it to you."
"Oh, okay. We deal with it. Thanks!"
What a nice person, I think, hanging up the phone.

3 days later I receive an email, telling me that the report was incorrectly filled and that I'd have to submit a new one.

Oh good, I was looking for an excuse to re-visit the white corridors of hospital X, lined with old people slowly decomposing on their plastic chairs, some of them probably still waiting to be released from the hospital after being born.

I'm a special person, though, and I don't queue. Instead, when I arrive there, I walk directly into the radiologist's office. There's an open window to the x-ray room there, and I can see some woman in there, topless, putting on a larger version of the lead bikini bottom that I wore for my pictures. No one seems to care that I'm seeing all that. In fact, I don't care that I'm seeing all that. It really isn't all that. I consider nipples that are losing the battle against gravity too lazy to be worthy of my attention. Yea. With breasts like that, I will be looking straight into their eyes when I'm talking to them...

I manage to get the attention of the nurses in the room, explain them stuff, have them laugh and shrug it off and point me to an old doctor sitting in the corner of the room. I give the new blank forms to the doctor and ask him to fill them up. He fills them up, seemingly quite happy to have something to do. After he is done, he gives me the forms and asks:
"Was there something else?"
"Try turning them around, would you?"
"What? The fo--OH! Would you look at that, they are two-sided, aren't they! There's also questions on the back side of these papers, not just on the front side! Must be a really fancy printer, where these came out from!"
"It's a pretty cool printer, yes."
"It saves paper, too! When you print on both sides of the paper!"
"Yes--"
"I think it saves about 50% of the paper required for the printing job, doesn't it? That's really efficient!"
"Could you answer those questions, too, then?"
"I wonder if we have a printer like that, here, too..."
"Please?"
"Sure. Sure! What should I write here?"
"How about: 'This guy definitely doesn't have tuberculosis' after that part, where it asks if I have it?"
"Would they belive it?"
"They might be more suspicious, if you just leave it blank. Again."
"Yea... You might be right. They are foreigners, aren't they?"
"Indeed."
"Not like Finnish, foreigners..."
"You are writing it in Finnish, doc."
"What? Finn--oh, right!" A pause. "Isn't that good..?"

Ten minutes later I walk out with the new report, having triple-checked it just to be sure-ish. I mail it out and go have a beer before heading back to my office. It's less than two weeks to Christmas.

I finally receive the visa on 5th of January, 2009.

Happy new year. :)

Airport hopping

But only to visit the master, not the servants. :(

Typing this sitting in Helsinki airport, waiting for my connecting flight to London, and further on to Reading, where I'll be spending most of this week doing something that might remotely resemble work.

Got a message from the NZ bureaucrats on Friday: it seems they lost my visa application and are now looking for it with the very best of their tracking sheep. No word of the x-ray report I sent them 3 weeks ago -- guess they never even received that one. I have given up trying to hurry this thing up, really, and wouldn't mind the long wait...

...but it's just that I'm homeless now.

My lease on my apartment ended and I moved out last weekend, now living here and there with whoever has enough extra space to store me in for a night or two. Perhaps I should do like that Japanese guy in Mexico, squatting for several months in the airport, living on scraps and media attention. On a positive note the friends who took all my stuff seem to be genuinely enjoying them.

(I did keep the apartment for 1 extra month, well prepared to pay for an empty place, thinking that it would be a buffer long enough in case of delays. Little did I know the extend and true power of general incompetence.)