auchmeddan

We finally got the last of our shipped items yesterday. It’s taken a couple of months to get here, but everything turned up in one piece and Jules unpacked our boxes today. This is the first time in 6 years we’ve had all our belongings in one country.

We went out last night to see “Casino Royale” and were shocked at how good it was. I really wasn’t expecting much from it (or the new Bond) but it looks like I was very wrong. After the horror-show of “Die Another Day” it appears the franchise is back.

For our first movie going experience in NZ we used the Gold Lounge at Reading Cinema which is full of reclining seats, free popcorn and sodas, and unobstructed views of the screen. They also let you order drinks at the bar and set times for them to bring them to your seat. It was definately nice having beers turn up at set intervals, but I think in future I’ll order spirits to keep the liquid content down.

….and it blows. Literally.

Today is the first day of summer in NZ, and it’s been cold, windy and rainy in Wellington today. Just to cheer me up even more I took a look at Ondrej’s website and saw that he’s been diving with Eagle Rays and Octopus.

I’m very jealous. I need a dive holiday.

For the first time since January, Jules will be in paid employment as of tomorrow. Hooray!!

Jules working will not just have an impact on us, but also on the pair of ducks that live around our apartment block. Jules has been feeding them bread and muesli every day, and I think they have come to expect these regular handouts now. We spotted them outside this morning hanging around the grounds and when we opened our kitchen window to throw some bread out we almost ended up with the female in our kitchen. I guess she was hungry since she flew up to us as soon as she realised food was on it’s way.

We’ve also finally got around to uploading a few photos of our apartment today. They are available here.

For now, here’s a photo of me playing the Xbox 360 on our lovely 50″ TV.

We finally have broadband access at home again! Hooray!

Not having internet at home is incredibly hard for me, especially as very restrictive policies at work mean I can’t check personal email there.

We will start updating the blog and responding to emails again shortly.

I start work on Tuesday for Axon Computer Systems in Wellington, and We found an apartment near George and Emma which we move into this weekend. We went out yesterday and bought some essentials for the place - fridge, bed, etc. It’s the first time we’ve owned furniture since 2000, so it was a strange experience to be in a store choosing appliances, especially since we took out Credit for some of the appliances (which is shockingly easy to get).

We’ll update some photos once we move in.

After 4 flights (two of which were delayed) and around 40+ hours of travel we arrived safely in New Zealand yesterday. We’re both a little tired, jet-lagged, and still getting our heads around the fact this is not a vacation, but so far things are OK and we feel fine.

Now we need to get down to the serious stuff of finding jobs, a place to live, and starting this new life properly. Fortunately, we have George and Emma here to help guide us in this. It certainly makes things easier.

We haven’t updated for a while as time has just started to slip away from us now. In three weeks time we’re going to be in New Zealand. Scary!

The Edinburgh Film Festival ended pretty well for us with “The Oh in Ohio”, an interesting documentary called “The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief” and Kevin Smith’s “Clerks 2″ which was one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I love Jay’s Buffalo Bill/Silence of the Lambs bit, but the deconstruction of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was probably the biggest crowd pleaser.

Now that Edinburgh has calmed down a bit with the end of the Festival I’ll need to try and get around the town to take some pictures and visit a couple of places I just couldn’t face in a huge crowd of tourists. It will be nice to spend some time in the city before we leave, revisiting some old haunts.

Too vague? OK. It’s The Final Countdown. I only have a few days left at work, and it’s less than 2 weeks until we leave Bermuda.

Jules is boxing items to ship to NZ, selling the TV and Car, and sorting out the clothes we need for Palm Beach/The Bahamas and Scotland (are there two regions on earth with more opposing definitions of Summer?). I closed my savings account today and moved our savings to the bank, copied our passports and Residence visas, and agreed to sell my bike this morning.

It’s getting a bit hectic now, but I can see it coming together. We’ll be gone before we know it.

I finally got around to doing something with our Bungy footage from our New Zealand Vacation in February 2005. The largest one is the Nevis Highwire Bungy - a 134M jump from a cablecar.

The file is around 16MB, so if you are on a slow connection I’d recommend hitting play, then pause the file until the bar builds up along the bottom. When it nears the end, press play.

Almost a year ago, we started the online application form to emigrate to New Zealand. At the end of April we submitted our application. In September we submitted all the forms, references, medical certs, etc. In November I had an assessment interview to dig a bit deeper into my understanding of NZ and why we wanted to settle there. I was good, and didn’t mention Hobbits or Orcs once.

On December 2nd, we were approved for Resident Visas.

This is a pretty exciting (and slightly scary) time for us. We’ve been given a year to turn up in NZ, so we’re going to take advantage of that and wait until next September before going down.

Jules finishes working here on Jan 20th 2006. I’m going to finish working in June. Then we’re heading to the Bahamas for our Tiger Shark trip before going home for a couple of months. It’s going to be strange. It’s kind of like the last time we’ll really be able to call Scotland “home”. Once we are residents in NZ, that will be our home. It’s not like being in Bermuda where you know you can never settle, so we always thought of Edinburgh as home, even though we thought less and less about settling back there. I’ve got a lot of jumbled thoughts in my head about this, as is probably apparent from my rambling…

The important thing now is to organise ourselves, and enjoy the next few months here before we leave for good.