Back on the property ladder

We finally found a house! Well, we hadn't been looking THAT long, but it felt like we had. Our house has 3 bedrooms, a very ugly bathroom (some renovations in our future), and absolutely gorgeous gardens in the back. We're less than a mile from a trailhead that will take us into the port hills and a whole network of trails.

Buying a house in NZ is different than in America. For one, buyers do not have real estate agents. We haven't had any agent helping us find a house, although plenty of sellers' agents have been on our asses, asking for feedback from their open homes. Word to the wise: when you go to an open home in NZ, if you are not interested in the house, leave a fake phone number on their registry. Otherwise, they will call you.

Another difference is that we had to hire a lawyer. We did not need a lawyer to buy our house in Arizona. Our lawyer will sort out the title for us and get a LIM (Land Information Memorandum) from the city council for us. This will tell us if there are any improvements to the house that were not properly permitted by the council, where the easements are, how old the house is, etc.

Our offer has been accepted now, so we're in the "conditional" phase. Our offer was conditional on the title, LIM, and a building report being satisfactory to us. We have a home inspector going to the house tomorrow to have a look-see. We were amazed to find out from the lawyer that only about 5% of home buyers in NZ bother with a building inspection. This may be due to the prevalent attitude here that "she'll be right." We don't yet have that attitude. We can't imagine taking on a mortgage without first having some assurance that the house isn't about to fall down.

We have 7 days to get this stuff sorted, and then our contract goes unconditional (assuming we're happy with the information we get). There's no escrow or title company involved. Our deposit is sitting in the sellers' estate agent's trust account. On the day we close, our bank will pay the rest of the money to the seller (or their mortgage holder, I guess), and it will be done. We hear there are only a couple pieces of paper to sign when we close. Not like in America, where we had to take half a day off work to go to the title company and endure a marathon document-signing exercise.

We close on February 1st.

NZ's PM in NYC

New Zealand's prime minister, John Key, is in New York for the United Nations general assembly. The NZ press has been giddy with the possibility that our PM might have a face-to-face meeting with Barack Obama, Superstar. The NZ Herald reported this earlier in the week:

Prime Minister John Key leaves today for a politically high-octane week in New York meeting US President Barack Obama, world leaders, the head of the United Nations and appearing on a TV show watched by more than three million people.

Mr Key will be front and centre on the international stage, with a one-on-one meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and a speech to the General Assembly, but most interest will focus on an opportunity to meet United States President Barack Obama.

The pair have talked by phone but the chance to chat and shake hands at a function the President is hosting will be the first meeting.

The headlines all said that Key was going to meet with Obama, as if Obama had personally invited Key into the oval office. But Key played it down. He said he might just 'rub shoulders' with Obama.

Tonight the 6 o'clock news reported that Key actually got to exchange a few words with Obama. Obama reportedly told Key that he enjoyed talking on the phone with him that one time. AND he looks forward to talking with him more in the future. AND (as if that weren't enough) Key and his wife were invited to a party hosted by the Obamas! The news presenter was pretty freaking giddy when he reported this.

It's a big deal for little New Zealand to get any attention from the leader of the free world. This could be New Zealand's time to shine. Nuclear deproliferation is all in vogue now, and as we're sure you already know, New Zealand has a no-tolerance policy toward nuclear power. We don't use it. We don't condone it. We don't even let ships carrying nukes dock in our ports.

If you want to hear more from John Key, he's going to be on the Late Show with David Letterman on Thursday night. It sounds like he's just reading the Top 10 List and won't actually be interviewed, but you know, it's not like he's a prime minister of a whole country or anything...

Some thoughts

Thought we'd share an assortment of the thoughts that have been floating through our immigrant minds these last couple weeks... bins, guns, and 9/11.

Bins

Christchurch has a great rubbish (garbage) collection system. This may seem like an odd thing to rave about, but wait til you hear. The city provides 3 collection bins - red for rubbish, yellow for recycling, and green for organics. The green bin is collected every week. The yellow and red bins are picked up fortnightly (sidebar - as an American, I thought the word 'fortnightly' went out of style in like 1590, but it turns out it's still widely in use. I guess saying "2 weeks" is uncool.) We can't believe how little rubbish we have now that we separate out recycleables and organics. We probably only fill up one bag every 2 weeks. Incredible!

The city is taking our organics bin and making a giant compost heap. Why isn't every city doing this? This new system just started this year, but Christchurch says it hopes to reduce the amount of domestic rubbish going to landfill by 1/3.

The other great thing about the organics bin is that it got us to start doing our own composting. Since we were already separating out the organics, it made sense to keep them for ourselves and make our own compost. We have our very own stinky heap of black gold in the garden right now.

Guns

A couple days ago I was walking home from work and a police officer was walking in front of me. He had on the full officer attire: hat, vest, boots. But no gun. The police officer had no gun. I asked around, and it turns out the regular beat cops don't carry guns. There is a special armed forces that will be called out if guns are needed. Gareth says it was the same in Britain. This makes sense to me.

I used to see cops with guns in the Starbucks in Phoenix , and I always thought, "Do you really need a gun at your side to order that venti mocha?" Somehow, having guns around - even on a police officer - made me feel less safe. But maybe that's just me.

There was a story in the paper this week about street violence. The gist of the story was that violent crime had become more deadly in recent years because more people were carrying knives. They were comparing fist fights to knife fights. It's strangely comforting to think that if we're attacked by a thug, he's probably not going to have a gun. We can totally run away from a knife.

9/11

Of course, the anniversary of 9/11 happened the week before last. It did not go unnoticed here on the other side of the world. Christchurch has its own sculpture to honor the fallen firefighters. It's made of 3 of the actual burnt girders taken from the World Trade Center wreckage. New York City gave these to Christchurch as a gift so that it could build a memorial.

The American Club (yes, there's an American Club here!) put on a small memorial service that included speeches by the mayor and an American Embassy representative, as well as a dove release. Up in Auckland, firefighters climbed the stairs of a tall building in full gear in honor of the NYC firefighters who climbed to their death.

Botanical Gardens

Today we went for a walk through Christchurch's Botanical Gardens. Entry is free. There were heaps of people out enjoying the sunny day. Not everything is blooming yet, but there was a nice preview of what's to come.

We're really enjoying being back in a place where the seasons change... :-)

A penguin story

This story about penguins at Christchurch's International Antarctic Centre is too cute:

By Shahra Walsh, The Press

Spring heralds the start of the breeding season for penguins at the International Antarctic Centre, which means sweet serenades, love triangles, and sometimes, bitter heartbreak.

Penguin keeper Bob Morgan said the centre's little blue penguins work hard and risk rejection to win over a mate. "There’s lots of squawking and carry on. The males do a lot of singing and they’ll ponce up to a [female] bird. If she’s receptive, she won’t attack them. If she doesn’t want to know she’ll just turn round and whack - it’s a bit like true life," he said.

And like true life, not all love birds live happily ever after. One such pair was Alex and CC who arrived at the centre as a couple three years ago. "They’d been together for seven years when they came here but alas and alack CC decided she wanted a fresh start so she dumped Alex unceremoniously and moved in with Elvis. "Alex is devastated. It happened 12 months ago and he still stands outside her burrow calling out," he said.

Morgan said that although Alex will "move on eventually, his role in life is to create other penguins so he’ll eventually forsake her and go look for another partner."

Jilted penguin Mo, who used to share a burrow with Austin, has also had to move on with his life. "Mo arrived here friendly with Austin and we thought Mo was female. Turns out they were both blokes. They were like a couple of bachelors in a flat. "Mo started moulting and lost all his feathers and looked terribly unattractive, so Austin left him. Then Mo got a wonderful coat of feathers again and Austin went back to see him but Mo said no way," Morgan explained. Mo is now happily paired up with Half-pint, a pair that were perhaps drawn together by a common disability - both have injured left flippers.

Twenty-six little blue penguins live at the centre, most of which are rescued and arrive with various injuries and disabilities. Although many of the centre’s couples are nesting, Morgan said it is unlikely any of the eggs are fertile. "Most of our birds are much older than they would get to in the wild, so we expect those eggs to be infertile. We do not raise penguins for release into the wild, we are concerned with looking after birds that can’t look after themselves," Morgan said. The breeding season will continue over the next couple of months, and like a popular television soap opera, there’s sure to be more romance and drama in store for the centre’s favourite characters.

Stan Helms to Bridal Path

We took a wee walk this morning in the hills above Lyttelton. We parked the car on a nearly vertical incline near the trailhead. Have you ever noticed that houses built along really steep streets look like they're crooked? They're not though. The street is.

Anyway, we then walked up the Stan Helms track, up to Summit Rd. We stopped to admire the Pioneer Women's Memorial, and then came down the Bridal Path track. The Bridal Path is the trail that pioneers used to get over the hills and into Christchurch when they first arrived in Lyttelton Port 150 years ago.

Here's the entrance to the trail. This is a Maori wood carving. You usually see them over the entrances to maraes (meeting houses).

This is the Pioneer Women's memorial: "they passed this way" it says.

Coming down the Bridal Path now. This trail is much wider and more straight-forward than the Stan Helms trail. It's basically a gravel road all the way down.

We saw a total of about 15 people on our walk this morning, and one of them was the general manager of the company Lindsay works for. It's a small world afterall... a small, small world.