Living with the Kiwis: 2012-05-27

On Wednesday, I went into town to meet Jacques for lunch. I was excited because earlier that morning I had heard back from the job at World Challenge that I'd applied for an I will be having an interview this coming Wednesday. If successful, I will move on to round 2 of interviews with their top 3 candidates via Skype with headquarters in Australia (don't worry, the job is based in Auckland). After lunch, when I was wandering through town, I received an email from a job I had only applied to the day before, asking if I could come in for an interview. This one was for Education First (EF) High School Year Overseas. It's a Swedish company, only still developing in NZ. They teach people English in many countries across the world and send students away on an exchange year. I had my interview Thursday but they are still not sure if it will be a part of full-time position. I am still waiting to hear back about that one.

Wednesday night, we went to a pub quiz. Our team of 8 needed my America expertise on 3 questions in particular. I told them the baseball team that Moneyball was about, that Kentucky was the highlighted state on the map of the USA and that the city situated on Mount Royal was Montreal. We had a pretty good team in general and ended up coming 5th out of 16...not bad...

Friday, I went to meet with the Rodney North Harbour Health Trust (who the recruiting company, AER, passed on my details to about personal care work). I wasn't too sure if I was going in for another interview or just to discuss the job in more detail and find out my availability or what....turns out they had my name badge all made-up already with my employee number on the back and a back with manuals and time sheets in it. Today (Monday), I am going to meet with a mother and her 20-yr-old son with seizure disorder. So this will similar work to what I was doing at home, plus potentially a bit of elderly care as well. Depending on the outcomes of my other job interviews, I can fill up my schedule with Personal Care work if necessary, or leave it to a couple hours a day or week, filling in around another part or full-time job.

Friday night, I picked Jacques up from the bus from work and we went to check out NZ Sale's warehouse sale on the North Shore. It's a website offering supposedly super discounted clothing with new offers each day. We got there and there were millions of cars and people and we were there less than a hour after it had started. It was only on for 3 hours Friday night and supposed to be all day Saturday and Sunday (but I'm not sure they would have had anything left to sell!) It was impossible to move inside the place with all the racks of clothes so tightly packed and the amount of people pushing you around. Not to mention the amount of clothes that had already ended up on the floor. Shoes were scattered around the shelves...if you found one that you liked, good luck finding the match. Jacques was not too impressed because there was not a whole lot of guys clothing to begin with, plus he couldn't find anything in the right size either. Plus, although you were probably getting a really good deal on some items, others were probably not too discounted. ALL shoes were $30, dresses were $30 or 2 for $50 or 3 for $60. Men's dress shirts were $20 and 2 for $30...just shows you how overpriced most clothing is in this country. I think the whole of Albany was at this sale waiting for the doors to open. It was more of an experience and I decided taking pictures was more fun than trying to search for clothes. I don't think we stayed in there more than 5 minutes! Instead we went out of Indian for dinner :) One meal we can eat out together at the same place pretty easily. With Jacques' strict paleo diet and my vegan, he can just get a meat dish and not eat rice or naan and I get a veggie dish and we're both happy! It was delicious. Then of course I had to watch the American Idol finale! Because it's normally shown Fri and Sat nights here, they just combined the performances into a one hour show, then had a 1.5 hour break, then the 2 hr results show. I was happy with the outcome!

Saturday, we went to a different clothing sale (supposedly designer clothes mostly). But they cut or rip the labels out of things so you can't tell where it's from. Sometimes extra things are left on that say the brand. For example, I found a little summer shirt/dress with the first part of the label cut out but xxi was left behind and then the rubber straps were left in to hang it from which said forever 21 on them. Most people here wouldn't know what Forever 21 is, and not know that it's a pretty cheap store to begin with. Fortunately this one was only $5 so it was still a good deal. I saw another shirt from Express and a dress that was xhilertation brand...from Target, 2 others stores people here would not recognize. If you pick through very carefully, you can find some nicer things but there were lots of clothes and that's a lot of work! I did find one BeBe dress that fit me perfectly for $5, but the problem with lots of items is someone's gone and cut a chunk of material right out of the bottom near the seam (if you're lucky) or just made a slit somewhere else random. I thought I'd examined this one thoroughly enough, and only found a slit right on the seam, easily fixable, but when I had a closer look there was a curved cut right through the middle of the back of the dress...not so fixable, so that one had to stay. I did find another nice blue dress for $5 and another more casual dress for $15. Not too bad, 3 dresses for $25.

In the afternoon, we went to watch some of a NZ Olympic Weightlifting competition. Jacques is now signed up so he can compete in the future monthly events with some of his other CF buddies. Just more experience to improve what they are already doing in CrossFit. There were a couple of young kids (one lighter than me) who were the strongest and held NZ records. Pretty impressive to watch!

Saturday night, we met up with some friends at Deep Creek Brewing company (visiting with one especially who was over from Australia). We spent a few ours there sitting outside with just a light jacket on. Although it's winter, I can survive with that temperature, after dark and still able to sit around and visit outside without having to be completely bundled up! From there we went into town and went to SkyCity. Laura and I watched the boys play some Roulette for awhile, trying to help predict the winning numbers. It was a fun night.

Sunday, Jacques and I left for Whangarei by 9:30 to go and pick up some rubber matting won on TradeMe. He is going to use it to protect the garage floor when lifting weights, but we were collecting it from a horse farm. I warned him that anything that has been around horses is going to smell like one. He was skeptical at first, but after not even 5 minutes of having the stuff in the car you could smell it just standing OUTSIDE the car! Needless to say we drove with the windows down the rest of the day! We got some picnic foods at the grocery store and went to Whangarei falls for lunch. Nice picturesque place to eat. From there, we went to a Kauri park with boardwalks up in the trees and walked to see another waterfall along the trail. Once we began driving again to head south, the gas light in the car came on and then all of a sudden it cut off completely. Fortunately we hadn't been too far and there was a little pull off right where we needed it to be. We pulled in there and it was immediately stinking of gas. Jacques checked under the hood and the fuel line had come right off so the gas was just leaking onto the ground. Somehow the clip had come undone for it to come loose. Again, fortunately, there was also a man in this pull-in place getting ready for a run in the park with his son and dog. He offered to take Jacques quickly to the gas station before he left for his jog. Jacques reconnected the fuel line (and put the clip back on) and then we went to return the jug and fill up at the gas station. Everything went smoothly after that and fortunately it could not have been more than a 20-30 min delay to our day. Just a strange occurrence which we hope does not happen again. Perhaps the last time the car was serviced, someone did not reattach the clip properly or knocked it slightly out of place...who knows. Oh and we were in his dad's car, because we needed the space in the back with all the seats down for this rubber matting. While away, we found out his dad sold the honda and it was gone when we got home. Now we'll search for a car with a smaller engine (not 2.2 litre) so we don't pay a fortune for gas every week! One more stop on our way home, we checked out Ruakaka beach, huge and amazing, beautiful even on a gloomy-ish day so I'd love to see what it's like in the summer!

So this week, or at least until we get a cheaper replacement for the car, we will play musical cars with the 2 between the 4 of us! Fortunately, I can take the bus to my interview on Wed.