![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nerwengreenIt's been just over 9 weeks since I left Mobile, and I've been in New Zealand for almost 8 weeks. A ton of stuff has happened in that time, and for that matter since the last time I wrote anything about it in May.
My shipped stuff is still in the U.S. last I checked; apparently I dropped it off at their warehouse just after their previous container to New Zealand left, which made my stuff the first of the next container, and they've been collecting additional stuff to go into the container ever since. On the one hand, I kind of would like to have more of my stuff by now (especially clothes). On the other hand, stuff takes up space, and space costs money, so the longer it takes for them to send it, the less I have to pay.
My current place is a one-room flat. That is, one bedroom in someone else's house that is full of their stuff and set up the way they like it - and since the landlady is very seriously Christian, the decor is too. There are two other long-term flatmates in addition to the homeowner, and also a bed for a short-term (one week or so) flatmate, so sometimes there's five of us. There's officially two bathrooms, but everyone basically uses the upstairs one. I have a dorm-sized fridge with very little freezer space. There's no dishwasher, and everything has to be washed by hand right after we've used it so as not to leave messes in the way of other people wanting to use the kitchen.
Despite all that, it's not as bad as it sounds. I kind of like it actually. The landlady runs a tight ship on keeping things clean and tidy and organized (we have weekly cleaning rotation; so far I've only had to do it once, and I might escape my next turn this weekend because we have a downstairs short-term flatmate whose turn it might end up being...). So at least living with that many other people proceeds along pretty smoothly. And I have use of all the household stuff without having to buy anything other than food and such.
Also, the place is basically across the street from my office, which makes it very convenient to just go home for lunch (...and shower, I shower at lunchtime to not have to compete for bathroom time with everyone else).
Unfortunately, there's not enough room in there for all of my stuff after it gets here. So I've been looking for somewhere else to live. Housing is extremely expensive here. Most places that are large enough cost twice what I can afford - and that's unfurnished with no utilities included. However, I've found a place on the other end of town (the Central Business District, or CBD, as they call it here) that is slightly less than I'm paying now for twice the space, including electricity, wifi, and my own bathroom. The downside is it's unfurnished, and appears to be an adapted crawlspace next to the main house's basement. The neighborhood is nice and quiet though, and the location would actually put me closer to all the places I typically go (except for work, which would be a lot farther).
The previous tenant in that space was apparently a young loud party girl, and the carpet is kind of disgusting at the moment. The main leaseholder wants to take a month to freshen up the place before making it available, which works out fine for me because I don't realistically expect my stuff to arrive before December. Also it gives me more time to save up for buying furniture and basic appliances (I no longer have any furniture or appliances; sold or gave away all of it (kind of wish I hadn't; furniture and appliances are also hideously expensive here)). So hopefully if all goes well, my lodging problems will finally be solved.
Then there's the transportation problem. I sold my car right before getting here (for much less than I hoped for, alas). My current transportation option is walking. There's a public bus system but it's kind of infrequent and stops running early. My buyable options are bikes, mopeds, or a really cheap used car. So far I'm still leaning in favor of an ebike even though that's weirdly the most expensive option (at least up front). A moped would get me farther places faster, but I'd have to register it and either get gas or worry about running out of electric charge (there is not a network of moped charging stations here, like they're building in Taiwan, which is basically moped central). An ebike, if it runs out of charge, will still work as a regular bike. So the other good option is a car, which would allow me to go pretty much anywhere without being confined to Nelson, but would come with registration, licensing, insurance, inspection, maintenance, fuel, possibly taxes, parking costs, etc.
I kind of like the landlady's setup actually; she has an ebike for toodling around town, and a camper for going farther places (with a rack to carry the ebike) - where she then doesn't have to worry about remote lodging. She also has a moped but I've not seen her use it - if she needs to go somewhere far, she typically gets a ride in someone's car. She's trying to sell the camper for $85k, which I definitely am not up to affording, but maybe it'll be something to consider working my way up to.
There's a used car place within walking distance that sells very cheap cars that I'll have to look into (especially if they have financing). The ebike brand I've settled on wanting to look at is a relatively new company with very few shops, and the nearest one is in a town 1.5 hours away (by car). Apparently bike shops here are very attached to whatever brands they already sell, and won't consider trying to get anything they don't already carry (I've asked two of them). Getting an ebike might end up being harder to do and less convenient, but it has occurred to me that now would be a perfect time to get away from using fossil fuels on a daily basis altogether.
Of course, mooching rides off of friends with cars is still using fossil fuels, but at least it would be a start...
And speaking of friends. Making new ones in my various hobbies is going pretty well so far. There's a fairly active local drumming community here, with full moon drum circles on the beach. Just as soon as I have the transportation option to actually get to the beach, I'll hopefully be able to join them. There's also a board gaming community here that meets at the local nerd shop on Thursdays, and I've made friends with the guy who owns all the games, who then invited me to join his other board game group that meets on Saturdays (and thus, the mooching of rides in his car began). I haven't looked much into the local yoga scene, other than to note that it's fairly expensive (everything is expensive here :p), but did find a centrally located gym that I like, that offers yoga classes. The yoga classes are kind of general, but I'm considering joining the gym anyway to make use of their space and weights to carry on doing the yoga I was doing before (of all the things about Mobile, the yoga studio is what I most miss). Then there doesn't appear to be a Nanowrimo community to speak of; I've joined the New Zealand - Elsewhere region which is the one that applies to Nelson, wrote an intro post yesterday, and ... crickets. Sigh. Oh well.
Impressions of New Zealand so far... the scenery is indeed fantastic, but it's not the main thing I came here for, because frankly fantastic scenery exists everywhere. The people are as sarcastic as advertised, which is awesome, because my default personality and sense of humor FINALLY have a place to fit in without being horribly offensive. People in general are really polite and civil and capable of behaving like responsible adults, as opposed to the typical American entitled mindset (just like when I moved out of Georgia and stopped being immersed in their culture of passively hostile racism, I now have a frame of reference to compare ...). A lot of them are from Europe or Asia. Somehow even the dogs are well-behaved in public. It's pretty common to see them walking or running alongside their owners without being on a leash, and also without running up to strangers and trying to jump on them. They're really big on recycling here, and not using single-use disposable anything. This makes some things much less convenient, but I like the effort. Downsides: even though they're very proudly locally sourced for everything, the locally sourced stuff is somehow still really expensive and not necessarily any better than the mass produced imported stuff. I would've thought locally sourced would mean less expensive due to less transport, but it doesn't seem to help. Maybe it's because it's also all organic and free range and cage free and gluten free and GMO free and etc.
And on that note. At some point I should probably get back to focusing on the main reason I'm here for, to work on my PhD project. I've read a whole bunch of papers so far and have the beginning glimmerings of some ideas for how to write my literature review that is due in a year, but it's hard to focus when there's lots of basic life and living still to sort out.
My shipped stuff is still in the U.S. last I checked; apparently I dropped it off at their warehouse just after their previous container to New Zealand left, which made my stuff the first of the next container, and they've been collecting additional stuff to go into the container ever since. On the one hand, I kind of would like to have more of my stuff by now (especially clothes). On the other hand, stuff takes up space, and space costs money, so the longer it takes for them to send it, the less I have to pay.
My current place is a one-room flat. That is, one bedroom in someone else's house that is full of their stuff and set up the way they like it - and since the landlady is very seriously Christian, the decor is too. There are two other long-term flatmates in addition to the homeowner, and also a bed for a short-term (one week or so) flatmate, so sometimes there's five of us. There's officially two bathrooms, but everyone basically uses the upstairs one. I have a dorm-sized fridge with very little freezer space. There's no dishwasher, and everything has to be washed by hand right after we've used it so as not to leave messes in the way of other people wanting to use the kitchen.
Despite all that, it's not as bad as it sounds. I kind of like it actually. The landlady runs a tight ship on keeping things clean and tidy and organized (we have weekly cleaning rotation; so far I've only had to do it once, and I might escape my next turn this weekend because we have a downstairs short-term flatmate whose turn it might end up being...). So at least living with that many other people proceeds along pretty smoothly. And I have use of all the household stuff without having to buy anything other than food and such.
Also, the place is basically across the street from my office, which makes it very convenient to just go home for lunch (...and shower, I shower at lunchtime to not have to compete for bathroom time with everyone else).
Unfortunately, there's not enough room in there for all of my stuff after it gets here. So I've been looking for somewhere else to live. Housing is extremely expensive here. Most places that are large enough cost twice what I can afford - and that's unfurnished with no utilities included. However, I've found a place on the other end of town (the Central Business District, or CBD, as they call it here) that is slightly less than I'm paying now for twice the space, including electricity, wifi, and my own bathroom. The downside is it's unfurnished, and appears to be an adapted crawlspace next to the main house's basement. The neighborhood is nice and quiet though, and the location would actually put me closer to all the places I typically go (except for work, which would be a lot farther).
The previous tenant in that space was apparently a young loud party girl, and the carpet is kind of disgusting at the moment. The main leaseholder wants to take a month to freshen up the place before making it available, which works out fine for me because I don't realistically expect my stuff to arrive before December. Also it gives me more time to save up for buying furniture and basic appliances (I no longer have any furniture or appliances; sold or gave away all of it (kind of wish I hadn't; furniture and appliances are also hideously expensive here)). So hopefully if all goes well, my lodging problems will finally be solved.
Then there's the transportation problem. I sold my car right before getting here (for much less than I hoped for, alas). My current transportation option is walking. There's a public bus system but it's kind of infrequent and stops running early. My buyable options are bikes, mopeds, or a really cheap used car. So far I'm still leaning in favor of an ebike even though that's weirdly the most expensive option (at least up front). A moped would get me farther places faster, but I'd have to register it and either get gas or worry about running out of electric charge (there is not a network of moped charging stations here, like they're building in Taiwan, which is basically moped central). An ebike, if it runs out of charge, will still work as a regular bike. So the other good option is a car, which would allow me to go pretty much anywhere without being confined to Nelson, but would come with registration, licensing, insurance, inspection, maintenance, fuel, possibly taxes, parking costs, etc.
I kind of like the landlady's setup actually; she has an ebike for toodling around town, and a camper for going farther places (with a rack to carry the ebike) - where she then doesn't have to worry about remote lodging. She also has a moped but I've not seen her use it - if she needs to go somewhere far, she typically gets a ride in someone's car. She's trying to sell the camper for $85k, which I definitely am not up to affording, but maybe it'll be something to consider working my way up to.
There's a used car place within walking distance that sells very cheap cars that I'll have to look into (especially if they have financing). The ebike brand I've settled on wanting to look at is a relatively new company with very few shops, and the nearest one is in a town 1.5 hours away (by car). Apparently bike shops here are very attached to whatever brands they already sell, and won't consider trying to get anything they don't already carry (I've asked two of them). Getting an ebike might end up being harder to do and less convenient, but it has occurred to me that now would be a perfect time to get away from using fossil fuels on a daily basis altogether.
Of course, mooching rides off of friends with cars is still using fossil fuels, but at least it would be a start...
And speaking of friends. Making new ones in my various hobbies is going pretty well so far. There's a fairly active local drumming community here, with full moon drum circles on the beach. Just as soon as I have the transportation option to actually get to the beach, I'll hopefully be able to join them. There's also a board gaming community here that meets at the local nerd shop on Thursdays, and I've made friends with the guy who owns all the games, who then invited me to join his other board game group that meets on Saturdays (and thus, the mooching of rides in his car began). I haven't looked much into the local yoga scene, other than to note that it's fairly expensive (everything is expensive here :p), but did find a centrally located gym that I like, that offers yoga classes. The yoga classes are kind of general, but I'm considering joining the gym anyway to make use of their space and weights to carry on doing the yoga I was doing before (of all the things about Mobile, the yoga studio is what I most miss). Then there doesn't appear to be a Nanowrimo community to speak of; I've joined the New Zealand - Elsewhere region which is the one that applies to Nelson, wrote an intro post yesterday, and ... crickets. Sigh. Oh well.
Impressions of New Zealand so far... the scenery is indeed fantastic, but it's not the main thing I came here for, because frankly fantastic scenery exists everywhere. The people are as sarcastic as advertised, which is awesome, because my default personality and sense of humor FINALLY have a place to fit in without being horribly offensive. People in general are really polite and civil and capable of behaving like responsible adults, as opposed to the typical American entitled mindset (just like when I moved out of Georgia and stopped being immersed in their culture of passively hostile racism, I now have a frame of reference to compare ...). A lot of them are from Europe or Asia. Somehow even the dogs are well-behaved in public. It's pretty common to see them walking or running alongside their owners without being on a leash, and also without running up to strangers and trying to jump on them. They're really big on recycling here, and not using single-use disposable anything. This makes some things much less convenient, but I like the effort. Downsides: even though they're very proudly locally sourced for everything, the locally sourced stuff is somehow still really expensive and not necessarily any better than the mass produced imported stuff. I would've thought locally sourced would mean less expensive due to less transport, but it doesn't seem to help. Maybe it's because it's also all organic and free range and cage free and gluten free and GMO free and etc.
And on that note. At some point I should probably get back to focusing on the main reason I'm here for, to work on my PhD project. I've read a whole bunch of papers so far and have the beginning glimmerings of some ideas for how to write my literature review that is due in a year, but it's hard to focus when there's lots of basic life and living still to sort out.
