We Have Finally Settled Down

Today is the beginning of another week and I was supposed to follow J on his school excursion to Owlcatraz, a bird park , a 30 km ride from Palmerston North. It was postponed till next week because of the bad weather today and hence this give me the opportunity to update my blog.

We have more of less settled down now after getting our rented property last Friday. We have made many new friends, attended the weekly meditation classes held at one of our friends place, J has even enrolled in a Chinese class here, have got our New Zealand car license, applied for a few job openings here, got our telephone and internet line going and even made a 200km trip south to Wellington.

The journey was Ok except that the weather was not that fantastic. We were passing through the rural Manawatu where we were welcomed by the beautiful scenary of mountains and hundreds of animals feeding on grass. It was a good journey for me to accustome myself to NZ roads again after an absence of 15 years. I was also please with the performance of the car and the handling was good. To be fair, I was only travelling at 100km/h as I do not want to get a speeding ticket on my first trip outside Palmerston North.

I will be getting a lawn mower in the next couple of days after doing research on this subject matter for the last 4 days. For someone living in urban Singapore for the past 40 years, you really do not know much about lawn mowing except that it is part and parcel of life here in NZ and you need an equipment to do the job for you. Robert even suggested getting a almb to do the job for you which is not a bad idea.

My impression so far of Palmerston North is that people are very laid back and very friendly especially the sales people. When you want to buy something, they will explain to you in every detail, give you a quote and ask you to shop around other places for better quotes and you decide not to buy anything, they are still friendly towards you. Another thing that impress me is the honesty and trust given to the public. In supermarkets here, you do your own weighing and check out at the counter. If this happens in Singapore, all our NTUC, Giants, will go bankrupt one day. Taking about food, we can get practically anything here including prawns, belacan, brahms paste, bak hu, frozen roti prata, practically anything and so if you are heading to NZ sometime, do not be bothered to stock food up.

Vincent