12 Sweet and Sour moments a year in New Zealand

A year ago, everything was different. Looking back to the time when we just arrived at NZ, I realized that a year can do a lot to a person, at least for me. Congratulations to me! 29th August 2018 marked my 1st anniversary as a resident in NZ. A lot of stuff happened and occupied me, hence the delay in posting this entry. Check out my random sweet and sour moments during my 1st year as NZ resident:

1)     Pleasure

I am super-duper happy having a chance of my life to be in a different country from where I was born. As I enjoy traveling to see a lot of new places, being able to live in another country is great. Plus, people call NZ a heaven on earth. A lot of places here to discover.

2)     Sub-Tropical Weather in Auckland

Have been getting rain or shine through all the year in Malaysia. So, moving to a four seasons country is exciting. Only that, Auckland doesn’t  quite get the notice. There’s no snow during winter, some of the tree doesn’t sleep in autumn and we get rain in summer. Sub-tropical weather is the right term for Auckland, the city of sails.

3)     Dude, where’s my car?

Just like the movie title. One fine day, when we’re about to go out and suddenly we found that our car was missing. This is not something that I would have imagine happen when migrated. Well…I am at No.2 safest country in the world (source: Global Peace Index 2018) where the ranking is determined by 23 factors, which includes murder rate, political terror and deaths from internal conflict. All this doesn’t mean I will be safe from burglary. Our car was stolen from tenants’ designated parking area.

What I learned from this experience is, Police Station doesn’t operate 24/7. In case of emergency, you just ring the #111, and make your report via phone. The officer in charge will send your report via email. Easy!  In my case, they found my car within a week. Excellent!

Other than this, NZ is indeed a safe country. Do you still remember when you used to walk alone to ‘kedai runcit’ (dairy) and bought cikedis (junk food) or anything that your parent asked you to buy during 1990s in Malaysia? Or Do you remember played in longkang ( drain )  and puddles, climbed tree, played pondok2 (play house)?  We still can have that here in New Zealand because it’s safe. Nobody going to kidnap you because you are at the end of the world hence the same reason police able to find my car.

4)     School’s swimming pool sabotaged

     I was delighted to know that my kid’s school installed a portable swimming pool. All the kids were able to have swimming lesson for 2 hours once a week and it’s included in the school curriculum.  Only that some people don’t get it and have no better things to do other than sabotaging the pool. The swimming pool only last for couple of months then the school decided to temporary stop the service until future notice. Ouch!

5)     Working with Kiwis

This is once in a lifetime experience for me. It’s either I do it or not kind of things. I still remember on the first night I arrived in Auckland and I opened my email and I got an interview invitation. I was so………happy and excited and of course relieved that I finally got an interview. I have been sending my CV to hundreds of companies for many months. Thank God, the first interview went well then I go through to a second interview and it went well too. I was hired, and it has been a year now. Great!

Kiwis working style is different compared to Malaysian, based on my personal experience. Different company may have different culture. I’ll tell you more on this in a separate entry. 😊

6)     Work/Life Balance

This is 100% true for me. The job market is rather small with only 5 million people so I work much less and can get home early by 4pm. The work life balance is significant to kiwis and I adapt well with this culture. yehaa!

7)     Expensive Property Rental

If you think property rental in KL is expensive, try to take a look at Auckland. The rental in Auckland is sky high that even for a small unit with 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom would cost you $500 a week. A WEEK. A BIG chunk of your salary is going to rental or property mortgage.

8)     Kiwis are friendly

I was scared because I think my English is not that good and my grammar always dropping on the floor. Nope…, forget all about vocab, grammar, tense or whatever. There’s no Grammar Nazi in NZ. Just in case, I just hide my ‘lah’ / Manglish accent in the cupboard.

9)     Say Thank you to bus driver

Another thing that I learned, and I think it’s sweet, is saying Thanks to the bus driver whenever someone drop off from the bus. You can simply say “Thanks Driver”, “Thank you” or “Cheers”.

10)  Teach your kids about religion, yourself!

I always take religion education for granted when I was in Malaysia because there are many ‘Sekolah Agama’ (religious school) and most of restaurant, meat and poultry are Halal. (Belief me, finding Halal food is not hard at all).So, this is an opportunity for me to teach and be responsible to my kid on religion. Yup, you can’t inherit faith, but I would try my very best to show what is Muslim belief and the way of life. InsyaAllah.

11)   The views, mountain and coast are as beautiful as pictured

       

    As I’ve mentioned earlier, NZ is a heaven on earth. All the views, mountain and beaches are wonderful. No filter needed.

12)  Free coffee

One of the many things that I enjoy in NZ is having a free coffee / tea or smoothies from my Distributors or Vendors. As I’m working in sales team, this is one of the perks that I get. Never let your tummy empty because hungry people are angry people.

I could go on and on with these sweet and sour things in New Zealand. 12 looks like a good number so I’ll stop. You have to experience yourself living in a different country because, visiting or holidaying won’t be enough to discover all the sweet and sour things of living abroad.

Are you moving to NZ or Auckland? Or do you live in Auckland? Tell me your side of the story.

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Nga Mihi,

routetokiwi