21 Months of Good Life (Part 3 - Bye Welly and Hello Perth)

This post has been long overdue...

We finally left Wellington in October 2008. We'll never forget Wellington as we were bringing a piece of it with us: Joanna.

Imelda was 3 month pregnant when we moved to NZ and despite what the local news said about the appalling state of public health system in NZ, we still found that it worked wonders for us.

We were blessed having these people who helped us through the process: our midwife Kath Boyle who helped with Imelda's pregnancy and Joanna's early weeks (while she's struggling with her jaundice and weight loss); the team in Wellington hospital who handled the cesarean delivery really well; Plunket nurses who helped us monitoring Joanna's growth (and gave us peace of mind); and all our friends here who shared their experience and lent helping hands.

Here she is now, a 21 month old kiwi :-)



Now it's time to savour new experience. Haere ra, Aotearoa...

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21 Months of Good Life (Part 2: Four Seasons in One Day)

We are leaving Wellington this month. This is the second installment of the high points during our 21 month tenure here...

Wellington weather is not exactly the high point of living here, but hey, you will only treasure happiness through suffering.

I had never really bothered about weather forecast when I was still in Indonesia or Singapore. That changed when we got here, life was pretty much controlled by the weather. When it's bad we stayed at home and when it's good we tried to get out and enjoy the day (or doing our laundry and hanging the clothes outside :-p). The only problem was that the forecast was quite often inaccurate. Can't blame those people in weather forecast as a day in Wellington can start with sunny morning which turns to heavy rain and gale by noon.

Winter was pretty depressing here (I guess also there and everywhere...). It's probably the only thing we disliked about Wellington. We always fell sick at least twice in the winter period. Electricity bill also went through the roof as our house was not very well insulated (as most houses here), and we needed to use space heater all day. Last year it was like 600 bucks in a month when Joanna was just born and we determined to keep the whole house warm 24/7.

So what kept us going then?

The hope of good summer days of course!

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21 Months of Good Life (Part 1: First Impression)

We are leaving Wellington this month. This is the first installment of the high points during our 21 month tenure here...

I still remember the date, 10 January 2007, when we landed in Wellington Airport from Changi Airport, Singapore. It was raining and windy when we arrived. Excited, as we realized it would be a different ball game altogether.

I liked this place right off the bat. I'd never been very comfortable with crowds, and here they only have 400,000 people, just a tenth of Singapore population, and a err.. tiny percentage of Jakarta population. People are generally polite and friendly. It was refreshing when the first time I took a bus and passengers were thanking the bus driver when they got off. I must have spent too much time in Singapore, when people were confused when you said 'please' or 'thanks' :-p.

We went out to buy groceries. Heck, food stuffs seemed to be very expensive (apparently we went to the 'wrong' supermarket though). Eating out could also break you wallet. In Singapore, 4 bucks could get you far, while buying Chinese food here would cost at least 7 dollars at that time.

First day at work, it was 5 o'clock, I looked around... Hey, where's every body??? The lax kiwi lifestyle was definitely NOT a myth. I packed my bag and headed back home. Well, when in Rome we do what the Romans do, don't we?

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Walk On...

It's been long overdue...

Liverpool 2 - Manc U 1

Have a great Sunday

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Lame Excuse

Have you ever heard or read people who declared this:

Science rules, God doesn't exist, it's not logical! (while quoting Charles Darwin and his evolution theory)

I'll give these people two names: Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal

Newton and Pascal have contributed more to the world of logical thinking, they have explained how life works (think of Newton's laws of motion and how it explains huge range of physical phenomena!), yet Newton and Pascal believed in the existence of God.

Do these people think they are smarter than Newton or Pascal?

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When music was still good (II)...

One of Sting's gem. This one is the live version, which I think is better than the recording version. Beware, you're about to see real musicians here! Too bad he didn't have it in his set list when I saw him live in Singapore in 2005...

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How rich are you?

Found this interesting site: Global Rich List.

Out of curiosity, I put my first salary in 1998, and amazingly I'm still in the top 15% of the world rich list, and I thought I was underpaid BACK THEN!!!

You should try this. It's a good therapy when you're stuck in rat race.

When I met a friend who was living in Australia, I asked him whether he enjoyed living there compared with living in Indonesia. And his answer was...

"Yeah, I like it here because there's no pressure to earn more money just to live a decent life"

Class!!!

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