An Interview with ... Elaine : British Expat Community

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An Interview with ... Elaine

Written by Elaine and Britishexpats

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Tell us a little about yourself and family.

I am 34 years old and am married to my husband (33) with no children.

What were your reasons for moving to the New Zealand?

For a fresh start and to live somewhere with less people than the UK, in a rural environment which would offer us a more outdoors style of living, and hopefully a better quality of life. To spend more time together as a couple.

How long did the emigration process take?

9 months.

In which part of New Zealand do you live?

West Auckland.

In your opinion what are the biggest cultural differences between the New Zealand and the UK? (Perhaps things you were not prepared for, or were surprised about)

Casualness of dress, many children (but some adults too) do not wear shoes when out and about even in the pouring rain – this includes both European New Zealanders and Maoris. I’m not sure if this stems from Maori culture originally (which makes sense if living out in the bush or on the beach) but it seems a little dangerous to do when walking out on the street and I find it dirty and unhygienic to do so in shops and other public places. It also seems at a juxtaposition to the Maori cultural tradition of removing shoes when entering someone’s home as a sign of respect, as I would want to put shoes on when entering my home if they had been walking around barefoot on the streets!

Something else that surprised me here were the Radio stations, and the fact that presenters are allowed to swear on them - that came as quite a shock to me and I don’t agree with it, especially during the day when children might be listening. I know Kiwis are known for being more laid back in general but I do draw the line at the use of offensive language on public radio. That would be sackable in the UK I would think.

What are the things you enjoy most about living in New Zealand?

Proximity to the coast and the countryside. Auckland harbour and the city center. Auckland has a lovely, clean modern city center with lots of tall glass buildings interspersed with the older colonial style buildings that works well. The harbour front is lovely with cafes and restaurants and the views out towards the gulf islands.

The geographical features like the geothermal areas of Rotorua and Lake Taupo – these are amazing to me as a geographer! Rotorua is just fantastic with its geysers and hot springs and boiling mud pools and Lake Taupo is beautiful with its views towards the volcano. The volcanic valley just North of Taupo is an unique place to visit and is packed full of geothermal features like bright blue sulphur lakes and silica terraces and hot water lakes. It is the natural scenery and geographical features that drew me to NZ in the first place. I really want to visit the South Island and see the glaciers and Alps and Fjords ASAP.

The quality of the light is so much better here and everything looks brighter – the trees look very green and the flowers so vivid.

Relatively cheaper housing in many places than in the UK. The colonial style of some of the older buildings is also very pretty with their wrap around porches and fancy woodwork trim– Hamilton is a lovely city for this. Sadly, there is little evidence of this in the suburbs of Auckland.

We have a grape vine in our front garden!

The people are very friendly and informal and will come to talk to you if they think you are new. Everyone asks ‘How are you?’ and means it. The estate agent who sold us our house was so friendly and popped in to make sure we had settled in OK and also brought us a Christmas present! You would never get that in the UK!!

My husband likes his job here much better than in the UK – he works less and more favourable hours for the same pay and has a great boss who took us out for a meal and bought us gifts when we arrived and introduced us to his family.

Is there anything that you dislike about living in New Zealand?

City living – Auckland is a sprawling city in terms of actual size (in the top 10 in the world??) and the suburbs spread out with no real distinction between them. There are a lot of people.

Traffic – is bad around Auckland. Very busy during peak times and the driving skills here are terrible.

Houses – unless you can afford the affluent areas like the North Shore or Devonport, most of the affordable housing is now crammed in around Auckland. Plots are sub-divided and there is little privacy. Not all houses have A/C or heating and the summers get very hot and the winters are chilly, and these conditions are exacerbated by wooden houses with single-glazing. There are typically many windows in each room within a house which let in the heat during the summer and the cold, damp air during the winter.

Weather – the North of the North Island, including Auckland is sub-tropical and gets exceedingly humid during the summer. 100% humidity is regularly reached, often hovering around the 80-90% mark. Therefore the outdoor living one is striving for is simply not feasible in these conditions. Temperatures have also reached 40C recently in some areas of NZ, so combine this with the humidity levels and it is not that nice, and is certainly nothing like the UK, as many reference materials would have you believe.

Night-time temps are around the low to mid 20’s during the summer months which makes sleeping difficult. To add to its sub-tropical nature, tropical cyclones and storms pass across the top of the North Island during the summer with torrential downpours and high winds that usually last solid for 24-48 hours. It may be true that some areas of the South Island have similar weather to the UK, but as the majority of the jobs are in or around Auckland with a quarter of the population living there, then surely it makes sense to apply the weather in this region to that which is most typically associated with NZ.

Insect life/noise – In accordance with its sub-tropical environment, the North Island, including Auckland, has sub-tropical rainforests which attract a lot of insects, such as crickets, wetas, moths, ants and mosquitoes. The crickets here are big (about 2-3 inches) and are exceedingly noisy all day and all night long. I have had to wear ear plugs on some occasions at night-time in order to get any sleep.

Cost of living – food cost are a bit higher than in the UK.

Pubs/bars – around the Auckland area, licencing laws for the sale of alcohol are very strict. This is especially so in West Auckland which is governed by a Trust that do not like bars or pubs at all. There are no nice, friendly bars that are open late in the evenings at all near us, and very few in Auckland city center to say it’s a major, international city. Supermarkets in West Auckland also do not sell alcohol. Many people, both European New Zealanders and Maoris drink at home, so this restriction with alcohol is not stemmed from a cultural perspective.

Jobs – the recession is still in force here as NZ is behind the UK/USA on that time-scale, and so, whilst this has been on a smaller-scale here, it is still being felt. There are fewer jobs available, many people applying for them and unemployment is rising according to the latest figures. It is worth noting that NZ unemployment figures do not take into account any immigrants entering the country within the last 2 years as these are not eligible for any state benefits, so the actual figure will be higher than those published. I’ve been looking for a job now for the past 3 months and haven’t even had an interview yet. I’ve looked both within my field and outside, I’ve registered with a specialist recruitment agency, I’ve applied for many jobs, anything basically that I think I might be able to do and plenty that I know I could do, like shop assistants, reading assistants, library assistants. I’ve sent my CV off to all the companies in my field that I could find in the area, I regularly visit the main job websites and read all the local and regional papers for vacancies, and I’ve also walked round the shopping centers of the suburbs in West Auckland looking for ads in shop windows. I even drove 40mins into the city to apply for a part-time job in a 2nd hand bookshop (working just 2 days a week ) where I was told to fill in an interview ‘quiz’ sheet, which had questions on it about different authors and books, along with NZ general knowledge questions and your own opinions on the topics of homosexuality and racial discrimination which I thought rather dodgy questions indeed.

Qualifications – there is little cross-over between jobs in NZ and every job seems to have a degree or qualification attached to it, i.e there are bartending courses. There is a specific qualification for every type of job here and they all want previous work experience within that field too. I even recently saw a job vacancy for a perfume spritzer at the airport where previous experience was required!!! Everything is very much education focused here and I’m beginning to suspect that’s how the government make most of their money – through university fees etc. And I’m all for learning, I would like to go and learn new skills and further my career prospects, but course fees are expensive in NZ and I simply cant afford to until I’ve got a job. Besides which, not wanting to sound superior, but I’ve already got 2 degrees and 9 years experience in the science industry.

Fast Food – everything is fast food here and people do not eat healthily around Auckland. There are hundreds of bakeries that sell pies and cakes (and sandwiches too but never salads), hundreds of Burger Kings and Macdonalds with ridiculously low prices – much lower than in the UK – and hundreds of Chinese fast food takeaways. I have yet to see a salad bar! People here are generally over-weight and I think its just been published that NZ is now the 2nd highest country in the world with the biggest obesity problem.

Sheep – it’s a myth! Where are all these so-called sheep then? We’ve traveled around quite a bit now across the top 2 thirds of the North Island and I’ve hardly seen any.

What do you miss most now you are not living in the UK?

The weather (yes I know its crazy as I hated UK winters but this humidity is terrible), friends and family obviously, my previous job, the open British countryside, pubs of course and proper British bitter, Boots, Salad bars/health sandwich shops, decent cars – all Japanese here and people generally don’t look after them.

How badly, if at all has homesickness affected you?

Quite a lot. Skype is great but it’s just not the same and Christmas was very hard for me. I didn’t think I would miss my family as much as I have done.

If you, or your spouse, work how easy has it been to find employment?

My husband found a job in the UK before we left – his sector (Retail Management) is in demand out here as there are lots of supermarkets everywhere. He found his job really easily after registering with a Retail Recruitment agency, and only had an informal phone ‘chat’ style interview with his boss.

I have been looking for work now for the past 2-3 months and have yet to get an interview.

Has your quality of life improved?

Not yet, as it’s too humid to be outdoors doing anything remotely active at the moment, other than going swimming. As I’m struggling to find work, our finances are also a consideration so we cant afford to do too much traveling or expensive activities. As most of the jobs are around the Auckland area, then it does mean city living for most, which is not an improved quality of life in terms of peace, space, countryside views or reduced congestion.

How does cost of living compare?

Not totally sure yet as we’ve only been here 4 months so haven’t got into the swing of things with bills yet (and we’ve just had to get A/C installed too), but our mortgage is cheaper, although our house here is smaller than in the UK and it needs renovation work (as housing standards are lower here than in the UK). We anticipate that our fuel bills will be lower as I think A/C is not overly expensive to run, but food is higher. Petrol though is cheaper than in the UK so for outgoings, I would say that it probably works out the same as the cost of living in the UK. However, salaries are generally lower in NZ, plus its difficult to find a job at the moment, so I would say that it is slightly higher overall.

Living in or around Auckland is more expensive than other areas of NZ too it must be remembered.

In what way does New Zealand fit into your long-term plans?

Again, not sure yet, as its difficult to make a long-term decision when we’ve not been here that long. I definitely do not want to live in or around Auckland for very long as its just too crowded and busy and doesn’t represent the things I moved here for. But that depends on jobs. At the moment, given the choice, I would move back to the UK.

In retrospect is there anything you would change?

Yes, we would have looked for jobs in different areas, most likely in the South Island or the South of the North Island away from all the people, the higher house prices and the humidity.

Are there any final thoughts you would like to share?

New Zealand is portrayed as a country similar to Wales but with purer air, better weather and more geographically amazing features. And this does exist but not where the majority of the jobs are based in NZ. Most of the photos you see in travel brochures and magazines, or the shots they show you on the TV are taken in the South Island where the landscape and weather is much more diverse, and if you live in Auckland, it means an 8 hour car journey to Wellington, plus a 3 hour ferry crossing to the South Island, followed by another however many hours in the car before you reach these destinations. So it’s not like you can visit these places at the weekend unless you can afford flights. I’m not saying there aren’t lovely places to visit in the North Island as there are – Lake Taupo is gorgeous, along with the East Coast region of Hawkes Bay, and Rotorua is a geographer’s dream, but again, it takes to a while to get to these places as there are no proper motorways out of the cities.

Unless you already have a job in place, or know you can secure work in a certain area, the vast majority of people come to Auckland as this is where a quarter of the population live and thus where most of the jobs are. I read a few times that you can visit beaches in NZ where you are the only person on them, but I have yet to find one of these in the places we have visited.

We came to NZ looking for a more peaceful, back to basics way of life where we could become a part of a local, village community and hopefully start a family. We didn’t know a single person here and had never visited the country prior to moving, but we did extensive research with books, DVD’s, the internet and personal blogs and didn’t find enough negative reasons not to think ‘Lets give it a go’. All our friends who had been on holiday to NZ said what an amazing place it was, and how they thought they could live there, and with no children yet we thought now’s the time to do it. I’m not naïve either, I know it takes time to achieve your goals and settle into a new country and I’ll admit that patience is not my strong point. I’m just not convinced yet that it will be possible to achieve this here with the lack of jobs outside of major urban areas and our reduced financial status due to my lack of success in job hunting. And I’m just not sure that NZ is the country for me. I know that my children could possibly achieve a better quality of life if we managed to move to the country but I’m not sure now that I want them to grow up not really knowing the rest of their family. Its only when you move so far away from them that you really value the meaning of family.

I don’t regret our decision to move here as life is about trying, and you never know how things might work out or what might be around the corner.

Elaine

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(Image "Auckland" by James F Clay , via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.)

Last Updated ( Sunday, 17 April 2011 )