johntmanic

That's ashame then mate.

But what do you mean by several UK comforts?

As I said earlier on in this post, it's somewhere where I've never even thought about going until I got a random phone call one evening?

But the difference for me and you is my gf wants to go more than anything in the world (probably more than me ha ha).

yick pie eater

UK comforts, depends what your interests are but silly little things, like watching sport (not in the middle of the morning), having a pint with your mates that sort of thing.

My gf was keen to go and then after a year she wanted to come back, it's always the women!! lot to answer for

I look around and think, there has to be more to life than this in the UK, I have sat in traffic many days on the M62 and thought 'what the hell are we doing?'

You don't realise how much of rat race we live in here until you experience something else. The government constantly take the micky out of us, social problems (riots), over crowded, expensive, climate, traffic.

There has to be more doesn't there....

johntmanic

Well I said to one of my bosses if I was to get another job then I'd have to go abroad - as there is nothing in Wigan I have to travel to Manchester everyday and the thought of doing that forever just depresses me.
At this moment though I'm on a bit of a downer (with regards to a move to NZ due to not hearing anything for a while) but I don't know where to even start if I wanted to find something say in Australia or Canada or somewhere along those lines?

Snap Shot

Dealing with NZ recruitment can be like pulling teeth. They are s-l-o-w, don't know why. Set your own time limit on replies to, say, e-mails, phone calls etc. Maybe four weeks to reply to an e-mail etc. You are probably used to the British way of recruitment i.e. they get on with it.

Snap Shot

Hello. The February earthquake happened four days before we were due to relocate to Christchurch from the UK in February 2011. It was to late to pull out. We had sold our house, quit our jobs, said goodbye to friends and family.

Anyway, after visiting my in-laws in Auckland for 3 weeks we arrived in Christchurch in March 2011. We stayed in self catering accomodation (Rattray Rendezvous, Rattray Street, Riccarton) while looking for somewhere to rent. We found somewhere within a week in Linwood the (battered) east of Christchurch. It was a two bed link detached property for the equivalent of £520 per month. BTW rents in NZ are quoted per week.

The road surfaces are cracked and damaged and pot holed because of liquefaction. This is mud/silt that is forced up out of the ground during an earthquake because Christchurch was built on a swamp. It has damaged the ground floors of affected homes and cracked concrete garage floors. It just keeps coming and coming long after the few seconds of earthquake has stopped. It sets like concrete so householders only have a couple of hours to shovel it out of their properties into wheel barrows and leave it in the gutter for the council to collect. There's still the stink of wet silt in the house though. Mould and fungus on the carpet too. Then it happens all over again during the next 'shake'. In the end the army were called into deal with clearing the liquefaction.

The shops have to close because yet again as the groceries have been shaken off the shelves by another ?.? magnitude shake. Imagine the mess as dozens of bottles of wine etc etc smash on the floor. It takes 3 days to tidy it all up. Then it happens again.

There are 6 shopping malls in Christchurch. Not all of them are open because of earthquake damage. This means all the shoppers are concentrated into the remaining malls. You think car parking is a joke in your town now ? Try Christchurch.

The red zone is all of the Christchurch CBD. It is cordoned off because of severe earthquake damage. There appeared to be nothing happening there re: demolition I mean, deconstruction every time we walked past. This has to be done prior to re-construction. I could see the leaning tower of Christchurch aka the Grand Chancellor hotel from the upstairs of our house in Linwood. (It's since been demolished) I'm not suprised there have been protests about slow progress of the re-build and other earthquake related matters.

Our house in Linwood got shaken during every earthquake, just like eveyone else's. The word 'munted' entered my vocabulary that year, it means trashed. Earthquakes large and small happened every day to the point where my husband and I would ask each other, 'has the munter been through yet ?'
It's like living with a bully who smashes up your house just to come back another day to do it all over again just as you had got straight. I asked my self how much more am I going to lose i.e. ornaments, clocks, t.v., pc screen etc etc and still insist it's ok and I like living here ?

Don't forget the infrastructure took a beating too i.e. sewers and drinking water pipes got cracked and filled with silt and sand which had to be cleared. For months some households could not flush their toilet or get a shower or do any washing up. Portaloos (though they've gone now) will always remind me of Christchurch. There were/are vacant lots around town or yet to be demolished badly damaged buildings and I'm sorry to say this but it looked like a run down inner city, or worse still part of the developing world.

My kiwi husband and I could not find permanent work in Christchurch (despite the exhortation to help with the re-build he was still suffering from being interviewed by one-eyed cantabrians) so when he was offered a job in a city on the North Island we said yes please and left Christchurch on 29 June 2011 having spent all our savings on rent, food, utilities etc. Being unemployed in post earthquake Christchurch in the winter was no fun. That's how 4 or five years planning disappears in about 3 months. He's a management accountant and had handed in an EOI for a job at Christchurch City Council from the UK the day before the earthquake...we must have been so close ! He submitted his cv to loads of employment agencies in ChCh, even the one that deals almost exclusively with the council.

Good luck with your endevours. Come to Christchurch with an open mind.

BTW, the salary you have been offered sounds really good. Obviously a vast improvement on what you are on in Britain.

Snap Shot

Basically, they started with 3 colour codes, plus the white zone which was unclassified.

Red = land stuffed and the government will buy you out either at the rateable value for house and land, or RV for the land and you deal with the insurance company for the house.

Orange = more geotech reporting needed.

Green = Ok, and you can rebuild or repair as necessary.

The white zone was primarily the Port Hills to the east of Christchurch, which face a variety of issues from rock fall, land slippage, etc.

The original zones were announced in June. Since then, further announcements have been made turning some of the orange zone either green or red, and some of the white zone has gone green. The main further issue has been that those properties in the green zone have been further categorised into "blue", "yellow" and "grey". This relates to foundation requirements. Grey means land was basically undamaged and standard foundations only are required, yellow is some damage or liquifaction and slightly higher grade foundations will be required, and blue means significant damage or liquifaction and individually engineered foundations will be required on a property by property basis. However, you only get these new, flash foundations if your property requires foundation work anyway, so if you are in the "green-blue" zone but your house is mostly undamaged, your foundations won't be repaired and brought up to the new standard, which raises implications when you want to sell.

Those properties still in the white zone have no classification at all and are still waiting on further geotech reports.

Please bear this in mind when looking for a house to rent.

Snap Shot

One word of advice, if you go to the Antarcica International Centre, get a years pass. They may be $17 more but you get it for the year instead of paying $69 for one visit. It's ok I suppose, not a great deal to do there. The truck ride is fun, the cinema is ok, experiencing a freeze over was good. Oh and they do have little blue penguins but the experience is pointless. You'd be better travelling south to Akaroa and doing the Pohatu Penguin tour. That was a great experience[/quote]

The Antarctica International Centre is where we went for my birthday June 2011. It was fantastic. Among other things the cinema screen footage of the frozen wasteland and under the clear blue water was amazing. So was the 3D cinema experience of being on a boat. Yeah, the Penguins were a bit disappointing, they've all got fun names though ! I've seen little blue penquins in their natural habitat in Omaru in the South Island. I've also see yellow eyed penguins in their natural habitat, i.e. coming in from the sea, walking over the sandy beach and heading to their nests at the bottom of a cliff. The public weren't allowed on the beach but I saw them from a view point anyway.

After the Antarctic Experience went for a meal, ribs and steak at the Running Bull in Riccarton - excellent. We were travelling by bus as we had given up the rental car 'cause we were broke ! It just meant we could both have a drink

Five days later my husband was offered the job that got us out of Christchurch

Snap Shot

We have lived in Christchurch from March to June 2011. Earthquakes are horrible. They are frightening, the house shakes, things fall down and smash. Imagine how much clearing up you are going to have to do again and again and again. Want to come home at the end of the day to see your house looking like it's been burgled ? That's more or less the aftermath of what an earthquake looks like. If you can get home because the roads aren't all smashed up because of current and past earthquake damage. Google liquefaction.

NZ$85,000 is about the start of the top third of income in NZ i.e. NZ85,000 and upwards to three figures.

You will pay less income tax and there is no National Insurance contribution to be made. However, the better salary, the less expensive NZ will feel. Statement of the blindingly obvious - ok !

You would do the working week then at the weekend you couldn't go shopping or to the pictures or swimming etc (dependant on your personal choices) because so many things are closed because of structural damage. The red zone is a no go area around the Central Business District of Christchurch because it's a deconstruction zone enforced with wire fences by the NZ government.

Also, the constant, 'earthquake talk' gets very grating. Not least the nonsense talked by Gary Brownlee the Earthquake Minister and the rest of 'team' appointed by the NZ government to sort out the re-build. House insurance is hard to come by in Christchurch. Homes to rent are like hens teeth presently. We did ok for a rented house because we were there 3 weeks after the February earthquake in 2011, but now, I'm not so sure.

Hopefully things have moved on since we left.

Snap Shot

Here is some information that might help you. We lived in Riccarton then Linwood, Christchurch from March to June 2011. TradeMe is a good New Zealand website. It's a 'shop front' for all the estate agents' properties to rent or buy in Christchurch or whichever city in NZ you require. Christchurch eastern suburbs were trashed by the earthquake and are, among others: Bexley, New Brighton, Aranui, Avondale, Dallington, Linwood, Riccarton, Bromley.

(We used to go on the bus to a bar called Salt on the Pier at New Brighton for Happy Hour on a Friday to try and cheer ourselves up)

Western suburbs are, among others: Ilam, Avonhead, Fendalton, Bryndwyr, Cashmere. Don't know if rents are at a premium because they are not affected like the east of the city is.

Sockburn and Hornby are south west but more industrial than residential. A word to the wise, all NZ rents are quoted weekly. TradeMe also lists jobs vacancies, cars for sale etc.

Eastgate shopping mall is at Linwood. The Palms is another shopping mall in Papanui I think, if not someone correct me on the location please. Riccarton Mall is a good mall.

chippy64

The Palms is in Shirley. There is also Northlands in Papanui, Merivale Mall, The Hub Hornby, South City Centre, Barrington Mall, Re:Start (the container mall) and the Colombo. Then there are the other 'retail park' type sites such as at Tower Junction etc.
We have found more than enough shops. As for parking - just about every vacant lot in the city has been turned into a temporary car park.
The red zone is being constantly reduced and demolition work is well under way. This is a great page, which shows how the red zone has changed http://cera.govt.nz/maps/cordon-reduction. Sometimes the zone 'increases' - this happens when a large building is being demolished.
We live in the east of the city and our road was front page news after the Dec quakes due to liquefaction. Of course earthquakes are not nice. They can be very frightening and destructive. Yet, we and thousands more, are still here. Will we stay if another huge one comes along? I can't answer that. All I can say is that right now ChCh is the right place for us and the positives are outweighing the negatives. Some of the positives are small things, like turning onto a road and seeing the snow covered alps every day on my way to work .
Anyway, we are happy here and are enjoying being part of a changing city. Not all the changes are good and I hope that the new ChCh will be somewhere that people will want to travel to, to see the worlds newest and hopefully impressive city.

Kiwikaye

For the sake of accuracy and the OP's benefit, Riccarton is a western suburb, not eastern. Cashmere is on the Port Hills not the western suburbs and was quite badly affected by the earthquakes as it was very near the epicentre of the February earthquake. Rents are probably slightly higher in Cashmere because it has always been a "higher income" suburb, and those houses that are still livable/rentable are sought after by people wanting to stay in the area.

To the OP - Christchurch is a slightly odd city in that, unlike most of the world, many of the suburbs near the beach have not been desirable places to live for many and, as has been stated, many of these areas have been badly affected by the earthquakes. Having said that, there are some realy nice places near the beach. Sumner is lovely but would be a long commute in Christchurch terms to work in Hornby and there is only one road in and out so can get quite congested at peak hour.