Lights, Camera, Action...

One of the first things I was curious about here is how/where to get my movie fix. There seems to be a ton of theaters around town and almost all of them are playing 100% Hollywood blockbusters currently. We did find one other theater that has a more "arty" flair to it and had all the artistic films in the area and around
the world. The biggest theater chain here seems to be Sky City Cinemas.

So far I have seen 2 movies here. The first was Harry Potter at the Queen Street Sky City cinema. It was a pretty good flick and even though we were in the second row, I still felt that every seat in the house was great. They design theaters here a bit differently and despite the weird padded wall on the way out, the biggest change is that they don't cram the front row up against the screen. They leave a bit of breathing room up there which is nice.

The second thing they do at "some" theaters or showings is do reserved seats. We had assigned seats (B4 and B5) and were expected to sit in them. I know in England they do this as well and there are different tariffs for the various parts of the theater. Here I think it is one price and first come/first serve regarding preference for seating. I am not 100% sure on that.

The second show I saw was Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer. The only reason I even saw it was for lack of anything else to see. I had seen EVERY other movie playing here for the last few weeks. This time I went on a Sunday and paid full price ($14.50). Harry Potter was also full price and I think they charge even more on the weekend and 15% more on the Holidays I think. Tuesday is bargain day it seems with a $9.50 price tag. Students and other groups get a small discount but NOT for blockbuster films. I am not sure what they call a blockbuster as every single movie seems to be one.

We found a great site, www.flicks.co.nz, that lists all movies playing and even shows every movie being released and the release date for the rest of the year and includes listings for all over New Zealand. I have been using this to plan out some of my future shows. It seems that movies come out here at either the same time as the US, in the case of the biggest blockbusters, or they can be delayed for a month or two usually. Sometimes a movie will come out even later than that. "Because I Said So" is opening in August and I swear I saw that like 4 months ago. Most of the movies in the next week or two are things I didn't have time to catch in the states and of course the Simpsons!

One other cool thing here is they have a thing called Gold Class. Tickets are about $35 or so. Gold Class is basically the ultimate movie watching experience. Picture being in a room with 30 lazy-boys with a wooden stand next you, a personal assistant to get you drinks and snacks and a big screen with great sound! Now you are starting to get the idea of Gold Class. They have a lounge outside that serves food and alcohol! as well. I can't wait to see a movie this way. Sounds like a great time. I bet the food and alcohol are very expensive though, so Jen and I may "prime" at home a bit, and enjoy a drink in our seat while watching the film. I think I may see the Simpsons this way, but if not, maybe the next big blockbuster.

Outside of the theaters, there is now 2 Netflix style companies which I may have mentioned. One is www.fatso.co.nz and the other is www.movieshack.co.nz - Both are your basic Netflix business model and they charge $19.95 for 1 movie out at a time, $29.95 for 2, $39.95 for 3, etc... So far we have watched V for Vendetta (which was awesome) and The Aviator (pretty good). We also watched a Bollywood movie called Bride and Prejudice which was a lot of fun. Our DVD player keeps choking on the discs though.

We just recently purchased a multi-zone/region free DVD player that is supposed to be able to play movies from any Region. For those that don't know, Hollywood some how insisted on having special Region coding added to all DVDs manufactured. Region 1 is the US (we're number 1, woot!) and New Zealand is Region 4. All geographic areas have a Region code and 6 and 7 are reserved for future use (the moon?). The goal of all this craziness is to make it so that DVD players only play 1 region and DVDs are released with a single region code. Ultimately this makes it so you can't buy a "cheap" disc from another country and expect to play it or have relatives ship you a DVD from another country where it gets released first. The main reason is that since movies can take a long time to come out in some places in the world, Hollywood doesn't want you getting your hands on a DVD (even though you bought it) from another region as it can jeopardize a ton of their local theater ticket sales. Region free DVD players basically take advantage of the fact that it is only a software change in the actual players and hack them to allow you to change regions as easy as selecting a menu. I have heard that Hollywood is adding new special region protection software to the DVDs now to prevent region free players from playing them. And the game goes on and on... don't people have anything better to do? Why don't they just release everything worldwide within a few weeks and be done with it. Any ways, our player has been skipping like crazy on stuff and I am worried it is having problems playing some of these DVDs. I may return it as it may be defective even... hard to say. Usually if you mess around with it enough it will play.

There is also a company called movielink.net that we noticed recently and that allows you to "rent" movies over the Internet and download them. Basically broadband video on demand. Much to my chagrin, they sensed that I was in New Zealand from my IP address and said that they will only digitally rent movies to the US apparently? Does anyone smell a conspiracy here? I suspect Hollywood is behind this as well. I still need to check if our old Netflix account will serve up on demand videos or if Itunes will let us buy a season's pass still...

So in conclusion, it's great to have a Netflix style service here and great to be able to not miss any of the movies that I want to see. The price is a bit more, but all the more reason to try out Gold Class!

See you at the show!

Matthew

Meant to be?

Our first morning here, we stopped to eat breakfast at the first decent looking cafe we could find near the hostel. Imagine our sticker shock when the bill was over $30! (And no, there were no mimosas involved...) After a chilly night in a place that didn't seem to believe in heat, it was scrumptious.



Notice the day's paper, and the article I opened to. I almost dropped my flat white when I saw it. (In case you can't make it out, it's one of those statues from Easter Island.) Spooky, huh?

Back to the Future

Greetings, North Americans, from Tomorrow!

This morning I woke up to a very chilly house, turned my head, saw this and thought "Thanks, Dinosaurs!".



-Jen

The high price of cutlery

Greetings all,

Well it has been a whirlwind few days and I haven't had a chance to post much. We viewed a small house in Remuera last Wednesday night and another group was also viewing the house just after us. They wanted it and were even willing to pay more than us, but I guess the landlords thought we would be a better fit for the place so they gave us a shot at it. We had to decide under pressure wether to get it or not. Jen was kind of opposed due to the cost and the pressure and I was a tiny bit leery of the location being down a 4 block hill from the main road and having spotty bus service. The neighborhood is beautiful though and we have a park across the street, a Kwik-e-mart (not the real name) around the corner and a bus stop 1 block away (although it runs rarely and doesn't go directly where we want). If we walk the half mile hill we are about another half mile from New Market which is a HUGE shopping district and if we go the other direction we get to Parnell which is a ritzy boutique style area with cafes and restaurants.

At the last minute we decided to go for it since the place is just gorgeous and deceptively close to everything.

I will post some pictures shortly and address information. We have spent the last few days shopping to get the essentials for the place. Everything is VERY expensive here. For instance we went into a discount plastics store and the cheapest garbage pale was $30. They go up to $100+ We also found a small plastic chest of bins (think Target for $20 to put your kids toys in).....$399. We went to a fancier home store and found cutlery sets for $1000.00+, A $69 can opener (cheapest was $20) and many other things to blow your fiscal mind. For reference the US dollar is only about 21% ahead of the NZD so 21% off $1000 worth of spoons is still $790 USD. Also I am not picking the most expensive things we found at really expensive shops. Everything is this price. For instance a trip to Alaska at one of their discount travel places was quoted at something like $18,000. I am sure it included lodging but still... wow!

If you are moving to New Zealand keep in mind that things are quite expensive here, especially manufactured stuff and electronics. TVs go for $1500 +, nice furniture is about $1000+ per piece and simpl things like a set of measuring spoons can run $20-80. I recommend filling box after box of EVERYTHING you think you might use here. Shipping a few large boxes of small stuff might cost around $300 vs. buying that stuff for $3,000-10,000.

We have found that almost everyone has specials and sales constantly and if you shop around you can find these deals. For instance groceries and meat seem to be affordable and even though cafes are expensive, there is often a special on the menu that is about 1/2 price. Things like paperback books might run $15-30 a piece but you can get DVDs for around $20 I think. We packed all our DVDs in a case logic case and left the boxes in storage and we converted all our music to MP3 and will probably just I-tunes anything new we want. There is a company called www.Fatso.co.nz that we were going to check out and it is like a www.Netflix.com service. We need to get a TV still and a Multi-Zone? (Region Free) DVD player that will play our US DVDs as well as the ones here. We found a used TV/DVD combo for $200 which is amazingly cheap, so we might grab that.

For everything else we have been using www.trademe.co.nz (think www.Ebay.com) and have gotten a nice futon to sleep on until our bed arrives. The futon will double as our guest bed after that. We also are looking for a desk and won some nice kitchen stuff. It is expensive to pick this stuff up without a car and taxi's don't like to lug a bunch of stuff around. We found a company called www.taxitrucks.co.nz that will rent you a burly man and a truck at $60 an hour + $30 call out fee. This is nice for our refrigerator that we need to get still. Also another company is www.moveit.co.nz with cheaper rates but less flexibility.

Our place doesn't have a fridge and although it has 3 bedrooms and a parlour, doesn't have a dining room and the kitchen only has space for stools at the counter breakfast bar. We plan to eat at the counter and get a nice table for our deck to eat outside when the weather is nice. Weather is similar to San Francisco in the winter, so you can still go outside, although this week was really wet and cold and our place was freezing. No central heat here, so we had to go buy our own. We bought 2 oil electric 5 blade heaters which don't do much at all. One is in the hallway and one in the living room. We have our own fireplace though and have been running it a lot. We actually burned a bag of coal yesterday. I feel so old school all of a sudden. We also do not have a dryer, but do have a washer. People hang their clothes out to dry here almost exclusively and we have some lines on the porch for this. It took my clothes over a day to sort of dry in this weather though, so you have to plan ahead and make sure the stuff is out in time for the sun in the afternoon.

Well definitely some stuff to get used to, but some simple shifts are enough to enjoy the lack of glutenous comfort we were used to. Everything here is very conservation based. All the outlets even have on/off switches which people actually use. The toilets have 2 flush modes, half/full. People just generally try to use less, plan out exactly what they need and buy that and schedule things more. We are used to doing anything we want exactly when we want. Need a taxi, there it is, need a bus, one will be by every 3 minutes, need an ATM or a Starbucks, no problem, 2 on every corner. I think in the long run I will appreciate the fact that things are a tiny bit more spread out here and you have to think about what you want to do more and pay for what you use.

Till next time,

Matthew

Today it rained

Today it rained... and rained... and rained. It was quite chilly and wet and basically it sucked. It is winter after all and it is almost exactly like San Francisco winter weather, so not that big of a deal. Hopefully it will clear up shortly. Tomorrow is scheduled to be the same wet mess.

Jen and I spent most of our time today lamenting the high prices, sloshing through the rain and taking occasional stops for some warm up beverages. We found a cute cafe and I had a great cup of hot chocolate ($4) and Jen had a Flat White which I think is half coffee, half milk or something like that.

We walked from Queen street all the way to the end of Ponsonby road which seemed like a long walk. We walked through another neighborhood on a fun street with lots of stores and bars also (I forget the name). At the end of Ponsonby Street we found a cool little food place that served roast meats potatoes and veggies. Jen had fried chicken and sweat potato with broccoli and I had a roast beef sandwich and mashed potatoes. I love hand carved meats as those of you who know me can attest to... After a long dreary walk and not really knowing where we would go this was a nice treat.

We also found a place called the Belgian Beer Cafe which we had heard about and were planning on finding. We decided to go on another day however. By now we were really getting miserable from the weather but wanted to hang out in the area for a tiny bit longer. We had passed a few Realtors on the way and got "Rental Sheets" from them. We also looked in the paper to find listings for our apartment hunt. It seems like all 3 places we went and the paper only had a combined total of like 15 listings for the entire city. I guess it is the wrong time of year. We called a few to arrange appointments in the area, but no one really was available. Things are definitely slower here and it could take a few days to have people get back to us we suspect.

We stopped in a Starbucks next (yeah I know). This wasn't out of any desire for something familiar I assure you. It was just a place that was there and I wanted a coffee. It was a bit cheaper than other cafes, had friendly service and my decaf Americano was actually great tasting. I read a New Zealand cultural guidebook and Jen went window shopping.

Finally we went to a few stores (next to each other). One had meats, one veggies and fruits and one was a bakery. After our little trips to each we had a nice meal for tonight and breakfast tomorrow and a few snacks. We caught the bus ($1.60 per person on Travelcoach...one of many bus lines here) and got back to our Hostel area. One more stop before heading to the hostel... Beer! Jen wanted a beer so we got a six back of a local ale ($12.50 NZD) and a few other odds and ends from a convenience store on the way back.

We just watched the Terminator on VHS with some other folks in the TV lounge at the Hostel and finally the Internet connection stopped flaking out. Fun times. Stay in School. Don't blog drunk!

Matthew

Our first impressions

Wow am I jet lagged. I think my eyes are bleeding. Hopefully not. Anyways, Jen and I made it to New Zealand safe and sound. We got about 4-6 hours sleep on the slightly shorter than expected 12 and 1/2 hour flight.The flight was fairly enjoyable, slightly less cramped than a regular coach flight, but still kind of tight. I had someone who reclined 100% of the way into my lap and I couldn't do much of anything the whole trip. Jen had a much better seat with no one in front of her. The guy in our isle seat slept the whole way making it problematic to ask to go to the bathroom so I think we got up once the entire flight.

Some cool things about the flight was that they show you on your own personal video screen where you are at all the time and how much time is remaining in the flight. Being a control freak and slightly anxious I appreciated the constant feedback. Also your personal monitor and free headphones work with your own remote control in your armrest which gives you access to a TON of music, movies, games and information. I played a game called Caveman (think Pengo) for a while and Tetris for a bit. I watched Bridge to Tabathia as well and Jen watched that recent Ed Norton period movie. She also watched Becomming Jane. I was impressed with the selection of movies. They even had movies that weren't out in the theateres here in New Zealand yet. They also had a huge "classics" section which included such favorites as Ferris Buellers Day Off, Galaxy Quest and a ton of other great movies from every genre. They even had all 3 Lord of the Rings movies and just about enough flight time to watch them all! Maybe next time.

After landing, we breezed through the airport stopping to take a photo of the "Please do not spit in trash bins" signs. We had a slightly cranky immigration officer, but got through with just a few cursory questions. The baggage claim was filled with people, but they were all surprisingly staying behind this yellow line a foot away from the conveyor belt. In America people would be pushing and pulling and knocking people onto the belt and here, everyone was chill and just waiting there turn.... Most people were even at the"end" of the belt area instead of crammed at the entrance. A cute begal and her handler were sniffing all the bags looking for agricultural violations (bringing in food or plant matter) and not drugs (although maybe that too). We got a free coffee from the Welcome to New Zealand booth and breezed through customs in about 15 seconds with a single question to verify our answers. We had our bags X-Rayed and Jen was challenged to open one for about 30 seconds. I think they saw our teddy bears and smiled and closed it up again.

So far so good, but after getting out to the pick up area, our driver that was supposed to have our name on one of those cards was no where to be found. We wanted a picture as this would probably be the only time anyone would be meeting us at the airport with our own name card and private car. Turns out he was late and we finally found his contact information and found him. It was more of a shared shuttle service with a private van and we had to wait about an hour to round up everyone. We met a nice girl from New York that was on the same flight and going to the University as well. We also had a chance to try some more coffee and to get on a free wireless network (most aren't free and I think we found an exception). I made my first international Skype call to my Dad and it worked perfectly without a hitch. Also we sent out a few emails and Jen called her parents.

After that a long ride to the Youth Hostel with the AWESOME and very friendly driver giving us informationand tips, we finally arrived. We were travelling with a girl from Norway and another student. A quick check in at the Hostel came next and we had to store our bags till 2pm while waiting to get a room. My headache wasn't getting any better, so Jen and I went out for a short walk to check out some cafe's. This city seems really beatiful so far and we are at a small cafe where I am writing this. It reminds me of a mix of Seattle and Van Couver so far. The only weird things that seem like culture shock so far are the driving on the opposite side of the road and getting in the opposite side of the car, compared to what we are used to. Most of the signage looks American and we have seen a Starbucks, a Subway, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, etc... There are a few local chains and brands we are starting to notice. The metric system is going to kick our butt soon though. That would probably be the other hard thing to adapt to. Also crossing streets is challenging as you don't know where someone is going to come at you from.

One more big shocker before we sign off for a while. Prices are very expensive. We just paid $32 NZD for breakfast at a run of the mill cafe. It was 2 eggs, toast and bacon for me and Jen had some sort of Potato pancake and egg dish + 2 coffee drinks. Mine was $11.50 for 2 eggs, toast and bacon which would probably run about $4-7 in the US. We get about 25% off from the exchange rate, so the whole meal is about $24 which is on the high end of brunch in San Francisco for this kind of place. Seems like every price we see is way more than we expected including rents which look to be $300-600 per WEEK for the kind of place we want to get.

Well more later and we will start adding pictures to the blog soon. So far New Zealand is great and we are excited to check out the University next.

Matthew

Flight day, a few more hours till our flight to New Zealand

Phew,

Almost time to fly. We are on our last day here in San Francisco. We woke up super early and started putting stuff out on the street. Within like 15 minutes half of our stuff was gone. Even some of the stuff that we thought might be hard to get rid of. We went out to grab some brunch at Ti-Cous, a French crape place with Alex again and took a bag or two of stuff to goodwill (thankfully down the street) so that we wouldn't have so much junk outside to clean up later if everything wasn't taken.

After brunch, we walked back home, turned our corner and everything was gone but a nice desk chair and a 17" monitor. Sadly, some jerk dumped a ton of trash and cardboard where all of our stuff had been. I think people took most of it and some person came and took the rest, making room by dumping trash from their truck or something.
I am like, "Not our Problem!" but Jen spend a bit of time cleaning it up and stacking it nicely. Really a shame after all that to end with trash on our doorstep.

We wheeled the chair to the corner for some better exposure and went upstairs to do last minute packing, finances and to do a clean sweep of the place for trash and other items. We think we got most of our stuff out of here, but I feel bad for Jen and David (our roommates) who will get stuck doing the final move at the end of the month when they move out.

Jen just gave me and Jen the cutest photo book with pictures from the last decade and before and also cute quotes that we had taped to the fridge during our 5 years in the loft here together. We will miss David and Jen very much and have had a blast and love you very much.

Well our shuttle to the airport is in about 4 hours. We still have to go to the post office, bank and maybe another errand or two. The flight should be about 14 hours I think and I hope to actually sleep some or most of it. Wish us luck!

Matthew

Uhaul and the surliest man alive.

With the majority of the stuff we want to take with on a boat somewhere, we are left with the stuff we want to keep but can't bring with, the stuff we want to sell and the stuff that will have to be given away or worse, thrown out.

Today is moving day, although it seems every day has been moving day for the last few months. Jen and I have taken a bit of time off work to focus on this aspect of going to New Zealand and to tell you the truth, it would be easier to just go to work for 2 weeks and throw everything else in the trash. We would financially be in about the same position. The downside to this approach is that it isn't very environmentally conscientious and there is definitely an inefficiency to the whole approach from a "value" stand point even though not necessarily from a time or money stand point. What I mean by this is that it is really hard to give away stuff that you paid a LOT for even though it is very hard to resell now. You just kind of feel cheated and feel that wow, I paid $250 for that laptop docking station and some guy is haggling over whether to give me $10 or $9 for it and also asking for a free battery, monitor stand, CD drive, Floppy Drive and anything else he can get his hands on. Very depressing, but when you think about it in the sense of, wow I will pay $500 to store this over the next few years and I can give it away for free, I am saving money. Once you wrap your head around the, if it doesn't fit in storage idea, then everything else looks like a huge weight both mentally and financially.

Today started with us agreeing to deliver a futon to someone for the privilege of selling it for $40. It seems like all we have done is chase after people to pick up free stuff or cheap stuff so things won't end up in the landfill. We have sold a lot of stuff also, but only one or two things yielded what we thought they were worth.

I had to go rent a cargo van at U-Haul and that set my day into a downward tail spin. I have sworn never to use U-Haul EVER again, but sadly, I caved. We finally found a great storage place IN San Francisco that is cheaper than all the rest. It's http://www.kennedystorage.com/ and I heard about it from http://www.metafilter.com/ - we got a rate of $40 a month for their only size box of 5 x 7 x 7.5 They are not one of these fancy 24 hour places and you can only get your stuff Mon-Friday and one Saturday a month and they charge for lots of in-outs, but if you want just no-frills long term storage, it looks like the best place in the Bay Area.

So back to U-Haul, we needed the cargo van for the futon delivery and moving all of our stuff into storage. I get to U-Haul and some surly woman is being rude to the customers in front of me, she then proceeds to take a 20 minute phone customer before me even though I was there in line before the phone rang. Some other guy sits down and stares into space for 10 minutes while the customers previously in front of me come back. They reserved a cargo van I guess and she asked if they wanted a truck instead. Thinking they would get one of those big fancy truck with more room, they probably figured, why not. What they got was a pickup-truck and a huge scolding after being asked what they wanted about 10 times in a high irritation voice. I think they didn't speak good English and were starting to get frightened by this mad woman.

Finally, the guy at the other desk decides to wake up from his cat nap and offer to help me. He did an OK job and was fairly thorough even going so far as to point out that I should check the mileage and fuel so I don't get overcharged. He forced me to take a $10 insurance rider because I couldn't prove my own insurance. Then he charged me like $250 as a deposit, an estimated 50 miles of mileage at $.79 and $7 for a furniture dolly, and $10 for another dolly. My $19.95 cargo van was now up to like $100 not counting the security deposits.
I was getting a little worried, but I figured it was all estimated only. He asked me to swipe my card and told me my Pay Pal (debit/credit) card with a MasterCard logo wouldn't work most likely. I tried and it asked for a PIN which I didn't really want to give. I swiped another card and the machine seemed to just mock me with a flashing advertisement. I shrugged and looked to the guy for help but he was pointedly ignoring me. I swiped another card, told him I don't think it was working. He just kind of stared at me, I swiped the original card again and after all that he mumbled something and the transaction some how went forward from there. I still don't know what card this is all on or what was wrong. I had to check a ton of stuff off on the machine to agree to crazy terms, and then sign a bunch of stuff. I was told to go outside and inspect a van that was being brought down.

I go outside and wait a bit, trying to fend off the Mexicans looking for hauling work. Finally the most SURLY person I have ever met came over and just glared at me. I said I had a cargo van, showed him my stuff, and he pretty much glared some more, muttered something almost unintelligible, and then game me more mean looks and I tried to rephrase what I was asking for. Ultimately, I don't think ANY real communication happened between us other than him just sending vibes of how shitty his life was, or maybe he was on downers or pot, not sure. He finally disappears, and comes back 10 minutes later with a cargo van. It has music blaring and the AC jacked on High, he jumps out, glares at me some more. I tell him I am going to check for damage and such and he just glares. I get in and turn off the radio, turn off the AC. Check the mileage and fuel. I ask him if it takes diesel or unleaded. He glares back at me (notice a trend here), he mutters something and walks away. I figure he is "checking" and he comes back and doesn't say anything about it. I figure, ok, I have had enough of this guy and I want to get out of here. I look at the full body of the vehicle and see nothing "majorly" wrong and hope they won't hold the millions of little scratches against me. I show him that the gas says 3/4 tank instead of full and that they misrepresented the mileage by 100s of miles (which had I left the lot would have cost me like hundreds of dollars in gas and mileage). He stares daggers, sends some animosity my way, grunts a little, then pencils a few things on a sheet of paper. I bolt out of there hoping to get on with my day.

I turn the corner and hear a horrible grinding noise that seemed to come and go. I am wondering if the muffler is ragging or something, but it goes away some times. Also the right mirror was slapped against the van and wouldn't electronically open. I hope if I return it as is, they won't blame me.

I go home, load up the futon, ignore the grinding, drop off the futon a few miles away and while turning a corner some women point out that I have a nasty flat tire... I check and sure enough I have a full flat the whole time. The van didn't wobble at all and the surly asshole didn't notice it and I was too intimidated to check the tires while trying to check the body closely. I wait for like 2 hours for roadside assistance (provided by U-haul for free and handled by their call center and a third party local mechanic, so it was much more pleasant).

Finally, I have to call everyone to push back storage appointments, the rental return time, my friend who is helping me move on his birthday (Thanks Alex!). We finally get back to the house and load up super fast and efficiently. Finally the day is starting to go a bit better. We move stuff into storage, but get lost finding the place a few times, but finally get there, load in fairly fast. At this point I haven't eaten in a long time and get a bit hypoglycemic and Jen and I stop for an emergency Coke (I usually avoid crappy foods and beverages but I was in desperate straights here). We then bring the U-haul back and guess who I get at the desk. My surly. He is a tiny bit more talkative but he keeps nodding off for a microsecond here and there and he has this I am REALLY dumb, really on DRUGS or REALLY lazy. I think all three. He even had the nerve to mutter "We take tips" like 6 times while checking me out and even picked up and shook a little tip can he had mad with a smiley face. I swear, where did they find these people. I wanted to just tear into this guy and verbally rip his head off, but I guess I am too nice or too much of a wimp. He tries to charge me for 17 miles even though it was 16 miles. He was able to subtract 2440.5 from 2456.5 on his own, although a tad slow.

Anyways, I was glad to get out of there, get a burrito with Alex and Jen and get home for ... you guessed it more packing, selling and giving stuff away.

The person scheduled to pickup the TV from our ad on http://www.craigslist.com/ flaked of course and we decide to do the BIG POST of FREE STUFF - COME AND GET IT OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE!!!! Jen against my better judgment put in a small blurb that if you Text message her about something that you are willing to come get in person tonight only you can come by, NO CALLS + NO FLAKES. She got a few calls, some flaky text messages, but one cute couple in medical school texted that they were poor and wanted a lot of stuff. They came over and took a ton of small stuff that is hard to sell or get rid of and it was fun talking to them, so that was kind of bizarre and interesting.

Tomorrow is our last day here, so time to get some sleep.

Matthew + Jen

Using technology to work and play remotely

We are fortunate to have our own business www.cardshark.com and also to have some money in savings. This will make doing this whole trip to New Zealand much less stressful. I also do a lot of web based consulting work for companies in San Francisco and Chicago. My two big clients have agreed to keep me on while working from there. This is cool and should be an easy transition since I have worked at home most of my adult career and also have worked remotely for both clients for the majority of time I have had them. One client I have been visiting a lot lately in San Francisco so that makes the transition a bit harder, but I have been scaling back on my in office hours so that should help make it go easier. I am currently on "vacation" for next few weeks to help with the big transition over to New Zealand and to get an apartment over there.

Technology will be a great enabler while working with overseas companies. We have hooked up with a company called Skype - www.skype.com which has two services that allow you to call and receive calls on your computer. Skype In give us a 415-xxx-xxxx phone number for $38 a year that will ring through to our computer. This is very cool and allows us to be anywhere in the world and get phone calls. It also saves people money in calling us as most people we know are in San Francisco or have free/cheap long distance to call us. Skype-Out allows us to call anyone for like .02 a minute from New Zealand. This makes keeping in touch affordable and easy. We also get free voicemail via Skype and they have some form of video conferencing as well that we can use in the future.

With US based bank accounts, we can get direct deposits from these clients and have it dumped right into our accounts, we can move it around electronically to our investment accounts or to www.hifx.com to move it to our New Zealand account.

Other tools like VPN, Remote Desktop, FTP, Email, SQL Server, telnet, Net Meeting, Go To My PC and others
make it very easy to work with other people around the world and to get work done fast and securely.

I am bringing over my laptop which I hope to use at cafes (hopefully with free wireless) and my bigger computer for media (dvd viewing, mp3 collection, games, etc.)

The last big hurdle is figuring out time differences. From San Francisco it is about 3-5 hours + 1 day time diffence. So for instance, if it is Monday at 2 pm in San Francisco, it is Tuesday at 9AM in Auckland. The rule of thumb is that basically any day after lunch we will be available for calls from the US. The reason for the 3-5 hour floating difference is because of the opposite seasons. At some points in time, we are on Daylight Savings Time in the US and they are NOT on it there. There is a small overlap where one of us is on it, then the 3 hour difference is the inverse where they are on it and the US is not. Most of the year has a 5 hour difference to the west coast though, so we are basing things on that. Check out www.timeanddate.com for more info.

Matthew