Away!

Phew - What a hectic last few days! We are now officially living out of our packs, so although we haven't left the country, I'd class us as travelers; No job, no residence, and nothing but the packs on our backs.

Princess finished her final day of work last Friday and had been sick all last week, adding stress because she was trying to pass as much knowledge to the "new girl" replacing her at work and could only make it to work Thurs/Fri. Sorry Sarah, Becks and "new girl"!

Meanwhile, I had been chasing the paperwork for the Netherlands work visa while we waited for our Chinese visas to be processed and our passports returned. The work visa was complicated because of 2 main complicating factors

1) the scheme is setup for immediate issue, so for us who don't get there for 6 months, they had to "see if the system would allow postdating the issue". I had to grease and hope they'd suss something out.

2) we needed to provide paperwork for health cover for the entire stay, which ends 18 months away! I wanted to go thru Mike Henry, but wanted the 15% off that the YHA offers. Most insurance schemes are for up to a year, and then rolled over assuming you are still a viable customer. So I called Mike Henry direct and worked my way up to someone competent enough to understand the problem, and they gave me the OK for 18 months coverage and a special code for the YHA to use in their system to allow the override. Phew!


So it all came together, but boy am I glad I have had so long off to chase this stuff.

On Friday night, Princess' (ex) employer took us out for a lovely meal and a few drinks, and we then went home to ponder the scope of our next task - dismantling our flat, and boxing all our possessions into boxes for storage at Mums place in Otaki.

The Warehouse sells 100 litre bins with sealed lids for $20 a piece so we bought 10 of those and stuffed all our crap into them. Mum and John came down Sunday morning and took a load north.

Nana, Princess' old car, was on trademe with a closing date on Saturday, and explicit expectation that the car needed to be transferred that weekend as we were leaving the country. Well Saturday night I got the call from the winner, and he was going to come over Sunday and settle, no problem.

Well I waited round all day for him, and after his no-show I used good old caller ID to call him back and ask what had happened and why he hadn't showed. He fobbed me off that he had showed up, seen the car and left because it was not tidy enough.

GRR! When you bid on an auction, you are obliged to buy it! His feedback showed that he had done the same to heaps of other people, so just added more feedback pointing out how unacceptable it is. Lesson - vet your bidders, especially if its important!

So on Sunday night with plans to leave the city the next day, I started scheming on what or options were. Car yard? Leave Nana with friends and relist? Neither were ideal. One nice lady had come and looked at the car and bidded, but missed out, so I tried to find her in caller ID, but she had fallen off the list as it was a week later. So I send out a fixed price offer to all people who had been 'watching' the auction at the same price.

Amazingly, the very lady I was thinking of accepted it about an hour later! The next day we met up and swapped no problems. I was very relieved because Princess is leaning on that cash to travel! The new owner said to me that she was hardly ever online that late, so I just caught her
by sheer luck. Thanks, karma!

So Monday was a chaotic day of cleaning, boxing and dashing around delivering the last give away stuff and saying goodbye to friends and family. And yes Sam, I did get the Muppets Albums finalized at last, but like all projects, I wish I had more time... I'll do a full post on that saga sometime soon.

I borrowed a Land Rover off Alvin (thanks) to get our final load (including us) up to Otaki, and greased another good friend, Nick (thanks also), to come along so he could drive the Land Rover back to Welly.


So, here we are in Otaki and I have got all our stuff stowed, and spent a lovely sunny day here with my mum ...