Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

New Zealand

first day of school, finally

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Yesterday was EV6’s first official day of school.

I don’t just mean the first day of proper “you might learn something there” school. I mean it’s her first day of public or private care outside of our own home. Ever.

It’s quite the belated start to school for her, considering she’ll be heading into Year 1 (the NZ equivalent of Kindergarten) just nine months from now. Many kids have logged four years of being cared for out of the home by this point in their lives.

As with many things here in New Zealand, our perception of pre-Year-1 school from abroad was a little different than the reality here on the ground.

While kiwi kids have a guaranteed Year 1 start date on their fifth birthdays, all care prior to that is optional despite 20hrs of each week being state-sponsored for 3-4yr-olds.

Given the state sponsorship, we were relatively sure getting into a daycare would be relatively easy, and there seemed to be tons of them. That’s compared to Philadelphia, where for many quality pre-schools you need to have your child on a waiting list before they are even born!

The complication arose from just how much school we were interested in Some care centers only offered 20hrs a week of care. Basically, they were set up to capitalize on the state-sponsored benefit, but that was it. That would be great for right this moment, but if I wound up in full-time job prior to EV6’s Year 1 started date we’d be in a pickle. By contrast, outside of the city the full-time child care centers were much smaller than their US equivalents and they all had wait lists – just not quite as long as the ones in Philly.

We sent out notes to the closest full-day schools on my birthday back in September. Two replied in short order – both to offer us a spot on wait lists stacked up into 2018. Eek.

Luckily, for once my resident OCD Godzilla really paid off for us. [Read more…] about first day of school, finally

about that so-called ice cream

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Since arriving in New Zealand I have an ongoing anxiety about being an obnoxious American.

I’m constantly apologizing to native Kiwis – for my diction, for having so many questions, for not knowing how to tell apart their money, and for using idioms like “pull the trigger.”

In fact, I think I’ve only done two actually obnoxious things since I’ve been here, and one is driving too cautiously into roundabouts.

A typical day’s selection of fruit sorbettos at Capogiro.

The other is talking smack on New Zealand’s ice cream. Every time I do it I get a note from a new Kiwi friend on Twitter that very gently expresses their indignation.

Here’s the skinny (or, as the case may be, not so skinny): Ice cream is my favorite thing to consume on this planet. I can (and have) eat ice cream four meals in a day, starting with it topping my warm oat meal and enjoying it between courses at dinner.

Thus, I was pretty excited to try a whole new country’s worth of ice cream in New Zealand, about which I’ve heard some excellent things.

What I forgot about in all my excitement about new ice cream is that Philadelphia is an amazing place to live if you are obsessed with ice cream. It’s a sort of ice cream mecca! We could purposefully ignore four or five of the best icy treats in the city and the next one on the list would still be better than the ice cream in most other cities on the planet.

The best ice cream in Philly isn’t even ice cream – it’s Capogiro, the Italian-style gelato sorbetto that National Geographic named the best ice cream in the world in 2011. A

My first flight of birthday flavors at Merrymead Farm.

After that, there is my years-long addiction to Franklin Fountain‘s absurdly good hand-dipped ice cream served from in an old-timey soda fountain shop. Then Bassett’s Ice Cream, America’s oldest ice cream company, with their iconic Reading Terminal counter.

Plus, the fantastical small-batch flavors (and absurd marketing) of Little Baby’s Ice Cream! And the massive selection of local creameries, including Montgomery County’s Merrymead Farm, where I ate 22 flavors for my birthday last year!

That’s not even getting into Pop’s Water Ice or the now-ubiquitous Rita’s, which I am physically incapable of turning down. And we haven’t even been to a grocery story yet, where national brands like Edie’s and upstart Blue Bunny are shelved alongside Pennsylvania’s own Hersey’s or Turkey Hill, and upstart Halo Top is competing with my beloved Ben & Jerry’s.

The flavor wall at Ben & Jerry’s this August.

Suffice to say, I was completely spoiled for ice cream choices in Philly, from the lowly generic carton to the high-end boutique brands.

That might explain why I’ve felt every sample I’ve had so far in New Zealand has been been a bust. Every flavor I’ve tried is too sweet. All of the vanillas have a sickly marshmallow note to their flavor that obscures the sweet bite of their bean. The salted caramels are too sugary to be salty.

(I have briefly considered that corn syrup just isn’t a thing here, and that my sweets-calibration might be totally off when it comes to things made only with natural sugar. That definitely applies to the cookies here (which is another post entirely), but given my wide-ranging taste in ice cream including a love for small creameries, and I’m pretty sure corn syrup and artificial sweeteners aren’t entering into the conversation here).

The very expensive Kapiti Ice Cream of New Zealand.

Each time this occurs and I whinge about it on Twitter, a kind Kiwi will bring up the same few “must try” ice cream brands that I am obviously missing out on, one of which is invariable Kapiti.

Here’s the thing: They are invariable $8 and up for less than a 2L container.

I came into New Zealand accepting that everything is more expensive here, but I refuse to accept that the only way to get good ice cream is to pay 2-3x what the cheapest brands in the store cost. That’s like telling an American to ignore every brand in their freeze aisle except for Ben & Jerry’s, Dove, and Häagen-Dazs.

Heck, you could never eat any of those brands and still eat ice cream fit for a king on a pauper’s budget. The store brand at GIANT was terrific. I’d never shell out more than $4 for a half gallon in the story unless I was buying a rare pint of Ben & Jerry’s, because some awesome brand would doubtlessly be on sale for 2-for-$7.

I’ve now sampled four or five different brands, and I’m ready to call it quits on my life-long affair with buying ice cream. If I can’t enjoy your ice cream at its cheapest blow-out price, I’m not interested in it when it costs a tenner.

As I described it to one new Kiwi friend, expensive ice cream occupies the same area of my brain as expensive jeans – something that only rich thin people ever buy.

minor shocks

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I have caused two things to explode in the past month of living in New Zealand.

I feel pretty good about that number. It could be much higher.

For the record, I am not trying to blow things up. I do not have any hobbies related to detonations. Take note, current and future rental property managers!

What I do have is a house full of our American electronics, very few of which operate on the voltage and frequency that emerges from the wall in a typical house in New Zealand.

A map of the power outlets of the world via an awesome Reddit post.

The world has four or more standard kinds of electrical outlets, depending on how you’re counting the combinations of the shape of the plug, the voltage, and the frequency. This is a fun fact that most people usually only encounter on vacations.

Of course, on vacation your entire inventory of electronics that draw power from a wall (rather than by the now-ubiquitous USB) might be limited a laptop and an electric razor – both of which can typically handle power differences if you pick up a cheap wall adapter at the airport.

It’s a different story when you move all of your electronic possessions to a new country. Every piece of electronics you encounter while packing yield’s another Sophie’s Choice.

Do you want to give up your favorite reading lamp and have to spend time and money to buy a new one in a country where everything is expensive?!

Or, do you want to pack and ship your lamp and have to power it with a power converter or transformer for the rest of its life? Power converters and transformers are appliances that are about the size of a toaster oven but ten times as heavy. They invariably have something like 23% one-star user reviews that say awesome things like, “it created a cloud of foul-smelling smoke” or “it emits an ominously loud ticking noise if I plug anything into it for longer than five minutes.”

Given that rosy outlook, you could also choose to ship everything and then cross your fingers and hope your reading lamp will be just fine with a cheap wall adapter. And then it could explode in a ball of fire. Or the lightbulb could pop and flip the breakers in your entire house.

Those are just the results I’ve encountered so far. I’m sure if I keep plugging things in I can produce some more potential fiery or smoking outcomes.

(But I’m not! Again, take note, current and future rental property managers! I have learned my lesson.)

Alternately, you might buy a slew of those heavy power converts but also be the luckiest American in all of Wellington and rent a house that turns out to be dual-wired for both New Zealand and American power.

So different, yet so the same. Two sisters only have their parents to blame. It’s rare that two can get along, but when they do, they’re inseparable! Such a blessing comes to few, few.

I was quite suspicious when we first spotted the US-style plugs in the house. Sure, they looked like the familiar electrical outlets we knew and loved, but they wouldn’t be the first seemingly-familiar thing to fool me in New Zealand. I had learned my lesson with their “plush” toilet paper and so-called “ice cream.”

Plus, I wasn’t keen on experimenting on the mysterious outlets with a beloved standing mixer or a guitar amp, each of which easily cost three times as much to buy here as they did in the US.

We carried on with our lives as we awaited a visit from an electrician to divine the true nature of the outlets. That still involved a surprising amount of stuff that had to be plugged into a wall. High-end electronics tend to specify the voltage and frequency they require, which is how we learned that our printer is A-OK with being plugged into a wall in NZ.

Smaller things, like bedside lamps, not so much.

convenience fees

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As we enter our third week of Kiwi life the thing I’ve begun to appreciate about America now that I am outside of it is how everything there is convenient.

The first thing I noticed were credit card fees. I’m not generally one to use my card for casual, daily expenses, but it was a necessity here before we got our bank cards set up. I quickly discovered that it’s common for many places to tack on a convenience fee of at least 2% to a credit purchase – and, for small purchases it might be an automatic 30-40 cents. These fees are almost universally absorbed by the store in the US.

You might be thinking, “2% – what’s the big deal!” Except, are you the sort of person who puts big purchases on your credit card purely for the points or miles, only to immediately pay it off?

Suddenly you’re paying a $20 premium for every $1,000 you pass through your card that way. $20 isn’t nothing, and if you’ve got to buy a whole new set of appliances because rental properties don’t come with them, it’s several multiples of $20.

Yes, you heard me right: rental homes don’t come with the major appliances here. No washer, dryer, or refrigerator – which are collectively known as “whiteware.”

I still haven’t heard the full history of why this is the case. It seems utterly mad to me, because as a renter you are suddenly responsible for a few thousand dollars of appliances over their lifespan of a decade or more, and if you switch homes a few times there is no guarantee they’ll fit into each subsequent house!

That’s specifically the case with dryers, which just aren’t very common in New Zealand. We’ve seen tons of places that don’t even have a spot for one, and even if they do there’s no ductwork for venting. If you want a dryer in those houses, you have to buy a super-special, super-expensive “condenser” style dryers that suck the water out of your clothes just like Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s farm.

The majority of people here line dry their clothes. We went on a walk to the zoo yesterday while the weather was nice and nearly every house we passed on the way had clothes hanging out on a line or a rack! [Read more…] about convenience fees

does it taste the same?

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We’re on Nomadic Day 23 here in Wellington.

I don’t know about you, but that’s way longer than any other vacation or break from the regular schedule of life that I’ve had since … um, let’s go with ever. It’s long enough that it’s starting to become difficult to differentiate between the days of the week, despite trying to hang on to some semblance daily norms like EV6’s bedtime routine.

That’s why I was so excited to visit a farmers’ market this morning. Saturday morning farmer’s markets were a regular fixture of our Philadelphia life for much of the year, no matter which configuration of the three of us decided to attend. Even if this one paled by comparison, it would at least let me know it was Saturday.

As it turns out, the Newtown Fruit and Vegetable Market in Wellington dwarfed our little Landsdowne Farmer’s Market. Or, maybe it just seemed big because there were so many vendors squeezed into such a small space all selling similar things. It created an effect similar to a hall of mirrors, such that you saw endless rows of peppers, pumpkins, and kumara no matter which way you turned.

Not only were there (perhaps literal) tons of fresh food, but it was much cheaper than in the many supermarkets we’ve visited like Goldilocks sampling bear housewares. A bag of veggies almost too heavy for me to carry was only $35! Plus, I snagged a beautiful brocade-covered canvas bag for just five dollars from a delightful woman who said she appears at the market fortnightly, and I honestly would have probably paid just to hear her use that word casually in a sentence.

The market helped introduce a little bit of gravity into my week, but it was a trip to the local Mediterranean Food Warehouse, that made me feel more at home here. It’s a high-end Italian-influenced grocery store and eatery chain whose local outpost commands one corner of a large intersection nearby. [Read more…] about does it taste the same?