Alan's Rambles: Dunedin: Life in New Zealand. Part 9

Its been a while since I posted something.

Dunedin city council force everyone into recycling. The system has it that every fortnight they will take away either your yellow lid wheelie bins full of paper and plastic, or your blue tubs full of glass. general rubbish is collected in Dunedin owned black plastic sacks which cost a bomb from local supermarkets, but this price includes the rates for collection. $16 for 5 bags. If you produce more waste you have better options with using weekly contractors to take your rubbish away. The two big companies to choose from are Envirowaste and Waste Management. Both provide you with a wheely bin of your choice in size, for a monthly direct debit bill. We chose Envirowaste, with a wheely bin the size of the Dunedin city bags. Its $13 per month with a weekly collection as i said before. It makes more sense for us now seeing that we need to bin a lot of used cat litter per week.

On Friday 8th Dec I had my work's Christmas party at Bethune's Gully, at the North East Valley just outside Dunedin. I had a lift organized for me otherwise I wouldn't have been able to go. In fact I originally opted out due to not being physically able to get there, but later found out people were car sharing. Two things I want to say about this at this point, this day was a beautiful hot summers day. It was so perfect. The next thing was that, at work during the morning I was frantically doing my jobs trying to be done by the time I got the call that everyone would be driving over. I got my Notice of Sales done just in the nick of time, and then got the call from my colleague at around 10:45 to leave. When we got back to work at after 2pm, there was hardly anything for me to do. So those hours I was away from work, I would have done hardly anything regardless.

So, as for the event itself: My colleague who was giving me a lift, she owned a mini van. I enjoyed the novelty sitting backwards, both there and back. The place itself is a secluded grassy field with two purpose built barbecues and a creak running to the side. Trees surrounding everything, and kinda on a sloping hill. Somebody brought three water guns and a water bomb machine. The water we got from the creak, and the water bomb machine is basically a pump so you don't need a water tap. It was just unfortunate that not very many people were interested in playing around like kids. The food was really good. There were sausages, burgers, and a hell of a lot of real steak. Any meat in this country is incredibly expensive, so to see this much steak; it would have cost the council a bomb.

On the 9th, Hermione was really groggy and completely ill all morning. She had been ill for weeks, but this morning she had two blocked nostrils and didn't eat her breakfast. She slept for hours on the cat hammock and we even got a blanket to cover over her as it looked like she was shivering. Thankfully she got back to being interested in playing and eating again around lunchtime.

On the 10th, Sabine unpacked her things and we made the home feel more roomy. We also had a house inspection from our landlady and she wasn't bothered by much, if at all. She didn't even inspect all the rooms.

Our cats have grown up enough to start behaving like little children who have bags of energy who love running around like crazy. one evening in the week Sabine taught Hermione not to scratch us. Call it a habit she was doing but it had come to be very frustrating. As Hermione is scared stiff of the bath, Sabine used this as a tactic to for her to learn. After half an hour of a lot of shouting coming from the bathroom, somehow, miraculously, Hermione learned. And its stayed. I can now pick her up without her having her claws out. Well done Sabine!

Regarding work again, there was a fire drill about 3 weeks ago. that was a novelty and it was planned. The whole building had to evacuate down the stairs and meet in designated areas outside. Well the week later the fire-alarm rang again. This time it was not a drill. I was out enjoying my lunch hour when this happened, so it didn't effect me whatsoever. Later found out it was due to sensor overheating in the vents. This week the fire alarm went off yet again, with me in the building at the time. This time someone burnt toast in one of the kitchens.

Yesterday we visited the SPCA to hang out with an influx of kittens. Only there wasn't any. Sabine asked at the desk and the lady said that they have over 70 kittens currently in foster homes which will be housed at the SPCA after the new year. I also asked regarding the general size of cats that we find over here. Fat black kitty that sometimes visits us has now been renamed Godzilla kitty because it has become obese and unclean. Poor thingy isn't in a home that is looking after it very well. :'(
In fact most of the adult cats at the SPCA are huge too. But I suspect they are all overweight.
After that visit we went to a pet shop in town that had a kitten adoption day. It was really busy and had lots of kittens about to hold and adopt. That was organized by Animal Rescue that said they have about 200 kittens in need of adoption.

So lets get some facts straight, SPCA + Animal Rescue = around 300 homeless kittens in Dunedin at the moment. These are excluding adult cats that need a home and excluding strays. This is just the kittens that are accounted for so far this season. Holy. Shit. This is an epic problem.

Today we visited the Otago Museum to see the recently renovated butterfly house. It was indoors on 3 floors and has potential to be awesome, but somehow falls short. the butterflies love sitting down more than flying around. At least in the London one they had a wind machine that forced them to fly every 15 minutes.