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.

Work Christmas party

Kitten day at a pet shop

Hermione hanging out with the stuffed animals

Calcifer has grown quite a bit!

Dunedin: This weekend

2 Sat-

We went to Mt Cargill today. Its a drive to north Dunedin and then a steep walk up the bush to the top of the hill. We parked the car in a decent spot about 500 meters away from the start of the walk. The official car park was only big enough to fit about 4 cars and was full anyway. The walk was nice, steep and long. Because the actual top was much further away than expected, we only got as far as reaching Butters Peak. Along the way there was a rock formation called the Organ Pipes which looked more like some sort of landslide more than anything. But one kid was climbing it. We also bumped into one of Sabines work colleagues, but she was going in the opposite direction, along with another bunch of kids. The temperatures today were glorious. In the mid 20's for sure. I hope we get to the top of Mt Cargill another time. Maybe when we have more bottles of water with us, and extra sun cream.
The top of Butters Peak had a 360º view of the whole of Dunedin and surroundings. Really cool.
We went home and cleaned the house. had some ice cream too. We bought mango/passion-fruit with real fruit in it. I finished off the boysenberry ice cream but had a taste of the new one. its amazing. And its not from Tip Top. It seems like all the ice cream manufactures over here have a high standard to them.

3 Sun-

Today we played with the cats then decided to go out. Dunedin has had really nice weather recently so Sabine wore a dress for the first time here in NZ. We visited The Warehouse in town, then went to the mall for an early lunch. I fancied a curry and ended up choosing a naff Rogan Josh. Sabine had a Chinese buffet dish. We shopped for a present for Sabines work colleague. She's participating in a Secret Santa and had no idea what to get this guy. Ive seen him a few times. I had the opportunity for participating in my work places Secret Santa but I don't have an idea about anyone, let alone know all their names. Sods law would have had it that I get picked some persons name that I've never talked too. So I declined. Sabine chose some sort of paint it yourself mug for this guy. It was the best thing around, and we looked everywhere.
We went to the museum because they said ages ago that the butterfly house will be open in December. Well its December now and... its still under renovations. To be opened on the 16th. Damn it! It was now something like 12:00pm and we had to lig around for 3 hours before the Santa parade to start. We decided to walk to the other end of the commercial district to go to Animates and then the other pet store just behind. That wasted some time. And made me dead on my feet. I put stuff in the car and decided to meet Sabine in the mall. More walking later and we met up. We ended up spending quite a while in Starbucks, waiting for the parade to start from 3pm. At around 2:45pm we decided to find a good spot outside. It was already gathering full of people and kids, and the road was already closed off. At 3pm nothing started. It was something like 3:20 before the first float got to where we were. It was a good parade. There were a lot of expensive looking floats driving past, some characters from movies, some from fairy tales, and others that advertised local groups and services. I would say it was about an hour long. I wasn't expecting such a long procession.

Some of The Highlanders?!

Dunedin: My job at the DCC

I started working at the Dunedin City Council on Thursday 21st of September.

I thought I would share my somewhat daily routine seeing as I never talk about work ordinarily.

I start work at 8:30am. I have the option of taking the bus in, however I choose not to. Its only a half hour walk to the Civic Center, which is directly at the city center, otherwise known as The Octagon.

I take the stairs up to the 3rd floor, using a fob key which is attached to my key ring. It gives me access to parts of the building.

I have a desk which is on an end, furthest from the window, quite near all the departments pigeon-holes. More about that in a sec. I have a desk which was literally raised to my working height for Health and Safety reasons.
On my desk are two widescreen monitors, which I work off of both. I also have my own telephone and inbox, with date stamp, 'Not Negotiable' stamp, stapler, pot of pens, posties and sellotape roll. I even have a riser for paperwork.

 

I have to wear work causal clothes, including black work shoes and smart black trousers. For some reason you can wear what you like on Fridays. I walk to work with my trainers and change my shoes when I get in first thing in the morning.

The church bells chime every 15 minutes, and a lot of colleagues use it by work practices. So when the bell chimes, I have to use one of the 3 lifts to go down to the Lower Basement to pick up today's mail. This is the mail for every department, including the library building opposite.

The Lower Basement is used as the mail in and out delivery space, so naturally this is where the vans come in and park. It is underground and also has access for the library mail depo. I check all parcels to see whether anything needs to be placed at the library dock, before I make my way up to the 3rd floor again with a huge trolley basket load of mail. We recently had a change of practice as the mail is becoming heavier and more frequent, so now two of us go down to collect the mail.

Back at the 3rd floor, we sort through today's mail. 'We' as in at least two of us. The mail is actually really disorganised. Some people that work here will label their incoming letters as just their name with the DCC building address. No joke. They have no idea how frustrating it is for us to have to use the 'names bible' just to see which pigeonhole to use. Some departments don't even use their updated pigeonhole name. Such as what may be labeled as 'Regulatory' really needs to go to 'Building Control'; or what are labelled as 'City Property' on the package needs to go to just 'Property', not 'City Development'. My manager seems to think its fine having the system be as it is. I did talk to her about it but apparently its like asking to get blood from a stone with some people/departments.

The mail is opened by a special machine that slices away the bottom of envelopes. After that we all take a bunch and process them. What we do is date stamp everything, and sort where mail needs to be placed for their respective pigeonhole. Stamps are kept and are given to charity to 'make money', including franked ones. No idea how. The used envelopes are then recycled.

During the day, letters get posted in two 'bins' we have here. Either regular mail out or special mail out (which can be either fast post, air mail or personal mail). Every now and then I will inspect these bins throughout the day and double check which bag they need to belong too, and then place them in their respective bags accordingly.

Mail needs to be sorted out by 9:30am, however we usually have it sorted just after 9am.

After that I start with my Notices of Sale. Two of my colleagues work in the "Pathway" database system. This is what I primarily work with. The other two work with something called "ECM" which is another side of the database. I also use it slightly.

So my colleagues that work with Pathway will divide the printed out Notices of Sale, sharing them out between the 3 of us. For some reasons, Wednesdays seem to have the most printouts. This is because the Lawyers that create these Notices of Sales like to send most of them to the head company on Fridays, which then takes until Wednesdays before they get to us. So Mon, Tues, Thu and Fridays I would process roughly 7 NOS's, whilst on Wednesdays I could be sorting out my 20+ of them, as well as my colleagues ones too who get to swamped down by them.

On a normal day, it takes me from roughly 9:00am until 11:15am to finish processing my share of the NOS. On Wednesdays I could be doing them until 2:30pm.

So, for each NOS, there are many steps I need to process. Firstly we tick off the list of things written by the lawyers. We have to check with our systems that everything they are saying matches what we have on our database. Any discrepancies I raise with my colleague Bruce, who looks at Land Online and other websites and systems to make sure that things are actually the same the lawyer is suggesting. Things like names of people, exact square meters of land being sold, numbers to refer to all this, etc.

the next process is actually changing the ratepayers. Its the exact process of changing deeds of homeowners on a database, but I'm actually changing the 'rates', or council tax as it would otherwise be known by in the UK. This involves changing their addresses on the system. I even have to input the prices of the properties being sold, often having to create new people and companies within the process.

The NOS procedure is really complex. I even have to phone the lawyers when they sometimes get stuff wrong, such as having someones address listed as a normal one when really, normal mail cannot be delivered there. Sometimes they misspell their clients names too. Not often. I kinda think its stupid that NZ Post don't deliver outside of major towns and cities. They either have a community mail box, or just have mail delivered to their nearest local shop.

The paperwork I deal with then goes to be scanned as PDF Files by my other colleagues, then comes back to me later in the day where I link the PDF's within the database called ECM. This is so that when people type the name key or the property key, the PDF can be pulled up. The paperwork then goes to be recycled.

Still with me? Good. Next thing I do is the 'Change', 'New People' and 'Change of Address'. How this works is that customer services (the call center) will process the requests by the individuals ringing us up. The query is collected with information I need to input into the database. I don't have much to work with. Usually just a name and address. Customer services often misspell so I constantly look up the true spelling/layouts with NZ Post. The most complex of these is the 'New People' which involves emailing specific people telling them that I've done the process.
This whole process is labeled as the NAR (name and address register). NAR is something which comes in drips and drabs though the day, but essentially after they are done, I don't have much else to do in the day. Take right now for example (its 3:24pm as I type this).

I have one 15min tea break every morning, around 10:30am. Then lunch at 12:30 for an hour. Then a second tea break for 15mins around 3-3:30. For lunch I go to the staff room upstairs on the 4th floor. Its a huge space dedicated to those on a break. After I eat my sandwiches I either read a book or play Pokemon.

In ECM I have been taught how to register 'Payplan Direct' slips. They are scanned as PDF's and inputted into ECM. Its just a case of someone (i.e. me) tagging the PDF files to the database things such as names, addresses etc. That can take some time depending on how many slips are in need of processing.

I also deal with duplicate name ID's in the system that need merging. Not an easy task as some names who have rates need to be at specific addresses or specific names.

My colleagues do things such as ECM and planning consents. Two of my colleagues use things such as GIS mapping which can be used to see properties from a top down perspective. It uses what is basically Google Maps however they can draw lines into it to get area square meters. This affects the rates of the property owners. They also deal with subdivisions and create new road layouts into the system in coordination with plans from land management.

At around 4pm the departments start bringing in their outgoing mail, in droves. The last hour is usually pretty busy with me checking each letter, making sure they go in the specific DX Mail bag. You would be surprised just how many international letters are put in the wrong box.

I need to get the mail trolley basket down to the Lower Basement floor by 4:45pm in time to meet the DX Mail guy who drives in to meet me and take the daily mail out.

After that its pretty much dealing with last minute NAR before 5pm. I walk home, up the very steep road called Stuart Street. Its a very busy road and it's the only exercise I get these days after giving up on swimming. I listen to my music walking to and from work on my phone. Very much like the days of listening to my Walkman on the way to and from school.

Sabine is home earlier than me.

Dunedin: This weekend

18 Sat-

Sabine and I got up at 3am today because the weather report for Mount Cook has been looking pretty awesome all week.

We left the house at 4am, driving pretty much non-stop all the way up. We did stop for fuel though.

A quick stop over at Kurow

We got to Twizel first of all for a hot drink and a sandwich, then drove up again, arriving at Hooker Track mid morning (around 9am or 10am?). The walk up to Mount Cook started out nice but a bit cloudy, but as the walk progressed the weather got better and better as the sun was burning though. Eventually it was bright and sunny! The views of the mountains were stunning, especially Mount Cook itself! It looked like it had an ice cube on top of it! XD
Also we could hear a few avalanches happening a few times. Even saw a few too. They were not like how you would imagine them to be. They were only in tiny areas where a bit of show would fall off at a time. A bit like like how clumps of melting snow come off a tree, only just on a much grander scale.

It became so clear you could even see Mt Cook from the car park

We drove back and made it home before 5pm. We felt sorry for leaving our cats for 13 hours so we made it up to them by having them roam around the bungalow until 10pm. They loved playing with us.

19 Sun-

Not too much happened today. We played with the kitties for most of the day actually. Sabine had to go to work so I followed. That was only for about 15mins. For the rest of the outing we just went to the mall for a bit.

Back home and playing with the kitties again. In town I bought a laser pointer and its proved to be quite fun with the cats!

I opened a few of my shipping boxes (which arrived at Sabines work on Monday). I was very surprised to see a birthday present inside one of the boxes. It was a Highlanders shirt with a matching green hat. Now I can fit right in! Thanks again Dad. I really wasn't expecting anything like that!

Not too long after that I spotted another hedgehog in the garden. It was basking in the sun. Sabine fed it cat food which it wolfed down. Then as it wandered off we both saw it dragging one of its back legs. poor thingy.

Thunder kitty, Saturday