October Snow and Coming Home

It snowed in October here.  Which is strange because it doesn't normally snow until sometime in December.

Autumn Snowman by Be

The trees were still all covered in their orange, red and brown leaves so the extra burden of two evenings of snow caused more than a few of them to snap off some substantial branches.  In fact, power was out for much of the small city of Franklin and many of the stores were closed for a day or so because of it.  It's amazing how slowly snow melts.  There were still huge ploughed piles of snow at the shopping centre more than a week afterwards - it looked like a mountain of dirty white rubbish by then. 

It was also my birthday, in October, and fiance sneaked out "for a drive" and came back with a pair of African violets.  It was very sweet.  I didn't suspect a thing, either, which goes to show how perceptive I am.  Fiance had his birthday in November and I baked him Pumpkin Apple Spice bread and, eventually, Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding - Edmond's cookbook recipes.  I also upgraded his PC with a new 650 watt power supply (previously 350 watt) to power the new graphics card which I then installed so that he could play Skyrim when it came out a few days later.  It does look impressive, though I haven't had a chance to play it myself yet, and he's been enjoying it.

The latest news in my quest for permanent residency is that I will be heading home on Sunday to New Zealand so that I can complete the steps of the process there that I didn't manage to before we had to leave.  We're taking two direct flights so it will be less time in the air and in airports.  We've also elected to leave a day early to stay over night in Los Angeles in a hotel so we can be well rested for the long trip from LA to Auckland.  Still not sure where we'll be staying or how long we'll be staying but it will take at least 3 weeks for me to get an appointment at the US Consulate in Auckland, once I have had the required medical examination, so I suspect it will be at least a month.

As much as it will be nice to be back in NZ; it will also be quite a hassle.  I'm still not sure where we'll be staying and we'll have to fly between Wellington and Auckland to deal with the consulate.  It's not a long flight, though, only about 1 hour each way.  At least it will be Spring there now so I won't have to deal with being too hot one day and too cold the next like it has been here for the past month. I will also be able to have real Marmite again.  I was so excited the other week when I found Marmite in the grocery store.  When I tried it, though, I found it wasn't the familiar, black, thick, smooth paste that I recalled.  Instead it was a thin, brown, syrupy texture and it didn't taste as it should have.  I wonder if this is the British recipe or one especially formulated to irritate ex-pats since I can't imagine any Americans to give it so much as a second glance.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: fiance and I bought our wedding rings.  They were a little discounted but we ended up getting platinum 3mm bands in the classic rounded plain bands with engraving on the inside of the bands.  We're pretty happy with them bit fiance suspects that his one is a little too large for him so we might need to get it adjusted, quickly, before we go back to NZ.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that I will be coming back to New Zealand at the end of November this year.  That is also the bad news, however.

I have to go back to NZ to sort out my visa. I need to have the medical examination there with a US immigration approved doctor and also have my consular interview at the Auckland US Consulate - the only US consulate in the country.  So, it's not so much a matter of choosing to come back as it is a matter of having to come back.

It's really a matter of unfortunate timing.  I had to come back to the USA to bring fiance back so he could get his medication refilled and because his NZ visa was finished.  I also didn't understand that there would be a stage after the initial application, which was approved a few days before I left NZ, so I hadn't realised that I would have to enter the US on a temporary vistor's visa.  And I also didn't know that under no circumstances can a person change status from a non-immigration visa onto an immigration visa without having to leave the continent and surrounding islands.

There is one other piece of good news, though.  It turns out that it will take less time to get an interview with the US Consulate and have my visa processed to completion than I had expected.  The Montreal US Consulate would take 5-7 months but the Auckland US Consulate apparently will take 3-12 weeks.  Of course, I seems that I can't actually ask for an appointment until after I have the results of the medical exam so I can't do that until I've returned to NZ and had the appointment and, supposedly, results could take up to 3 weeks to come through.  So, all in all, it could be 4 or so months before I can return to the US on an immigration visa (if one is approved) after returning to NZ.  Since I'm here until November it could be April before I get back to the USA.

It feels like a big, annoying waste of time and money but if it's what I need to do to be with fiance permanently then I'll just have to get it done.  Perhaps I can find some temp work while I'm there to help with the finances.  I still find it really hard no being financially independent for the first time in years.  Still, needs must.  I think I'm coming near to the end of the mountain of paperwork that I need to complete.  The weather is getting more mild here so it's easier for me to go out during the day.  Fiance is taking me out for a late lunch and grocery shopping soon.  We really need to find people to hang out with here; it seems like most of the 20-somethings here have gone off to college.  We've got a couple of leads, though, so we'll check those out.

Fortnight of Laziness

I was going to post something more whimsical tonight, a post idea I've had since I started this blog or perhaps before then, but I just realised that it's been over 2 weeks since I last made a post.  So this is an update post for those who know me.

I've been here just shy of 1 month and I don't feel like I've accomplished a lot of what needs to get done.  I'm no clearer on what I can do to sort out immigration but I do have an appointment to talk to a lawyer about my situation so I can get advice on the best course of action and what my options actually are.  I've read a few books for pleasure, as opposed to text books, and watched lots of Futurama, Invader Zim, The Simpsons, The Daily Show and Colbert Report.  I have, supposedly, made friends with the dog.  I think it's more of a truce, really, because I am undeniably a cat person.

I have plenty of forms to fill out, though some I am waiting to speak to the lawyer about before filling in or submitting, but it's been increasingly difficult to find the motivation.  I know how terribly self-defeating it is to procrastinate on these matters but there was a point where I felt every time I made an inquiry about my situation I found out that I was even worse off than I had originally thought.  That mindset is another self-defeating behaviour, I do realise, and I finally just decided to give myself last weekend off worrying and fretting to relax before tackling the tasks on Monday.  Hence why I have the lawyer appointment tomorrow; because I finally had the energy to find a lawyer and set it up.

I really struggled with eating safe and healthful foods when I was busy finishing up my study at super-speed in NZ so it's been wonderful to have the time and resources to try out recipes I've been wanting to.  I was frustrated that I had a cupboard full of spices but was lacking one that I wanted.  Then, at future-in-law's behest, I looked again and found that I had everything to make the spice mix that I wanted.  So, tonight I made my own 5 spice with freshly ground star anise, fennel seeds, Szechuan peppers, cloves and cinnamon.  It smells delicious so I'm looking forward to when I've made enough room in the fridge to make more food.  I have been over-doing it just a tad since I'm out-pacing myself with how much I can actually eat.  I do have some help with consuming the dishes but future-in-law doesn't want to eat all my safe food and fiancé doesn't like all of it.  I am eating a lot of pasta.  There's still at least 20 pounds of dry pasta in the pantry (that's about 20 boxes, 8 servings per box) but fiancé is helping me eat it too.


I think I've probably rambled on long enough tonight.  I am still alive and, relatively, well.  Hopefully my next post will be more entertaining and I'll take my camera out with me tomorrow when we go to North Attleborough (20 minutes away) to see the lawyer.  I might catch some squirrels or chipmunks being cute.  You never know; they seem to make a habit of it around these parts.

Happenings of 11 and 12 September

I just wanted to record a few interesting experiences that I've had over the past couple of days.  On Sunday I went to church with fiancé (the inclusive, non-dogmatic, accepting church) and, as most of the world will likely be aware, it was the ten year anniversary of the attacks on the US by Al Qaeda.  The message that was conveyed by those gathered and by those leading the service was one of peace and also acknowledgement of loss and grief.  A young Native American man sang an impromptu song in the language of his tribe along to a small drum that he had brought along.  It was amazing; I felt really privileged that he had shared that with me and those gathered there.  The song was sad and haunting but also very beautiful.  I had been saying to fiancé that I haven't seen any indication or expression of Native American culture in my previous visits to the US and so, as he said, I finally had my wish.  I would have loved to approach the young man and chat to him after the service, when people gather in the foyer for coffee, but a sentence at the end of the sharing ceremony finally triggered my homesickness in a huge way.  I was too tired and upset to brave social interaction, which I still find difficult at times, so we went to the store and then home.

In the evening I decided to cook myself some baked chicken breasts with peaches and ground chipotle pepper which is how I fell into the massive task of cleaning, repacking and organising the herbs and spices shelf in the pantry.  I discovered in there just about every herb and spice I had ever heard of, and I few I hadn't, and because it was so disorganised there were more than a few containers to consolidate.  There were also half a dozen cans in there and I found what I thought at the time to be some molasses spilt over some of the spice bags and the cans.  I cleaned it up and thought nothing more of it until I went to put the cans back and found that one can still had the black syrup on it, despite having rinsed and wiped it off, so I took it back to the sink.  As I peeled back the label to reveal more black ooze I thought about how curious it was that the can of apricots seemed rather hollow, what with the contents hitting the ends as I turned it, and it began to dawn on me.  The can had actually corroded enough to leak and, I suppose, the air leaking in must have helped the contents to rot and eventually turn into the delightful substance I was being subjected to as I attempted to clean it.  Needless to say, it immediately found it's rightful place in the bin.  Let this be a lesson to anyone with decade old cans in their pantry; they can eventually, under the right circumstances, go very very bad.

On a high from organising the mess that was the herbs and spices, I then moved on to the shelf dedicated to cake and muffin mixes.  2 Halloween cake mixes, 2 corn muffin mixes, 2 chocolate cake mixes, 1 can of frosting and an assortment of tiny bottles of frosting and sprinkles later I was left with the only box of cake mix and can of frosting not yet expired.  I used them to make my first cake-from-mix frosted with frosting-from-a-can.  My ex-professional baker ego got the better of me and I asked fiancé which he liked better: my baking or the cake mix from a box and frosting from a can variety.  He told me that it wasn't fair to ask him to choose, so I assume that I lost this bet, and I was disappointed with this answer for a while.  Then I realised that, despite my considerable talent in the kitchen, I was no match for the perfected science of Betty Crocker's laboratory or the Pillsbury Dough Boy's years of butter-icing manufacturing experience.  A quick look at Betty's ingredients also reassured me.  My cooking is rather simpler and more healthful, if I do say so myself, so perhaps that can even the score a little.

Today (actually yesterday, to be perfectly accurate, as of 26 minutes ago), we went shopping after an appointment that fiancé had and I found soy chocolate pudding, soy cheese and soy yoghurt at an organic food store.  We also visited the book store and fiancé garnered himself the rest of the series which begins with Game of Thrones by R. R. Martin (which he purchased at Wellington airport before we left).  He, cruelly, encouraged me to play with an e-reader which was on display and then years of consumer training and ingrained advertising gnawed at me to buy it.  Normally, I would have an income and could simply purchase it then and there but that is not the case at the moment.  I think this change in my situation triggered another home-sickness sulk so I had a sulk for a while until I realised that I had left my handbag in the book store's café.  It had my passport in it.  My wallet, credit card, NZ driver's licence, my cell phone and the cute fried egg key chain fiancé bought me.  But, most importantly, my damned passport.  Fiancé quickly turned the car around and drove me back to get it.  I ran in and the staff had already spotted it and were just about to lock it safely in a draw when I came back for it.  I haven't been so relieved since I passed my final exam.  Perhaps not even then. 

Previously, when fiancé had encouraged me to look at the e-reader, there had been no one stationed at the kiosk with the e-readers but there was now when we came back.  Fiancé encouraged me again to go to that counter and ask my questions of the staff member there.  I'm glad that he did.  The staff member was friendly, knowledgeable and actually seemed like the type of person that fiancé and I might get along with as friends.  He brought up the fact that writers can self-publish with no cost onto this platform and sell their e-books through the store's website.  He himself had done so.  I'm very intrigued by this prospect, it makes getting a book published seem so much more accessible and possible, and I feel really motivated to look further into it.  I feel so much more motivated to write.  What else have I do to?  Well, aside from cook, clean, tidy, paint and deal with bureaucrats.  Fiancé also picked up a job application for the book store, which is a big and awesome step, so all in all it worked out great.

Technology of Convenience

I last left New Zealand on 31 August 2011 which was 1 day before the new legislation "Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011" came into effect.  Copyright holders could use information collected as of 12 August 2011 to prosecute, however.  Still, my name has never been on an ISP account and I wasn't a fan of using peer-to-peer file sharing software which is what the law targeted.  I wasn't immune to the concern about the law, though, so it was something of a relief to be leaving the country when I was (avoiding the Rugby World Cup was also a huge bonus).  I wasn't glad because I thought I could go to a place with more lax copyright law, not at all, but because I was heading somewhere that has all the services that I need without having to break the law.

In the USA I can watch House M.D. and new episodes of The Simpsons on Fox's websites.  I can watch free content directly from the copyright holder themselves; all legally.  Sure, the copyright holder chooses which episodes to make available to me at which time, each site has about 5 episodes available at any given time and they rotate them, but it's still incredibly convenient.  In NZ the closest I came was TV 3's "TV on Demand" which usually just made available a few episodes from earlier in the day or week.  Usually the shows were NZ made shows too, not the property of big US copyright holders, so there was a limited variety from what I recall.  So, to sum up: in the USA I don't need to break copyright law (even if I wanted to) because my needs are met with free media directly and legally from the source.

Now, NZ readers out there might think: "But wait a minute, what about your monthly bandwidth limit?  If you're watching so much online then you'll be downgraded to dial-up speed or charged a mint for exceeding your limit!"  My answer to that: bandwidth limits don't exist here.  Fiancé told me that some of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) tried to introduce limits, individually, and it would just cause their customers to migrate en mass to another ISP.  Basically, unless all ISPs introduced limits at once then it could never happen because the ISP that does loses too large a portion of their customers.  Sweet deal, huh?

Cable television here is a lot better than in NZ, too, in my opinion.  I've been in a household where we had Sky TV but, with the exception of a few cartoons that were repeats of repeats of repeats, I found that there was never anything to watch.  Or I would turn the TV on at the end of a movie that I really wanted to see or end up watching half a movie because I only caught the end of it.  I know TiVo has come to NZ now, and other recording devices of a similiar nature, but there's still not as much good and recent content as in the US.  And, because a lot of the good content is owned by US copyright holders, there likely never will be.  In this household there are 3 TiVo machines, 3 widescreen TVs and 3 people.  Excessive, I know.  By hey, fiancé and I at least share 1 TiVo while the man paying for it all (bless his soul) monopolizes the other 2.  Far be it from me to complain; fiancé and I watch many of the same shows and we're both happy with this arrangement.  Fiancé was already recording Futurama (a rare show in NZ), The Daily Show, Colbert Report and he set it up to record House M.D. for me.  There is, sadly, a lack of British shows available.  There's BBC America but when I tried watching that once it was during a marathon weekend of Top Gear.  Hmm, no thanks.  I shall investigate and see if the TiVo can't pick out a few gems for me, however.

Not all is sunshine and cupcakes in terms of US technology, however.  In the US it's normal practice (and they all do it) for Mobile Service Providers to charge customers to receive text messages.  When I found this out, since I had previously thought that this only applied to when International text messages were received, I was flabbergasted.  I can get unlimited text plans here for around $20 US but otherwise texts are $0.20 each way so, effectively, $0.40 per text!  In NZ my phone company charged me $0.09 NZ ($0.07 US at today's exchange rate) per text message sent - nationally or internationally - and nothing to receive text messages even if they were international.  They would also give me a number of free national texts each time I topped up my pre-paid account and, because I was mostly sending international texts to fiancé, I can honestly say that I never used all of the free national texts that I got.  I usually had about 700-900 free texts just sitting there waiting to be used, though they did expire after 30 days, so all I had to do was pay for the international texts.  To be honest, that company was an anomaly because most other phone companies charged $0.20 NZ per text send, nothing for receiving texts and $0.30 NZ for international or Pxt (picture) messages.

Another sore point with me about US phone companies is that they don't have to unlock a phone when a customer leaves them.  Say I purchase a phone from a company and, since it's their hardware, they make me sign a contract.  I have to pay to leave them if I want to go before the contract is up which is pretty standard (though scummy) and is done in NZ also.  If I then want to move to another company with the phone I purchased from the last one then I have to ask the first company to unlock my phone so that it can be used on the other company's network and plan.  Legally, they are under no obligation to do so.  I've never come across this in NZ.  Perhaps they do it with smart phones but I've never bothered to own one so I wouldn't know.  I like to give my old handset away or have it spare when I upgrade so this would be a major pain in the backside.  Fortunately, I still really like the phone that I got in NZ and since it's not locked I can get a sim card from a US phone company here and pop that in without even signing a contract since they can just add my phone to fiancé's contract with them.  I could go pre-paid but I figure this way is less hassle and there's just 1 bill to deal with each month.  It seems to work out a bit cheaper too, from what research I've done, so it's probably the way to go.

Games are ridiculously cheap here too.  Even if you factor in the exchange rate, console and PC games (especially pre-owned) are incredibly cheap when compared to NZ prices.  A game that would retail in NZ for $80 I can get a pre-owned copy of for $10 US.  And the beautiful thing about my main console of choice is that I don't have to deal with any region lock issues.  Lack of bandwidth limits also makes purchasing music and games online to download much more manageable.  Supposedly, electronics are much more affordable here than in NZ but I have yet to find evidence of this.  I was (window) shopping online for a netbook and found that the prices seems comparable to what I recall from NZ.  Then again, I didn't compare specific models so fiancé may be correct in his claim that PCs and their parts are much less expensive here.

State of the Culinary Arts

In my last post I mentioned that I've been cooking more often in the past couple of weeks since my arrival than I had been earlier in the year.  Part of the reason for this is that I want to make a lifestyle change to stick to foods that are safe for me and won't make me sick (because of IBS) and another part is the freedom of the comparatively large kitchen that I have at my disposal.  For a while now I've been wanting to make a post about shopping, cooking and eating in the US because I've noticed a fair amount of differences between those habits here and in NZ.  Some of these points may have to do with income levels, State differences and family habits/culture but this is my experience.

Firstly, shopping in the US is interesting.  Even in the normal everyday supermarket I can get Soy Cream Cheese - which is incredibly delicious and safe for me!  There are more flavours of soy ice cream than I'm used to (cookies and cream included) and in our local grocery store there is a Dunkin' Donuts.  I've actually found, to my surprise, that I can eat the type of donuts that Honey Dew Donuts and Dunkin' Donuts sell.  I've also found that strawberry frosted donuts with sprinkles are so good that I want to eat too many of them.  These stores are everywhere and they have drive through windows.  Oh, that's another thing; there are drive through windows for pretty much everything.  In Wellington, the capital of NZ, there were 2 stores with drive through windows in the central Wellington and close suburbs.  They were both US franchise fast food restaurants.  Here you have all the fast food places with drive through windows, a café has one, the pharmacies have them, there are drive-through ATMs and you can get little electronic boxes that attach to your windscreen to automatically pay at toll booths.  It seems, in the USA, all you have to do is drive through.

Back to the supermarkets now.  I have never seen so many frozen dinners in one place at one time!  There are at least 4 aisles of vertical freezers with vegetables, pre-cooked meats, ready made dinners, ice cream, waffles, donuts, gluten free foods and etcetera in our local grocery store.  About a half of one of those freezers is filled with microwave meals.  There is another freezer for seafood, though it's a bit smaller, and most of the back wall of the store is refrigeration for meat, dairy, perishable soy and, yet again, more mircowave dinners that don't need to be stored frozen.  Compare this to my local supermarkets; the larger of which usually had 2 freezers for vegetables, pre-cooked meat and instant foods.  The instant foods took up about a quarter to a third of 1 freezer.  These freezers were also much smaller; they were the type you look into from above.  And it's not that this area is more populated; Franklin has a population of 31,635 as of the 2010 US Census and Wellington City has a population of 192,800 (and those are just those that live in the city, not those that live in the greater Wellington region, many people commute into the city for work for other activities).  The reason for the difference is, in my humble opinion, that there are more supermarkets in Wellington city than there are in Franklin.  A lot of Franklin is spread out and you can't walk or bus anywhere without first getting a ride to a footpath that goes somewhere other than around the block or to a bus station.  Downtown Franklin doesn't contain a supermarket (they're too big here for one to fit) and they tend to be in big malls with a dozen other stores.


Secondly, I wanted to tackle the topic of fast food and restaurant meals.  The US has something of a reputation, at least in NZ, of creating a habit of large portion sizes.  While it's true that you can get a giant drink from a fast food restaurant; it actually seems that most franchises give portions around the same size as those of US food chains in NZ.  Now, non-fast food restaurants are another story.  When I went to a steak and seafood place nearby they gave giant portions.  Future-in-law said that the reason for this is that if a restaurant serves normal, moderate sized portions that people would give themselves at home they are suddenly assumed to be stingy and they would get a bad reputation.  He said that many people, himself included, take half the meal home to have the next day or at another time.  There are people who eat the whole meal then and there but I think every country has people who over-indulge at least some of the time.


And lastly, the adventure of this family's kitchen.  I have to tangent back to the super market for a moment here to explain a detail I missed earlier.  There seems to be, on almost all items that I went to buy, a constant discount deal on buying in bulk.  For example, if you buy 10 bottles of iced tea you can get them all for $10.  I'm used to seeing 2 for $5, and there are a few of those deals too, but I've never seen a bulk deal for 10 of an item in an NZ supermarket.  In fact, from what I recall, most NZ supermarkets actually restricted the number of an item shoppers could purchase and it was usually maximum of 12.  Perhaps the enticement of a discount for buying in bulk can be partly to blame for the state of the kitchen in this house.  There is, as I put it to fiancé the other day: "More of everything you could ever need or use before it expires" in this kitchen.  There are two large closets which are used as pantries and they're completely full of cans, packets, boxes and cartons of food.  There's half a shelf of plastic re-sealable storage bags, tin foil, wax paper and parchment baking paper.  There is an entire, albeit small, shelf dedicated to pre-made frosting, muffin and cake mixes.  There is an entire very large shelf covered in herbs and spices in jars and zip-lock bags.  It's great to have so much to work with but the problem is that I don't know I have all these things unless I manage to hunt them out through the 3 rows of cans on one shelf or the stacked trays of spice jars.


When I asked fiancé if he had ever heard of the fad of eating your way to a bare cupboard; he said that he had not.  I'm not in the least part surprised by this.  I would love to do this with this household's kitchen but I foresee some issues.  One is that fiancé, due to a physical condition causing heightened senses, is a very fussy eater.  There are foods in the cupboard that he used to eat but now won't.  Another is that I can't eat a lot of what is in the cupboards because of my own health issues.  Perhaps, if we can find no one at home who will consume them, some of the cans will have to be donated.  We'll see what happens, and if I can get anyone to co-operate with me, as time goes on.

End of Week 1

Well, it's past midnight so I've officially been in the US of A for an entire week.  I feel like I've accomplished very little but I do know now a lot more of what I cannot do, in terms of immigration rules and visas, so I just have to figure out what I can do to get things sorted.  I've spoken to US Citizen and Immigration Services, the Auckland US Consulate and the National Visa Center.  From all this I have concluded that: I need some legal advice.

In less bureaucratic news, I started painting the kitchen wall today.  Part of the aforementioned wall had to be removed to access the plumbing so that old copper pipes could be replaced by new, longer-lasting, plastic pipes.  Actually, technically speaking, I didn't do any painting today.  I was busy wiping the extra plaster off the parts that didn't need plastering and then sanding the rest down smooth.  It's not a huge area to deal with but I foolishly didn't cover my head and got fine dust all over my hair and face.  It was almost comical to look in the bathroom mirror and see horizontal lines of white powder running down from the bridge of my nose.  I guess dark circles are good for something and that something happens to be catching dust.  Who would have thought it?  The reason that I was roped into this house repair project is that, the other day when future-in-law was helping us move the things we weren't allowed to move from our room without him and mounting the TV on the wall (and I'm still not sure about having a TV in a bedroom but this will basically be like our 1 room flat which is a sanctuary away from the antiques), I accidentally confessed that my father was a house painter when future-in-law asked me if I could paint.  I don't really mind doing it, he is doing a lot for me and fiancé, but sanding is one of those menial tasks which is unlikely to be enjoyed by many.  I am certainly not a huge fan of it myself.

The room that we're staying in is on the way to being, but isn't quite yet, habitable.  We have an annoying situation where suitcases full of clothes, and other bags, are taking up space so there's little room to move around.  But, frustratingly, we can't unpack until we have somewhere to put all these belongings.  One of the set of drawers that we would like to use for this room are next door in what used to be fiancé's bedroom but has become the tenth storage room (1. attic 2. basement 3. garage 4. first storage locker 5. second storage locker 6. front room 7. TV room 8. dining room 9. future-in-law's office room).  To remove the draws we would have to clear a path because the floor is covered in boxes and piles of stuff and things, remove all the ornaments, lamps and etcetera from the top of the drawers, empty and remove the draws or just carry them with their contents next door and then move the frame out and somehow fit it through the door to our room which has the doorway partially obstructed by an overflowing bookshelf (which is not ours nor are its contents).  Fiancé thinks it's impossible or, at the very least, close enough to impossible for him not to want to bother.  I tend to agree with him.  The lesson of the day seems to be; make do with what you have.  And make do we shall.

It hasn't been all bureaucrats and moving boxes, though.  Fiancé and I did get to the movies the other day to see Rise of The Planet of the Apes.  I enjoyed it but I probably wouldn't pay to see it twice.  I've also been cooking a lot more than I have in the last several months.  Tonight I made couscous with dried fruit and pistachio nuts.  I found it delicious but fiancé was not so enthused.  He decided he would like it better with brown sugar and apple sauce - which can easily be arranged - but this does mean that I have to finish his portion.  Woe unto me.  It's calling me now so I'd best deal to it.

Day 5

We ended up waking up super early (about 6am, which is early by my standards) and went off to church for the 10am service only to find that there were around half a dozen people and dogs there sitting outside in the sweltering (by my standards) heat.  It turned out to be the last "Summer Service" which was for blessing the pets of congregation members.  I guess it was held outside to prevent pet accidents indoors but I wasn't able to hang around in the sun so fiancé and I went off to do some shopping.  A decade ago I never would have entertained the idea of buying, let alone wearing, short-shorts.  I'm sorry, teenage-self, but it cannot be avoided.  I obtained 2 pairs of tiny shorts (1 of which are jeans shorts but they're actually quite tasteful and do not, I repeat do not, have frayed bottoms for that "I just cut my jeans into shorts" look.  Perish the thought!), and a couple each of rayon tops and dresses with the hope that I might survive my furtive trips outside during the end of this summer.  The Gods only know what I will do next summer, immigration willing, when I am subjected to the height of a Massachusetts summer.

Jet-lag is making me lethargic and my compulsion to be useful is warring with my lack of energy to actually put into action all the cleaning, tidying and cooking plans that are floating around my head like rain-clouds on the horizon of a picnic.  I just finished an IT diploma more than a month early, you'd think I might have some sense of achievement from that, but all I can think is that I'm not supporting myself financially and not making myself useful enough.  Maybe the tiredness is making me a bit mental too.

None of these feelings are helped at all by the phone call I just made to the Auckland US Consulate's Visa Services call-centre when I learnt that getting my immigration visa sorted out is even more involved than I had expected.  I have to leave the North American Continent and surrounding Islands before the end of my holiday visa, not just the USA but the whole area, and I also need to have a medical exam, interview and provide more documents than I can count on both hands.  Even if I had known all this before I left NZ, it wouldn't have made much difference.  Fiancé's travel visa and prescription medication was running out so he had to go, and he couldn't have travelled that far without someone to accompany him, so it's not reality that's bending to bureaucracy; it's just my vision expanding to encompass all the details I failed to see when I was so focused on getting everything done to suit my schedule.  Government departments don't really work that way.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though.  I may not be able to pin-point that gleam just yet but surely it's out there somewhere.  Perhaps being forced to leave the area will mean that I'll get to visit the Chilean branch of my family sooner rather than later.  Anyway, I better get back to filling out my paperwork.

Day 4

I can't think of anything more creative to call my posts at the moment but it is 1.32am so perhaps that can be forgiven.

Once we gave up hope that any plumbers would get back to us that same day, I decided to watch a movie on Netflix - another bonus of living in the States and made possible by lack of broadband caps - and the movie I chose was called "What Dreams May Come".  Without giving too much away, it was something similar to the Orpheus and Eurydice story; only with contemporary US Americans and involving  more Heaven and Hell than Hades and dealings with the Gods.  I cried, a lot, as I am wont to do in any even slightly evocative film.  Then, like an idiot who wants her body clock to be even more messed up, I stayed up until 6am writing.

A few hours later, a plumber called and arranged to come over in a couple of hours.  By this point, I was relieved but too tired to really do much other than go back to bed.  My fiancé, who had not slept a wink all night, on the other hand was the one who waited for them, directed them to the pump and then arranged payment after calling the future-in-law for details.  Just to give a bit of background; fiancé spent the last 3 years of high school studying from home because of severe and constant panic attacks which were later diagnosed as Panic Disorder, along with Major Depressive Disorder and he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome when he was in his pre-teens.  This is a man who, less than 1 year ago, was so crippled by his illnesses that he couldn't step out his front door - let alone answer the front door to talk with a stranger.  But he took care of everything, while I was taking my zombie-sleep, without much more than a single hesitation.  He is amazing.

I was really surprised that it only took a couple of hours for the plumbers to replace the outside water pump for the well and about 200 metres of pipes.  Then we had water again.  I still feel a little giddy at the privilege of having running water - as silly as that might sound to those who take it for granted.  Once the plumbers left we both slept until about 6pm.  I spent this evening cooking because I had been too scared to do so the day before as I didn't want a mountain of filthy dishes to attract insects to our kitchen.  I also had to clean (with the help of the dishwasher) all the dishes that had been piling up.  I think I do have an obsessive compulsion to wash my hands when ever they feel slightly less than clean because, by the end of the time we had gone without running water, I was getting really frustrated at how sticky and filthy my hands felt.  1+ neuroses for me, I guess.

My body clock is still mad at me, which is why I am writing rather than sleeping at this moment, but I'm hoping that it will play nice soon and let me sleep.  Fiancé wants to go to church in the morning and I said I'd go with him.  I'm not overly fond of churches but this one is quite nice, mostly because they don't force you to believe anything and teach acceptance and celebration of differences, so I don't mind accompanying him.  The people there are nice and I should probably try to make some friends here and it seems like a place to start.

Day 2 and 3

In the afternoon when we woke up, almost 24 hours after our arrival, we found that the van we needed to use to buy groceries had 1 slightly flat tyre and 1 dramatically flat tyre.  Now, back in Wellington I could have hopped on the bus, called a taxi or simply walked down to the corner store of the centre of town.  Not so in the urban sprawl of this town.  Taxis have to be pre-arranged the day before, buses don't even service the area and there are no footpaths along the roads we would need to walk to get to any store.  We ended up ordering Chinese food because they delivered and because I thought that would be slightly less painful on my sensitive stomach than pizza.  It wasn't much.  It was ridiculously amusing to me, however, that Chinese food here does actually come in those white cardboard boxes with the wire handle just like in American Sit-Coms.  It also came with 5 complimentary fortune cookies; apparently I "will make changes before winning" and I have been advised to "Do the right thing because it is right.  Have the courage to face it.".


We ended up making a quick store run just before the store closed at 11pm because the future-in-law got home and let us use his car around then.  The next day we set about moving all the analogue TVs out of the room we have claimed as an antique-free zone and moving fiancé's computer into the aforementioned room so that it could actually be used (there was no room to stand in front of it - let alone sit - in his old bedroom come antique storage room) and then we were told not to move anything else until future-in-law was home to tell us where it was to go so we stopped.

Again, it was hard to wake up at a reasonable hour the next day so today I got out of bed just as future-in-law was heading off on a trip out of town for 2 days.  It just so happened that this was the exact same moment that the pump which brings water from the underground well that provides the water-supply for this house decided to break.  We have had no running water for over twelve hours.  Now, the fact that future-in-law is out of town isn't the worst part of this.  Tomorrow is July 4 - USA's "Independence Day" - which means, effectively, that we will be without water until Tuesday 5 July at the very least.  More than likely, all of the service people who we could call to come out to fix the pump are away on holiday out of town.  We've left messages for two separate companies, at least 1 of which advertises 24 hour service, and have heard nothing back for almost 12 hours.  I shall never take running water for granted again.

At least I can credit my "ghetto" (in the words of fiancé) upbringing as useful for helping us through this situation - we'll ask for some buckets of water from the neighbours tomorrow and do the good old bucket flush for the toilets then boil some for doing the dishes that are piling up and washing ourselves a bit.  One of the things I was looking forward to about living here was that I would have improved living conditions.  The Fates, it seems, are not without their sense of irony.

Beginning

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step - or so Confucius is supposed to have said.  My own journey from the land of fantails (Aotearoa/New Zealand) to the state of the Black-capped Chickadee (Massachusetts, USA) began with a drive around the bays of Wellington and one mislaid suitcase.  Far be it from me to do things by halves as, in actual fact, the journey I undertook was actually 9119.649 miles (14676.653km for us metric users) and it took 4 plane rides, 2 of which we missed and had to be rescheduled, 4 car trips, too much fastfood and all the patience that I could possibly fathom.  Oh, and a ride on a train in the Washington Dulles airport which made me feel like I was taking an after-hours tour of a Sci-Fi set.

I arrived to a mild day near the end of summer; at least my new household considered it mild.  86°F or 30°C is not what I would consider mild - not by a long shot.  Some people make the innocent mistake of thinking that New Zealand is tropical.  It is not.  Wellington is known as "The Windy City" for a reason; a gale-force strength reason.  NZ is sub-tropical, with a stress on the sub, and I like to remind people that we are neighbours with Antarctica.  Yes, we have snow - we have some great ski fields in fact - heck, it even snowed at sea level in Wellington a week or so before I left!  I came from the end of a cold, wet and windy winter to the tail-end of a summer in which it gets hotter than my place of birth can get without volcanic activity on a serious scale.

So, it was hot.  Did I mention that enough yet?  I was also miserably tired because I find it far too uncomfortable to sleep on a plane in economy class - except for when my fiancé was kindly lending his lap to me as a pillow - and our trip had taken from 1pm Tuesday 30 August (GMT+12) to 3pm Wednesday August 31 (GMT -5).  That's almost 60 hours of travel.  Admittedly, missing our flight from San Francisco to Washington and the subsequent flight from Washington to Providence, Rhode Island was something of a blessing in disguise.  My fiancé's brother had gone to a lot of effort to come out to see us for the brief few minutes while we stood in line at San Francisco airport security on the way to the gate for our next flight.  We had been held up in immigration for a good hour because, apparently, I suck at following instructions.  Once we missed the flight, and found we had to catch much later flights, he kindly came out yet again and picked us up, drove us to his home and let us shower and crash on his futon fold-down sofa bed.  This was the first time I had met him and the first time my fiancé had seen his brother in two years.  Though we spent the majority of our time there sleeping, we got to chat in the car to and from the airport and his hilarious stories were a much needed stress reliever.  I think we owe him a fruit basket, at the very least.

Back in Massachusetts, once we had dragged our suitcases out of the car and ourselves up the stairs, we arrived to a room which looked more like a museum than a bedroom.  My future father-in-law is an avid collector of antiques - specifically antique technology such as wooden radios, early television sets and phonographs - and he has increasingly run out of space in the 4 bedrooms, 2 sitting rooms, 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, 1 laundry room, 3 bathroom, double garage, attic and the large basement of his house.  The 2 rooms we wanted to use, which I had spent 3 weeks cleaning 3 months previously, were filled with antiques and over-flowing storage boxes of items which were long past being useful.  Disheartened, but exhausted, we slept like the dead.