I’d love to get a good rundown of the places to live and work. What is the climate like in the various areas too? Ideally, I’d like to live somewhere that doesn’t get a lot of snow. I can handle cold, I just don’t want to have to drive in or shovel feet of snow.
A bunch of years ago I was about a millimeter away from taking a position with the NZ stats bureau. They were going to push through citizenship because I had needed skills, but they couldn’t pay me enough to be able live in Auckland.
That was painful. Hell, I would have even done a long commute, but it just wasn’t going to work.
le sigh
Christchurch would probably be borderline then. They tend to get a bit of snow most winters, sometimes a lot of snow. That’s the coldest one of the three options.
In Wellington we have had snow twice in the last 30 years. The last time was about 7 or 8 years ago and it was a hugely exciting event. It was gone within a couple of days, but while it was here I worked from home. We are definitely not set up to handle snow
Auckland don’t get snow, they are too far north. Auckland is sub-tropical and is quite a bit warmer than Wellington.
Yep, that’s the way I feel too. With me it’s figurative as well as literal. I don’t like Auckland. It’s too big and spread out, traffic is horrendous, and it’s hugely expensive.
My preference for a place to live is definitely Wellington (no surprises there I guess 
) . Wellington has a reputation for being windy, but that’s mostly based on the fact that we get one or two storms a year where the wind can blow pretty hard (I’m talking 100kmh+). The rest of the time it’s pretty mild.
The weather in Wellington tends to be fairly stable, whatever the current weather is tends to hang around for a while. In Auckland you can walk into a shop in clear blue skies, walk out again 10 minutes later into a torrential downpour - which will change back into clear blue skies another 10 minutes later.
Auckland has about 3M people, Wellington about 500K, Christchurch about 300K-400K.
Auckland has a lot of infrastructure problems because they have had a huge amount of population growth over the last 30 years or so. They have no real public transport because everything is so spread out, and commutes can take several hours.
In Wellington, there is a central business district and all public transport is based around this. If I take solely public transport my commute takes 50 minutes from walking out my door to walking in the door at work - and that includes a 5 minute walk to the bus stop and a 10 minute walk from the train station at the other end. If I take the car I can cut down that travel time to around 40 minutes if I leave early enough to miss the rush.
You can cut the commute down even further by living closer to town, but I prefer to live in the suburbs.
Speaking of commutes, I have to head off and get ready for work now. If you want any more information I can post it later.
No, they literally couldn’t pay me enough money to be able to afford to live in Auckland. I would have moved even if there was an hour commute each way. Still couldn’t make it work.
After about a 20 year absence, my bouts with cluster headaches has returned with a vengeance. Fortunately, they aren’t as painful as they used to be although they still hurt like hell for the hour or so that the attacks last. If I had access to a gun with my first attack over 25 years ago I would’ve seriously put a bullet in my head. Having children nowadays has fortunately taken that option off the table. Hopefully the attacks will slowly fade away as the season progresses like they used to in the past. I also seem to be able to sense them coming on a bit better and load up on whatever OTC pain reliever I have on hand at about double the recommended dose. I can also mitigate the pain by trying to find a comfortable position in a dark, silent room and controlling my breathing.
But yeah, life sucks right now…
Yep, I knew what you meant 
I had a rather strange chain of thoughts today. I was thinking about how to get a scene going in a story I’m writing and somehow that led to the old song "Frog Went A-Courtin’. I’ve figured out part of what the frog is wearing, which looks like a single-breasted open-front tailcoat, and maybe what he’s wearing underneath it would be a Mess jacket, but that doesn’t seem quite right. I definitely have no idea if there’s an actual name for the shoes the frog is wearing, other than ones that would fit his flippered feet. I guess he’s just wearing leggings on his legs.
Any ideas?
I can’t see a reference to that without thinking of Uncle Pecos…
"Hey there ne-ne-ne-ne-nephew!"
BING “Can’t play without a guitar string! Where’s that cat?”
Ahh, yes, childhood memories.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m too dumb to realize when it’s time to just give up on some things.
Trying to run virtual machines (virtualbox) on an i3 (windows 8 single language) is one way of teaching somebody to be patient…
Is stubbornness just selective stupidity?
No. True stubbornness isn’t selective. It’s also not always stupid, but that’s usually the way to bet.
For those with access to the Literacy group, the short story I wrote based on that song is now available.
It was sunny, clear & 70 degrees Saturday morning.
This morning, there’s over a foot of snow (in places) and my garage side door (person-sized, not car-sized) has decided that it no longer needs to close properly. It faces west, and we’re getting gusts up to 50 MPH from the west. I have bare spots on my driveway and not 2 yards away, a drift more than a foot tall.
I love seeing all the weird and wonderful ways Mother Nature can carve sculpture out of snow.
Living with it… well, that’s another thing.
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After several weeks of no rain at all (which was suspicious) we got struck by Storm Angus which unloaded a month’s worth of rain in just under four hours. Everything flooded. The roads flooded. The T&W Metro flooded. There were landslides. The large wind turbine on the dock has a twisted blade. Trees came down everywhere.
Then it was glorious and sunny all the next day. I mean it was still 2ºC (35ºF) but it was truly beautiful and nice and felt warm enough… just everything was ruined 
I would have been much happier if I hadn’t had to go to the emergency room last night…
Please say it was for your roomie
Nope. I drove myself in. Possible TMI ahead…
Apparently, peeing lots of blood is perfectly good reason to show up in the emergency room
Doh! Sorry to hear. And, yes, that’s plenty good reason. I hope you’re on the mend, again.