Cost of Living - Shopping with Ms Shortie

Many of you are probably wondering what is the cost of living in New Zealand. It is definitely something to consider if you plan to move here. There are multiple websites that helps one to compare between countries. However while these website provide a glimpse at the difference between the cost of living, we felt it wasn't adequate. This is mainly due to the difference in culture between Singapore vs other countries (especially western). 
Case in point: When you compare the price of bread between SG and NZ, what bread we are comparing against? Gardenia vs Sunflower Canterberry Lindseed bread? Kaya toast vs focaccia bread (exotic in SG but common in NZ)? Or fancy (and overpriced) Breadtalk vs run of the mill croissant? Unfortunately Numbeo doesn't make a distinction. Bread is bread.

This leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. When you are brought up on Gardenia white bread, you are not likely to immediately switch your diet to German dark rye bread and this is where we felt the websites were not specific enough.

Thus we've tried to compile of list of our living expenses and household stuff/groceries below. As far as possible, we tried choosing brands that can be commonly found in Singapore.  Hopefully this would remove some of the ambiguity and give you a better idea of how much you may be spending. 
(Note that this is only for Wellington where prices are a tiny little bit more expensive than in Auckland)

Living Expenses

Rent: $500/week (inclusive of car park) [average rate for a car park is $50/week] 

Home insurance: $40/month [to cover for contents in our house in case of natural disasters or burglary]

Power: $120-$200/month [varies between summer and winter]

Internet: $90/month [unlimited usage plan]

Petrol: $80/month [we only drive during weekends]

Household Stuff & Groceries

There are 4 big supermarket chains in Wellington – Moore Wilsons, New World, Countdown and Pak n Save.

Moore Wilsons is the most expensive. In relative terms of ambiance, pricing and speciality goods, we rank it on par with MarketPlace. Followed by New World (Cold Storage) and Countdown (NTUC) and Pak n Save is something like Giant or Sheng Siong. Although Moore Wilsons and New World may be the most expensive, there are sometimes deals where you can get stuff cheaper than Pak n Save. You can bring down your spending if you know where and when to buy. 

There is also the Sunday Farmers Market where we get our fresh fruits and vegetables. Can’t get any fresher than that as Ms Shortie often find caterpillars in her veg. Yucks but I guess it means no pesticide!

There are also quite a number of asian supermarket where one can get asian ingredients. While items sold here are generally more expensive, they are not exorbitant. 

In general, we go to:  

-          Sunday Farmers Market for fruits and veg

-          Pak n Save for meat, other food and household stuff

-          New World for convenience coz its near our home

-          Asian supermarket for most things Asian

Prices from Pak n Save & New World

Item	Quantity	Brand (or similar to)	Normal Price	Sale Price
Bread	1 loaf	Gardenia	$2.18	3 for $5
Bread	1 loaf	Ploughman (wheat, nuts; healthy kind)	$2.99
Milk	1L		$2.45
Eggs	30; size 7		$11.00	$9.78
Ham	100g			$1.00
Cheese	12 slices	Cheesedale		$2.69
Potato chips	150g	Kettle		$1.99
Potato chips	150g	Pams (homebrand)		$1.30
Cup noodle		Maggi	$1.25
Instant noodle	5 pack	Maggi	$2.78
Tea	100 bags	Dilmah		$4.19
Coffee (plunger powder)	200g	Robert Harris		$6.00
Coffee (granulated instant powder)	360g	Nescafe	$18.98
Milo	530g			$6.38
Coke	1.5L			$1.74
Cornflakes	380g	Kellogs	$2.48
Pasta	500g	San Remo	$2.11
Pasta	500g	Budget (homebrand)	$0.83
Canola oil	500ml			$2.68
Olive oil	1L	Borges		$9.98
Nutella	400g		$5.84
Tabasco	60ml		$4.99
Rice	1kg	Sunrise	$2.50	$1.98
Beer	330ml x 12 bottles	Heineken	$21.98
Minced pork	1kg		$14.50	$9.99
Pork loin chop	1kg		$16.98
Chicken drumsticks/thighs	1kg		$9.98
Chicken breast	1kg		$12.98
Whole chicken	1kg		$14.98
Beef rum steak	1kg		$21.98
Beef porterhouse steak	1kg		$30.98
Red cod fish	1kg		$13.98
Salmon	1kg		$26.98
Frozen uncooked prawns	1kg		$24.98	$17.00
Shampoo	300ml	Clairol Herbal Essence	$6.30
Shampoo	300ml	Dove		$5.00
Shampoo	350ml	Pantene		$5.00
Shampoo	250ml	Garnier		$2.99
Body wash	250ml	Original Source	$4.06	$2.99
Body wash	375ml	Dove	$4.98
Kitchen towel	2 rolls			$2.45
Tissue box	180 sheets	Homebrand	$1.30
Toilet paper	18 rolls	Kleenex		$12.00
Dishwashing liquid	750ml	Palmolive		$2.69
Laundry detergent	2kg	Persil		$12.00
Laundry softener	400ml	Comfort		$4.00
AA Battery	12 pcs	Energizer		$13.00

Prices from Sunday Farmers Market

Item	Quantity	Price
Broccoli	1 head	$1.00 - $1.20
Bok Choy	1 bunch (4 - 5 stalks)	$1.50
Kai Lan	1 bunch	$3.00
Chai Sim	1 bunch	$2.50 - $3.00
Leek	1 stalk	$1.00
Lettuce	whole	$1.50
Cabbage	whole	$1.50 - $2.50
Potatoes	2kg bag	$2.50
White onions	1 bag (6 - 7 onions)	$1.00
Ginger	1kg	$7.00
Chinese garlic	1 bag (7 - 8 bulbs)	$2.00
NZ garlic	1 bulb	$1.00
Carrots	1kg bag	$1.00
White button mushrooms	1kg	$9.99
Brown button mushrooms	1kg	$10.99
Shallots	1kg	$6.99
Capsicum (Red)	each	$0.99 - $1.50
Apple (Royal Gala)	1kg	$1.50
Apple (Granny Smith)	1kg	$1.50
Oranges	1kg	$5.00
Mandarin oranges	1kg	$2.69
Pineapple	each	$3.00
Banana	1kg

Skilled Migrant Category Visa Demystified

Lots of people have asked us about the actual visa application process. It's really complicated. Nothing we say can save you from nights of anxiety attacks. But maybe this can help:

Larger version here. Note that we didn't create the chart. It was created by Bostonian from ENZ.org. Kudos to him. Hopefully that helps someone out there.

Part 1 and 1/4: Working Culture (Ms Shortie's perspective)

Well, Mr Fatty had given his view about the working culture here, so now’s my turn.

I’d definitely have to agree with the going home on time, coffee breaks and generous praises. It is really OK to go home at 5pm, 4.45pm or even 4.30pm if you have finished your work and nobody is going to say anything about it. There was once when I had to stay back to make international calls (because of the time difference) and by 5.30pm the office was empty except my senior manager and I. He only realised I was still in office when he was about to leave and told me “You should go home, its Friday. Make arrangements with your manager to make the call at another time so you don’t have to stay back. You shouldn’t be in the office at this hour”. But it’s only 5.30pm!

On coffee breaks, I often see people in the kitchen (they call it the “kitchen” over here; “pantry” is where you store food - one of the numerous difference in NZ) chit chatting, reading the newspapers, having a cuppa. And it’s ok. At first, I didn’t dare to take breaks because I was afraid that people might say “she must be too free, nothing to do…” (typical Singaporean) but nobody says anything here. Sometimes I go to the café across the road and I see my senior manager there having his cuppa as well.

I get really pai seh when my manager says “thank you for your work done this week” or “great job, this work is awesome” or “I’m so sorry I have to trouble you to follow up on this…”. I often don’t know how to react. I mean, it’s my job and I was just doing my work, and it’s not like I worked super hard. But managers are really appreciative here and it makes me want to do more for them.  

On discrimination, I haven’t experienced any in my work place. Count me lucky that there is a fellow Singaporean in my office but I’m the only Asian in my team of 20 pax. I feel that I have been given the same opportunity to perform as the rest. I have also been invited to BBQs, Christmas parties, Beer o’clock on Fridays, etc. I haven’t attended any Beer o’clock sessions as I don’t drink but I still get invited almost every Friday. In fact, being Chinese has given me an advantage because I could communicate with their chinese stakeholders. Many times, my colleagues tell me that they wished they could speak another language other than English. China is NZ's second largest trading partner and us Singaporeans being bilingual helps a lot. Take for example something simple like arranging for a courier from China to NZ, I would have to make the call because the person at the other end do not speak a single word of English. Or if a potential chinese investor sends an email, nobody would be able to read it and they might just lose the opportunity for business. During my younger days in Singapore, I used to winch whenever it's time to attend chinese lesson (听写，默写 and whatever 写) but now I’m glad that I am bilingual, and I give credit to the SG educational system for that. You’d really come to appreciate that knowing two languages gives you an edge above the rest. Oh the irony! My Chinese actually improved while I'm in NZ. 哈哈!

Ms Shortie

Life in NZ - A 6 months review - Part 1: Working Culture

As the saying goes: Time flies when you are having fun. It has been almost 6 months since we touched down in NZ. When we first started our blog, one of the aim was to document down our process and experiences of migrating to NZ from a Singaporean perspective. Past couple of weeks, we have been receiving feedbacks that there are many others who are contemplating the move and would like to find out more about life in New Zealand. I guess now's an opportune time to do a 6 months review about the good and bad experiences and hopefully it would allow others to make a more informed decision. There's so much to talk about about so we are going to do this over multiple post.


Part 1 - Working Culture in NZ:
We can't comment for every company in NZ, but based purely on our own experiences, the working culture here is very different from Singapore. Most companies start work at 8.30-9am and ends at 5pm. That's about 1 hour less of working time per day compared to Singapore. In both Mr Fatty and Ms Shortie's work place, rarely do people work overtime. When it's time to go home, it's time to go home. There's a strong focus on getting things done and less of "wayang-ing". Because the focus is about getting the job done at the end of the day, going for coffee breaks is not frown upon. Surfing youtube is accepted and there generally is a high level of trust that everybody's get their job done.

Due to the shorter working hours,  time really flies when you are in office. Some initial adjustment one might face would be the need to be more focus and discipline in terms of time management.

The working culture also seems more open. One example that comes to my mind: In Singapore, when switching jobs, there's a tendency not to tell your colleagues too much about where you are moving to. Here people seems to be more open about their career plans and aspirations. Another example would be feedback from your peers and bosses. In the office, it would be made known to you when a job is well done. Bosses tend to be more generous with their praises (Of course, at the end of the day, we are not working for praises brownie points but it does add to the job satisfaction). This open atmosphere also means that when something is not going to workout, it will be part of the feedback as well.

Some of you must be wondering, as an Asian, how is it like to be working in a predominantly "white" environment. Well Mr Fatty is the only Asian in his firm and he gets along pretty well with this colleagues. He gets invited for after office drinks, poker nights, BBQ etc. He doesn't gets called names (at least not in front of him. Behind his back who knows? ;)  Some personal thoughts on Kiwis is that they are generally pretty friendly (and harmless) people. Of course since they are from a western culture, they are generally more vocal but not boisterous. The  Kiwi accent does takes some getting used to (although it's not as thick and difficult to understand as Australians). You will not be able to understand some of their jokes initially but after a couple of months you'll get a hang of their humour and crack jokes just like them. As long as one makes an effort to socialize and be more proactive in their conversations, one shouldn't have an issue assimilating with the Kiwis. Many of Kiwi's social activities has beer involved in it more often then not. So if you can drink a glass or two, the assimilation process would probably be faster as well.

Generally I would say most Singaporeans would find working in NZ less stressful due to the shorter (and well defined) working hours and the more informal atmosphere. Oh did I forget to mention, "informal atmosphere" also refers to drinking session @ many work places on Friday afternoonish.

cheers,
Mr Fatty.

Our Weekends in Pictures

It's been a busy few weeks for the both of us.. Ms Shortie just got back from a work trip while Mr Fatty just completed a conference. Just thought of posting a photo entry on some of our weekends. :)
Here's a glimpse of what weekends are like in NZ:

Weekend getaway in a log cabin in Ohakune

With view of the mountain from our balcony

Driving up Mt Ruapehu

Sledging on Mt Ruapehu

Hiking among sheeps in the cloud at Makara

Makara Beach on a nice sunny day

Start of a 4-hour hike

Check out the view

And the rocks we had to climb

Wind turbines in the distance

Finally hiked up next to one

View from the top 

The steep path down 

250 steps up to the light house at Cape Palliser

View from the top

Cape Palliser lighthouse

View from the top

Hello fat seal!

Our coastal drive back 

BBQ at Martinborough 

BBQ at Martinborough

Weekend roast

Wellington Harbour

Rainbow 

Petone Winter Carnival

Double rainbow

Fireworks on the water

Indian Curry

Been a while since the last post. Nope, we have not been eaten up by a shark.Nope, we have not been poisoned by a spider. That's Australia. Wrong country. We migrated to NZ remember? We are very much still alive :)

The weather has been pretty awesome lately. It's now late-spring. The sun is raising earlier and earlier and setting later and later. Dawn starts at about 5.30am-ish. Dusk is @ 8.30pm-ish. I'll do a separate post on how it affects daily life another time.

 Anyway today's post is about something else. When we started this blog, besides documenting our adventure, we wanted to provide an avenue to share our insights of migrating to NZ from a  Singaporean perspective. It struck me that even when I refer to "Singaporean perspective", everyone's experiences is going to be different depending on his/her background, race,  temperament etc etc...

Thought I'll blog on about something interesting about how the different races in Singapore might experience Wellington differently. I'll try to put myself into the shoes of the 3 major races Chinese, Malay and Indian and talk about the topic every Singaporean loves best: Food. Hopefully this might provide some insight from a different angle on whether Wellington/NZ is the place for you. This is the first of the series.


[Indian Food]

There's this saying that culturally Australia is more American whereas New Zealand is more British. That may explain why there are so many Indian restaurants around ( Chicken Tikka Masala is England's national dish). There's at least 1 Indian restaurant on every street in Wellington City. You'll probably be surprised at how deeply curry has ingrained itself into the Kiwi culture. When you go into an Indian restaurant, you are likely to see more Caucasians dinning than Indians. At my work place, one day a week is desingated curry day.(In case you need me to spell it out: It's the day whereby the entire office goes to an Indian restaurant to have curry).
The Good News: Biryani, Masala, Korma, Vindaloo, Rogan josh and many others which I can't even pronounce. They are all available here. Even Tairu is available here!( I've yet to come across Rasum though). Ms shortie loves papadum and it's available at pretty much every Indian restaurant.
 Are they authentic? Not by Singapore standards. They have been pretty much adapted to the Kiwi's taste-bud. The UK standard of curry customization applies here: mild, medium, Kiwi Hot, Indian Hot.

The curry comes in a variety of meats too. From your standard chicken & mutton to more exotic ones such as duck. Take note that it's quite common to see Beef and Pork curry on the menu though.

A typical set lunch includes the following. Notice that it's pretty high in carbo:

• Rice
• Roti (In singapore we call it Naan)
• 1 portion of curry
• Price: $7-12

The Bad News: Pretty much every Indian restaurant we went to has roughly the same menu. They revolve around curry and curry and curry. I've yet to see Indian Rojak. No soup kambeng. No fish head curry. Can't recall coming across Mutabak.

If you can't live without your Banana leaf or Apollo or Muthu's curry, maybe you want to think twice.


Mr Fatty

Life in Welly

It’s been a while since our last entry. Lots of stuff had happened and lots of stuff ongoing. Mr Fatty and Ms Shortie got married and made their big move to New Zealand. So here we are in Wellington and we’ve already been here for 3 months and counting. So let’s continue our story…..

After we had gotten our Work Visas, we hastily made the decision to be wedded before coming to NZ. We brought forth our wedding plans by 7 months, sent out invitations to our closest friends and relatives and got married in 3 months’ time. Following the wedding, we only had 1 week before we were due to arrive in Auckland. We packed our bags - Mr Fatty packed light; only brought 2 pairs of shorts, while Ms Shortie tried to bring everything including the kitchen sink, and we flew into Auckland via Etihad Airways and Air New Zealand. It was a 13-hour altogether and both airlines were great. We made our way down to Wellington on a 7-day road trip, starting with a nice honeymoon meal at the top of the Auckland Sky Tower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, on to Rotorua to see the geysers, mudpools, soak in some Polynesian spa, feast on Maori food, then to Hobbiton where Ms Shortie felt right at home, drove through Lake Taupo which is actually a sunken giant ACTIVE volcano, then to Tongariro National Park for some trekking and snow fun, then on to Palmerstone North and finally reaching our destination: Wellington. We clogged a total of 1,300km though it’s just 635km from AKL to WEL.

We had booked to stay with a nice kiwi lady for 3 weeks on Airbnb and spent our first week here in Wellington searching for an apartment and exploring the city. Finally we found an apartment that made us go “wow”. We had to keep calling up the agent and told him how much we liked the apartment for him to let it to us over the other couple. Took us about 1 week to get all the admin work done coz the landlord requested that we get a Contents Insurance for the house. So Ms Shortie had to call up insurance companies to find out which was the best deal for us. And we scrambled to buy the basic furniture and household items whilst we still had our rental car. I would say we have gotten a rather prime location with Courtney Place and the cinema one block away. Courtney Place is lined up with lots of restaurants and cafes. New World, the biggest supermarket in the city centre, is just around the corner. So is Te Papa (the national museum), the habour, and a Sunday farmers’ market. There’s also an organic supermarket nearby. I would say this location is very convenient and Mr Fatty just takes about 15min to walk to work, while Ms Shortie takes 30min coz her office is a wee bit further away. But its good exercise. And it's pretty normal sight to see people dressed in formal attire with sport shoes on brisk walking to work.

Food

Warning: Eating out is expensive, at least $10 for a plate of fried noodles. But it’s a much bigger portion compared to Singapore’s so we could share and save up a little. There are also lots of Asian food around. Especially sushi. Quite a few Malaysian restaurants around too. So no need to worry about char kuay teow and wonton mee. So far, most food courts we’d seen have Chinese food, thai food, Japanese food, indian food and kebabs. And food here tend to be very salty. We also found a foodcourt that has cheap Chinese food and it’s just across the street from us. So you pay $12 and pile on as much food as you can on your dish! Also, there’s a big Asian supermarket where Miss Shortie can find all her ingredients to make mee soto! They even sell mooncakes now when mid-autumn festival is just around the corner! But, most of the time we buy our groceries at the Sunday farmers market and make our own dinner. Trying to limit eating out coz it's just too expensive! And most people bring their lunches to work.  

Just swipe your Eftpos card, no cash required!

The good thing about living here is you don’t have to bring any cash when you go out. All you need is an Eftpos card. It’s kinda like NETS just that they accept it anywhere and everywhere! You could pay using this at the supermarkets, dairy shops, departmental store, shops, foodcourt, furniture shop etc. So far the only place we came across that doesn’t accept Eftpos are some stalls at the farmers’ market. It’s very convenient and you don’t have to bring large amount of cash out so no worries of getting robbed! Our previous landlady told us she doesn’t have any cash with her at all coz there’s no need to have any! P.S. Ms Shortie tried paying for a $0.29 bill using Eftpos and they accepted! :D

Driving & Walking

Buying a car is cheap (~$3000-$4000 for a 2^nd hand car) but parking is expensive and driving in Wellington is not easy coz of the city’s hilly terrain and Ms Shortie absolutely hate red lights on a slope and not to mention PARALLEL PARKING on a slope!!!  Good thing is the city is pretty small so you could walk almost EVERYWHERE. It’s healthy exercise. It also seems like Wellingtonians are very healthy people. You’ll see people going to the gym or jogging on the streets even though it’s winter. Then again, it’s good to have a car so you could explore the outskirts.  

Renting

Renting is very common in Wellington and rent is usually paid weekly. There is also something called the bond which is paid to the government who keeps it until your lease is up and if you damaged anything in the house, the landlord could use that money for repairs. Bonds are no more than 4 weeks rent. It is also important to choose a house that is built to the earthquake compliance codes (I will come to earthquakes shortly) and if possible sheltered from the northerlies. The northerlies or southerlies are strong winds that blow from the north or south. We experienced a very bad southerly last month that left about 25,000 homes without power. Our landlord’s house was shaking and the lights were flickering. The wind was battling against our window and I thought the roof was going to lift off. 

I’m not sure if this is only in Wellington… you do not have to pay for the water you use; only need to pay for electricity. It’s weird to us coz we pay A LOT for water in Singapore but maybe because NZ has lots of water unlike SG.

TradeMe

TradeMe is probably the best way to buy/rent/browse for anything. It's the kiwi version of eBay. According to Mr Fatty, eBay couldn't make it in NZ coz TradeMe was here first and it was too well established and popular. We were looking for furniture and managed to get a nice sofa off TradeMe for $120 which is MUCH cheaper than buying a new one. We also found our apartment on TradeMe. :)

But there are some things which we didn't want to get second-hand, like our bed. So we went to look for a bed and all the shops we went to sold beds for minimum $2000. *faint* We finally found one for $359 and bargained for free delivery. J So now we have a mattress but no bed frame so we are sleeping the Japanese way – tatami style. Then we had to buy kitchen utensils, table, vacuum cleaner, dustbin, hair dryer, heater, pillows and duvet, etc. which amounted up to about $1,000. We saw an outdoor dining set, 1 table and 2 chairs for $59. It’s the cheapest we’d seen and we needed something so we could have our meals properly so we got it. It’s a mad rush trying to buy stuff before your rental car lease is up. After that, we noticed a lot of buildings have the same dining set on their balconies. Haha.

­Work-life Balance

I'll save this topic for the next entry coz I wanna talk about EARTHQUAKES!!!

EARTHQUAKES!!!

NZ would be perfect if it weren't for the earthquakes! And it's happening too frequently..... :( When we first arrived, we were told by many people that the big ones (like magnitude 5 and above) happens about once a year. I think we probably had like 10 or more since we came and 5 of them above magnitude 6. I can't really keep count of how many we had. Slightly more than a month ago, I experienced my first earthquake home alone and it was very scary. I was doing the laundry and didn't know what was going on when it happened. There were creaking noises and then when I looked up I saw my whole kitchen moving left and right and immediately knew it was an earthquake. BUT I didn't know what to do! We didn't prepare for what to do during earthquakes! Instinct was to get out of the house and run (in case the building collapse). But we learnt that that is the WORST thing to do! Because if you run outside, things will fall on you and it's more likely that you'll get hurt outside. So the best thing to do is to hide under a sturdy table and hold on to it's legs (aka Drop, Cover & Hold). Drop before the earthquake drops you coz its hard to stand up properly when the ground is moving. Cover - I think its for seek Cover aka hide under table and Hold on to your shelter coz it might move away with the ground. And also to prepare an emergency bag with water, food, clothes etc, and an emergency plan with your family members in case communication systems are down. We have packed 2 bags - 1 kept next to our bed and 1 near our main door. Anyway.......... after that first quake, we had a 6.5 one 2 days later on a Sunday evening and Wellington City was shut down the following day to check for building damages. The 6.5 one was scary.. our entire apartment was just rocking left and right and the kitchen cabinets flung open and shut. Many aftershocks continued for about a week. There were about 3000+ quakes recorded for that series. It was crazy..... After that, we hurriedly tried to earthquake-proof our home. Bought child-lock hooks to secure the cabinets, bluetack-ed our mirror to the wall, moved fragile items to lower shelves and put non-slip mats under them, and strategically place our table such that we can dive under it and hide. It was a good thing we did all these because......... 3 weeks later.... a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit, followed by a series of 5.somethings and 6s!!!! We were VERY lucky we were not in Wellington when it hit. In fact we were on the road to Ohakune to see the mountains and didn't even feel it. But when we were in Ohakune, 300+km away from Wellington, we could feel a bit of the aftershocks so I can't really imagine how it was like. We just hope that our apartment is ok and it was! Everything was intact when we came back except for a fallen bottle of toner. We did well in earthquake-proofing our house. Anyway after all these experiences, I think we agree that we should move to somewhere lower ground. It really doesn't feel nice to be rocked  around on the 7th floor....

Ms Shortie