4th Worldwide

Guess which city is ranked 4th world-wide in terms of quality of living?

Drum roll please.

Auckland. Yes good old boring Auckland!

How did that happen - You might ask. Beats me. I'm stumped myself. I wonder what factors were taken into consideration. Well I'm sure they have their reasons and justifications. Hmm... Right-o.

Update:

I did some research on the criteria used by Mercer to rate the different cities. The criteria include factors like political stability, crime, medical services, schools (especially international schools), public services, transport, recreation, shops, housing, climate and pollution.

Interestingly cities with glamourous reputations like New York, Paris, Rome came in 49th, 33rd and 55th respectively. So I guess cities with good quality of life also seem to turn out to be pretty boring places. Yawn. A good balance for me please! Sydney seems like a good choice - 10th on the list and an interesting city enough to live in!

Out Of Credits

In order to call home, I make use of this particular international calling card - Hello China! It costs about 2 cents per minute to a landline in Singapore, so $10 buys you an eternity, well almost. My card recently ran out of credits. Since only certain Asian shops sell this elusive card, I haven't been able to replace it. I'll go hunting for it today and will call home soon! Until then, BIG HUG!!!

Bargain Hunting.

I just came back from a quick lunch-time shopping trip. I bought myself a really nice charcoal-coloured woollen winter coat for about $315. Cue had a members' sale and, of course, I (the ever shopaholic) managed to get myself on their mailing list. I happily printed out the flyer and got the coat at a 30% discount. Regular price of the coat was about $450. Yesterday, I dragged Stephen to Briscoe after work because it was the first day of their annual ANZAC weekend sale and we have had a list of household items that we've been meaning to get for a long time now. I got a non-stick frying pan for $9.99 and an fleece electric blanket with dual temperature controls (Yay! No more freezing sheets to climb into at night.) at a 60% discount. We paid about $50. These aren't exactly rock-bottom bargain prices so can you imagine paying regular prices for these items. My wallet will be smarting for weeks!

One good thing that came out of being here in NZ is that I've learnt to take advantage of good deals and discounts, something which I never bothered to do in Singapore. Sales were too chaotic and crowded for me, and I usually ended up buying the non-sale items anyway. I am also guilty of buying items without so much as a glance at the price tags.

Everything here, on the other hand, is so expensive. For example, eating out is pretty costly. A simple lunch can easily come up to $15, which consists of a sandwich or a main dish and a drink. That's double the price of lunch in Singapore. Furniture here is also priced through the roof. We can actually use our Ikea furniture for a year and sell it online here at a profit. We recently sold a study table at a tidy profit of $80. This basically means that these Kiwis are actually paying us to use the furniture before selling them on. Can you beat that?!

I used to tease my Mom about cutting out coupons and keeping discount vouchers to take advantage of the bargains. Now I'm doing the exact same thing. I can so imagine my Mom going "I told you so!".

Just a note to say...

... that I'm still alive and kicking and not lying in a ditch somewhere in NZ. I just download all my photos yesterday and I'll be putting up new entries.

Soon.

Stay tuned! :)

Daylight Savings

Daylight savings ended in NZ last Saturday while we were away. Now we're 4 hours, instead of 5 hours ahead of Singapore and the sun now sets at 6:30 in the evening instead of 7:30. I'm going to miss those long summer days.

We'll have a long break this weekend because of Good Friday and Easter Monday. I'm thinking of heading north for a couple of days up to Paihia, that is if the weather holds and we can find accommodation since there'll be an exodus of people leaving Auckland for the long weekend.

Boy Racers

A bill is going to be introduced into the courts of NZ that would allow the courts to crush (Yes, you read right. Crush!) boy racer cars to serve as a punishment for repeat offences. Previously, these boy racers* had their cars confiscated and sold off but the cars were bought by other boy racers so the problem was being recycled. Now they're going to crush the cars. How ingenious!

*Boy racers are the NZ equivalent of Ah Bengs racing around in their souped-up WRXes and Evos. Sometimes you can hear them in their cars screaming down the roads in the middle of the night. Crazy bunch.