Land of the Kiwis A runner in New Zealand

Day 5: Fortifying The Position

Today was the first of a predicted 4 days of overcast/rain. Blech. I'll let it slide NZ, I'll let it slide. But only on account of the fact that it's still spring. If this were summer... I'd shake my fist. Anyways, not really a bad thing because it allowed me to get up all this web stuff and do a ton a useful errands.

The tough part of the day was the rainy, wet run. I got out with Cary and a friend named Alex Wallace to do a shake out Monday run.

15min RE warm up to the "Velodrome". This is an awesome cement bike track with mad banked turns for maximum speed. I'd love to watch a race there sometime or bust out Cary's road bike for some time trials when it gets warm.
2 x (8 x 100 @ 800 pace, 100 jog rest) 5min jog rest.
15min RE cool down.

Snapper Card

Got back and showered before taking the bus into town. Public transportation is really good here, though a bit more expensive (I think) than in the states. I don't have much experience though... One of the errands was to buy a "Snapper Card" for $10. You basically feed your snapper cash and it saves you mad $$ on buses and can be used in some convenience stores (NZ name: dairies 'DEER-ees'). With card, trip from our house to city is $2.40 instead of $5. Now, keep in mind the current exchange rate is .706 $US : 1 $NZ. So not bad.

The following is a good guide to some essentials (for runners at least) when living in the city.

Snapper Card: See above.

Gym: These are hard to come by outside of a university. I might be able to get a free membership through Tony Rogers and the Wellington Harriers, but only because he happens to have a free one sitting around from when he worked with them. The best one we found was "Les Mills". It's in a few cities in NZ and is really good but quite expensive. $40/week if you just do it per week. $20/week with 3yr contract. Now you can transfer contracts so it's likely to be a good idea to find someone with a 3-yr contract who's leaving. Buy it off of them. Use it for however long, and sell it again.

Blackberry Plan: Holy moly this is complicated. Their cell network is completely different from the US one. The biggest difference: if someone calls/txts you, you pay nothing and don't use any minutes/txts. They might get hit hard though depending on their plan and service. There  is also a big fee that got hidden from you in the states for calling someone on another network "switching fee". As for service providers, there are 3 big players in NZ. Telecom (best for iPhones), Vodaphone (best for Blackberries), 2 Degrees (upstart cheap company bringing down the prior monopolies). I think the way I might go is to use a prepaid plan for txts/voice. Now depending on how badly I want it, the cheapest data plan (and this is nice that I can just get a data plan) is 100MB (plenty) for 39.95/month. Times .706 is under $30 so not freaking bad! Still haven't made the final decision but for now, I have a prepaid card Cary gave me with the number 022.606.8019 for voice and txts. It might be best if you just txt me and I'll get on Skype and make the call for $.02/min.

Clothes: Pretty expensive here, at least on the strip. Cheapest jeans were $89.99 NZ x .706 = ~$70 US. Did find some really nice under-button-down Ts for $10 NZ. Got 2.

IRD: Went to the post-office with Cary to fill out application for my IRD #. This is your NZ tax number. It generally takes 10 days to process and after that you can work no problem. Easy.

Banking: It costs $5 to use ATM to take out NZ cash from a US account. It also costs 5% of transaction to use US debit/credit card. So I decided the best thing would be to grab $500 from US account to open NZ account. That way I can take out/use money without any fees on top. Best bank, online banking, debit/credit card, friendly service: BNZ.

Sushi: Found 8piece sushi for $4.90 NZ!!!

Well that was the core of our shopping trip to Wellington. Still rainy. Back for some good old pasta and a ham sandwich.

Goodnight.