John & Fayne in New Zealand: Part II: Week One- Getting Reacquainted

My first two weeks here are designated for “orientation”, a loosely structured time of becoming familiar with the basic layout of Auckland City Hospital and the various personalities involved. I will go into detail about work after I go live” in a few weeks. Since I spent 11 months here a year ago, it is partially a matter of familiarizing myself once again with Kiwi ways. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed ginger beer and L&P soda, the fresh coffee cafes every 20 paces, the various biscuits on the shelves.

Previously, we had visited Auckland briefly three times. (I will link the previous blog posts at the bottom.) If you look on the map, it straddles a very thin isthmus between the large Tasman Sea and the gigantic Pacific Ocean. As a result, the weather changes often and rapidly, not hot or cold but much more humid than California. At 36.5’ South latitude, it is similar to San Luis Obispo in the north. The metropolitan area has 1.3 million people, or 30% of the population of the country. The topography is dominated by 50 extinct volcanoes, part of the Auckland Volcanic Field, so San Francisco-like, there are lots of hill and valleys.
I suspect if they could, city planners would want to take a mulligan on Auckland. I’m no expert, but there is no coherent style to the architecture. If not for the iconic Sky Tower (which Parthenon-like, looms over-head throughout the city), I would have no idea which city this is. See the montage below.

The highway system manages to slice up the CBD (Central Business District) so that walking across town is a challenge and yet it is still is not possible to drive in from the airport without meandering from one road to another through freeways and city streets. Even the historic Symonds Street Cemetery and final resting place of the first governor of New Zealand Captain William Hobson is transected by roadways.

Halfway across the Grafton Bridge between the CBD and the City Hospital there is a small sign and porthole pointing out the artwork in the median strip below.

Before we left the states we tried to tie up all loose ends but one was left hanging. For five months, we have been trying to complete re-financing our Richmond, CA property. Despite our bet efforts, the final papers came through 24 hours after we left the US. No worries, they say here. Not so. What a huge hassle! I did not realize the US uses different sizes of paper than most of the rest of the world, and standard 8.5” x 11” and 8.5” x 14” legal paper is nowhere to be found in Auckland. They use A4 and A3 size paper here. I thought it was a result of the US refusing to bow to international metric pressure, but it is not that simple. A4 is 21x29.7 cm, and A3 larger at 29.7 x 42 cm.

Paper sizes- clockwise from upper left: Standard, A4, Legal, & A3

It has something to do with a German system from the 1920’s involving the square root of two (I kid you not). Wikipedia has a fascinating (for nerds) discussion of paper sizes here.
So what I had to do was print them up on the A3 and trim them manually to size. The next challenge was to get them notarized with a US notary, available only through the US Consulate at $50 US a pop. Post 911, the Consulate is not a warm and fuzzy place, but we got that down the shipped back express mail to Ukiah. Not easy or cheap, but we should soon hear if our efforts were successful.
The weekend was pretty relaxed, but we had to move from hotel #1 to #2, and hope to be in our more permanent place next week. The highlight was a walk down to the harbor for great fish and chips (“fush and chups” in Kiwi) at the fish market and to take in the festivities celebrating the stop of the Volvo Ocean Race stop. This is a most prestigious round-the-world yacht competition held every three years. There were a host of activities along the viaduct, including a colorful parade with sea creatures and mermaids.