It was difficult to decipher what he was saying because he had to talk over the blaring music. If the music was lower or turned off while he speaking, we would have heard him just fine.
midnight madness update
- Thread starter higgins3
- Start date
Witness protection program. My wife is a born and bred Italian Jersey Girl (Roselle Park) whose dad was the head of a plumber's union. She marries a guy named Smith, takes his name, and moves to a new hemisphere. What else could it be?
Actually, we're both profs. We were looking for a big adventure (second marriage for both of us) and the chance to move to NZ and have professorships at the same uni seemed like an exciting possibility. We got leaves of absence to see if we liked it. Been here (OK, I'm in SF right now!) 11 years now and love it. We get back about three times a year. Dual citizens, but I would never give up my US citizenship.
mikefla is right. Hard to retire here as it is very hard to get permanent residence if you are over 55. I made it in by months! Not impossible, just very hard. But if you are under 55 and have skills that NZ wants, it's not hard at all.
As to cost of living, Auckland is super expensive in terms of housing, but the South Island, for the most part, is not. And Dunedin, a college town of about 125,000 nestled into a lovely harbor, is not expensive at all. We find that if you factor in everything (and I'm a maths kind of a guy), it's not much different than NJ, and if you want to be careful with your money, it's cheaper. We splurge some, and dining out is one of the expensive things. But we grow veggies, and could go one bay over from our place (you can just see it in the distance in the pic) and gather up enough little neck clams to feed an army in about 15 minutes (no exaggeration). And the lamb is unbelievably good.
This is a view of the Otago Harbor from our back yard.
Jaw has dropped.
You lucky, smart son of a gun!
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