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Month: June 2009

  • June 4, 2009

    Car woes, part one zillion and nine

    Life without a car in Auckland, frankly, sucks.

    Possibly not so much if you live, work and play in town, but otherwise?

    During the week I get by fine like I always have, unless I need to go somewhere out of the ordinary. I bus into town in the morning and I bus back at night.junker_car

    But on the weekends? Things like going grocery shopping, doing laundry, or visiting friends or family is damn near impossible. We’ve been borrowing BF’s brother’s car/scooter, but in an NZ winter, trust me, you want to be covered up outside. Flatmate’s car’s rego and warrant have run out, not to mention the broken taillight and the scraping wheel guard. Not something you wanna drive, or be caught driving (for things like broken lights they slap the fine on YOU, not the registered car owner).

    We live about five minutes walk from the bus stop. The bus will get us to town, or down the road to New Lynn where we can shop at the ridiculously overpriced Foodtown. We can’t bus to Pak n Save, or even Countdown. And let’s not get into what a bitch it is to lug a week’s worth of shopping on the bus and then from the bus stop, across two busy roads and to our house. The same kinda goes for bussing down to the laundromat; it’s not so much carrying the dirty clothes there, but lugging the wet, heavy clothes on the way back. We were set to hit the laundromat last week when we had the car, except it had already closed. So now we have about a month’s worth of laundry needing to be done :(. I did do a bit of handwashing this morning, which is currently on the line (hopefully, given the crazy winds and rain this afternoon) still dripping.

    We so need a car. And definitely before August, when our lease ends and we’ll need transport to look at new places (we plan to move to a totally different suburb) and to move.

    Here’s where we’re at. Dead car. $2000 left to pay it off (probably about what it’s worth now). $1300 to fix, not to mention all the other little things wrong with it. Urgh.

    I would love to get a half decent car for 5-6k (which would involve borrowing, sadly, and isn’t going to happen). So it’s going to have to be a beater in cash (ie, next nothing, which is all we can afford).

    I’m hoping my mum gets a new car really, really soon. She’ll be happy to pawn hers off on me for cheap, and I’ll be happy to take it. BF is all set on having a manual, but you know what they say about beggars and choosing.

  • June 4, 2009

    Downtown dining

    When I heard one of my best friends changed the venue for her 21st to a Viaduct restaurant – a Thai one, no less – I was wary.

    We all know what kind of, uh, patrons the Viaduct clubs are famous for. As for restaurants, they’re all overpriced and usually get mediocre reviews at best. Especially “ethnic” ones.

    tom-tom-gai

    It was a Friday evening. I’d left the house at 8am, been to classes, been to work, slashed on a bit of makeup and flipped my head upside down to try entice a bit of body into my pancake-flat hair. I was on time. No, make that seven minutes early. She’s notorious for being late to everything, and this time was no different. The six or so of us who got there on time waited 40 minutes for her. I was tired, hungry and grumpy. And stressed, of course, I’m always stressed. Did I mention stressed? This has seriously been the most stressful year of my life. Moneywise. Uni-wise. Flatmate, landlord, house, car, neighbourhood…you name it, it’s gone sour-wise. Except very, very few of my friends live in the real world. They live in the comfort of family homes, and as much as I love them, uni and family problems are the extent of their stress. They don’t understand what it’s like to actually be a grown up, for lack of a better expression. So I just try to smile, shrug and say I’m fine, because it’s a celebration and all. It’s not the place or time to launch into my woes, even if I wanted to. I don’t want to burst into tears or anything, so I keep quiet.

    Our table was long and thin and there must have been about thirty or so of us. I was the third to order. And I was, for some reason, second to last to receive my food. All I can think of is that soups must take a hell of a lot longer to make than other dishes. At least it was good, I’ll give em that.

    And then it came time to pay. She’d told us to bring cash, so I got out a $20 note and made sure I kept under my limit.

    Except that someone, somewhere had made the decision to split the bill EQUALLY.

    Fine. $20.43 is not that much more than $20, and my dish was (I think) $18 or $19.

    One of my dear friends duly paid her $20.40 in cash, and another kindly pitched in 40c for me.

    The waitress then pointed out that we were short and insisted on extracting a further 10c (no more 5c coins here) from BOTH of us.

    Never mind the fact that ONE SINGLE 10c would have covered BOTH of us for our 3c shortfall.

    No, they HAD to have that extra 7c from us both.

    It was seriously the last straw for me that day, and I had to walk away to take a brief timeout. Thanks to my friends who stumped up a further 10c on my behalf.

    Sorry, I know this is incredibly petty to whine about. But so were they for doing what they did. It’s really not the amount, it’s the principle of the matter, and that that was blatant overcharging for no reason. No two ways about it.

    Wasn’t planning on returning anyway, and definitely won’t again.

    Sorry, WangThai. You FAIL.

  • June 3, 2009

    My plan was to buy me a dress for under $50 for my friend’s party next weekend. The only stipulation is we can’t show up in black! I was keen for something in one of these colours:

    twelve-by-twelve-dress-9 red_white_dress 819_10_1

    Combed Recycle Boutique, the chain stores, the crazy minimall of Asian fashion shops in Atrium on Elliot and DressSmart.  But nup, no luck.

    We did however, scoop a major bargain for BF at the Dickies outlet in DressSmart. Grey Dickies pants (go for well over $100 retail, were $69 at the outlet branch, and $52.50 after a further 25% special Queen’s Birthday discount)! Something I’ve been wanting for him for ages, but Dickies aren’t cheap. So instead of buying me a dress I don’t really need (I still don’t know what I’m wearing for her birthday, but I’ll sort something out…two of my dresses are too casual, one is black, and the other two far too formal; might have to work the separates), we got him some sturdy, NICE pants to wear to the party.

  • June 2, 2009

    Mrs Micah had a fab post about “bragging and blogging” the other day. One of the things she said is that it can be tempting to put an overly-positive spin on things or filter what financial information you share with others. So true! When I spend money I know I shouldn’t have, I often don’t want to post about it. Or I might want to mention what I bought, but not the price. When things aren’t going as well as I’d like, I prefer to keep silent and not dwell on them (except for days I’m REALLY down in the dumps, in which case you’ll get posts like “pit of despair” and the like).

    It definitely is easy to write about things you’ve done right. Like having enough saved to pay for insurance, rather than just putting it on the CC.

    It’s not so easy to write about seeing your savings go down because you had to pay for a broken window to be fixed, or for ridiculously high class fees, or because your LL hasn’t paid his share of the bills (true!). Or the fact that putting $35 aside weekly to cover utilities just isn’t cutting it anymore – with price rises and our usage going up, we need more like $45. But have I put that into action? No.

    I’m just feeling very overwhelmed. I feel like a little cartoon character who just gets more and more crap piled on top of them, trying to hold it all up and keep it together. But I’m only one person and I can’t keep it up. I need some of these stresses to go away, and if that doesn’t happen and they just keep on coming, I am so due for a breakdown.

  • June 1, 2009

    Postgrad

    Unlike many of my friends, I will not be pursuing postgrad study.

    I have zero interest in academia. It holds no lure for me.

    The thought of spending even a year or two doing research and writing a lengthy original thesis, at this point, terrifies me. Not to mention the prohibitive cost; it amazes me that the journalism post grads, who study alongside us, are paying the equivalent of our entire 3 year degree for one year…or pretty darn close. No way! Not after I’ve worked hard in order to graduate debt free (touch wood).

    Maybe one day that will change. And in the future I wouldn’t mind doing a few papers in something like political studies, psych or sociology. The one downside of doing a BCS is the narrow focus, especially in the earlier years. I loved my polsci paper and wished I could have done more like that (instead of crap like Interpersonal Comm…a paper in which you actually bust out your own everyday-life examples of, say, stereotyping others, which was just PAINFUL).

    So when people ask why I’m not doing something back at uni next year, and how I should be, whether it’s because of the economy or because I’m smart enough to, I say I want to be out there. I want to be working. Journalism, I think, is in the same vein as something like teaching or engineering. At some point you’ve just got to do it.

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