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Browsing category: Uncategorized

  • October 31, 2012

    Things I’ve been pondering…

    Where is the line between happy and settling? How do you know if you’re hoping for too much and your expectations are wildly out of line? Is the grass always greener? Can’t I just pause and appreciate what I have? Be cognisant of the here and now?

    What’s better: working lots at a job you love but not earning a whole lot, ever? Working lots at a job that pays well, building up serious wealth and retiring early?

    Could I ever be a stay-home spouse/parent? Or am I better at playing breadwinner? Is it really such a bad thing to be a good worker?

    I’ve had a string of nascent opportunities come my way lately. Practically none have panned out. In one case, I’m actually glad. But I’d really like at least some of the others to have led somewhere. Am I doing something wrong? Is my karma in debt?

  • October 30, 2012

    If staying childless is selfish, so is procreating

    “You can have quite a fabulous life without kids, and you’d be so much wealthier.”

    That (more or less) was something I heard from a mother-of-two recently.

    As someone who didn’t start feeling any maternal urges until a couple of years ago (although I guess I’m still young in the grand scale of things) this really struck home.

    My current state of thinking is that I do want kids … eventually. Two. Ideally a boy and girl, just like me and my brother. But not for some years yet. Kids don’t trump my other life dreams. And if for whatever reason kids don’t come easily to us, I don’t want to spend oodles (or go into debt) trying to conceive. If for whatever reason it wasn’t on the cards, I think I would be quite content. There are children enough on T’s side of the family for us to play cool aunt and uncle to, and they could definitely use any money we directed to them in lieu of having our own.

    I’m not Christina from Grey’s Anatomy, but I’m definitely not the kind who squeeeeeeees at pregnancy announcements and clamours to hold infants. In fact, please never ask me to hold your baby, thus forcing me to find an awkward way to refuse. Every twitch and every movement scares this noob. Watching me cradle a baby has provided fodder for others’ amusement on multiple occasions (although thankfully the sight of my face has yet to send one into a crying fit – my biggest fear).

    Sure, procreators are still the majority among us, but it seems that being childless by choice is increasingly socially acceptable (or is it just the blogs that I read?). You skip the baby brain, the physical strain, the demands on time and wallet by offspring. Living an entirely adult may be a “selfish” choice to some, but choosing to further strain the world’s resources is selfish in another sense. That also depends, I guess, on where you live and whether your population is ageing overall.

    I didn’t always want children, but then again, I didn’t used to think that I could ever get married – I couldn’t imagine kissing somebody in public, in front of my family. T wants kids and I imagine those fledgling instincts of mine will pick up steam over the years.

    Where do you stand on the question of kids?

  • October 29, 2012

    What’s good weather worth?

    Auckland is my hometown. It has a few things going for it – work opportunities, friends and family, ethnic cuisines, and everything from beaches to parks to bush. And as our biggest city, we take amenities like libraries, concerts and the like for granted. Sure, there’s not a lot that’s affordable to do, but if an international band is touring, if they make a stop in New Zealand, you know what city they’ll be playing in. That kind of thing.

    But on so many quality of life factors, it fails hard.

    Public transport? Dire.

    Cost of living? Astronomical.

    Housing market? Out of control.

    English: Auckland Harbour Bridge. The harbour ...

    Auckland Harbour Bridge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    And you can add the weather to that list. After basking under the South Island’s glorious spring skies last month, Auckland has been spectacularly depressing. I’m not quite my mother, who religiously watches the weather forecast every night and practically plans the next day around it; and I don’t think I have SAD, but the weather does have a major effect on my moods. And that effect is generally one of disgust and frustration.

    (That said, moaning about the weather here does pale in comparison to what the US east coast is facing right now with Hurricane Sandy. At least we’re relatively sheltered here from most kinds of natural disasters.)

    Steel skies. Constant rain. It’s impossible to get out and enjoy our parks, beaches and bush – and if we’re cheated out of a second summer in a row, I’m predicting VERY BAD THINGS on a national scale. This blazing weekend just gone was the best, in memory, for about the past year. Here’s hoping it’s a taste of what’s to come.

    On the other hand, one could live somewhere beautiful and warm and sunny in regional New Zealand. But unless you could work remotely and make decent money doing so, all you could realistically aspire to would be working at the local supermarket. Or bakery.  Or something along those lines.

    What’s important to you in choosing a place to live? Does weather matter?

  • October 27, 2012

    Link love (Powered by tiramisu and the Muppets)

    Hey, Auckland Transport? It’s pretty douchebaggy to send out a traffic ticket six months after an alleged offence.

    Quite frankly, even if we thought we had a shot at contesting this ticket, how in hell are we supposed to figure out what the hell happened at 5.13pm on April 30?

    I’m not kidding. Last week a ticket arrived in the mail pinging us for driving in a bus lane on Great North Rd in Grey Lynn in APRIL. That’s six months ago, for those feeling too lazy to count.

    Odds are it was T, as I hardly ever drive. Or possibly a friend or family member who borrowed the car. But more importantly, how did it happen? We’re both familiar with buslanes and how they work, and we both know to stay the hell out of them. Quite possibly it was a case of driving in a bus lane in order to turn left at a corner, because that’s how the roads work here, and you’re allowed to do that within a certain number of metres of the corner (and a misjudgement on the driver’s part). There’s a minute chance it was me pulling over to do a U-turn, as I recall doing many months ago, just shy of the start of a bus lane on Great North Rd, though I don’t know if that was in our car or a work car, and I don’t think it was that late in the afternoon.

    I’m trying not to waste any more time analysing this, because six months on there is just no point. Gotta suck it up and cough up.

    This week’s links:

    Thanks to Prairie Eco-Thrifter for including me in this week’s carnival of personal finance (in case you missed it, we had a new Civic IMA for a week and were inducted into the wonderful world of hybrids) and also to TB Blue Collar Workman for including me in the lifestyle carnival (check out my post on how we planned our most recent holiday, a campervan trip around the South Island).

    I am a planner. Yet underneath it all I am horribly disorganised. I’m also a voyeur. So I was all over this post by Mochi and Macarons outlining how she organises her life.

    This one’s aimed at journalists but there’s plenty of advice for anyone involved in running an event. Steve Buttry discusses using Twitter to promote your gig, and how to incorporate it throughout the actual event.

    Jeepers. I’ve probably had less than 10 jobs in my life, but J Money does have a few years on me. In this post, he runs through all 30-odd jobs he’s held to date.

    Kyla Roma talks about how to zero on your passions, plus a list of resources.

    Here’s Nicole with a reminder that sometimes even the things you love are “fucking hard work”.

    Do you ever feel like you’re doing it (money/life) wrong? Via Tales from the Trenches.

    At Life Without Pants, a nice take on focusing on your path and setting your own pace: Never compare the beginning of your story to someone else’s middle.

    Ramit’s handy script for how to tell people you’re raising your rates.

    Jess Lively realises that overarching happiness does not mean constant joy and stability on a daily basis.

    Finally, there were so many insights packed into Reid Hoffman’s latest LinkedIn piece. Here are my favourites:

    • If you can’t find someone who wants to employ you to pursue your dream job, or if you can’t financially sustain yourself—that is, earn a salary that allows you to live the lifestyle you prefer while doing it—then trying to turn your passion into a career doesn’t really get you very far.
    • The unfortunate truth is that in today’s career landscape, your parachute–no matter its color–may be punctured full of holes. And if it isn’t that way already, it could get that way at any time.
    • Deciding where you want to be in ten years and then formulating a plan for getting there might work if our environments were unchanging. It might work if getting from point A to point B in your career were like crossing a lake in a boat on a calm summer’s day. But you’re not in a calm lake. You’re in a chaotic ocean
    • Winning careers, like winning start-ups, are in permanent beta: always a work in progress.

    Happy weekends, all!

  • October 26, 2012

    Dichotomies and contradictions: Putting your money where your mouth is

    Now that I don’t work in the CBD, and don’t walk down Queen St every day, I can’t get used to not seeing the iconic Borders bookshop below the cinemas.

    “I can’t wrap my head around the fact that it’s just not there anymore!” I lamented to T on Diwali weekend as we passed the dark, hollow building, plastered with ‘For Lease’ signs.

    “You know why they had to close? Because of people like you, who go in there and read for hours without buying anything,” he replied without missing a beat.

    Ouch.

    While that’s not the whole truth – the book and CD industry is in near terminal decline – people like me didn’t exactly help stem the demise.

    In fact, when it comes to putting my money where my mouth is, I fall so far short it’s not funny.

    I love books, but I’ve never been a book buyer. I’ve had a library card ever since I can remember.

    I love good writing, full stop, but I don’t pay for it. Given that this is how I earn a crust … yikes. I don’t have any magazine subscriptions, and I’ve never donated to, say, Longreads, though I adore what they’re doing. In short, I grew up in the age of free content, and wound up in the heart of that industry. I’m part of the problem.

    I love music, but hate to pay for it.  I spent most of my childhood first taping songs off the radio, then pirating music in my teens. Now I pay to attend concerts, but we’re now well and truly into the age of streaming music, which costs nothing as long as I’m connected to the web.

    I love good food, but am loath to pay for good ingredients. We do from time to time – good cheese, good meat, good ice cream, good olive oil… but eating quality is not cheap. In fact, I love food but don’t enjoy cooking. (I’m mired in a MAJOR food rut at the moment. A spot of Food TV revived a bit of interest the other night, but not nearly enough.)

    Do you walk the talk when it comes to your dollars and cents?

  • October 25, 2012

    On saying no (and being okay with it)

    I’ve been on a nay-saying spree lately. And it feels good.

    1.

    I got a sudden rush of interest from students around the start of my holiday last month for help with essays and tutoring. I turned them down, but said I’d be available from October for any future inquiries. Much as the money would have been nice, I wasn’t going to stress myself out trying to cater to them while in the South Island without a computer.

    2.

    I refused to pander to a request that came my way during the course of a work day, one that I was fully entitled to say no to, but still felt slightly guilty about. When it came down to it, the time it would have taken me vs the potential payoff simply didn’t add up.  The whole thing took up far more of my brainspace than it should have, but I don’t feel bad for it – and hopefully I’m setting a precedent for myself going forward. (I have a feeling this may be tested sooner rather than later.)

    3.

    I politely asked a clueless marketing person to stop spamming me. Here’s how it went: she’d send me a link to an infographic, asking if I would share it on our website. She would then follow up with a string of incessant emails asking if I had decided to use it (and in one case, even asking who else I knew that she could approach about it). This cycle repeated for about three different pitches. Apparently infographic outreach is the crappiest of crap tasks, which I can totally understand. But here’s a piece of free advice: stalking your targets is never a winning tactic.

    Ignoring her led nowhere, and an abrupt ‘no thanks’ to one of her countless messages was evidently not a strong enough hint.  I hate confrontation, so I considered simply marking her email address as ‘spam’ and directing all future emails into my junk mail. But I stiffened my backbone and wrote back something along these lines:

    Based on your previous emails, I don’t think the topics you cover are a good fit. You’re welcome to keep sending pitches, but please don’t send multiple emails to follow up. I receive hundreds of emails a day and simply don’t have time to respond to them all

    …managing to resist adding a snotty “least of all, unsuccessful pitches” at the end of it.

    Not that she took any heed of my reply (sigh), earning herself a free and permanent pass straight to my junk folder. Takeaway: do not hesitate to flag and block potential Spammy McSpammersons.

    We’re all busy. We all have too much on our plate. Saying no isn’t a luxury – it’s a must.

    Do you struggle with saying no? When was the last time you did?

  • October 24, 2012

    Review: The Conservatory (Wynyard Quarter, Auckland)

    I lunched at the Conservatory in Auckland with a group during Fashion Week, and my first thought was: Oh! I’ve been past here before! To be precise, when the new Wynyard Quarter first opened up, T and I came to the nearby Auckland Fish Market, then ventured out to the waterfront for a looksee. The new eateries were expensive and not really to our style, so this is my first Wynyard dining experience. However, I remembered this particular restaurant for the woven capsule seats outside, suspended between roof and ground by chains, which we stopped to admire.

    We’ll start with the good, shall we? The portions are generous. The wine list is enormous, taking up almost all the pages in the menu, with food only accounting for the last couple. I had the seafood salad, which was delicious – mussels, prawns, scallops, salmon, with green salad, crispy noodles and what I think was a drizzle of soy. Light, very well balanced and pretty fresh. (What is proper etiquette for eating crispy fried noodles, by the way? They were in pieces too large to comfortably fork but too hard to cut – a diner sent a piece flying into her neighbour’s lap that way.) I would’ve loved if they’d removed the prawn tails and even the scallop roe, but I am a child.

    wynyard quarter the conservatory seafood saladI also sampled the Conservatory pizza (a light touch with prosciutto, salami and tomato) and potato chunks, their take on the classic side of chips. These were absolutely enormous – about half a potato’s worth each – and perfectly cooked, served with a strangely orange aioli that turned out to have a hint of chili and paprika.

    There are just three desserts available (raspberry mousse served with lemonchello syrup and cream/mixed berry tiramisu served with a berry compote/duo decedent chocolate pudding) but all sound divine. I would’ve liked to have tried them all, but alas, dessert was not part of our visit.

    An aside: while for some reason the menu drops an all-important ‘s’ off ‘desserts’ and randomly apostrophises ‘pizzas’,  below that, amusingly, reads the phrase 18 inches (as measured by a woman). Yes, the pizzas are ginormous, though none of us had a ruler to hand.

    Other elements failed to impress. We were seated in the sheltered (plastic sheeted) conservatory outside facing the water. Some of the black-covered chairs, however, were adorned with questionable white stains that resembled bird poop. One of our group noticed that the bottles on our table were somewhat scummy looking, resulting in cloudy water and floaties. And the Caesar salad was the last meal – by a significant margin – to arrive, by which time the first couple of dishes had gone cold while sitting (Caesar salad, of all things!)

    So, a mixed bag. Some attention to detail wouldn’t go amiss (they weren’t hugely busy during our visit, and had only just opened for the day by the looks of it). YMMV.

  • October 22, 2012

    House-sitting as a lifestyle choice

    While looking at overseas accommodations options online, I started to see a few mentions of house sitting as an option for longer-term stays, and it’s something that seems popular among RTW and long-term travellers. I mean, what better way is there to extend a free stay?

    House-sitting isn’t just for travellers, though. I know someone who lives in Auckland and house-sits, going from place to place every so often, as a lifestyle choice. (Imagine how much you could save if you eliminated housing from your budget.)

    Upon Googling some house-sitting sites, I noticed that one mentioned that many of its house-sitters are professionals saving for a deposit on a house (which is darn near impossible in this country). So how would one make house-sitting work as a long-term lifestyle?

    • You’d need to be good with animals, as lots of people are looking for a pet sitter
    • You’d need to not have a lot of stuff, because moving is a bitch and carting tons of items from house to house frequently would be beyond tiring
    • You’d need to have a car – in a sprawling city like Auckland it’s unlikely you’d be able to stay within your preferred area all of the time, and would probably end up jumping all over the place
    • You’d ideally have somewhat flexible work arrangements – it’d be ideal if you work from home
    • And of course you’d need to be okay with the frequent picking up and moving, packing and unpacking. No doubt there are long-term assignments out there – the woman I know seems to stay put for a couple of months at a time – but nonetheless you’d be always looking for the next place. You’d definitely need some kind of backup plan should you need somewhere to stay between assignments in a pinch (hostel? Friends or family?)

    I briefly thought about signing up to one of these sites, mainly because I spotted a great West Auckland property available over the holiday period and thought ‘what a great way to spend New Year’s without going away!’ But in addition to needing to find someone to take a chance on a first-timer to get your foot in the door with house-sitting (again it’s that whole how do you get experience when nobody will give you experience? conundrum, except it’s even harder because you can work for free to get experience, but you’re house-sitting for free and there’s nowhere to start below that), there’s a membership fee. Too much work for a throwaway thought.

    And as for house-sitting as a lifestyle? I just don’t think it’s feasible for us – that would require buying a second car, cancelling out a lot of the cost savings – and adding the other inconveniences into the equation, it’s not the right path for us at this time. But it’s definitely something to consider. Lifestyle alternatives FTW.

    Have you ever been a house-sitter? Would you consider it as a lifestyle?

  • October 18, 2012

    Adventures in the freezer aisle

    I’m buried in the depths of an enormous food rut.

    I’m buying  almost exactly the same items when shopping every week. It’s like a terrible parody of my own life. Eating the same thing for lunch for days in a row. Every meal should be a pleasure, but I can’t remember the last time I had a memorable meal.

    The only vaguely interesting thing happening in my kitchen at the moment comes from the freezer department. I know – the devil, you say! I’ve more or less stopped buying frozen foods – chips, patties, vile combinations of pre cut veggies. But since getting back from the South Island I’ve wanted to eat more fish, and on a whim the day we got back, I wandered over to the frozen fish department.

    My last memory of frozen fish is of a terrible 20-pack of what was billed as lemon pepper fish – mostly crumb with hardly any fish flesh at all, and hardly recognisable as such. But it turns out Sealord does decent crumbed fish fillets. It comes in super plain packaging so you can hardly distinguish it from the budget brand stuff, but it’s affordable and, most importantly, it’s good.
    If you’re in NZ, I definitely recommend the kumara crumb fillets (which, incidentally, I’m pretty sure I was part of the market research taste testing group for yonks ago before it came out).

    I’ve been steering clear of the freezer department for the longest time, but maybe it’s worth a second look every once in a while.

    What, if anything, do you buy frozen? How can I get motivated to tackle the recipes I’ve got piled up in my bookmarks folder?

  • October 17, 2012

    The two things you need to successfully change your life

    the key successfully changing your life<image via turatti on flickr>

    I have come within metres of a convicted killer.

    Did that get your attention?

    Paul Wood told an amazing story at TEDx Auckland this month. From high school dropout and murderer to PhD, it’s a tale almost too good to be true. No doubt those younger years form a part of his life he’d rather forget and leave well behind him, but it’s a surefire way to gain media attention and can only be a boost for his business.

    His turnaround is a testament to the power of drive and determination.

    Without that that internal drive and desire, you can’t expect to get very far. He identified the negative influences in his life, the factors that were holding him back, and set about eliminating them. Sure, there were setbacks, and it took a long time to work through his first degree and fulfil university requirements while in prison, but after that, he set about gaining another, and then another…

    But he also made the point that he couldn’t have done it alone. Success rarely happens in a vacuum.

    His father visited him every weekend. His professors visited him in jail so he could complete his course criteria. It’s something I’ve mentioned before – you need incredible inner strength and motivation to break a cycle, and it’s damn hard to do it in a hostile environment. Conditioning factors shouldn’t be understated, nor should the importance of mentors and role models. No human is an island.

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