On a Whim Wm's world travels

Last week, our flatmate (housemate) Robin made for us what seems to be the national dessert of New Zealand — a Pavlova. As you can see from the photo below, it looks something like a large merengue, but it is actually quite thick and creamy inside, more like a fluffy cheesecake. After you bake it and it cools, you top it with whipped cream and fruit. We used raspberries and blueberries, but people often use kiwifruit (naturally). Very very yummy. This was the first time we tried one, so we don’t know how it compares to those served in restaurants. But for now, we can truthfully say that Robin made the best pavlova we have ever tasted! Hopefully Cindy can learn to make them.

A few weeks ago I did a big post about missing Trader Joes. Well, I knew that would come back to haunt me. Here’s the story…

One of the things I love about TJs is the dried fruit, especially the weirder kinds. One thing they had a few years ago was called “Razzcherries” — which were dried cherries soaked in raspberry flavor. Interesting taste, but they were a little too sweet, so I didn’t buy them very often. Eventually, TJs stopped carrying them. But I still like the fact that TJs would carry something weird like that. Where else would you find something called razzcherries?

How about New Zealand?

Fast forward to last weekend. We are visiting Napier (see Cindy’s post, below) and go into a small Italian deli and store. They have a large selection of dried fruits and lo and behold, they have razzcherries! So I buy a bag of them, but didn’t try them until yesterday (after we are back home). The surprise is that these razzcherries are REALLY good. Way better than the ones that they had in Trader Joes! They have a very strong, tart raspberry flavor. Very intense. And not too sweet.

So here I was, complaining about not being able to get stuff like that over here, and I can actually get something even better. It just goes to show that it takes a while to get used to a new place. When we come back to Portland, I’m sure I’ll be complaining about things I miss from NZ. Sigh.

The other funny thing is that we bought those razzcherries in Napier, which is about a 4 hour drive from here. I was wondering how I could ever find a closer place to buy them, when I realized that I could just call up the store in Napier and they would likely tell me. Most stores in the US will not tell you where they get something — they want you to buy it from them. But people are very nice here, even people in stores. I’ve frequently had people in stores tell me other places I should look for something when they didn’t have exactly what I was looking for (I’ve mentioned a couple of those cases in this blog). So when we run out of this bag, I’ll call the deli in Napier and see if they will tell me where they get them so I can find some place to buy them closer to where we live.

Added note: I did find a place here in Wellington that carries razz-cherries, the same ones we found in Napier. They were in a grocery store here, in the bulk foods section.

So, I’ve been decidedly pro-NZ the last few postings, but there definitely are things that bother us here. Today is Good Friday, and everything is closed. You can’t even go to the grocery store (although a few convenience stores are open). It will be worse on Easter, this Sunday. And even on days when things are open, they all close around 5pm. So if you work until 5pm, when do you go shopping? Many stores stay open late on Thursday night, so I guess that is your only chance. Either that or the weekend.

Not everything closes at 5pm. Grocery stores stay open later than that, some as late as 11pm. And the local video rental store is open until midnight. There is also a chain called The Warehouse, which stays open until 8pm every night, but neither Cindy nor I like shopping there (they are a bargain warehouse with cheap crap, and their prices aren’t even all that good).

So yes, this is not a country of shoppers. And that is the challenge for us — as Americans is shopping so important that we forget about things like health care, the environment, or education? Is having a choice of hundreds of things to buy more important than having a real choice in political candidates? Is being able to go shopping in the evening more important than spending time with your family and friends?

I try to be philosophical, but it still pisses me off when the stores close at 5pm and I’m not done shopping yet.

The continuing saga of drugs in NZ. Yesterday I asked our housemates (called flatmates here) for the name of their doctor. They both use a doctor whose office is about 3 blocks from where we live — very convenient! So I called the doctor’s office yesterday afternoon and got an appointment for the first thing this morning. Before I left the house this morning, I worry that they will probably want me to fill out all kinds of paperwork, so I get my address book, contact information for my doctor in the US, etc.

When I walk into the office, they ask me if I want to be treated as a “casual patient”. I say sure, and the next thing I know I’m in talking to the doctor. No paperwork. None. Nada. They already have my name from when I made the appointment over the phone, and that’s all they need. Wow.

So the next thing I worry about is that they will want to repeat all my lab tests and everything before they write me a prescription, but as they say here — “not a problem”! The doctor does check my blood pressure, and listens to my heart and lungs, but she is fine writing the prescription for me. I do have the prescription from my doctor in the US, after all. But it is hard for me to imagine a doctor in the US writing a prescription just like that — after all they could get sued if they don’t check me out completely themselves!

The main thing we have to do is figure out all the equivalent drugs. Drugs have different names in different countries, or slightly different drugs that do the same thing. So for all 3 of my drugs, we find equivalents. Two of them just weren’t available here, and the third (Lipitor, which I talked about in the last post) is actually available, but they don’t like to use it because there are equivalents that are cheaper and do just as well. I figure I’ll try out the equivalent. Just to be safe, I’ve sent an email back to my doctor in the US with the names of the new drugs I’ll be taking.

Twenty minutes later, I’m done. I pay for the visit using my debit card (called EFTPOS here). Total bill? NZ$52. And remember, I’m paying for it myself since I don’t have insurance here. I do have health insurance in the US, but to be honest all the paperwork I know I will have to go through just for US$38 probably won’t be worth it. When I lived in Canada, I had an injury and tried to get my insurance company back in the US to pay for it, and after days of phone calls I gave up. (I’m sure all of you reading this in the US have much nicer health insurance companies that never give you any hassles at all, right?)

Bottom line? The whole experience was easy, painless, fast. No defensive medicine. No reams of paperwork for the doctor, insurance company, etc. No long waits, either for an appointment or in the doctor’s office. I spent most of the time actually talking to the doctor. The practice of medicine is alive and well. Nice. The biggest problem was that I kept expecting there to be a problem. I was pleasantly surprised.

Those people in the US who are opposed to single payer health insurance should check out the situation here in NZ. I’ve talked to other people here in NZ, and they all seem to feel much better about health care than people I know in the US do. I’ve also heard that Australia has a similar system, and it works well. Why is the US the only major industrialized country without universal health coverage?

Ahem, I’m talking about prescription drugs. I have been alarmed at the high, and rapidly escalating cost of prescription drugs in the US. For example, my mother has diabetes and alzheimers, and her prescription drugs are her biggest expense (more than food or housing). If I were not helping her out, she would be one of those people who would have to choose between buying her medicines or paying the rent. And as a diabetic, not taking her medicines would mean death. What do people on a fixed income do? I watch in disbelief at all the fuss and millions of dollars being spent on Terri Schiavo, when every day people are dying because they cannot afford common medicines.

But the high cost of drugs in the US was illustrated to me graphically yesterday. One of the drugs I take is Lipitor to lower my cholesterol. When I came over to New Zealand I brought a three month supply, but that is starting to run low. I am still paying my health insurance in the US, so I could get my drugs there and have them sent to me in NZ, but I decided to see first what they would cost here. So yesterday I went to the mall and walked into the first pharmacy I found (called a “chemist” here). Naturally, I can’t actually get the drugs yet, since I don’t have a prescription from a NZ doctor, but the pharmacist was very helpful anyway (people here are like that). She looked up Lipitor and said that the equivalent drug here would be around $10 or so per month. Remember, this is NZ dollars, so even with the weak US dollar that is around US$7.20. A couple of years ago it would have been around US$5.

Now, I didn’t actually know how much Lipitor costs in the US because I have health insurance that covers drugs, but I have a $30 co-pay (on top of the $400/month I’m paying for the health insurance). But this pharmacist had just told me that for less than the cost of my monthly co-pay in the US, I could pay full price and get Lipitor for $10 in NZ. Then the pharmacist added helpfully that the price would be different at different pharmacies and I might be able to find them cheaper somewhere else.

So this morning I decide to look up the prices of these drugs in the US, to find out their retail price. I can’t just walk into a US pharmacy, so I look online in drugstore.com, which offers discount prices on prescription drugs. It isn’t a fair comparison, since I’m putting a discount mail order business in the US — the land of free markets and competition (which we all know results in far lower prices) — against a boutique pharmacy in a mall in liberal anti-competitive NZ. But what the heck. For Lipitor, their (discount) price is $95 for a one month supply. Which seems a bit higher than the NZ$10 I was quoted in the boutique pharmacy. Thirteen times higher.

Some of you might be thinking, hey, doesn’t NZ have socialized medicine? Aren’t their drugs prices subsidized? The answer to both questions is no. NZ does have single payer health insurance, which means that the government supplies basic health insurance to all their citizens. But you still pick your own doctors, and buy your drugs wherever you want. Since I am just a visitor I don’t qualify for their national health insurance, so I would be paying full price.

Note that Clinton tried to get single payer health insurance passed in the US a few years ago, but congress turned it down after a media blitz paid for by the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. Maybe that’s why they need to charge such high prices for drugs, health insurance, and co-pays. National TV time is expensive, not to mention the major donations to politicians they need to make to keep being protected from that nasty competition from other countries.

So, now I’m thinking I should get my drugs over here. Even though my US health insurance probably won’t pay for me to go to the doctor here and get a prescription, it will probably be cheaper to do that than pay the co-pays for my 3 drugs in the US, and have them shipped over here. Plus I get an extra visit to the doctor out of it. Isn’t competition wonderful?

One last comment. I realize that some people might claim that US pharmaceutical companies need that extra money in order to do research to find new drugs. Well, here’s an article about a new anti-HIV drug being developed that seems to show that drug research is alive and doing well here in NZ.

One thing we find amazing about the beaches in New Zealand is that they are covered with sea shells. In the US, you hardly ever see many sea shells on the beaches, and when they do show up everyone picks them up and takes them home. It is hard to break that need to take the shells home — the windowsill in our bedroom is covered with shells we have picked up on beaches all over NZ.

Here are some photos from a beach right here in Wellington — just a few minutes drive from downtown. The large shells are Paua, which we call abalone in the US. They are beautiful (this is where “mother of pearl” comes from) and yet they are everywhere.

 
 

We went to Rivendell today. Or rather, the park (Kaitoke) that was used as the setting for filming Rivendell in “The Lord of the Rings”. Kaitoke is a beautiful park situated on the upper Hutt River, with loads of huge old trees covered in epiphytes and vines, a swing bridge, and many walking trails. The actual site where the filming was done is marked with signs, giving quotes from the movie.

To be honest, we didn’t even know we were going to Rivendell today, we were just going to that park. But when we got there, we saw signs written in an elvish font, and following those signs we found small tours (mostly of Japanese tourists) being led around that area. The tour leader had still images from the movie, and was indicating a tree in the still, and then pointing to the actual tree right there in front of you.

You can certainly see why this place was picked to be the site for Rivendell. Even without the movie connection, it is a magical place. The rivers have cut deep canyons and the vegetation is dense and moody. Beautiful.

 

Last Sunday we went to the farmer’s market in Wellington (I talked about it in the blog), and today (Saturday morning) we went to the farmer’s market in Porirua (the town next to ours out here in the ‘burbs). The two markets are as different as night and day. This one not only had all the vegetables and fruit of the Wellington market, but it also had tons of other stuff. Lots of food stalls, people selling music, clothing, and everything else imaginable.

Porirua has a large population of Maori and South Pacific Islanders, so there were all kinds of foods we weren’t familar with. For example, one booth advertised “banana pancakes, 5 for $1” (and that’s a NZ dollar, so less than 75 cents). We got them but they were nothing like any pancakes we knew. They were spherical balls of banana dough about the size of a small fist that were deep fried. They tasted more like doughnuts than pancakes, but were yummy (if a bit greasy). There was also Indian food (roti containing chicken, beef, or a fried egg), Chinese (steamed BBQ pork buns), and kebabs (meat on a stick).

There were buskers everywhere. Especially popular were little kids playing classical music on the violin. There was even a Maori guy on organ with a drum machine, singing EZ listening hits (“I just called, to say, I love you”).

Like last week, we got a ton (or should we say tonne?) of vegetables and fruit, all for very low prices (about half of what you’d expect to pay in a grocery store). What was especially amazing this week were the size of the vegetables. They had daikon raddish that were the size of small children, cucumbers the size of your arm, and cabbages that were not to be triffled with! There were also lots of vegetables that we had never seen before.

Oh, and this market is in the parking lot of the local mall, so everything started closing down before 9am. We don’t know what time it starts in the morning. We heard a rumor that someone went there at 3am and it was already going. Wow.

This Sunday morning, New Zealand switches from Daylight Savings Time back to regular New Zealand Standard Time. Remember, it is fall here and the days are getting shorter. This means that instead of being 3 hours behind Portland (3 hours earlier) we will be 4 hours behind (“fall back!”).

Meanwhile, back in Portland it is spring time and in a few weeks they will be going onto daylight savings time. At that time we will be 5 hours behind Portland for the duration of their summer.

And just to complicate things, remember that right now we are not 3 hours behind Portland, we are really 21 hours ahead. It is just easier to think of it as 3 hours behind and one day ahead. Got it? As I type this it is 7pm on a Friday evening here in Wellington, which means it is 10pm (3 hours later) on Thursday (one day earlier) in Portland.

Which means that if you are reading this in Portland, the first 3 words of this blog entry should have been “This Saturday morning”.

Sigh.

Interesting article about an American who has renounced his US citizenship:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0503/S00131.htm

As the comment on this blog entry suggests, this guy might not be a shining example to use of someone escaping the US, but it is still an interesting read.

This morning (Sunday) we went to the Wellington farmer’s market. It was great. Large and bustling, with tons of fruit and vegetables and amazingly cheap prices. Farmer’s markets in the Portland area tend to be more yuppy events, with breads, cheeses, and organic produce at high prices. Typically in Portland you pay more for produce at the farmer’s market than you would in a grocery store — you’re paying extra for the quality. But the produce market here was more a working market, with huge boxes full of produce. Things like parsnips for the equivalent of 50 cents a pound. Really good avocados for around 70 cents each. And lots of oriental vegetables. Bok choy, huge napa cabbages, winter melon, all kinds of squash.

There was one stand selling dim sum on a stick. For NZ$2 (less than US$1.50) you got four pot stickers on a stick, or four shu mai. And they were yummy.

Our housemate says that there is a farmer’s market in Poriura (close to where we live) on Saturday morning. We’ll have to check that out next week.

The other day we did a guided walk in the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. This is an unusual place in that they are attempting to take a sizeable hunk of land and put it back to the way it would have been before any humans arrived in New Zealand. Let me explain.

New Zealand, being as isolated as it is, was one of the last large islands in the world to be populated by humans. The Maori only arrived around 900 years ago, and westerners around 1650. In addition to a lack of humans, there were almost no mammals in New Zealand. Ecological niches that are filled by mammals (like rats, mice, dogs, cats, ferrets, etc.) in the rest of the world were filled by birds, including a number of flightless birds like the Kiwi. When humans arrived, they brought with them a number of plants and animals (both intentionally and unintentionally) that dramatically upset the ecology. For example Australian possums were introduced to New Zealand to provide a fur animal for trappers (possums here have a soft bushy fur, unlike oppossums in the US), but they have gotten totally out of control and have become a real problem. Possums strip the flowers off of trees and other plants, which not only harm the plants, but take food away from the birds, so there is a huge program to try to get rid of possums.

To preserve some of the native vegetation and animals, many smaller islands around New Zealand have been transformed into wildlife sanctuaries. Introduced animals and plants have been removed, as much as possible, so that the endemic species can flourish. In the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, they have done the same thing, but they did it by building a large fence around the entire sanctuary. When you enter, they have you check your bags to make sure you aren’t bringing in any mice or other animals.

But what impressed me most, is that they have a goal to restore the entire sanctuary to its state before humans arrived. To do this will not be easy, of course, so they have drawn up a 500 year plan. Yes, that’s right, they have a 500 year plan for how they will restore everything back to the way it was before humans arrived. Where else in the world would people think that far ahead? 500 years ago, the Europeans hadn’t even been to New Zealand.

For example, a part of the sanctuary is covered with Monterey Pine trees, which were planted by Europeans (strangely enough, there are almost no Monterey Pines left in Monterey, California, where they were originally from!). Instead of cutting them all down, they are felling them a few at a time. Each time they cut some down, they leave them there as “nurse trees” to enrich the soil for other trees. They have found that the seeds of the endemic trees are still there, and grow back naturally when you cut down the introduced trees. So they will be continuing to cut down introduced trees for the next 100 years or more.

Meanwhile, the sanctuary is a lovely place. There are lots of trails of course. Two lakes. And because there are no possums or other mammals, there is lots of food for the birds, which are everywhere. There is also an old gold mine shaft, which you can go into (they even provide hard hats, so you won’t hit your head on the low ceiling). The shaft is full of cave weta, a rather large insect that looks something like a grasshopper (only much bigger). Here’s a photo:

Webpage of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.

Ron Arps is organizing another contra dance trip to New Zealand, at the end of January 2006. It sounds great. If you would like more information, contact him at ronarps@jackson.main.nc.us

A long time ago (or maybe it just seems like a long time ago), when I started this weblog, I said I would answer the question “why are we doing this”. Someone reminded me the other day that I hadn’t yet answered this question. I guess the answer is not all that simple, but I’ll try.

Yes, some of it is because of the current political mess in the USA. I am worried that the US is going downhill. It isn’t just the insane deficit spending. We aren’t spending money on those things that will keep the US strong, like good education and research. Remember the days when lots of big companies had research labs — Xerox PARC being the primary example, but there were many other places (like the Tektronix Research Labs where I worked for a while). Those were the places that came up with the insanely great ideas that led to the computer boom, but most companies have closed down their research labs. And the US has stopped building infrastructure. Remember when the US decided to build a national interstate highway system? Or provide universal telephone service? Other countries have invested in broadband networks to provide cheap Internet access, but not us. I’m not sure what our economy is going to be based on in the future — overpriced medical care for our aging population?

Meanwhile, the economy in places like New Zealand is booming. And Cindy and my trip to China a year ago was eye opening. I give it 10 years max before the economy of China completely overpowers that of the US. Most people in the US still are laboring under the delusion that we are the world’s only superpower — are we blind? It is sobering to realize that there are more English speakers in China than in the rest of the world put together. They are investing in infrastructure like crazy. And unlike Japan, they know how to write software, so there goes that edge. China is a dictatorship with global ambitions. I expect that the Beijing Olympics in 2008 will be pivotal, when China publically flexes their muscle for all to see.

The other advantage of the US is cultural, but countries like New Zealand and China have demonstrated that they know how to make movies. I’m not sure if the US can hold onto their cultural dominance for that much longer.

So, do I want to live in a country whose economy is sinking in a sea of deficits and crumbling infrastructure? Where people are dying because of a lack of public health care and overpriced prescription drugs? Where the major political discourse is about discriminating against gays? Where pollution is on the increase? Where the government purposely distracts the population by starting unnecessary wars? Where people give up their basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism and the military tortures innocent people? Not really.

So it seemed like a good time to pop my head up and look around (before the proverbial shit hits the fan). I’ve lived in Canada and England in the past. Living abroad has always been a challenging experience for me, in the good sense of that word. You learn about yourself when you are in a different situation. You can get some of this from travel, but only so much since as a tourist you are isolated from daily life, and your experience is temporary.

So when Cindy and I started talking to people about potential places to live, New Zealand kept popping up. And many of our recent trips have been to Asia, which we have enjoyed, so we thought it would be good to be closer to those places. Originally, we were going to do a visit here first, but most people we talked to who had lived here said to not bother — that we should just move here for a year to try it out. Which is what we did.

The other reason for me is that I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, and time is running out! Living in Canada and England always helped me figure out what I wanted to do next, and I’m hoping the same thing will happen here in New Zealand.

So how is it working out?

I have to say that of course there are good and bad things about any country, and New Zealand is no different. Some things are rediculously expensive here, petrol (gasoline) as expected, but also phone service and broadband internet. Computers and other electronics are overpriced. And even though New Zealand has a deserved reputation for being ecologically sensitive, they have their share of ecological disasters. I’ve also noticed that many Kiwis seem to have something of a national inferiority complex, perhaps from being overshadowed by Australia and other places for so long. They don’t seem to think they can compete in the world, so they often don’t try. Maybe this will change with sucesses like “The Lord of the Rings”.

In general, however, we love it here. The people are very friendly. The country is beautiful. The food is great. There are lots of cultural events, festivals, and other things to do.

The big issue for us is the distance. We have family and friends back in the US whom we miss terribly. If you’ve been reading this blog you know that Cindy’s son was going to move here with us and go to school, but he didn’t. The Vonage internet phone has helped (now that we have a reliable internet connection to use it on) since it allows us to call anyone as if we are in the US. But the distance is still there. So we aren’t sure if we want to live here permanently. We’ll see. And if it doesn’t work out, then at least we will have had a great year in a beautiful and friendly place.

Wellington is on the southern tip of the north island (the ferry leaves from Wellington to go to the south island). We live in a valley north of Wellington, about 20 minutes away. Yesterday, we drove north (for the first time). We actually live about 5 minutes away from the coast, which has beaches and cliffs. The area north of us is called the Kapiti (pronounced CAP-it-tee) and it is nicknamed the “sunshine coast”. Lots of people in Wellington have beach houses (a beach house is called a “bach” — short for bachelor pad I suppose) on the Kapiti coast, and some people even live there and commute into Wellington (there is a train and a motorway).

Kapiti also is famous for cheese and ice cream. So we stopped at several cheese shops, a cheese factory, and a chocolate factory where they were making chocolate eggs for Easter. We also stopped at the ice cream place (where they make Kapiti ice cream), which has really good ice cream with unusual flavors. I had a double scoop: Cardamom / Orange, and Lemongrass / Ginger. Yum yum yum.

We stopped at several beaches, and collected a bunch of “cat eyes”, which are shells that have been worn down so they look like flat white pebbles but with a spiral design in them from the spiral shell. Really beautiful.

On the way back, rather than go back along the coast, we headed inland over a mountain with a great view of the coast. Then we stopped at a park which is kept as a working farm. We got there just in time to see a really good sheep dog rounding up the sheep. They sorted the rams from the ewes. Then we got to see some “sheep dagging” where they shave the discolored wool from the rear end of the sheep, to keep it from lowering the quality of the wool when they shear them. They are going to shear the sheep in a few days, so we will probably go back later this week to see that (the farm is only about a 20 minute drive from where we live). It is interesting how the farm is set up. The buildings are the original farm buildings, but they built a raised walkway over the sheep pens and the shearing area (inside the barn) so visitors (like us) can look down and see what they are doing, without getting in the way. So you get a close-up view of everything.

More images from the Kapiti Coast.