Category — Preparing

É claro que a prática é bem diferente da teoria, oposta, nesse caso! Essa foi a semana mais cheia e corrida de todas.. temos feito tantas coisas o dia inteiro que eu já acordo cansada.

Estou lavando todas as nossas roupas, as que vão na mala e as que vão ficar aqui guardadas também, um pouco a cada dia, quero dizer, um monte a cada dia. Agora tem uma pilha de roupas pra passar me esperando.

Por dois dias ficamos andando no centro, procurando as coisas que ainda tínhamos que comprar, e quando digo dois dias andando, são dois dias andando mesmo, sem parar, pra baixo e pra cima.. e no fim de cada um desses dias pensávamos “é bom pra irmos nos acostumando, a gente vai ter vários dias desses nos próximos meses”. Ai minhas perninhas!

Algumas coisinhas que compramos:
- uma mochila menor, bagagem de mão e pra usar no dia-a-dia, que o Felipe me deu de presente de aniversário e uma outra mochilinha de nylon dobrável que vira em nada;
- capas de chuva para as mochilas (resolvemos não comprar nenhuma mochila grande nova, vamos usar as nossas velhas mesmo que ainda dão pro gasto);
- adaptadores de tomada.. por que cada país tem que ter um tipo de tomada diferente?;
- na farmácia: remédios pra dor (inclusive dor de barriga – muito importante!!), água oxigenada, band-aid e repelente;
- calculadora pequenina, achamos uma própria pra fazer conversão de moedas, bem legalzinha;
- seguimos mais um conselho do Juliano e compramos algo pra ferver água, encontramos um “rabo-quente” (pra quem não conhece o termo, é um tubo de metal que vai dentro do água e esquenta quando ligado na tomada), não foi muito barato ($40), mas é beeem menor do que uma jarrinha.

When I finished working last Friday, I thought this last week in New Zealand would be very relaxing, after all we had almost everything very well organized, we had only a few last details to sort out, little things yet to buy, pack the bags and leave.

Clearly, the practice is quite different from the theory, opposite, in this case! This week has been the busiest week ever… we have done so many things everyday that I’m already tired when I wake up.

I’ve been washing all our clothes, the ones we are taking with us and those that will be stored here also, a few every day, I mean, a lot every day. Now I still have a pile of clothes to be ironed waiting for me.

For two days we were walking in the centre, looking for things that we still had to buy, and when I say two days walking, I really mean two days walking, non-stop, up and down.. and at the end of each day we thought “it’s good to get used to this, we’ll have several days like this in the coming months.” Oh my little legs!

Some things we bought:
- A day pack, that was a birthday present from Felipe to me, and another little foldable nylon backpack which turns into nothing;
- Rain covers for the backpacks (we decided not to buy any new large backpack, we will use our old ones that are still ok);
- Plug adaptors.. why each country must have a different type of socket?;
- In the pharmacy: pain killer, imodium (very important!), hydrogen peroxide, band-aid and repellent;
- Little calculator, we found one that is peferct for converting currencies, it’s nice;
- We followed another tip from Juliano to buy something to boil water, we found a “water boiler” that’s quite common in Brazil but is the first time I see here, was not very cheap ($40) but is much smaller than a jug.

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Well this week is being really busy I’m just writing a quick update. Last week we’ve got our Indian visas, and Cristina got her Vaccination card from Brazil.

Car sold

Yes that’s it, after 1.5 year we finally sold it. We bought this car from an Afghan engineer for NZD 2,600.00 it was really tidy and we pretty much travelled all around the north island. To sell it we decided to put on a trademe auction for NZD1,00, first because we really needed to sell the car before we go, second we believed the auction could give us the best market price in a short time.  The first 4 days were good, lots of people bidding and the price got to $1,200 but then it was slowing down along the way, and one day before to the end, after 2 weeks, it was $ 2,200. Just on the last 10 minutes the auction started to get exciting again, two guys started bidding each minute, after dozens of bids we ended up selling it for NZD2,550.00 not too bad, almost the same price we bought it.

Found new tenants

Another concern was to find nice people to take our room, we were very lucky to have Robbie, our flatmate, that quickly found a very nice couple, friends of him, she is a painter and he’s a carpenter, looks like they’re very happy to move in. We’re just sorting out the paperwork now.

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Several things happened in the last few days (weeks?), but my days have been so busy that I haven’t been able update you with the news, real time.
Ok, I confess, the Olympics are taking a lot of my free time! Let me open some parenthesis here and tell you that I’ve been watching the Brazilian athletes compete, live, with brazilian narration, online my PC for free! I mean, kind of free, because Internet is still not free over here.
Services like JustinTV, SopCast and live news on the GloboNews website are preventing me from writing in times of Olympic Games, I cannot avoid looking when I hear the narrator saying, in Portuguese, that another Brazilian is on the tatami,  in the pools, celebrating a goal or a point in a volleyball game.

Now I am taking a little gap, since Sportv is showing a game between Lithuania and Russia that I am not interested at all and will update the site with 7 tasks from our to-do list:

Tidying up the camera to travel

We took the camera to a specialized shop to have the sensor cleaned. The photos were coming with some little dots of dirt, which would not be nice to happen during the trip. We left the camera at the shop and picked it up 2 days later, clean photos now, task #1 met and $80 less in the wallet. Now with the new lens we won’t have to have change lenses all the time and I hope that the sensor don’t get dirty again so soon!

New backpack or old backpack

We’ve been out several times looking for a new backpack for Felipe. We’ve been to several stores, between prices and benefits we ended up not buying anything so far. We’ve decided that we will first separate our stuff and see how our old backpacks are and if everything fit in them, then we’ll decide if we do buy a new one or not. Task #2 still on the to-do list.

Tidying up the car to sell

Two weeks ago we took the car to a workshop to get the “Warrant of Fitness.” The WoF is a certification that all vehicles are required to get regularly. The car goes through an inspection that will approve or disapprove the conditions to use it. In our car’s case, that is a bit old (12 years), we must renew it every 6 months. The one we had before was valid until October, but we decided to get a new one to sell it, as it also is a guarantee for the buyer that the car is in good conditions. So our car has been inspected and passed in the quality control without any difficulty. Yay, task #3 accomplished and $60 less in the pocket.

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Now that the torture with the passport is over, I can tell you about the new gadgets we bought last week. This is the result of a rainy weekend… shopping! It was the most expensive weekend of the year… but these things were already planned in the budget and it was good to do it all at once – and it is super fun to have new toys.

Mini-Laptop Asus Eee 900

After discussing whether or not carry a laptop, we ended up opting for yes. We know it is expensive and fragile, might happen to be stolen, break, damage and can also be another concern. But the pros were  more than the cons: a laptop can be very useful to look for a ticket, accommodation, to keep in touch with people we’ll visit, download and upload photos, update the site… but we really decided when we found this Asus Eee, which is much cheaper than the big ones (we paid US$ 570) and easier to care for and carry. It is ridiculously small and light, compared to our other 15″, but large enough to use the keyboard and access the Internet with a 1024×600 resolution screen. It also comes with a protective cover.. perfect for travelling! It has also proved to be very resistant.. on the first night I dropped it on the floor from 1m height (ooops, sorry Felipe!),  it jumped up and down and survived without any scratch!

Walkie-Talkie Radios – Uniden

I’ve always wanted to have a walkie-talkie when I was a child.. now that I have one nobody wants to play with me hiding behind the sofa. heheh
This was another tip from Juliano, and if he hadn’t said anything, we would never think of this hypothesis.
It is much cheaper than taking a cell phone (option that haven’t even been contemplated) and can help us when we get lost from each other. This one is a Uniden, they were the smallest and cheapest we found (US$ 60), there are 2 in the box and uses 3 AAA batteries.

Sigma 18-200 Lenses

Although we are far from being professionals, photography is one of our favorite hobbies, Felipe’s and mine, since the design uni time. We’ve already got a SLR camera and two lenses (a 18-55 and another 70-300), but in such a trip, carrying so many things and changing lenses all the time might not be something practical. As we love taking photos and this purchase wouldn’t be exclusively for the trip, we decided to invest a little more (US$ 660.00 – ouch!) and buy a Sigma 18-200 with Optical Stabilizer. It is bigger and heavier, but is everything is in one and much better quality than the others we had here, which will be retired by the way – does anyone want to buy?

Furthermore we will also take:

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Last Tuesday we sent the paperwork for the Australian visa. Forms, passport photos, credit card to pay AUD 100.00 (ouch!), a copy of our bookings and even a copy of the travel agency’s receipt.
I reviewed both forms, each detail and even warned Felipe that some parts of his form were missing.
The Australian consulate is one of the few that is not in the capital, but in Auckland, so the application had to be sent by mail. I wrote a letter asking them to send both passports back to my work address, I put everything in an envelope with another stamped envelope inside (yes, you have to pay to get the passport back) and sent.

On Thursday it was back! Wow, two days later! That was very quick! I ran to open and the first passport I got was Felipe’s, the page with the visa marked by the receipt of payment .. they use a full page for a 3 months visa … I mean … is a multiple entry visa, valid for one year, but each stay can not exceed 3 months. “Yay, we’ve got the Australian visa!“, I thought. Then I realized that there were more things inside the envelope. And there I saw all the papers I had sent and my passport. I opened my passport and .. where is the visa?? When I looked into the form, there was a note “Please sign the application.” I couldn’t believe I had done everything right and forgot to sign the papers! Pissed off with myself I caught a pen, signed, put everything back in another envelope and sent it back in the same minute, thinking that on Monday it would all be resolved and my passport stamped.

Monday nothing. Tuesday nothing. On Wednesday I arrived at work looking for it… and nothing. I decided to wait a little more to call the immigration, who knows.. maybe the two days were an exception. Today, I was sure my passport would be on my desk, pretty nice, waiting for me .. and nothing.

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