Reliable and efficient public transportation, high-speed internet, it’s nice to be back in the civilised world. I said goodbye to Auckland and my Scottish neighbours over a glass of wine and a nice dinner with cheese crackers and filled chicken. In the morning I took the airbus express to the airport and to be fair, this piece of Auckland’s public transportation works well. Guess you can expect that at $16 for a single ride.

Once again my bags are packed and I am ready to leave. I’ll spend my last night at the hostel and be off to the airport tomorrow morning. NZ and I never got to terms and my time here was a low in two years of travelling. Yet I reckon a few days in the buzzing heat of SEA will be enough to forget the months of disappointment here. New adventures I’m coming!

Just handed in the notice for my flat. I’m moving out on the 5th of March. The agency I was in touch with didn’t get back to me - despite what they said. For Monday I had an interview with another agency scheduled but they gave me a ring to tell me the interview was cancelled and that they’d do a phone-interview later that day instead. Which they didn’t. Yesterday an agency I interviewed with weeks ago rang me and asked if I was interested in a position they were looking to fill.

So far I haven’t handed in my notice for the flat. The only reason for that is the interview I had last week. The job description sounded very good with interesting projects, recent technology and some international travel (an issue for many but a bonus for me). On top of that an above average pay would make any money worries a memory. The manager who conducted the interview seemed quite happy with me as well.

Having spent two months here, I have picked up some knowledge about Auckland. Something everybody agrees upon is how unique the public transportation system is. Mentioning it makes people chuckle, roll their eyes or start a rant. It is, in blunt words, total and utter crap. Getting to the job interview on Wednesday required me to leave my place at 2pm. The interview was at 4pm. It’s not that far, 20 minutes with the car, but with walking, time spent on the bus and a bit of buffer for delayed buses it becomes two hours.

The company that brought me in for interviews last week would be one of the last places I would want to work at. Just an unprofessional bunch of hackers. Kinda reminded me of my last employer in Germany, the one that made me hate my profession. Sure enough they came back to me this week, asking me to come in for a third interview with the management. That usually means they are willing to hire me.

Recently I got an email after being invited for an interview with an agency. It read Please bring passport Room and forms please Wondering why the recruiter would ask me for a room and forms, I checked the recipient list of the mail and saw that their front desk received a copy of that mail. How lazy can you be? Is it unprofessional? I’d have written two mails. The lady doesn’t seem to be too concerned about the impression her mails leave, as the next one started like this

On Wednesday I had an interview with a third recruitment agency. I wasn’t too keen on going as my experiences with the agencies are not the best so far. It was worth it for the view alone though, saw Auckland from their office on the 38th floor in the CBD. Nice. The interview was outstanding in that the guy was unusually open about my situation, shedding some light on the pros and cons of my resume.

Yesterday some friends and couchsurfers came over for Thai food. I was a bit overwhelmed by the response to my invitation and in the end it was eleven of us who needed to be fed from two hot plates. Good thing that Thai food can be cooked quickly, once all the preparations are done. As I don’t have a massive dinner table, we had the food Thai-style: on the floor.

So what if I don’t get a proper job in NZ? In that case I’ll be in a remote corner of the world with my funds on an uncomfortable all-time low. I would then have a couple of options. 1. Try to get some casual work to keep myself afloat. That could give me some more time to find an IT job, but I think if I haven’t gotten one by the end of the month, I’d need a lot of luck to get one any time soon.

I’m starting to feel home at my new place and what remains needed now, to truly feel comfortable, is a regular income. The job market is doing it’s annual phoenix from the ashes impression and there is a couple of interesting positions available. So far seven applications have been filed with three more in the making. One got rejected, one got me an invitation for an interview on Thursday. Not too excited though as I’ve been at that point before.

Roughly 20 months after moving out of my flat in Karlsruhe, I now have a place on my own for the first time since. It is a 1 bedroom/studio apartment on the edge of the CBD. It’s close to all the amenities and comes with a balcony and a view over West Auckland, the bay and the harbour bridge. I’ll post some pictures of the interior once it looks presentable. With everything else being settled, I’m back to the job hunt now.

A christmas eve excursion to the north shore with Richard. Mulled wine and turkey dinner at James and Queenie’s. Right now I’m ‘working’ as a house sitter a little outside of Auckland city, taking care of two cats and some maintenance work. I’ll have the place for myself till early next year and hopefully have found something on my own by then.

Three weeks after moving into the flatshare I decided to get out there yesterday. The guy I shared the place with seemed like an interesting guy at first, somebody who knows a lot of people and has a lot of stories to tell. As it turned out, most of his stories where made up and nobody came around the place except the people I was meeting. He was what people call a low life.

Left my flatshare today, back to the hostel and limited internet access. Details later.

Auckland with its population of 1.5 million is New Zealand’s biggest city and home to one third of the country’s total population. It is the northernmost of the major cities which means that it gets the warmest climate. That doesn’t mean much though, temperatures have been in the low 20s and rain poured down almost non-stop for the last week. Yesterday moments of sunshine brought the opportunity to join a local group of photographers for a walk around the city.

Days went by without any notice from the company or the job agency. I gave the agency another call and was told that the company had decided not to hire me. Why I had to call these jokers to get that information is beyond me. Why the company went through hours of interviews, reference checks and negotiations is obscure as well. Might have been the permanent employment/visa thing, I’ll probably never know.

Still no news on the job front. The agency apparently had a bit of trouble and I had to call them twice to get things going. By now all my referees have replied to them and hopefully they’ll provide some feedback to the company early next week. Can’t stand this waiting around without anything to do. The job is so attractive that I’m not seriously interested in applying for other offers and thus there’s not much to do other than wait.

The job application is still ‘work in progress’. The recruitment agent taking care of me has been sick for two days. Looks like I won’t get a decision from the company this week. Other than that I had a fairly quiet time. I went to the biggest weekly couchsurfing meeting I’ve ever seen (100+ people) and got in touch with some of the locals. New Zealand doesn’t feel that different than Australia to me, although the Kiwis wouldn’t like hearing that.

On Tuesday morning I showed up at the recruitment agency for a little chat with my agent. It really was just a quick chat, after five minutes everything was settled and he sent me off to an interview with their client, the actual company I’d be working for. There HR greeted me and gave me a short briefing about the company and it’s history. It followed a 1/2 hour written test on C# and SQL (programming for those unfamiliar with the terms).

Over the weekend I met up with James, whom I met in Ha Long Bay. He’s been in town for a couple of weeks and has some information about the accommodation situation. I’m intending to stay here for quite a while and asked him about flat-shares. On Thursday I’m moving in. This morning I rang a recruitment agency that had an ad about a software development job on a popular Kiwi website.

Arrived in the morning after a quiet 10h flight. Strange to be back in the western world, I really miss SEA. But probably the world looks brighter after a good sleep, didn’t get that on the plane.