London Expo

I went to the London NZ Expo on Sunday. My wife had to work that day so I ended up going by myself. I think it was useful to go at this stage depite that fact we won't be emigrating until early 2008. There were quite a few IT employers represented, inluding the firm I work for in the UK so I had a quick chat with them. A couple of the recruitment agencies and another IT firm asked me to upload my CV onto their website, and I must have filled in a good dozen or so forms with my e-mail address.

You should be able to do the majority of the Expo in a couple of hours if you know where you'll be settling and what employment you want. I have to say some of the regional stands were very persistent in extolling their virtues!

Visited Countries and New Zealand Radio

A link I found from Our New Zealand Journey is Visited Countries, which allows you to select all the countries you have visted and get a map, as seen below. I was disappointed in how few I have visited in nearly 40 years of life! A friend of mine is aiming for 50 countries by age 50 - maybe I should set a goal for myself! I need to start racking them up before we leave for New Zealand.



I've also been listening to a Christchurch radio station, The Breeze, which is quite good - at least for my age group anyway! There's also Radio New Zealand which as far as I can ascertain is a cross between BBC Radio 4 and Radio 2, but with the time difference it's hard to listen to the decent stuff.

And Completed

We are officially no longer home owners, but somewhat richer in savings! Last Friday, after seeing a huge jump in our surrent account, we completed the sale of our house in the UK. We're now living in Service Quarters and able to save for our future in New Zealand. We're taking advice from an excellent website which Martin Lewis runs. This will help with regular saving, but I'm still debating whether to send the balance of our house sale out to New Zealand now, where interest rates are a lot higher, or keep it here in the UK in case of a change in circumstances.

The other option is to max out on premium bonds and hope for that £1m win!

Exchanged!

Thank goodness!! We exchanged yesterday and complete on Friday, so our home in the UK is now sold! I'm just opening an accounbt with HiFX to transfer the proficts of our sale to NZ, but with the exchange rate dropping every time I look we had better do it soon. It was only a few weeks ago that it was NZ$3 to the pound.


Last weekend some friends of ours came to stay with us in London where we're now living and we all went to see the American Express World Gold Championship held at The Grove near Rickmansworth. It's the first time we've been to see a golf tournament but our friends were old hands; I don't play either though my wife who does is campaigning for me to start. They were pleasantly surprised how good the facilities for spectators were.

What was even better was that we all had American Express cards so there were freebies galore, ranging from free parking through quite good portable radios to a remarkable pleasant lunch and drink. We got to see all the best golf players in the world including Tiger Woods who only comes to the UK for the Open, We bagged a place on the 9th before he arrived and it was pure luck that his shot fell only a matter of feet from where we were standing. The weather held off to so all in all a very good day out.