How's life in NZ/Aus?

lemon_of_old

I was just chatting to a couple of Samoan lads who're staying at my hostel. (side note, I'm so over hostels, I need to find me a flat!!)
They were working security last night for the carnival and said that there were way more woman arrested last night than men! Which I kinda get, I saw a lot of very very drunk women, skirts around their necks and high heels kicking up at the sky. One full on attacked a bouncer in the club. Mental kiwi ladies.

watna

/does a little dance for joy!

Not only did I just get my work permit I received a letter in the post today telling my my residency has been approved. Happy happy days! It took over 4 months to be assigned a case officer and from the date I did it took 21 days for them to approve my residency. I can only presume that the partnership evidence I supplied was pretty good.

I'm so so excited. I can finally feel fully settled here, can stop paying exorbitant fees for doctor's visits, can be made permanent at work (no more fixed term contract for me!) can join kiwisaver and in general feel like I really live here and am not visiting for a few months.

We're having freinds around tonight so I'm going to celebrate by drinking a lot!

Crumble Froo

awesome watna, well stoked for you!

Rabies

nice one.

dSTAR

Congrats watna!

*Hands a glass of bubbly

The Sweeper

Congratulations! The feeling of being properly settled is an excellent one. I wish you a great celebration and a minimal hangover.

Zambia

Have a good one Watna

watna

Thanks all. I'm only slightly hungover today. I behaved myself really! I think out neighbours hate us though. We ended up playing quite drunk cranium and we were very very loud!

Hoping my boss will get a perm contract sorted for me this week. The sooner the better!

Crumble Froo

im so thrilled (and jealous), watna, but i am grinning while i type this... fair play, well done, and if all goes well, i might just get round to popping in your way in a few months... you're gonna have to show me this cranium thing...

The Sweeper

Gah. I'm starting to get really confused about these new bushfire warnings for tomorrow. It's supposed to be a day like black Saturday. Telstra is organising to text people fire warnings, and other telco providers are being pressured to do the same.

Actually, scrap 'confused'.

Replace it with 'pissed off'.

Tomorrow is supposed to have winds gusting up to 150kmph and high temperatures.

The forecast for my area, on weather.com.au, currently lists tomorrows conditions as 28 degrees, cloudy, an 8kmph wind and up to 7mm of rain. RAIN. Humidity is due to be 83%. That is not a high fire index day in this area. It's certainly nowhere near conditions on February 7th.

ABC news website says "About 2,200 firefighters are continuing to battle four fires - in Bunyip State Park and Wilsons Promontory, and two in Kilmore East-Murrindindi."

THERE IS NO FIRE IN KILMORE EAST. IT'S NOT ON FIRE. I KNOW. I DROVE THROUGH IT AN HOUR AGO. The Kilmore East-Murrindindi fires STARTED in Kilmore East and have burned everything there over three weeks ago. Those fires are now miles and miles away, threatening other homesteads in the Yarra Valley and the Warburton Valley. Even then, the containment lines are holding.

It annoys me, because it's inaccurate, and it's panic-mongering, and it's precisely what we DO NOT NEED right now.

It's really, really difficult to get news and information out in rural Australia, and that's compounded when your local news channel on TV are CRAP.

That leaves everyone relying on the radio, which is better, and the CFA website, which doesn't need the additional traffic of people in low-risk areas staying logged on for hours because of what they're hearing on the TV.

It's wrecking my head.

brendansmith

Minesajackdaniels wrote: »

Gah. I'm starting to get really confused about these new bushfire warnings for tomorrow. It's supposed to be a day like black Saturday. Telstra is organising to text people fire warnings, and other telco providers are being pressured to do the same.

Actually, scrap 'confused'.

Replace it with 'pissed off'.

Tomorrow is supposed to have winds gusting up to 150kmph and high temperatures.

The forecast for my area, on weather.com.au, currently lists tomorrows conditions as 28 degrees, cloudy, an 8kmph wind and up to 7mm of rain. RAIN. Humidity is due to be 83%. That is not a high fire index day in this area. It's certainly nowhere near conditions on February 7th.

ABC news website says "About 2,200 firefighters are continuing to battle four fires - in Bunyip State Park and Wilsons Promontory, and two in Kilmore East-Murrindindi."

THERE IS NO FIRE IN KILMORE EAST. IT'S NOT ON FIRE. I KNOW. I DROVE THROUGH IT AN HOUR AGO. The Kilmore East-Murrindindi fires STARTED in Kilmore East and have burned everything there over three weeks ago. Those fires are now miles and miles away, threatening other homesteads in the Yarra Valley and the Warburton Valley. Even then, the containment lines are holding.

It annoys me, because it's inaccurate, and it's panic-mongering, and it's precisely what we DO NOT NEED right now.

It's really, really difficult to get news and information out in rural Australia, and that's compounded when your local news channel on TV are CRAP.

That leaves everyone relying on the radio, which is better, and the CFA website, which doesn't need the additional traffic of people in low-risk areas staying logged on for hours because of what they're hearing on the TV.

It's wrecking my head.

I really cant get my head around the fact that they had a day of remembrance and the fires are still burning.

Crumble Froo

i can't believe the panic mongering. that's... just wrong on so many levels.

The Sweeper

Man, I know that there are other areas of Victoria that are under threat tomorrow because of the wind factor (Yarra Valley, Warburton Valley), but those communities need focused, accurate information, advice and recommendations.

Evacuate early - what's early? Tonight? Tomorrow morning, first thing? Tomorrow when you can see smoke? And where to evacuate TO? Where do you go, if you have two parents, three kids, two dogs, a cat and a hamster? Where can you evacuate to if you have animals? You can't leave them in the car, they'll die in the heat on any given summer's day. Where won't be on fire?

The sort of broad-level heebie jeebies we're getting at the moment does only one thing - it creates ostriches, people who will stay at home with their heads in the sand until they can smell smoke and see flames and hear the property next door crackling.

This is the very reason that the 'stay and defend your property' ethos probably won't be overturned - because if you can't get accurate, up to date information about what the fire danger is going to be like in your local area, then you really can't be expected to evacuate to nowhere every time there's going to be bad weather.

They shot themselves in the foot with the last warning, for last Friday, which was another 'oh it'll be like black Saturday, temperature 38 degrees' warning day. It was 28 degrees tops here, balmy and overcast with a wind of around 15-20kms. The authorities don't seem to understand that the people in the already burned areas are like cats on hot tin rooves - paranoid, skittish, confused, liable to panic at little provocation. The reporting, instead of being targeted from the outset at danger areas, addresses the entire state for the first few minutes, or few paragraphs, or few sentences on the radio. THEN it gets more specific.

Gah. I'm so over it.

One Cold Hand

Yeah I got a text yesterday. Exact wording was:

"VIC Police:
Extreme weather warning in Vic expected Mon night & Tues. High winds & fire risk. Listen to ABC Local Radio for emergency updates."

It was pissing rain on the way to work this morning!
My first reaction was 'sh!t it must be REALLY bad if they're sending out texts to everyone. I guess they're being extra careful, but they do seem to have overstepped the line.

missannik

I understand why everyone is getting a bit narky, but really if the authorities don't put out warnings and something does happen, then just imagine the uproar! They're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. Having a look at http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/incidents/incident_summary.htm it looks to me that there was due reason to put out such a mass scale warning.

The Sweeper

The CFA incidents page always looks like that. It simply lists all of the triple-0 calls that have been referred to the CFA and are assessed as 'incidents' in the state of Victoria.

The 'justification' would come from that page being full of going wildfires where there's a full strike team of five or more tankers in attendance. (See the current situation in Dereel.)

What I've noticed about that page today, the two times I've logged onto it to see if there is a local incident that himself will be at and is therefore not coming home, is it's full of 'false alarm' 'false alarm'.

If you want to know what's going on, don't look at the incidents page, look at the updates and advice page, where they list awareness messages and urgent threat messages. That gives proper information on where the danger areas are.

Even then, close the page when you're done - the CFA site finds it hard to handle the traffic since Feb 7th.

The unfortunate side of the authorities arse-covering exercise today is that, in making a state-wide announcement they've put everyone on edge, and also alerted the firebugs to the fact that, even though it rained and there's 70% humidity, any fire successfully started today will spread at a rate of knots. It's also caused people who don't need to panic to panic.

I'm in Kilmore. The fires that wiped out Wandong and Clonbinane and Kinglake and bits of Broadford and Flowerdale etc. etc. - they started 5kms away from me. This town was the unburned organisational hub of the Feb 7th fires, with the Kilmore CFA station being the operations central coordination centre. However, today, while there's a blistering breeze outside, there's been rain, humidity goes up and down but is high overall and the teams lined up at the CFA station are spending most of their time assisting the SES in removing fallen trees.

But STILL, there are people all over this town who've packed suitcases and cars up with their possessions - but they haven't evacuated. This is partly because they've no idea where to evacuate TO. This means they won't go until they can smell smoke and see flames, and that's too late. It also means they're stressed and feel uninformed, as opposed to feeling ready and aware.

Yes, fire could start anywhere in Victoria.

Yes, the wind means any fire that starts will be uncontrollable.

HOWEVER, a smattering of rain and high humidity make it more difficult for a fire to start. An overcast day with lower than expected temperatures also makes it more difficult for a fire to start.

Putting the entire state on high alert and being unspecific about evacuating - which is how the media started out - that's just a bad way to communicate with people.

The_B_Man

All my friends are going home.

There is just no jobs in Perth!

The Sweeper

There is currently a fire near Dereel, which is south of Ballarat.

The CFA website has an urgent threat message out for residents of towns in the area. The ABC local radio has just announced that the urgent threat message will probalby soon be downgraded because the CFA have the fire under control. Then John Brumby live from Melbourne on the news at 5pm says that the fire in Dereel is burning out of control. Then the conditions reporter on site at Warburton announces brightly that there is an urgent threat message out "near Ballarat".

This is what I have a problem with. Not the fact that the authorities want to let us know there's a danger - that's fine, that's sensible, that's not a problem. It's the bloody way they're doing it...

Crumble Froo

heh, thought of you majd when i read the front page (ok, not the main headline) of the 'world' section of the paper today, and it said "Fire service not 'crying wolf'". was gonna link to it, but they dont seem to have the same article online.

chele

The_B_Man wrote: »

All my friends are going home.

There is just no jobs in Perth!

What are you going to do? You going to cut your losses and head back home???

watna

Just got my passport back from immigration. I can't stop looking at those beautiful blue residence stickers. They're mesmerising!

Going to a prty at a friends house tomorow so going to get some NZ flags and make a pavlova with kiwifruit on it to celebrate.

It's put me in a great mood for the weekend. I was told it would take 3 -4 weeks to process my migrant levy and get my passport back. It took 3 - 4 days!

dSTAR

watna wrote: »

Just got my passport back from immigration. I can't stop looking at those beautiful blue residence stickers. They're mesmerising!

Going to a prty at a friends house tomorow so going to get some NZ flags and make a pavlova with kiwifruit on it to celebrate.

Well done watna.

Hunny we already discussed the pavlova.

*On next available flight

Sammag

Congrats Watna!

watna wrote: »

Going to a prty at a friends house tomorow so going to get some NZ flags and make a pavlova with kiwifruit on it to celebrate.

I did this too when i got my Perm. Residency here last year. In fact I think I made a pavlova for every dinner party from then on... Double layer, double chocolate pav with cream and raspberries is to die for *drool* :pac::pac::pac:

I will celebrate my Citizenship next Jan with a HUGE batch of Lamingtons. I have never made them (and don't get what the fuss is about - the chocolate is WAY too thin on them) but I think only fitting when one becomes an offical Australian

Congrats again!

One Cold Hand

Sammag wrote: »

I will celebrate my Citizenship next Jan with a HUGE batch of Lamingtons. I have never made them (and don't get what the fuss is about - the chocolate is WAY too thin on them) but I think only fitting when one becomes an offical Australian

I don't get them either. I just had my first one a week or so ago and I wasn't blown away. Too much sponge not enough chocolate!

Sammag

One Cold Hand wrote: »

I don't get them either. I just had my first one a week or so ago and I wasn't blown away. Too much sponge not enough chocolate!

It's an Aussie thing, they've funny tastes. They like salty poo scraped on their toast and wax lyrical about stale Victoria sponge squares barely covered in thin watery cooking style chocolate. :rolleyes:

myhorse

Sammag wrote: »

I will celebrate my Citizenship next Jan with a HUGE batch of Lamingtons. I have never made them (and don't get what the fuss is about - the chocolate is WAY too thin on them) but I think only fitting when one becomes an offical Australian

Congrats again!

I remember when I got my citizenship. My Aussie friends threw a nice party for me. Which was nice only thing was that it was an irish themed party....
Only in Australia...........


Well done watna.

dSTAR

:pac: <== Raspberry lamingtons with cream in the center. Mmmm.

Sammag

Nyom, nyom, nyom



(BTW excuse Granny tablecloth and naff jug – In-laws gaff)

Crumble Froo

dSTAR wrote: »

Well done watna.

Hunny we already discussed the pavlova.

*On next available flight

what's this about already discussing pavlova?

and





I GOT MY VISA!!!

YAAAAAAAAAYYYY!!!!

that's me safe and legal to work here for another year, allowed to apply for another year after that, and, most importantly, able to apply for residency now. ^__^

Xavi6

Just been made redundant. Fan-fucking-tastic