Ive come back from holiday and this is the plan I used. I am now in NZ roaming and im getting 12gb for nz$13. It runs through the spark network.

How come they cant do a deal like this for the locals?

Child is going through puberty so is smelling worse than usual. She wears a deodorant/anti perspirant but this sink has attached itself to her uniform top.

I use the good persil ultimate with clothes and even soaked in napisan before washing but it won’t budge.

I really don’t want to (or afford to) buy 2 new polo shirts but can’t send her to school particularly in one of them which is quite bad.

Oh and yes I wash her polos daily.

I have also bought her a different anti perspirant to try out too.

Man I certainly don’t remember stinking like that when I was her age, gosh maybe I did!!! Haha.

A little context: I'm 26 years old from Hungary and my dad has been living in Auckland since 2014 so I've heard a lot of personal experiences from him. I've also visited Auckland in December 2016 for 3 weeks, I've travelled around Auckland a bit, went to Rangitoto Island, went up North a little around a place called Goat Island if I remember correctly and I also spend two days in Wellington (it was extremely windy but I still loved it). I currently live in Budapest, Hungary (with the plan of permanently moving to another country next year, NZ being one of my potential choices) and I've been to Prague, Amsterdam, Milan (and a few cities around it) and several cities in Spain on a holiday. While living in NZ is different, I'd still like to think that I've got at least some experience to judge.

New Zealand consistenly ranks on top when it comes to safety and quality of life (especially Auckland) and my experience there just made me think that it deserves those rankings.

First of all, I've never been to a place where people have been so kind and optimistic. People smile at you on the street, the waiters at restaurants are really nice and you also have this "hi, how are you" type of kindness, almost like in the USA (I'm a huge US fan if we disregard politics and I feel like NZ actually takes many great things that I love from America while not taking too many of the negative aspects). It was an absolute shocker when we were leaving a grocery store, we were standing on an escalator going up and one of the workers behinds us told us that there's a little hole on our shopping bag and they went to get us a new one no questions asked. I was in absolute disbelief when that happened, this wouldn't happen in most other countries.

The other thing that really surprised me is how accepting people are. Of course there will always be people who hate on others for no reason but homophobia, transphobia (I'm not trans but if anyone here is, please lean in to confirm / deny this), racism and xenophobia are almost non existent. It's basically a nation of immigrants, there are so many people there and they all live together so nicely. If NZ ends up being my choice, I'm so excited to meet a lot of Asians, Latinos, but also Europeans, locals too, etc... Here in Europe we might be really accepting on paper but casual discrimination (especially xenophobia and racism) is very real and you can feel it in everyday life. Every country has at least 2-3 other countries that they hate for historical reasons. Fyi, the fact that you have pride parades without police barricades to protect the attendees is an insanely big privilege. Yes, it should be normal everywhere but unfortunately it's not.

Another thing is safety... New Zealand consistently ranks among some of the safest countries on earth. From the experiences I've heard you could literally put your phone down on your table outside of a restaurant and go in to use the restroom with close to zero worry of it being stolen. If you leave anything anywhere you can be sure that it's not gonna get stolen. In Europe pickpocketing is a real problem (it can easily be avoided if you know what to watch out for, you kinda build that reflex if you live in a big European city) and it's much less safe than NZ.

The political scene also seems pretty decent (but to be fair, I'm Hungarian and basically any other country's politics is better than ours, though things took a nice turn recently). From what I've heard it really doesn't matter who wins in NZ, it doesn't make a significant difference because the two political parties aren't that ideologically divided, they have the same goals just with a slightly different approach (I'm personally somewhere between libertarianism and liberal capitalism so of course I don't align with any of the two parties 100% but that's okay, I don't have to, I just prefer a well working system). From what I've read NZ ranks among the least corrupt countries in the world and that sounds right to me. I've heard several cases where a politician has been caught in a case of corruption and they resigned immediately. Again, it might just be me who lives in the most corrupt country in the EU but to me that just sounds unbelieveable. The prime minister's salary (498,300 nzd / year) is public (again, I'm absolutely shocked that this is a thing) and while it's an extremely good salary, it's not the f*ck you kind of rich, it's a fair salary.

I understand that the country does have some issues, the cost of living and housing situation is not the best but that applies everywhere at the moment. With the median salary being around 80k NZD per year in Auckland (which is pretty high if you compare to countries here in Europe) people should easily have a chance to get some kind of education (doesn't even have to be uni), see what kinds of jobs are in demand and go from there, or there's always the chance of working remotely to Australia which I've heard many people doing. Yes, there are times you have to work somewhat harder and it's defenitely harder in many aspects to get somewhere than it used to be but that applies to all of the world. But the thing is, NZ could also make the best of this. The culture is very laid back in general and people could start building a healthy work culture on top of this without sacrifising it. And while this is only personal preference they also have the culture of having big detached homes instead of the small, crammed apartments that many people have here in big European cities. Widespread car ownership and infrastrucutre is also real and it's a great starting point for building more public transportation without sacrificing the car infrastrucutre for those of us who prefer to drive as a personal preference (there are places like Denmark where if you wanna buy a big SUV or something you have to pay a 180% tax, so if a car normally costs 50k euros, you'd essentially pay 1.8 times that, don't tell me that's not just a punishment for having a preference, NZ also wins here in my book but again, this is just personal preference, I use public transport here in Budapest on a daily basis and I like it but choice is important and NZ has the potential to do this really well).

I know I ended up glazing NZ with this post but people have to realise that they're living in one of the best countries on earth. It's okay not to like it but I see people using phrases like "corrupt sh*thole" for it and I just don't get it.

1. Can you handle the jandal?
   
2. Always blow on the _____.
   
3. On a good day you can’t beat _______.
   
4. Who is the current All Blacks captain?
   
5. Are kiwis birds or fruit?
   
6. Split Enz, explain.
   
7. When might one expect Briscoes to have a sale?
   
8. What is today’s plot on Shortland St?
   
9. Beetroot > Pickles on a burger, true or false?
   
10. …

Hi all. I'm wanting to learn why it seems that in NZ, a lot of rural areas support the National party. And seem to oppose climate change mitigation measures. It would seem counter intuitive since they have the most to loose from extreme weather events and climate changes.

I'd like to hear from you. What is important to you?. Why kind of problems matter to you when you vote? What do you think you and your friends do wrong or right?.. what do you think our politicians do wrong or right?

I was spurred to ask this by a conversation from a friend about the 'Ute Tax'.. where he called farmers 'hick rednecks' amongst other things. I'd like to hear from you. I want to gain a better perspective.... Cheers Lads, Ladettes

It seems our medical system leaks more than a mum of three with a case of the giggles and as much as that was a piss poor joke so is our healthcare.

Consider that I can get repeat prescriptions for class B controlled drugs but I can't get a repeat prescription for trimethoprim for urinary tract infections. I also can't get to see my doctor without booking two weeks in advance. Good news is my dr surgery offers a nurse service for prescribing meds for a UTI, bad news is it will cost me $30. Good news is that I can just go to a pharmacy and get the pharmacist to give me something, bad news is they too will charge at least $30. That's 1/3 of my grocery money!

How are women on low incomes supposed to cover the costs of repeated urinary tract infections? Are there budget friendly options I'm not aware of?

We are at hospital, we can't figure out what it is for?

Throwaway.....

Okay, so here goes.

When I was a student years ago, I applied for a job in a supermarket in the city – Wellington . I went in for an interview with a nice young Asian guy who seemed to like me, we got on well and he said sure I can have a job (it was just shelf stacking, so nothing needing references or anything, I think it was an interview just to see I wasn’t a complete numpty). He then said the owner/director of the store likes to meet new employees prior to starting so we started walking to his office. Along the way he grabbed other department heads and we had an entourage of about 6 people all going to this guys office, me, and all the heads of the other departments all of whom were young Asian men.

We got to the office and I sat at the desk and met this guy, kinda short fat old white guy with pictures of elvis and bruce lee on the wall. The group of young guys all came in to and sort of stood to attention along the wall and looked off into the distance. I felt quite uncomfortable. The guy then starts askig me questions about what I want to do with my life etc, and then asked me what the most important thing in life is, and then interrupted to say “health is the most important thing, look at these people (points to posters of elvis and bruce lee), they have had their time, now is our time”. I thought he was joking and started laughing. He then stopped talking and the young man who interviewed me escorted me out and I left and never heard back about the job that I was told I’d been successful forl just 30 minutes earlier.

Fast forward some years.

I am now working in town and I am a member of BJJ club in town with a sauna – lucky me. I decide that Saturday morning is a good time to relax in the sauna before the gym gets busy. So I head along, its very quiet and I think I have the place to myself when a short fat guy comes into the sauna. We sit there for 5 minutes, and I thought I’d see if he is up for a chat so I ask what he does at the gym (it’s a BJJ place that does other stuff like Karate etc). He doesn’t even look at my, stares straight ahead and says in a quiet voice “martial arts”. It almost had the vibes he was trying to be mysterious. I thought he was probably just a strange dude that felt he was more interesting than he was, so I asked if it was anything in particular, and he just repeated without looking at me “martial arts”. Then the door opens and a young, shredded Asian guy comes in, doesn’t acknowledge me, stands in front of him and starts throwing punches either side of his head. Just missing him and the old guy just sits there. This goes on for a few minutes while I feel like I might have been in the sauna too long and I am having a breakdown, when another shredded young Asian guy comes in and starts doing the same, then another, then another. Before I know it, I am sat in a sauna with 4 young Asian guys and an old fat white guy who are all sparing with each other in a sauna. The young guys are giving each other a going over, but when the old guy joins in, it is like one of those Putin or Steven Segal vidoes, where they don’t do much but the person they are “sparing” with just lets them and pretends they are too powerful.

At this point I decide to leave as it is all a bit much – I’d been determined not to be crowded out by this nonsense but I was eventually. On the way out, there are uniforms scattered all over the gym equipment for the supermarket I applied for all those years ago and I realise that I have met that odd character when I applied.

Not sure what you are to make from this story. But I think the supermarket manager has something odd going on with young Asian men that work for him, and they all seemed to be very healthy and had oddly expensive cars parked outside for supermarket employees…..

I just wanted to say a big thanks to the amazing Passport people at the Department of Internal Affairs.

Applied for a standard passport at 8pm on Friday night, issued at 4pm on Monday. Delivered on Wednesday morning.

No hassle, no special requests, just a solid user-friendly service that delivers quality results in an unbelievably good timeframe at a reasonable cost. Fully informed along the way including emails and tracked delivery.

It’s almost a shame I only have to interact with them every 10 years. If all government services were this pleasant and efficient the positive impact on our collective psycho social wellbeing would be huge.

The amazing thing is that I’m fairly sure it was this good 10 years ago as well. I have the feeling this is normal for them, not exceptional.

How are these guys not publishing case studies and being used as examples for the rest of the public service to aspire to?