Friday, March 7, 2008

Home Sweet Home

Our Wellington Apartment Building - 4th Floor

In New Zealand we are living in what you might call tourist apartments. These are essentially condos in an apartment building which are owned by the tourist accommodation company and rented for a week or more. Our apartment in Wellington is the only “transit” unit in our building. The advantage of this type of arrangement is that they are larger (two bedroom) and include such amenities as you would find in a regular condo, such as full kitchen with all the appliances, huge living room, two bathrooms, dining room, washer and dryer, high speed internet, and secure covered parking. http://www.aptsinwgtn.co.nz/

Having a full kitchen we are able to have meals at home, usually breakfast and some lunches. We try to eat dinner out about every other day. This however puts a lot of meal planning on a certain significant other. Her home economics background may be beginning to fade. She seems to be falling in love with those supermarket pre-made deli dinners. Geez, we are becoming very yuppy! The item Mary Ann really loves about this living arrangement is the maid service. At least once a week the ladies arrive to clean the bathrooms, change the beds, change the towels, dust everything, and vacuum the floors. For some reason Mary Ann thinks this is the way life is supposed to be. Go figure.

The apartment instructions do say if you need to take out the garbage before the maids come and do it for you, then there are bins available and you are provided some really complicated instructions on how to find them in the bowels of the building. When we told the maid we had gotten lost trying to find the bins, she just rolled her eyes and said it is impossible to negotiate. Maybe I will try again to solve the puzzle. I can do this!

Quirky Living Note: In New Zealand they obviously do not believe in mixing animals. There are clearly understandable signs for Boarding Kennels, but also the unusual signs for Catteries. I will have to assume this is a place for boarding cats, rather some other meaning.

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