A happy day, finally we more or less got the keys for our newly rented home. More or less because were only given the keys to the back door. After thoroughly locking the doors (we live in a dangerous neighborhood now) the first nights in the house turns out to be rather lacking in warmth. Fortunately, the sleeping bags keep us alive until morning, only the nose has suffered mild frostbite. We have learned another lesson: Old NZ houses don’t come with such fancy thrills as basic insulation. If it is 3° C outside there is no reason why people should not get the full benefit of sub arctic temperature in their living rooms as well. This explains why Kiwis are so hardy and run around barefoot all year, and why local hospitals fill up really quick when the temperature reaches close to zero. Being the sissy’s we are, we do the only reasonable thing and buy electric heaters (heating is another thing that doesn’t come with a rental). Now it could be nice and warm, at least if we could get back into the house, we don’t have a key for the front door and the backdoor is still locked from the inside. So we call the rental guy, who calls the owner, who will come with the front door key in a little while. It is cold, it is already dark, but we do get the front door key and it does warm up.
A bad case of NZ plumbing. Note the precision that the silicon has been modeled to cause further leakage.
Also a matter of interest is the state of the electric power sockets, and of course the plumbing. It takes a brave man to hook up a washing machine in NZ. The electrician-plumber-nimrod who did the sink in the first place thought it would be a good idea to fix leaks with silicone, so we in turn thought that we should not trouble the poor man any further and took the matter into our own hands. Et voila, washing machine and dishwasher are running, of curse only after they cut away some of the kickbord so the dishwasher would fit into his designated place. While we were getting settled into the house nicely some ants apparently had the same idea, but they overstayed their welcome when they took a liking to Melli’s Knusperzucker. Apart from ants getting into the cooky-box, a mouse started to run through the house, cute in a way, but it too had some bad manners and after it took a dump in behind of Melli’s nightstand it was decided that it had to go. Martin tries to catch it alive, leading to some very funny scenes (so Miss. H. later testified), but unfortunately the poor thing gets squashed in one of the attempts, as it tries to dart between a doorframe and a woodblock. Felt bad for a while, until I thought of the mouse burgers in the movie never cry wolfe. Mouse gone, ants under control and finally heating, if we can only get the light switch in the kitchen to work..