Oh, excellent! Thank you!
Very intriguing.
:: Sunspace starts to look around at life to see whether he would qualify for immigration ::
So, um… anyone need any solar-powered houses down there? 
Like this one? There’s a lot of sites here talking about passive use of solar energy, but full-on solar energy homes are increasing in number, and the trend may well show a sharp increase soon with fuel and energy costs rising.
…just a quick note here, I work at the functions division at Te Papa. The building is open for the public between 1000 and 1800 weekdays and weekends, and open Thursday nights until 2100. If you or any other dopers are considering visiting the National Museum, send me a PM about a week before you visit, and we will try and catch up…
If I’d had known you worked there, Banquet Bear, that may have made my visit last March to Te Papa far more interesting than it was. sigh Next time, perhaps?
I believe dynamitedave was gently accusing you of mocking our (NZ’s) recent America’s Cup loss to a landlocked country (again!)
We lost to fellow Kiwis, 1920s Style “Death Ray”. Plus a few Aussies, American, French, Italians … not so much us vs. a landlocked country, as us vs. the world.
Still a sad thing – and the sad part was the kiwi vs. kiwi business.
As I said earlier, when I offered NurseCarmen a definition for “stirrer” – just some gentle digs. No biggie.
…absolutely! I believe I owe you at the very least a coffee, and at most a lavish banquet!!!
So cool! Well, I do have to get back down there at some stage. I missed out on the cable car thing, want to go down to Wellington via the Overlander, see the Alexander Turnbull Library – and would be absolutely thrilled to meet you! I’ll be in touch next time I know when I’m down your way. Cheers! 
:smack: It took me almost 24 hours to make the connection! Peter Jackson is a subversive one, in’t he!
:smack: Ah, sorry NurseCarmen, I was thinking you were commenting about TNZ coming er second in the last cup. Not that I was worried about it 
As mentioned by Ice Wolf up thread, sailing is big time here, with lots of islands and bays to visit.
Sunpace, GST is a VAT. GST means Government Sanctioned Theft Goods and Services Tax. It’s paid on almost all transactions. Each middleman only pays GST on the difference between the outputs and inputs. At the retail end, prices are listed GST inclusive, so no maths needed for shoppers. Trade suppliers, eg an electrical wholesaler, list prices as GST exclusive.
Apple is dear, because, well they are Apple. I wouldn’t be suprised if their main market is students with their practically open-ended loans.
Immigration of certain skill sets is encouraged. Go to here and in the Toolbox check out the 2 Skill Shortage Lists. You then need to download a .pdf. I understand Canadians are already fluent in “eh”, so you’d fit in well. 
I get to see many houses and am despondent about the lack of design for passive heating and cooling. Finally a house was built in 2005 for research purposes, and I hope the results start coming through soon and that the current minimum standards get revised and added to.
I was tempted to mention the clever folk at Weta – but thought, nah, you’ll know now where the name comes from! 
He, that’s funny, a good friend of mine worked there, too, at least for a short while (by now she has migrated to working at a news website). I’m planning to visit her sometime next year, so maybe I’ll drop by. The world is small!
Oh POOP! He SAID Melbourne but we all knew he was THINKING about home
Yep, that’s us Kiwis. Hopeful mind-readers. 
No worries, fellow Aucklander – doesn’t matter what he intended, we have adopted it. Kinda like our unofficial slogan.
ETA: Actually “home” for the Finns is Te Awamutu. Is the weather there really that bad?
That’s pretty much the wat it works in Canada, too, except that GST is always listed separately.
Are you guys having a labour shortage, or what?
:: checks requirements list ::
Bugger. I’m just a lowly electronics technologist with only a diploma[sub]and 2o hyears’ experience[/sub] but no degree at all. And in what I’m doing with solar-powered houses I have even less formal accreditation.
Looks like I’d have to go back to university and get that degree. 
Or marry a New Zealander. Or become extremely famous and well-known (for good reasons) in the field.
:: nods :: My friends and I are designing and building houses that heat and cool themselves, even in Canadian winters, without the need of a furnace. All they need is the sun. Hence my username.
When I was thinking of moving to NZ, I read a very helpful book entitled “Culture Shock: New Zealand”. (There’s a whole series of “Culture Shock: …” books for many different countries.)
The book covers a lot of both the “big” questions and the small questions and has good descriptions of the people and how they relate to each other and immigrants. I remember “egalitarian” being used over and over.
From my limited time there (3 weeks) I found a few things surprising: wages are much lower than I expected (I would have had to take a 60% pay cut), and things are much more expensive than I expected. (Levis > US$100, paperback novels > US$20)
The people, however, are very friendly, more so than in the states, I found.
J.
I’ll check that out, then! Thank you!