Upside Down

Now this is really important. I (Mike) need to get my head straight. We have purchased a car.* The problem is not driving on the left (I learned to drive in the UK); the problem is not turning on the windscreen wipers (left hand) rather than the indicators (right hand); the problem is not changing gears with my left hand. The real problem of being upside down is not knowing my north from my south. You may be different. But, perhaps through my orienteering as a youth, I have a strong internal sense of direction. But now the sun sweeps an arc across the northern rather than the southern sky and my internal GPS has yet to flip. What I took for granted now has to be forcibly remembered and brought into conscious thought. “Which way am I headed?” Just how do those birds and butterflies do it when they migrate across the hemispheres? All I know is that here is one confused kiwi-wannabe!

* By the way, it’s a nice story about finding the car. We gave ourselves last Saturday to go out looking. On TradeMe, we identified four possibilities. The first three had issues. But the fourth was in a family with 3 children for 11 years and now they were upgrading to a hybrid. The wife’s mother is a Quaker who attends the meeting in Penzance, Cornwall, not far from my birth home. When she visits, she goes to the Takapuna worship group, just across Auckland Harbour, which is a part of Northern Monthly Meeting. Perhaps we have yet to explain that North Island comprises five monthly meetings: three, including Wellington, in the south; Mid North Island; and Northern. Northern Monthly Meeting comprises a half-dozen worship groups, including our own Mt. Eden and Takapuna. So as part of our nurturing role, we will be visiting all the worship groups in Northern Monthly Meeting.

And for those who bemoan the complexity of the DMV at home, here’s how easy transferring ownership of a car is in NZ. If it weren’t for our US drivers license, we could have done this online. However, because of the foreign licenses, we had to go to a post office. The buyer and seller each had a short form to complete – name, address, auto’s make, model, and VIN number. Hand these over with NZ$9 and it was done. No need to get a new tag because the tag is associated with the vehicle not your name. We also added third party insurance online for $150 for the year.  Jealous yet?