Traffic lights and postcodes

Trip Start May 18, 2003
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Friday, September 19, 2003

On my first day in Auckland I pretty much did what everyone else does on their first day in Auckland - walk up and down the main drag, called Queen Street. This main road contains most of the backpacker hostels and has enough amenities close at hand that you do not need to venture out into the city. Of course, you can not really appreciate Auckland if you stay in this confined area so I booked myself on the free Stray travel three-hour orientation tour of the city (which I would recommend to every newcomer to Auckland). After getting my bearings on the city Auckland seemed much more manageable, so Sebastian (a German student who is going to be studying at Auckland University) and I went exploring an upmarket area of the city called Ponsonby yesterday evening.

During the last couple of days I have been getting through my list of administrative tasks with relative ease. Yesterday I applied for my IRD number (a bit like a National Insurance number and used for tax purposes), got myself a forwarding mailbox and this morning I opened an account with Kiwi bank.

Part of the reason all has gone so smoothly so far is that the Kiwis I have met have been genuinely friendly and very helpful. For example, on entering one bank to enquire about opening an account the 'greeter' at the enquires desk advised me that the available accounts were not really the best value for money. Free banking does not exist in New Zealand so most accounts come with a combination of monthly fees and/or everyday transaction charges. He informed me that I could save quite a bit of money if I went to Kiwi bank; a competitor. Having compared the products from several banks Kiwi bank are indeed the cheapest (but still not completely free).

I am still finding odd little differences in Auckland that amuse me.

Traffic lights: Pedestrians in Auckland are very careful when crossing at traffic lights. This is partly due to the lights changing from red straight to green, but even when there are no cars approaching I have not seen anyone makes a dash for it. When the green man does eventually appear a reasonably loud mechanical winding sound can be heard from the crossing control boxes. At first I thought this might be to help blind people know when to cross the road. If that is the case, the council has completely forgotten to lay 'bumped' paving slabs to help locate the crossings. It's all very peculiar.

Postcodes: You would have thought that postcodes would be essential for efficiently directing the post in a city with over one million inhabitants. However, no one seems to be using them. Every address I have come across so far does not list a postcode, including the main post office. I jumped to the conclusion that they simply do not exist, until I found that the IRD form had a designated box for you to enter your postcode.
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