Car drive

I drove an automatic 1994 Sable, Murcury owned by the three guys living in the flat. It's a reasonably powerful american car. First I drove to the Bank of America branch close by to get an account. Driving for those five minutes was relatively easy -- no highways and traffic lights all the way. Staying tight to the left once in the lane wasn't as hard as I thought. I still seem to leave a little more space on the left though.

I went for a much longer and eventful drive later, around 7 pm to have a look at one room and a car. First highway (aka Motorway in NZ) experience. Five lanes each way with one or often two most outer lanes being exit lanes. Exits/offramps are to each major road, which means on everage less than half a mile so no problem with getting out of the highway. Speed restriction is usually 65 mph, but 10 mph over is considered fine. A lot of people drive faster. Driving after this second time seems more natural. The main problem now is to know where I am and where to go as there are more places to go to and a lot more space to cover. Not like in Wellington, where if you get lost and drive you'll arrive somewhere familiar pretty soon. Here you can drive for many hours and get lost in the web of major highways and streets. That's why I bought a road atlas...

The room that I looked at turned out to be in a Vietnamese family house. Nice, but will be my plan B as I don't want to live in around a family.

The car I think I'll buy. It's TOYOTA '93 Tercel for $1500. It's automatic and low power, only 1.5L and has three not four auto gears. Time is of the essence and I do want an economical Japanese car for under $2000. After extensive car search on the web nothing much was coming
up. I test drove it and asked as many questions as I could and looked at as many things as I could. Everything was fine. The minuses are that it's relatively noisy on the highway due to it having only three gears, but nothing alarming. Also it doesn't have central locking and it's leaking oil, but the seller will fix it before I buy. I think I need to get a permit to buy the car, which means I have to sit the written theory test. After that I get a temporary permit and need to sit the practical test within the three months.

Just remembered. We went to a supermarket yesterday and the toothpaste was huge! It was 180 grams instead of the regular 110 grams. I'll have to take a photo of it some time and show the difference.

Today has gone much more quickly than yesterday, because I did so much more.

Called parents on the pnone card Jono lent me. The quality was unbelievably good, better than my home one! It costs nothing too, something around 3 cents/minute.

Apartment and generally the complex is really quiet AND these guys don't own a TV. Blayne, one of the flatmates just downloads everything, but only he and Duncan watch. Jono and his wife Ingrid don't seem to watch anything except for an odd movie or two a week. It's different, but it makes me write this instead of spending mindless hours watching the screen change pictures! To add to the relative silence is the fact that Blayne and Duncan (and his girlfriend) are away as I mentioned earlier I think.

Just to tell you about the taxing. It's 7.5% and it's not added on anywhere so you have to calculate it in your head. I haven't had to pay tips, but apparently it's only compulsory in restaurants. Everywhere else you don't have to, but the general going rate is 10-15%.

Feel tired... Will think of more to say later and take photos in a month or so.

Small piece of trivia: electric switches flick up to turn on and down to turn off -- the opposite way to NZ.