One of the vouchers I got in my envelope which I got when I arrived at ACB was for an orientation talk. I didn't know exactly what it was about, but I went over to the top floor of an office block opposite where it was being held yesterday morning. It turns out that there's a company up there called IEP who provide all the job finding, tax, bank account setup and advice services that I'd paid for through the Work and Travel Company. The information I'd been given wasn't very clear, so it was a good thing that I went to the orientation talk and found out about this place.
It seems that there are lots of companies reselling the IEP service throughout Europe and N. America, because out of 30 of us, there were only 3 who had English as their first language. The woman who was giving the talk went through lots of information about working and travelling around New Zealand, along with what their company provides. They're only open Monday to Friday, but you can use the Internet for free and their computers are much better than this one!
One of the more intesting points that I picked up was about WWOFFing, which is where you work on an organic farm for 5 hours a day for your food and accomodation. Because I'll only have 6 weeks left in NZ when I get back from my month tour with Flying Kiwi, I'd have to stay in one place if I chose to get a job. WWOFFing might be the best way to get to know the locals and see the parts of the country that I want to visit in more detail.
So after my orientation talk, I met up with Jay, Nikki and Simon again and we went for a walk around Auckland. Karangahape Road was meant to be all funky like Camden in London but wasn't very exciting, so we went onto The Domain - Auckland's main park - and then back into the city centre.
Auckland is the third largest city in the world in terms of the area that it covers, but it only houses 1 million people. The downtown area where I'm staying is packed with skyscrapers owned by the big insurance companies, but you rarely notice their presence at all. It's not like The City in London where all of the financial insitutions are bunched together; here everything's completly mixed up.
There's enough similar for it to be comfortable, but enough different from home to be interesting. Cars drive on the same side of the road, but around 90% of them are Japanese. I haven't even seen a VW, Renault or a Citroen yet! The Asian and Maori population is also huge here, about 20% although it seems much higher around here, but it doesn't feel like there's any segregation at all.
I went out to The Playhouse in the evening, an English style pub except without the smell as smoking in public places is banned over here. I met up with a group of people from a New Zealand backpacking website and had a great time before coming back to the hostel.
