Happywimmy.com: Moving to a New Country

It's called a t-r-a-n-s-t-i-o-n. It's not easy. It's tough indeed. But it's fun. Recently I just moved to Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. With only 400.000 population, I must admit that this is quite a big life change for me. Moving from a gigantic (and chaotic) Jakarta with 20 million people (it's even 5 times as much as the whole population in New Zealand!). Anyway, I don't regret being here, I like this city much.. It's modern and compact, and most important, it's easy to get anywhere!

Before I get here, there are couple of things that I needed to prepare :

1. Airplane ticket (ofcourse). I got a Jetstar (for the second time) for 660 New Zealand Dollars (about 4,5 million rupiah). While I only paid the same amount for return tickets on my first trip!

Tourist Visa. The documents that I needed :

3. Visitor Visa Form INZ 1017

4. Application fee (140 New Zealand Dollars). The updated till July 2011 fees can be checked here

5. Original passports (valid for at least 6 months)

6. 2 recent passport-sized photographs (I just used Fujifilm for passport photos, it's about 4x6 cm with white background)

7. Completed Sponsorship Form INZ 1025. Because I have a sponsor, I asked him to fill, scan and send it back to me..

8. Attached copies of evidence : 1000 New Zealand Dollars a month depends on how many months you wanna stay) or 400 New Zealand Dollars a month + completed sponsorship form

9. Attached copies of valid ticket (With this one, we can still use a booking ticket, which can be obtained easily from travel agents)

With sponsorship scheme, the documents that my sponsor has to prove are :

10. Scanned or copy of original passport

11. Evidence of home address (I used a home loan agreement)

12. Prove of bank statement

13. I also used a prove of working payslip and worksheet (just to make sure that my sponsor is able to be responsible during my stay in New Zealand)

It takes approximately 1 week for me to get my visitor visa, and I get 6 months long for my first visit and 2 years long for my second one, with multiple entries! :) (We have to ask for multiple entry if we wanted to)

I guess being here for approximately 2 months and going around quite a lot is enough to describe things that I like and dislike.

1. It's small, compact, not as spread out as other big city like Auckland
2. As long as I recognize, people are more alternative
3. Peolpe are much involved in art or community activities
4. The public transportation is easy to get and on time (there are bus, ferry, cable car, train and cab)
5. The downtown area is very accessible and very easy to get to, there are many cool cafes, bars and restos to hang out
6. Settlement Support NZ is very helpful for new comers, with many activities, seminars and workshops involved
7. Job mentoring service is also very handy, matches migrants with job mentor in the same industry