Sorry I haven't written in awhile; it's been an eventful and emotional week. Here's a breakdown:Saturday - Landlord visited for the first time. He also learned for the first time about the issue we had with the water heater and our huge electric bill. (A landlord is different from a property manager in NZ.)Sunday - Wonderful church message about depending on the Lord and being honest with Him in our prayers.Monday - Kelly Temp Agency called with a job opportunity doing some data entry work with Courier Post (like Fed Ex in the states). But first, I had to interview with Courier Post to see if they accepted me.Tuesday - Looked at a "fully-furnished" flat with a friend from Korea who is also trying to get a flat for a couple of months. The flat was nicer than ours but still not up to snuff in the area of cleanliness. Cara and I determined that 'clean' is one of our top requirements for the next flat we rent. Also, apparently 'fully furnished' in Hamilton means: comes with a fridge, stove, washing machine, couch, table, and bed. Hmm...Went to our first 18ups Bible Study that evening and met more Christian Young Adults.Pastor Campbell offered us the use of a used car for three months that he just bought!Wednesday - Morning job interview with Courier Post. I'm not sure how it went. They wanted me to have Excel experience to do a job that's basically data entry into Excel. They requested that Kelly test me on my Excel knowledge to see how much I had. The landlord called in the evening to offer us either $400 towards our electric bill or free rent for a month that would only take effect during our last month in the Flat. (Good thing we've decided this is our last month!)Thursday - Went to the Hamilton Dept. of Building and Housing in person to get a copy of a legal document that would help our situation. Discovered that the people we talked to on the phone were wrong. We have not rights as a tenant to receive compensation for our electric bill from the landlord. It's a 'grey' area. He would only have had to pay if he did not fix the water heater immediately. Went to Lodge Rentals and informed our property manager that we would like to do the free month of rent. Then informed him this would be our last month.Met with our landlord in the evening and told him we accepted the offer of free rent for a month. This was a rough day!!Friday - Took the beginner and intermediate Excel computer test at Kelly Services. Did awesome with beginner, not so well with intermediate. My Kelly consultant didn't seem too fazed about that. We'll see what Courier Post thinks.Worked most of the day at the church putting together creative prayer stations for Sunday's service. It was a special project that Pastor Campbell asked me and my sister to do since we had a creative background.Received the car from Campbell. First thing we did was drive out of the city towards the mountains. Somehow we ended up by the Mormon Tabernacle - Temple Mount. The building was beautiful - too bad what's being taught inside is rotten.Saturday - Went to Field Days, NZ's largest agricultural fair. Can you imagine Cara and I at a fair about farm stuff?! It was fun. The highlights for me were seeing the wearable art fashion show where the designers had to use only material found on a farm, and the tractor race - I didn't know it was possible for those things to go that fast!In the evening there was a Rugby game at the Rugby Stadium near our flat. The New Zealand All Blacks verses Canada. The game wasn't that loud, but there was an awesome fireworks display at the start of the game. Today - Talked to a family from church who are in need of house sitters for 6 weeks starting in July. Now that we have a car we can do this. They are glad to have us live in their house (free of rent) while they are gone. Thank you Lord. After all that's happened with our flat situation it'll be good to not have to deal with property managers and landlords for a little bit.Well, that's the events of the week. It's been long. I'm glad it's over. God is good. He continues to provide when and where we least expect it.
The title of my blog scared ya didn't it?It's not all that bad.We just most likely will be moving out of our flat soon. Why? Problems with the Property Manager. No...conflict with the Property Manager. Here's the issue in a nutshell. Last week we received our electric bill and it was over $1000. There was clearly a problem. I called the electric company discovered that the meter reading was almost ten times higher than previous months. When it was discovered that the electric problem was an internal one I called my property manager. He immediately sent an electrician. So far so good. The electrician discovered that the problem was with the water heater. It had been leaking heated water onto the roof for the past month. Thus causing a supper high electric bill. My property manager was called and he sent a plumber immediately to fix the leak. The plumber came and the leak was fixed. Still good.Now here's where the conflict came. Once the leak was fixed the electric company informed me that the money would still have to be paid. They advised me to talk to my property manager about covering the excess amount of money that was caused by the broken water heater. I called the property manager and asked him about covering the excess charge since it was caused by broken equipment. He refused, saying he didn't have to pay since the problem was fixed immediately. After getting off of the phone with him I was angry. This bill was almost ten times more than we would normally have had to pay! I needed advice and knew there was a Hamilton department of building and housing that could let me know the law on this issue. So I called them. They informed me that the property owner would have to pay the excess amount because the leak impacted the amount of our bill. If we knew of the problem and didn't alert the owner immediately then we would have had to pay. I called my property manager today and told him what the Dept. of housing informed me. He still refused to pay wanting legal proof that the owner should cover the excess charge of our bill.Let me just pause here and comment that any decent property manager would have covered the excess fee without question because they knew it was caused by their faulty equipment. When I spoke with the electric company and the dept. of housing, as well as my Mom, they all agreed that this is what a good property manager would do. Now I have to file a complaint with the dept. of building and housing and probably meet with a mediator to get the money that the owner owes us. Ugg! I didn't want to do this, but my property manager has left me no choice. Thankfully I have a smart Mom who told me to get a record of the daily energy usage in this Flat for the past year from the electric company, and I'm doing a seven day meter reading (suggested by the electric company) to get an average of what our energy usage most-likely was for this past bill. The dept. of building and housing told me that these documents will help greatly. Actually they were confident that we will receive our money.In the mean time, I have to set up a payment plan with the electric company to pay the bill for now until my property manager gives us the money owed us. Also, Cara and I need to move to a new flat with a new owner. We've decided that our property manager isn't very good. From the moment we've moved here his true colors have been slowly revealed. First with the shockingly dirty state of the flat when we moved in. Then with his reluctant and sometimes degrading attitude when we asked for repairs of different items (the water heater wasn't the only thing needing to be repaired in our Flat). And finally his response to this issue. If he reacts this way to a pretty obvious problem, there's no telling what other conflicts we may have with him. Can you believe he actually told me I was "bullying" him when I mentioned that I spoke with the department of housing?! So we begin the search for a flat again. With a much better property manager. At least we're actually in New Zealand and can view the flat before we decide to rent it. We have to give 21 days notice before we move out so it'll probably be a month or two before we leave. Pray for us and this conflict. Oh, and we're still in need of jobs.
It's our first New Zealand Holiday. Queen's Day. NZ is celebrating the Queen (of England's) birthday! People are off of work today. Children don't have school. And they are celebrating. How? By not really doing anything.Queen's day is pretty much like our President's day. People get the day off but there are no parades or fireworks. No cookouts. No family get togethers. It's just an extended weekend of relaxing and maybe going shopping. Cara and I have decided that we love holidays and we love birthdays, so even though we are not British or Kiwi (and could care less about the Queen of England) we are going to celebrate this day by making a birthday cake for her. Yum.Actually, we've already had a kind of extended celebration this weekend. After church yesterday the senior pastor, Campbell, and his wife invited us over to their house for lunch. It was a lot of fun. They live on a plot of land outside the city that's like a mini farm. They have a few pigs, some sheep, a goat, some chickens (which lay exotic green eggs!), and some rabbits. Most of the animals they have they raise for the sole purpose of eating (except for the rabbits). It's kind of like how we in the States grow vegetable gardens so we don't have to buy produce in the store. Well, in New Zealand there are many people who raise animals so they don't have to buy meat in the store. Interesting huh?Campbell has three boys, the youngest of which is 6 and the oldest of which is 12. Those boys have A LOT of energy which added another dynamic to the lunch. I love kids! It was fun. They also have a pure breed dog that just last week had a litter of puppies. The puppies were really cute. Can you believe each of them will sell for hundreds of dollars?After lunch we hung out with the family and then they offered to take us to see the beach on the West Coast that evening since they only lived 35 minutes away from it. Cara and I jumped at the opportunity to get out of the city and see some more of the beautiful country. So we rode with the whole family out to the Beach in Raglan. It was a beautiful, black sand beach. There were parts that were smooth and parts with giant rocks. There also were crazy surfers out in the freezing water riding the waves. I think this was the first time I'd ever seen surfers in person. After our sunset beach tour we had some fish 'n chips at a local fish place. It was served wrapped in newspaper. Delicious. I was very thankful for Campbell and his family extending such love and hospitality to us. The day was just what we needed to feel refreshed again.
