Heat, Rain, Humidity and WINZ

32.4 degrees in Auckland Thursday, the warmest it’s been here since 1872.  Even the wind felt warm, but less warm than sitting in the sun.  We haven’t been up to much this week except looking for work and trying to keep busy.  We had our friends Tony and Helen and their family, Jonathon and Sarah down on Sunday for a leisurely sail on the harbour and a BBQ after.  All in all a very relaxing day.  Not a lot of wind but we did sail a bit so it was worth it.  I spent Saturday cleaning up the mooring lines and pick up lines for our berth.  We don’t actually tie up to a finger like we have in the past, instead we are stern in against the main dock and there are two pilings, one on either side of the bow that we tie off to.  The idea is you attach permanent lines to the pilings then pick them up as you back in past them.  What you end up doing is attaching a small diameter, floating line to the mooring line, then that is attached at the main dock end to the stern line.  In order to keep the whole thing out of the way when you leave the dock, you attach a counterweight through a pulley on the piling and in theory that pulls the lines out of the way.  When we arrived last week, the lines were a mess and hadn’t been used for some time.  I removed all the old lines Saturday and replaced them with our own lines, fixed the counterweight system and generally made it so we could easily get in and out of the berth.  We got to test it on Sunday and other than a couple of wee adjustments, it all works well.

We also managed to get our unemployment benefit sorted out finally.  We had an appointment on Monday for a Search for Work Seminar at the local WINZ office.  We got in to the seminar and were told to look for 3 jobs in the lists they had supplied that we could apply for then wait to meet with a counsellor to work through them.  As we were not yet receiving an unemployment benefit, I though maybe I should ask what was going on.  I called the seminar leader over and asked what exactly we were supposed to be doing here.  He started to explain that as a condition of continuing to receive our benefit we had to apply for work through the seminar.  I politely informed him that perhaps he was making an unwarranted assumption, i.e that we were actually receiving a benefit.  He looked a bit surprised and went to check our status on the system.  It turned out we were not actually on the system (we knew this but of course he didn’t).  He then asked if we had attended the initial seminar where we were informed of our obligations about finding work etc that we were required to attend BEFORE submitting the application.  I again politely walked through all that we had gone through at this point with WINZ.  He asked how we had seen initially, I handed him the business card of the seminar leader for the initial seminar that we had attended.  He then asked if we had submitted our application and had it vetted.  I handed him the business card of the next person we had seen to get the application sorted out.  He took both cards a trundled off to check into it.  It turned out that there was absolutely no record on the system, no notes on file, nothing, of our attendance at the initial seminar, our subsequent meeting with the case worker in Kerikeri or anything else for that matter, other than our address change that we had registered with them last week.  He managed to get hold of the case worked in Kerikeri, Hori, who told him he was swamped with work but that he had some “processing time” that afternoon and that our file would be dealt with that afternoon and that we would be sorted out by Tuesday AM.  When we were told this, Cathy and I both smiled and politely informed the case worker in Auckland that we had been promised that before and nothing happened.   He gave us his card and said that if nothing had happened by Wednesday to call him.  Remember this was Monday afternoon.  OK, Tuesday, nothing, Wednesday morning, nothing so on the phone again and informed Gary (our Auckland case manager) that nothing had happened.  He was most displeased and promised to call me back.  We had a few calls back and forth to make sure he had the complete and accurate story then managed to get hold of the office in Kerikeri.  He first tried to call our case manager in Kerikeri, Hori, and got as message saying he was unavailable.  Gary then called the next person in line and got the same message.  He then called the manager in Kerikeri and found out that Hori was at the manager’s desk.  When he talked to Hori, he asked what had happened.  Gary was once again told by Hori that he was swamped with work and the application still had not been entered but that there was a woman who was going to be entering data and he would put ours on top of the pile.  Thursday morning I just about fell of the seat at the nav table when I checked our accounts and we had received the money they had promised.  Although we got sorted out by applying gentle but consistent pressure on the system, what about all the others that had applications lying on this guys desk that had no been dealt with.  We are fortunate in that we were not destitute.  There were a lot of other people in Kerikeri that were severely unemployed.  I hope that they got their benefits sorted out as well. 

So Friday came and friends from Opua were coming in town to check out the Louis Vuitton racing so we bummed around with them most of the day and checked out the race village.  If it stops raining today, we will wander over and check out the action.  The series is almost done so this will likely be the last weekend of racing.