Job reference check

Well, my company was hiring test programmer. One of the candidate who is shortlisted (among 60 applications) became the final candidate (she is Malaysian as well) and people are excited about it because she is quite pretty hehe.

My PM sit behind me and therefore I know we are going to hire her from his conversation with another manager. she will be hired if reference check are done. First reference check went fine but not the second one! The second reference check gave her quite bad impression to my PM and the decision to hire her was dropped immediately due to this! Even we had to re-select again and ask the recruitment agent to find another one all over again.

So guys and gals, please, when you are working, be professional and leave your job in good term. I don't know why she chose that to be her reference but it really screwed her up due to his input. This is not the first time I saw this. Reference check is quite crucial in NZ here and they will call to Malaysia (my manager called all my ex-bosses who hired me as developer before when he did my reference check). So, choose your reference wisely.

house!!

We will get more settle down from now on as we purchased a house in west harbour zone. The school is good and in walking distance from my house :) So I don't need to worry about much about the kids' education like I did in KL.

House is always a big topic for people life and I guess many people would like to know more about it.

In NZ, especially Auckland, house is quite expensive compare to other cities. Sure, terrace linked house or apartments are more affordable but the price will not go up because of few issues here here. First, buyer preference is always towards house/bungalow. Another issue is the leaky house in NZ. Apartments and linked houses are prone to leaky issue. Apartment is usually range in between 150-300k (lifestyle apartment can go up to million though but i think those are over-priced haha). Terrace link house is usually 300-400k, house are high 300 to 800k++ (million dollars houses are not included here, I am talking about the normal working class affordable houses). The major problem for buying apartment or terrace house is banks are reluctant to loan money for these type of properties due to leaky issues.

Leaky house is one of the worst nightmare for people to purchase house here. The problem is not because of the house is leaking (this is small matter), the problem is caused due to the house is NOT letting the water leak out from the wall and trapped inside the house because of bad design and stupid Green govt approved to let builder use not treated wood to build house during 1994-2004 era. Water trapped inside the building causes the house frame rot and mouldy. Fixing it might cost more than 100k+ (more info http://www.consumerbuild.org.nz/publish/leaky.php)

So, to mitigate this, it is highly recommend to get house pre-purchased inspection which might cost 380-800 dollars depends on your house size. Another recommended report is the LIM report to know about the house history and check if the dwelling has other issues such as flooding zone, illegal pending building structure etc.

I will talk about houses finance, contracts and some idea in next post :)

So, we bought a house which is 15-20 min driving (no traffic) distance (18km exactly) to town center, on top of a hill, 2000 sq ft floor area with 4000+ sq ft land area for 400k+, near sea and marina shipyard. Just think about if you can afford a 400k property in KL, you might get one here as well, but it is a house instead of condominium.

Latest Update

Well, it has been long time I didn't update this blog.

After all these years, I am getting more adopted to NZ life :) The kids are still loving it and we just bought a house and moving in end of this month. At least, they have place to run around in this summer :)

The school is 600m away from the house. So, I won't need to worry about finding the primary and intermediate school for my kids (as long as I am living here)

I recently did a pr visa transfer to new passport for my wife and son. It is actually quite easy and stress-less. We go back to KL last year and apply new passports, when we came back to NZ, we just need to wait in the airport for extra 15-20 min as the officers needed to verify the visa and passport. MAKE SURE YOU BRING YOUR OLD PASSPORT BACK WITH YOU!!!! DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THIS!!! Say out loud in Immigration office you need the old passport back!


To transfer, just go to nearest immigration branch (I went to Queen St branch) and tell the receptionist you want to transfer, it will be done on the spot :) oh ya, 90 dollars per passport though.