David and Lili's World Tour
NEW ZEALAND
July 2017 - Tauranga Home
KIA ORA.
Arriving from Japan, the final stop on
an EPIC trip around the world (BOOM!) we bought a house in Tauranga, New Zealand.
The deal closed 8 months ago, and since then we've mostly been rocking the garden,
plus we built a secret trail down into the hidden park out the back.
After 2.5 years living out of a backpack, just being home is friggin' amazing!
That's the good news.
The bad news is that New Zealand's 100% Pure
branding has become polluted.
The National Party
has been in power for 9 years, and stuff is getting worse quickly.
The house-price-to-income ratio and youth-suicide rates are both dead last in the world;
our rivers are increasingly unswimmable; inequality is becoming extreme;
and there's no tax whatsoever on inherited or accumulated wealth.
Fortunately NZ is about to vote to change the government.
We support The Opportunities Party (TOP),
led by a great guy (and fellow world traveller)
whom we actually know personally, Gareth Morgan.
This is a different kind of political party because it's all about evidence-based policies,
including a tax on wealth.
The mainstream media, of course, is not promoting TOP, but Gareth's message is going viral.
Election drama!
Update: by law TOP needed 5 percent of the vote to get into Parliament, but only got 3.5 percent, not enough but not bad. At least Labour beat National. Good.
May 2018 - Ten years in New Zealand
We proudly became citizens of Aotearoa - New Zealand in 2014.
Then we went backpacking around the world, this time for two-and-a-half years,
delighted to use our shiny, new ALL BLACK passports.
Upon returning to our adopted homeland, we promptly bought a house, and since then we've been working to fix it up.
Woohoo!!
So now we live in Tauranga, a small city
on the north coast of the North Island,
famous for Mount Maunganui, an extinct volcano at the end of the beach.
That's where the tourists hang out on hot summer days, surfing and what-not.
Tauranga is also the fastest-growing city in New Zealand, with the country's biggest shipping port.
Our region, the "Bay of Plenty" also exports a lot of fruit, and that's the major reason we chose to live here;
I have temporarily retired from working as an "I.T. guy" to become an organic fruit and veggie farmer. Yea! Our garden kicks ass. We have bananas, passion fruit, plums, pears, figs, feijoas, apples, apricot, persimmon, pomegranate, papaya, guava, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, grapes, limes, oranges, and more...
Meanwhile, we have received heaps of visitors from overseas, too many to mention,
and we did make one overseas trip (to Oregon)
for a family reunion coinciding with a total solar eclipse, plus the
World Footbag Championships
(I ranked #5 in an event called "2-square").
To summarize, we love friends, family, footbag, and eating fresh food.
Plus of course, travel, and we're looking forward to going around the world yet again,
this time with a focus on AFRICA...
Previous: Japan . . .
Next: Polynesia . . . Rapa Nui
. . . AFRICA
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2010 . . . 2014 . . . 2022
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