It's Snowing and I have a Lemon!!!

Woke up this morning and saw it was raining. No big deal, but this rain was falling slowly. Weird.... As the day progressed, the rain got lighter and fluffier. By the time I got home, the housing complex look like a fairy land with all the lights and frosted icing everywhere.

I went to pick up the mail from our new apartment for the first time today. I found a key in the box. Apparently I had a parcel, and this key was to open the parcel locker. So I opened it up and inside was a box of cookies from the Toyota people. Not knowing what to do next, I tried to remove the key, but it wouldn't come out. After fiddling around with it for a while, I realized that I was probably supposed to leave it there for the postie to collect later.

After work, I went off to check out an Aikido dojo not far from work. Not far in the US means 15-20km. Not having the GPS, I had to rely upon a set of printed out instructions. Unfortunately, one of the key turns was at a dark obscure intersection. By the time I realized I had taken the wrong turn I was heading back the way I came. Fortunately, it was in an area I had been to recently, and the dojo was close to the junction of two interstate highways. So long as I didn't cross over either of the highways I should be able to find it. The dojo was small, neat and freezing, just like the old one back home.


The saga of the TV continues... We watched the Oscars the other night, and for the whole 3 hours, the problem didn't occur. The next day the technician came out and the problem didn't occur, typical. He ran some diagnostics and couldn't find much wrong apart from some obscure factory setting. But since we couldn't reproduce the problem he left. I get home that night and within 30 minutes the problem is back.... Grrrr... Fine, back on the phone to call up the service desk to get the tech to come back out again. Two days later, we expect his call and he doesn't call. The service desk acknowledged the tech was scheduled after 15 minutes of chasing people around, and he will be calling tomorrow.

Pearl is all ready to make use of the 30 day return policy, which is probably what the last person did when they returned it. We were going to chuck it in and make use of CostCo's very liberal return policy where there is no time limit on returns. Unfortunately they have closed this loop hole to stop people getting their "free TV upgrade". This has been reduced to a mere 90 days and you get a 2 year service plan with it as well. So, we'll see if we can't get this fixed one last time, then we'll give up and head down to CostCo in a couple of weeks when there is a special on the Sony LCDs.

View more pictures of the snow here

I am a Number and I Have a TV!!!

On Friday, I went down to the Social Security office and joined the obligatory queue, quietly waiting and watching the various people in the room. Even though I went to the office as soon as it opened, I still have to wait nearly and hour to be served. But in the end it was worth it. I was told that my social security number application was processed. Now, I can give that number to the banks and other credit institutions to start building up my credit score.

It seemed like a wonderous feeling to be known as 555-66-7777, because now I can sign up for a store card with Gap, or the telephone company and know that if I pay my bills on time that I wont have to pay an extra non-refundable deposit to get a mobile phone or satellite TV. I won't have to pay for everything in cash and have the sales agent inspect every one of my non-sequentially numbered unmarked $100 bills one by one.

Even still, we don't have a credit score right now. So even our debit cards have very low limits on them. Buying a new TV was harder than I had thought. Picking the model was the easy part, getting the one I wanted was hard, and paying for it was harder still. At Best Buy they had a whole wall full of TV's on display. Picking out the best looking picture was easy. When it came to getting one, the computer said there were two, but the sales guy couldn't any. The only one left was a "return". You would think that after the GPS fiasco I would not bother with another "return". But it was really cheap, it was 40" LCD for the price of a considerably smaller screen. I could afford their riddiculous extended warranty and still be cheaper than the original price. After some haggling we agreed on a price. Then when it came to pay, we knew we had the cash in the bank, but we discovered that there was a daily spending limit on the card about half of the value of the TV. So what were we to do? It didn't quite get to the point of us empyting out our pockets onto the table trying to find that last penny, but it was kind of close.

As per the norm, I plugged in the TV as soon as I got home to check it out. It all looked good. The cable in the apartment here is only standard def, so it looks kind of crap, but it worked ok, for about 30 minutes. Then the right hand side of the screen went into reverse video. At first I thought it was some crappy effect on the documentary that was on at the time, but it stayed no matter which channel I surfed to. Fortunately, I have BestBuy's in house service contract, so a guy is coming around tomorrow to take a look. The problem is that after watching the Oscars for three hours, I didn't see the problem once...

Anyway, if I can get it to occur and they don't fix it in three goes then I can invoke the "No Lemon" law. This is some kind of consumer protection act that stops you from having to constantly chase the manufacturer/vendor around to try and fix it. When you invoke this clause you get your money back or an equivalent item valued at the same price at the time. So hopefully it will just be fixed and we can be done with it.

Licensed to Kill (almost)

Since we are here for the long term, Washington State kindly gives us 30 days to get a license or stop driving. So a little less than three weeks later, Pearl and I are down at the DoL queue waiting in line. No not the Dole (unemployment benefit) queue, the deparment of licensing. Actually Pearl went first. She waited all of 10 minutes to get served, sat her license, passed and then was pretty much out of there.

I went down today after checking out the queue length at the Bellevue office, which was supposed to be 0 minutes. I get there and pick up a ticket which had the number 82 on it. Looking up at the counters to see what number they were up to, I was horrified that it said 40. After an hour of waiting they were getting close. I happened to check the little notice above the testing machines. After sitting the test, I needed to get another ticket and wait to be served again. So I quickly grabbed another ticket, number 144, sigh.... it was going to be a long day.

When my first number came up, I was so lucky as to get the grumpiest person serving. She chewed me out for forgetting to put the apartment number on my address. Then when I took the eye exam, I didn't see any of the text on the left hand side, so I asked "Am I supposed to close one eye?" and she snapped back "Do you drive with one eye?". So I closed my right eye to try and find the missing text. The problem was that I couldn't converge my eyes correctly to see the text. So I faked it by using one eye and then the other to read the letters. I am not going to fail this because of some stupid eye test that doesn't really work. The test itself was fairly easy, but I apparently know nothing about headlights and distance because flunked those two questions.

So come the first week of March both Pearl and I will sit our practical exams. Between now and then we will be busy practising our parallel parks with the new car. Taking a driving test in the van will be a challenge, it is so hard to stay under the 30MPH limit with a V6.

Wheeling and Dealing

It is time to get some wheels and join the masses with an urban assault vehicle. Will it be a Hummer H2? A Ford F150? Or perhaps a Dodge Ram truck. Nah, we have to be sensible, we are not even considering an SUV. We want the smallest thing we can find that fits more than 5 people. A V6 3.5L minivan with motorised sliding passenger doors and seating for 8.


A couple of weeks back to went to see the Honda guy, and a nice Japanese man gave us a polite overview of the Honda Odyssey. All well and good, but we weren't ready to buy. We needed to check out the competition. Second on the list was the Toyota Sienna. After seeing these two minivan (yes, Pearl is going to be a soccer mum), there wasn't an awful lot different between them apart from the price, and even that is artificially different.

Having never bought a vehicle in my life, this whole experience was very educational. I know that you usually bargain with the dealer, but this was one more step beyond that. We settled on the Sienna because of a couple of neat features that really fitted in well with what we wanted. So, we sat down with the dealer, a nice friendly looking chap, to start talking price. But as soon as we did, he said he had to go off and deal to something else but this other guy would help us out. This "other" guy was very apparently the negotiator. The typical fast talking smooth operator. We haggled our way in a very friendly orderly fashion to get what thought was a good price. The price still needed to be approved by the manager, but the expectation was that shouldn't be a problem. But oh no.


Our original sales guy came back with the approved price, a couple of grand higher than what we had negotiated to, basically taking us back to where we started. It became apparent that the first round of negotiation was just a method of getting our top price. And this second round was to try and extract as much out of us above that. Fortunately, I had my "negotiator" (my mum) with me too, and she was none too happy to have this stunt pulled on us. That put the sales guys onto the back foot and the "nice" sales guy ran off to grab his "negotiator" to try and even the playing field. We gave some ground, but perhaps we should have played hardball and just walked out. Hopefully we gave them a run for their money. Xander got something out of it. The "nice" sales guy got him a little NASCAR toy that I am sure was designed to annoy us with all the noise that it makes.

We picked up the van yesterday, but not after a lot of fun and games. The first thing we realised was that we didn't have auto insurance. Unlike New Zealand where people don't usually sue each other when they have an accident, here you need insurance to protect yourself against liability. You don't actually need to insure the car, but you as a driver must have insurance. So auto insurance is a silly name to call it, because you aren't necessarily insuring an automobile. Anyway, since Pearl and I haven't gotten our Washington licenses yet, there are very few companies that can or will insure us. And the ones that do charge an extraordinary amount. For 6 months it will cost us over $1000 USD to cover us, but once we get our licenses that cost will go down by nearly 50%. Fortunately being a town where there is a large population of new immigrants, there are many people out there who know how to deal with us folk. Hopefully within a month we will have our licenses and our premiums will drop to a more reasonable level.

And on top of all this, we needed our obligatory social security number which still hasn't arrived yet, which could be anywhere from a week to 3 months away depending upon who you ask. Oh yeah, and to avoid the riddiculous finance rates that the car companies offer to people like us, we paid cash. Even that was not without hassles. Apparently the federal government is suspicious of people paying with large amounts of cash. The car dealer had to accompany me to the bank to make sure that I got a real cashier's (bank) cheque, and they still require our social security number (which we don't have mumble mumble muble...) so that the government can track who is splashing cash around. Just because I don't want to pay their stupid interest rates I get to be treated as suspiciously as a known criminal.

So, now we have a car, insurance, no where to park... Whoops! Just as well the nice guy at the new apartment gave us access to the apartment early. All we need now is a new car seat for Xander and licenses for Pearl and myself. But that is a whole other story, so stay tuned...

Toys for Boys (and Mums)

The Mums have been out in force this week. hunting down the best toyshops in Seattle's East side. Apparently Xander is not particularly fussy about which toys he likes, but once he has one he likes, he will not give it up. In fact, his new ride on was so popular Pearl and Mum could not make him part with it, even when they were trying to put him back into the car. They had to pry his hands of it one at a time as they buckled him in. All the way home he had it clenched tightly in his little hands. But since then he has been wandering around the apartment pushing the cart around. To avoid this situation with the expensive toys, Pearl and Mum carefully navigate the store. And in the cases where a large expensive toy comes into his grip, they distract him with smaller and smaller toys until they can get safely out of the store.

Xander just loves the mall. They have two playgrounds inside. We discovered the second one recently and it is a bit more out of the way, and therefore less populated. While not as active as the other kids who jump and run around all over the playgroup, Xander takes his time observing the goings on and tries his best to explore the "ship".

Finding friends in this town should not be hard. He has already discovered Lily who lives in the same complex as us. She has a Cantonese live-in nanny, so my Mum has been spending a bit of time there chatting to the old lady. Xander has an amazing ability to charm the females, young and old. He is cheeky and saves his biggest smiles for the girls. I am sure this is part of his cunning plan to take over the world. He already has his mum and grandmother doing exactly as he wants, even though they think they are operating of their own free wills.

View more Xander pictures here

Downtown in Chinatown

Today was supposed to be a serious business day. Pearl had passed her written drivers test, and I was supposed to do the same. But the convenient wait time information on the web site said there was at least a 30 minute wait at the licensing office. So this gave me a good excuse to put it off until Monday, but oh Monday is a holiday, and this particular office only opens from Tuesday to Saturday, and when there is a holiday on Monday, they take Tuesdays off. So I have until Wednesday to sit my test.

So off we went to find the Toyota dealer using the trusty GPS. Unfortunately the GPS information was out of date, as Pearl and Mum discovered last week when they tried to find a small toyshop, only to discover it had probably closed about 5 years ago. Never mind, we'll just pop into work and lookup where it is on Google. Oh no, my new swipe card doesn't work. So no GPS and no Internet. What do we do? We'll go to plan B. Lets check out Chinatown and Downtown Seattle.

Off we went, found the first carpark in an area that looked like Chinatown and wandered off. Just as we were walking down the street I heard the familiar drums of the lion dance. Oh yeah, it's Chinese New Years. We came across the lions parading around Chinatown. They happened to stop at a travel agency and lit the firecrackers. Xander was remarkably calm when they went off. I think he was so enchanted by the Lion dancers.

After grabbing some Yum Cha (they call is Dim Sum over here), we drove further into town to find a park near Pike Place Markets. The area was crazy busy. People wandering all over the place and you are stuck in a 4 way stop intersection trying to make a move like all the drivers. Once you get out of there you are fine. We drove up and down the car park trying to find a park big enough for this big American car we are driving. We gave up and squeezed into a "compact" car park, just like all the other SUV and Minivan owners before us.

The markets were crowded. Bus loads of tourists gawking at the seafood sellers, who were hamming it up for the crowds. Mum had a monk fish slide off the shelf toward her. It was just the store owners playing games. The markets were not just seafood, there was other fresh produce and crafts. The street outside had lots of food stores, cheeses, bakeries, the original Starbucks coffee shop etc... But the biggest draw in this area were two kitchenware shops. Pearl and Mum spent a good while poking their way through them. Xander and I had to find something else to occupy ourselves since we couldn't fit into the tightly packed shops. So we entertained ourselves by walking around the buskers who frequent the markets, a guy with a guitar, mouth organ and a hoolahoop, a blue grass group, a gospel trio, a guy with a piano and a guy with playing a saw with a violin bow.

On the way home we stopped by Uwajimaya, the big Japanese supermarket. This one was the one downtown, it is bigger and better stocked than the Ranch99. Their trollies had this weird metal cap on one of the back wheels. At first I thought it was a brake, then I saw the black plastic cover on the front wheel on the opposite side. Still confused I happened to spot a sign saying not to take the trollies past the yellow line. Now it all fell into place. The front wheel will lock up outside of the yellow area and the cap on the back wheel is there so you can't push the trolley on the back wheels.

Oh well, I suppose I should get back to studying the road rules so I can remember what the fine is for parking on a disabled car park without a permit, and whether I should stop, slow down or just run the kids over when I see a school bus.

View photos from today

Settling In

After scouring Seattle's eastern suburbs for places to rent, Pearl found an apartment just down the road from work. Rent in this area seems pretty high for what you get. Most of the places in our price range were either tiny or run down places that you would think twice about taking a step into. So we were really surprised (at first) at the size and quality of the apartment we finally settled on.

Most of the places were around 1200 sq ft (111 m2) and had 2-3 bedrooms plus one bathroom. This seemed just a little tight because it left little to no space left for Xander to play in. But I have to say some of the locations were spectacular. One was in a private community on Mercer Island in the middle of Lake Washington, the other in a private community on the side of a hill overlooking the city. The place we settled on was a 2 bedroom, an office and 2 bathrooms. The apartment is about two blocks from work which is pretty much in the center of downtown Bellevue, close to lots of shops and restaurants.

The apartment was being rented out at about 25%-30% below market rate, and it quickly became obvious why. Just across the road were three major constructions, and our apartment has a grandstand view of all of them. Not being too fussed about the noise nor the view, this was a bargain. Xander was really enjoying himself playing with the blinds and watching all the activity across the road and in the street below.

We will hopefully be moving in around mid March when the container finally arrives. So now that we have a place to stay, the next set of decisions are being laid out in front of us. What voice provider do we use? Which long distance carrier do we use? DSL or Cable for internet? Cable or Satellite for TV? Or do we not even bother?

The interesting thing over here in the US is that VOIP (voice over IP) is pretty well established. The cost of getting a broadband connection plus VOIP is about the same if not cheaper than the equivalent landline plus broadband. The only caveat is that emergency calls can't be made if there is no power or no network with VOIP. But cellphones can still be used, although they too are susceptible to power outages. The biggest attraction to VOIP is that many of the providers also have free calling to a number of countries.

It seems that over here, pretty much nobody uses the terrestrial TV broadcast signals anymore. The apartments are not cabled with an aerial, only a cable TV jack. So we'll just have to take our chances and see if we can pick up anything with a pair of rabbit ears :)

There are just so many providers over here, you really need to do your homework before making a decision about anything. Even then, you can't always be sure you have covered all the options, and the providers sure don't make it easy to figure out the true cost of things, nor make them easy to compare one service to another.

This is an interesting learning experience, and also quite frustrating when you can't get a straight answer out of anyone.

View photos of the new apartment
View photos of the temporary housing

Becoming A Somebody

This whole deal with social security numbers is a real pain. Unless you are working, you can't get a number. Unless you have a number, you can't sign up for finance. Unless you sign up for finance you can't get a credit rating. Unless you get a credit rating, you can't get a loan.

The guy down at the Honda dealership said that people like us are called "ghosts", because we don't exist. So how do we get ourselves out of this hole? It seems that you just need to buy a car. And not just buy a car, you need to buy a car on finance for several months, possibly two years. Also, the finance rate is higher than normal, quite a lot higher, like 15%-20% per year, and you need to have a 50% down payment!! This seems like a giant scam.

But without this, there is no show that we will be able to buy a house. We can barely rent a place without a social security number. Oh well, it seems we just need to pay our way out of this, but just try to be as smart as we can by putting the absolute minimum required on finance and minimising our costs.

Lost and Found

Continuing the ongoing saga of the lost luggage and passport, after calls to Seattle Airport, San Francisco Airport, United Airlines in Seattle, United Airlines in San Francisco, Bellevue Police and Kirkland Police we finally got somewhere.

Nancy, from United Airlines in Seattle, gave us a call to let us know that they had found Xander's passport. It is amazing that we got this far. Pretty much every lost and found desk had a answer machine saying that they wont talk to you, so leave a message and we'll only call you if we need more information or we have found something. And please don't bother calling more than once.

The luggage story so far had been even worse. With four luggage claim checks and only one missing bag that might or might not have a luggage tag, the problem seemed beyond the ability for anyone to comprehend what needed to be looked for. So when we went down to pick up Xander's passport, we asked Nancy, who was still on duty, about our luggage. We gave her a few more details about what was inside (12 cans of baby formula), but still no hit in the United databases. She went even further and looked at the unclaimed luggage in San Francisco and found a possible match under a different name, David.

Ding! We realised that without the luggage tag, they had used the name tag on the bag, which still must have had Pearl's dad's name on it. The description on the contents matched perfectly. So Pearl was practically jumping up and down clapping her hands like a Japanese school girl in some cartoon.

Today was a big relief to everyone. After all the running around trying to organise police reports, getting passport photos and worrying about getting a replacement visa for Xander, we are all feeling that weight come off our shoulders.

In the future, I will promise to be more careful....

The New World

People here are remarkably friendly and very honest about it, unlike many other parts of the US where there is a feeling of feigned politeness. This has made the transition into the community much more pleasant.

The past few days have been consumed by filling out forms, waiting in queues and generally coming to terms with the vagaries of the US regulatory processes. But first up on the list was obtaining a local phone number via a pre-pay mobile phone. Given that we have no credit history and no social security, we would have to pay a deposit of $300-$600 per cellphone if we went onto a plan. Being an unsecured risk will be the story of our life for the next few months until we can build up a credit history.

It seems the easiest way to do this is to buy a car on finance and pay it off over a longish period of time. Then perhaps in 6-8 months we'll be graced with a mountain of offers for credit cards from all and sundry. Right now, we only qualify for a debit card, kind of like our EFTPOS cards, but the transactions are processed like credit cards.

One of the first stops around town was Fry's Electronics store, and top of the list was a GPS navigation system. We were looking for a small one, but we spotted a returned one of the next model up that was only slightly more expensive than the one we were looking at. It seemed like a steal. However, when we got back to the car to use it we discovered all manner of things wrong with it.

Most of the car mounting kit was missing, the car charger didn't fit and the wall charger was a Motorola phone charger. So, we headed back in to complain. It quickly became obvious someone hadn't checked the unit properly before repackaging it. Two sales guys and a manager later, we had a brand new unopened unit to take away with us. Then Pearl had to go online that evening and find another unit even cheaper (sigh...).

Next on the "must see" list was Ranch 99, the Taiwanese supermarket chain.
Xander fell asleep in the car, so he and I had a little nap while waiting for Pearl and Mum to do some shopping. Nearly an hour later they still hadn't returned and Xander had awoken from his nap. Pearl must have been spending several minutes deciding between the 10 different brands of every item. It was better in NZ where you only had one or two choices, the one from China and the one from Taiwan, so there was only really ever one choice :P

Signing up for a social security number was pretty easy. This little number is so important, I cannot get paid until I get one, and they don't just hand them out on the spot either. Once I get this, I can be a fully functional entity in the US system.

While we were there, Pearl was admiring the photos on the wall and was curious who the balding guy next to President Bush was. I told her it doesn't matter because in a couple of years he wont be up there any more.

Opening a bank account was pretty easy too, and the banker was particularly friendly and helpful. Washington Mutual often labels itself WaMu, so I always wondered why a Chinese bank was so popular. The biggest draw card for this bank as Pearl soon discovered is not the cheap fees or the friendly staff, but the hundreds of choices of patterns you can have on your cheques. There is a whole market based around printing personalised cheques. Incredible, and only in America :)

All in all, it has been pretty painless getting set up. But the biggest decisions are still to be made: finding a place to live and buying a car.

The Great Escape

With the wife, son and baby sitter (my mum) in tow, we set off on the great escape from my home town, travelling over 11,000Km in 24 hours. Nothing could stop us from getting to the final destination: too much luggage, missing tags, lost luggage, a lost passport, and a lack of a map.

Getting to US soil was the least of our problems, despite the 13 hour journey from New Zealand. Air New Zealand squeezed our mildly overweight suitcases into our alloted weight allowance, US Immigration didn't hassle us over the visas, and agriculture just smiled as they took our fruit away from us. It was too good to be true. However, we first spotted trouble when the SFO staff pointed out that a piece of luggage was missing its tag. Fine, we'll just check it in and we did. But that lingering doubt about the other bags came back to haunt us.

When we arrived at Seattle-Tacoma airport, we were missing one bag. Another bag had been retagged unbeknownst to us, and we had taken out the stroller that Air New Zealand insisted we cargo from NZ. So we had four luggage tags that we could not account for and one bag missing. This seemed all too much for the United people to comprehend, and to date the bag has yet to be even found. Fortunately, nothing particularly valuable nor critical was in the suitcase. Just a 6 month supply of Xander's baby formula. It is going to cost a fortune to replace it here in the US because it is like 4 times the price, sheesh!

During all this, I somehow managed to lose Xander's passport during the chaos around the security checkpoint on our way out of San Francisco. Fortunately, this was the last time we needed it. But I have to file a police report for the lost passport, and the advice I got from the local police department was to call 911!!!

We picked up the rental car from the airport, a big new American car, a Chevy Impala. It was good it was so large, with 8 pieces of luggage, a baby seat, a stroller, hand luggage and three adults it got a little cozy in there. I am sure Pearl can testify to that since she was jammed in the back between all the luggage.

The night we arrived in Seattle, there was thick fog everywhere. I was surprised we were allowed to land. That kind of fog would have shut Wellington airport for over a week. Finding our way to the temporary housing was realtively easy despite this. The hardest thing was finding the actual apartment in the housing complex. Trying to find building I in a relatively dark weirdly laid out place was impossible. I am sure they did this to test us. So we used the car park number and assumed that it would be close by. Fortunately this was the case. The next challenge was to work out how to open the lock box that I had conveniently forgot to print the instructions out for. In complete darkness too. After finding a torch, I discovered that there was a torch attached to the lock box, but I couldn't see it in the dark :P

All in all, we got here pretty unscathed. Minus a few bits, but pretty much in one piece.

View photos from the trip here and here