Passports Pain...less !

Ahh how nice it is to have something go smoothly.

You know that panic feeling you get when you look at your passports and realize that one of them has expired, and you don't have any for your children.... you start to think that getting this right might be harder than getting into New Zealand.

Well it was delightfully simple. Making use of the Passport Centre we were in and out in about 15mins which is very important, cause we had to take our 2 children in with us so that I could sign for their passports.

So what was the process:

1) First we went to our local Passport Center or some other company that I am sure will offer a similar service, and complete the appropriate forms and get the photos done there.

2) Pick your day ( any day ) and go to the government dept. We went the very next day. First we went to the Passport centre office across the road and sign a blank form, which we did not have to complete.

3) We got our escort to walk across the street and jumped the queue, because they have somebody there the whole day queue for whom ever they have next.

4) Got to the counter and signed some more empty forms, as our escort handled all the talking and we were done. They fill out the forms after you leave.

Ahh painless, the way it was meant to be, all within a lunch break.

I bet I won't have too many post like this in the future, but then again, I should keep quite until I have the passports in my hand.

A death to start a new life...

...So the talk has been going back and forward now for a year or so now, and the decision has finally been made to give the idea of moving to New Zealand ( from South Africa ) a serious go.

To try and make things interesting, and force me to reflect, I decided to try and blog the roller coaster ride that I am sure this will be, and then attempt to try and detail the lessons learnt in a web page, so that other can benefit from what I have learnt, for free.

Sadly the key driver was the death of, more accurately the senseless murder of, one of my wife's family friends Jennifer Ray Hall. On a positive note however there have already been arrests, so that does give some confidence, but little to remove the associated fear that feeds upon horrors like this.

If you join us ( my wife Keri, my boys Seth, & Gabriel, and myself Stephen ) along this journey, then I look forward to hearing from you, getting your advice, your stories, or even your reasons why we should not go.

.. and so it begins....