Donnerstag, September 21, 2006
the initial one....background information
...why New Zealand?
well, approx 20 years ago in school, a friend of mine did an exchange to Hamilton in NZ. We wrote some letters (remember that time? paper ! made of blue light paper so that the airfreight wouldn't be that high?) and one need to concentrate, not to waste too much of this expensive paper...how sad the letters looked when one needed to scratch things out and rewrite. How much easier it is now...well...
To make long things short. When she returned past one year, I did not only felt in love with her, but also with the pictures she took in NZ, and her stories about the beauty of the country. My first contact with NZ.
Past school, and after the military service, I ordered information on studying physics in NZ. All the papers looks so good - besides the fact that the university fees where so high for foreign people....too high for me or my parents...sad.
So I studied physics over here in Germany and got early involed with a company doing Software for image analysis on electron microscopes. Well, that was luck 'cause I could fincance my studies on my own from that. Building up the very first website for them in 1993 and doing more and more work leads to the fact that my days in the university were bit more than usual...but it was fine. Right past my diploma thesis (about tomography on a scanning electron microscope) my part time job became a full timer. Over the last 14 years that I am now working with the same company, we increased stuff from like 16 to over 160.
So my work also changed nearly every 2 to 4 years and never became boring.
But my thoughts on NZ never died...but how to afford the time and money for a longer stay in NZ? It needs some financial management to put every month bit to the side until one reaches the goal: a loan of a nice campervan for around two months and travelling both islands.
During my job I flew bit to the States, South Africa and Malaysia. That also gave me the chance to collect miles...then Lufthansa came out with a wonderful idea, I think 2 years ago: a credit card on which one can collect one mile per euro spent plus the bonus that all collected miles will never be deleted past 3 years. And so, finally, I reached the limit of 100.000 miles to fly to the farest destination in their list. Great!
well, approx 20 years ago in school, a friend of mine did an exchange to Hamilton in NZ. We wrote some letters (remember that time? paper ! made of blue light paper so that the airfreight wouldn't be that high?) and one need to concentrate, not to waste too much of this expensive paper...how sad the letters looked when one needed to scratch things out and rewrite. How much easier it is now...well...
To make long things short. When she returned past one year, I did not only felt in love with her, but also with the pictures she took in NZ, and her stories about the beauty of the country. My first contact with NZ.
Past school, and after the military service, I ordered information on studying physics in NZ. All the papers looks so good - besides the fact that the university fees where so high for foreign people....too high for me or my parents...sad.
So I studied physics over here in Germany and got early involed with a company doing Software for image analysis on electron microscopes. Well, that was luck 'cause I could fincance my studies on my own from that. Building up the very first website for them in 1993 and doing more and more work leads to the fact that my days in the university were bit more than usual...but it was fine. Right past my diploma thesis (about tomography on a scanning electron microscope) my part time job became a full timer. Over the last 14 years that I am now working with the same company, we increased stuff from like 16 to over 160.
So my work also changed nearly every 2 to 4 years and never became boring.
But my thoughts on NZ never died...but how to afford the time and money for a longer stay in NZ? It needs some financial management to put every month bit to the side until one reaches the goal: a loan of a nice campervan for around two months and travelling both islands.
During my job I flew bit to the States, South Africa and Malaysia. That also gave me the chance to collect miles...then Lufthansa came out with a wonderful idea, I think 2 years ago: a credit card on which one can collect one mile per euro spent plus the bonus that all collected miles will never be deleted past 3 years. And so, finally, I reached the limit of 100.000 miles to fly to the farest destination in their list. Great!
# posted by chris2nz @ 9:16 PM 
