How WFF puts me off working

Working for families is great for those families, like mine, that are eligible for a wee bit, even if it is a bit inefficient to pay taxes and then get this bit back.

The main issue I've been having with it on a personal level is that it discourages me from working. Even a bit of part time work would mean that we'd get a reduction in our WFF. And then factoring in childcare and transportation costs makes working seem foolish. I think it is important for my baby to be cared for by his parents, so hurrying back to full-time work isn't something I want to do. I've done spreadsheets to work out my breakeven point and employment when you have a baby is all just too much work for too little reward.

I guess in a way this means that families are actually encouraged to spend time together, because it isn't worth doing overtime or part time work if you can get money for doing nothing.

kiwisaver, how it will affect me.

Well, I think I'll be signing up for Kiwisaver soon. I'm not working as I'm full time caring for my wee baby, but there are still benefits to joining up. The $20 per week matching, $40p.a. fee subsidy, $1k kickstart etc.. I would need to make regular contributions for at least a year, and could have a "holiday" after that, although I suppose it is better to carry on for the matching if you can.

I am disappointed though with how confusing it is to try and choose a fund to go with. Quite a few places haven't got their investment statements or application forms ready yet.
Having worked in the financial industry though, I know how many drafts are required to get customer documentation precisely right and have the legal dept happy.

I'm less sure about whether it is worth signing up our baby. He wouldn't be eligible for the $20 per week matching from the government. He would be eligible for the $1000 kickstart though, and getting him started early means he'll be eligible for the 5 year mortgage thingy earlier too.

I'd love to see comments on what other people are doing with kiwisaver for themselves or their children.

A blog for Bevan

I'm starting a blog focussing specially on our little boy Bevan.

The link is http://babybevan.blogspot.com/

Australian political test

I've just done the Australian political test that David Farrar mentioned on his blog.

My results can be found here:
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/index.php?page_id=206&id=7da0d0a4f8218069903e10ab20406039

Interesting to see that I'm most closely aligned with their Liberal Party. Overall my results came out as centre right.

My baby Bevan

I don't update here very much but thought I should do so for the very exciting news that my baby arrived on the 1st of january (my birthday).

His name is Bevan Lachlan Ellis and he weighed 8lbs 11oz at birth.

Here are some photos.

tickle me elmo

Oh - this is seriously cute and funny.

I want one!

There is a new Tickle me Elmo 10th anniversary toy. He actually does the whole ROTFL routine.

Check out a video at:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=tmx+elmo

Comically bad waiter

I feel almost mean bringing this up, but couldn't resist.

On Friday, I was invited along to a family dinner at a restaurant in Upper Hutt. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong from the minute we stepped in the door.

The waiter couldn't find our booking, although we could see it plainly written down in the bookings book. Perhaps it was because he couldn't seem to grasp the (extremely common) name the booking was under. Even pointing at the entry didn't help.

He didn't escourt us to a table. We found a suitable one by ourselves. Then he plonked our menus down and told us all about how we couldn't have coffees (we hadn't asked for any), and how he was new on the job and that he didn't like working in the kitchen so he preferred to work out the front. Great, I'm not sure that we felt particularly reassured by these comments. He took our drinks order, and then promptly forgot to bring us our drinks, although he did bring over water and 5 glasses for our table of 4.

He came over to take our dinner orders, but he didn't know what the soup or the fish of the day was, after checking with the kitchen he reported back that the fish was "te-ra-ki-hi or something", we corrected his pronounciation and felt so proud when he got it right the next time when another diner enquired. You might wonder how we knew that he got it right the next time, this was due to his habit of standing far away from the table he was serving and raising his voice to be heard.

He brought out our entrees and proceeded to bump the spoon in the pesto sauce dip onto the pale tan pants of one of the members of my group. Strangely, he didn't apologise for this, and instead said "accidents happen", as if it had been our fault he was clumsy.

Eventually our mains arrived and it was interesting to see that he'd stuffed up the order. He'd muddled my pork sirloin steak meal with a steak meal, with the result that the steak meal was served medium instead of the requested rare.

It was about this time that he got confused about who we were again and interrupted our conversation to say that he'd been rung by his boss and that our meal was free. Of course, this was too good to be true, he was actually meant to tell someone else this good news. Oh well.

All in all, it was actually quite funny to be served by this guy. He was bad in an almost sort of Fawlty Towers way.

Thinking about it now, I feel sorry for the restaurant that employed him. They will have to invest a lot of time and effort into training him, rather than cutting their losses. With unemployment at low levels and laws that protect incompetant workers it must be so hard to get the right staff. Still, who knows? Maybe this waiter will be a fast learner and learn before he drives away all the business of this restaurant.

Politics

I don't seem to write about politics very often, even though I enjoy reading other peoples blogs about politics. I guess if I was more interested then I'd take the time to follow the issues better and perhaps have something unique to contribute to discussions.

But my interest in politics is at a bit of a low. I think this is because for months politics has been about personalities and allegations and not at all about policies. It has deteriorated into a mud-slinging match.

What I'm interested in is what ideas politicians have to improve the functioning of New Zealand. This either isn't happening, or it isn't being reported by the main stream media. Perhaps the media in NZ have realised that character assasinations by politicians sell more papers than reporting policy .

Perhaps our elected officials should be held accountable for meeting measurable performace targets, in order to keep them focussed on the job. For example, when Don Brash was the Reserve Bank governer he had to keep inflation below a certain level. If he didn't then I imagine his employment agreement spelt out the repurcussions.

I suppose the electoral system is designed to work this way, but in practice everyone forgets the promises shortly after the election, and the goalposts change, and the excuses begin, and the blame shifting starts.

I dare say that this post reveals how naive I am about human nature.....Ah well.

Richard Hammond

I've been reading the news sadly about the accident that Richard Hammond (a presenter on "Top Gear") had.

Yes, Top Gear is funny, cheeky and daring, but without Richard Hammond on it then the whole female audience would lose interest. Cars don't seem particularly interesting, but when you add in some jokes and a cutie like Richard to present their crazy automobile activities then somehow cars become interesting. And if he doesn't get better then no-one will want to try any of those crazy stunts on the show ever again - so the show wouldn't be worth watching and would end.

Anyway, I hope that he comes out of this okay. The words "Brain Damage" have been mentioned though. :-( So sad for him, for his family, and for his fans.

New carriages for the trains!

I am very excited by the news that tenders are being called for for new carriages for the Wellington commuter trains. This is well overdue and much needed.

There doesn't seem to be enough carriages to meet current demand and so all the trains during peak commuting times end up very full. For example, today I had to stand for my journey and even though I'm six months pregnant there was nobody willing to give up their precious seat for me.

Sometimes the trains are so packed that the ticket collecters have to give up and not collect tickets as they wouldn't be able to safely navigate through the overcrowded carriages.

Hopefully the new carriages will have plenty of space for prams. The current style carriages have no space to park a pram at all, thus making it impossible to safely have a modern pram on the train. There is also limited space for wheelchair users. I can't even imagine if wheelchair users can even use the "red rattler" carriages at all.

computer-less

If anyone has been trying to email me at my paradise account then I'm sorry to say that I can't pick up my messages at the moment.

My computer at home is being repaired, and I probably won't get it back for another week and a bit. Mean-time, my work email address still works, so drop me a line there.

Only 7.5 weeks till I leave work - wahoo!

Got a cold

I've got a cold, the second one since becoming pregnant. It isn't much fun as you can't even dope up on cold medication. I can have lemon and honey drinks and paracetamol and unmedicated cough lollies. At least I have a nice supply of aloe vera tissues.

Michael also has a cold, but he is off jet-setting to Europe. So I think I'll be filling in my evenings with early nights and with all the housework and stuff needed to get the place ready for a baby.

Perhaps when my cold passes I can also attempt to have friends around for dinner and socialising.

Yay for Hayley

I was pleased to hear that Hayley Westenra will be awarded a 2006 Outstanding young person's award by the International Jaycees. Good for her - I think she is so nice.

But I've been searching and searching the net and I can't find ANY info from outside NZ to back the news report up, nor can I find out anything about the other 9 nominees. Anyone else know where to find out?

Updates of Baby news

Finally we are over halfway with the pregnancy. It does seem to have taken a long time.
I'm just starting to look pregnant rather than fat, and my waist is almost gone now that I am 23 weeks along.

At 20 weeks we went and had an anatomy scan, where they check that the baby has been developing okay. We wanted to find out the gender of the baby, and I'm very happy to announce that we are having a little boy. Yes, we have picked out a name, but it is still secret.

Ever since around 19 1/2 weeks I've been able to feel the occasional movement from the baby. At one point I even felt the baby having hiccups, which was a pretty weird feeling.