BeTrade Me

In New Zealand, there is a Web site which combines the marketplace of Ebay and the community of Craigslist. It is called Trademe.co.nz, and if it would fail, I am certain that the New Zealand’s entire society would fall apart, and the country would be forced back into the barbaric days of having to hoot and grunt at each other in order to conduct commerce. You know. The early 90s.

TradeMe is how I found Wendy, my car. It is also how I found my new home, somewhere in the Brookfield neighborhood of Tauranga.

I’ve been in Tauranga less than 48 hours, and already I’ve found a place to stay. Which means I’ve got a week to settle in before starting work. (Better than keeping my stuff in my car and staying in hostels, I’ll tell you that.)

The Brookfield flat was also the first place I looked at.

Okay, maybe it’s a hasty decision – time will tell, of course – but I actually prefer a small room, there’s a mattress on the floor for sleeping, which will suffice until I can find a place to buy a real bed – or at least a pillow and a blanket. Room for a small desk and a chair, and I’m happy with that.

And the roommates seem nice – Sam, the owner, is a laid back professional working a corporate job; Ben, the other roommate, is a salesman at Harvey Norman, a computer store, and a fellow gamer. They were cool with me, so I’m cool with them.

Mainly, though, the idea is that if I found a place acceptable, I should probably just go for it. I only have a week before works starts, so that’s not a lot of time to settle in. Having a place to literally call home means that I don’t have to worry about where to sleep at night. It also means setting up a bank account and an IRD number; both of which require a physical address.

Once I start working, too, I can pay my bills online without a need for a checkbook. I can pay rent in cash until I get paychecks; rent is automatically deducted from the paycheck, here, which is just one less thing to worry about. Not that there will be many; utilities are included in the rent, and that includes SkyTV and the Internet – which used to be capped, but Ben was pushing for unlimited Internet before I moved in – my desire for unlimited internet as well convinced Sam that it was worth getting.

There’s another reason why I went with the first place I looked at as well. TradeMe has a policy that only people in New Zealand or Australia are allowed to use the site. I had arranged the car before I left; and had sent notices to multiple flats looking for roomies; but TradeMe soon figured out I was accessing the site from the United States. Well, technically, I told them – I wanted to get a “confirmed” account on the site, so I entered in my name and address back in the States. When that had processed, they suspended my account – politely, of course – but suspended nonetheless.

The whole purpose of looking for flats and cars on TradeMe, of course, was to arrange appointments to look at flats and cars before I arrived in NZ; where I would, for the first few days, at least, have sporadic Internet access at best. So once I was suspended, using TradeMe from the States to look at additional flats and cars was impossible; using TradeMe from NZ *before* I got a flat and a car was impractical.

Luckily, my few weeks on TradeMe before they suspended the account lead to Wendy and this flat.

So I have a car, a mailing address, a place to sleep, and Internet. Everything else is details.