Video transcript: Anton Labuschagne
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Anton Labuschagne (Audit Manager):
I’ve been in New Zealand now almost eight years. I arrived here in August 2009. Since I’ve been in New Zealand I’ve lived in Tauranga. Tauranga, it’s a really nice city, it’s got beautiful beaches, it’s got a place called Mount Maunganui. It’s a nice size, it’s not overly big that you sit in traffic for hours, but it’s not so small that everybody knows everyone.
So it’s just got a great mix of everything and it’s a great place for a family. There’s good schools there, and it’s just the whole lifestyle is really geared to family and outdoors.
What I enjoy the most about New Zealand, is that, you just feel safe and at peace. It’s just so nice to sit at home with your doors and windows open, no burglar bars to obstruct the view.
You feel safe, and, you know, if your kid wants to go down the street to his friend you’re not worried about what’s going to happen to them, they can just run off with their friends.
Moving to New Zealand, it is very exciting, but at the same time it can be a bit stressful because you’re leaving all your family, friends, and life in South Africa behind. But at the same time you’re really looking forward to your whole new life, your new adventure with your family.
It’s just really exciting because even though it is similar, it is very different, and so it’s just finding out all the differences, and how things work, it’s really great and exciting.
There was a couple of other South Africans that actually had moved to my office just before me, and so they made it easy because they gave me a bit of a helping hand on what had to be done.
However, as a wider office, they gave us great support. The office actually had somebody in Tauranga just kind of show us around, you know, what are the different areas, what’s the price for rental.
Everybody went out of their way to help me, just to first understand the various methodologies, the different systems, and what I enjoyed about that was it was all done in my office where I’m based. I didn’t have to necessarily leave my family behind.
With the transition they didn’t necessarily come and just throw bucket loads of work on me. They kind of let me ease into it, which I found really helpful because as it is it’s quite stressful and emotional with emigrating so I found that that was very helpful for me and my family.
The one thing I did find quite different is, even though we speak English, with the accent and the slang it’s all very different, so at times I did struggle to understand people when I first came, so I would just smile and nod and hope it was the right reaction I was giving.
To settle down, I suppose how long it takes depends on you as a person. If you embrace it and want to accept the change, and that it’s not as it was in South Africa, and that it’s different, you will settle quite quickly. I think within a few months we were kind of up and running.
I know other people have struggled because they didn’t quite embrace the change. So I suppose if you come with a positive attitude and want to embrace change you will settle really quickly.
That’s the only advice I would give, is just give it a go, make the change, accept things are different, and just enjoy the change and the adventure that it is to move to a new country with your family.
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