Month: November 2018

A textured ceiling in our bedroom was damaged due to a leaking roof during a storm earlier in the year.  As part of the repair the texture needed to be removed.  As such we were advised that we needed to vacate our house for approximately three weeks whilst they removed it and go various asbestos clearance certificates.  So this required us packing suitcases and moving to a studio at my parent’s house.  Packing enough clothing to last two small children was difficult, because at the best of times we do on average one full load of laundry a day.  However, we managed it.

Living in the studio was hard.  Our son slept in a porta cot that just fit into the small walk-in wardrobe.  My daughter slept next door in the main house.  We cooked using a portable LPG cooker, had no jug, no toaster or oven.  Though I did enjoy staying there, as the walks around Bucklands Beach were terrific due to it being so close to the sea.

While we were living in the studio the textured ceiling removal and ceiling repair were completed within five days of us leaving the house and a verbal clearance was given to the decorators by the removers.  By the start of the second week the written clearance had been given.  However, this was when things started going a bit pear shaped.  Firstly, the scope of the works was changed from not removing all the wallpaper and plastering and repainting to only removing the wallpaper on two walls.  The wallpaper was textured, you can imagine the finished result.  Then it was they were not going to remove any wallpaper and paint over the textured wallpaper.

Secondly, the painters could not find the colour we had selected. Which was quarter pearl lusta (a Resene colour) that even Dulux managed to tint for us in previous occasions.  I think they were using this as an excuse.

We then managed to finally get the loss adjuster to sort out the scope change and settled on getting the two walls that needed repairing plastered and painted (with the other two to be handled by us).  However, the project manager could not get the plasterer that he organised to do the job or find another to do the job.  After about 2 weeks the project manager found another plasterer and the painters then finished the job.  However, on inspecting the finished result, the plastering was an average, the skirtings were not painted and they had not removed our curtains before starting and had damaged some with paint.

Finally after around 7 weeks out of the house we managed to move in.  Our children had rooms, however, we still needed to finish the other two walls.  So we ended up setting up a makeshift bedroom in our living room for 2 weeks while I removed the wallpaper, plastered the walls and painted them.  We also had to accommodate my wife’s cousin and significant other who had decided at a whim to travel to New Zealand from France to walk part of the Te Araroa trail for a couple of months.  Fortunately, they were staying a couple of days and didn’t mind sleeping in an unfinished bedroom on an air mattress.

In any case after 9 weeks it is great to move into back into our room.  The only things that need finishing is replacing the door handle and painting the timber joinery.

After this episode I will definitely take a time frame and budget on it taking three times longer than expected!

Here is a recipe for cheese scones that I use when I do baking with my daughter.  It is simple to follow and keeps my 3 and a half year old daughter entertained.  Here are some I made earlier today with her:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of plain flour
• 6 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 75 grams of butter
• 3/4 cup of grated cheese
• Around 1-1.5 cups of milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius.
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
3. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with fingers until the mixture resembles the consistency of fine breadcrumbs and there are no longer any chunks of butter left.
4. Add grated cheese to the bowl.
5. Slowly add milk little by little and mix quickly with a knife until the mixture resembles a soft dough.  Sometimes you will need a little more or less of the milk to get this consistency.
6. Kneed the dough a few times
   
7. Line an oven tray with baking powder.
8. Press scone dough down on oven tray and cut into 12 evenly sized pieces.  Leave around 2 cm between each scone.
9. Brush the top of each scone with milk.
10. Grate some cheese on top of each scone.
11. Bake at 220 degrees Celsius for around 10 minutes or until the scones are golden brown.

Back in December 2005 I bought a house in Turangi.  My long term plans were to tenant it and then do it up when the tenant moved out.  However, at the age of 21 I never envisaged having a wife and children. As a result my priorities have changed between then and now and I no longer have the time or will to do it up.  I have two children that are 3½ years old and 18 months old which keep my wife and I very busy.  It now means I no longer want to spend my weekends doing houses up.  When I am down in Taupo I would rather spend time with my family and go trout fishing with my father and daughter.

The house has loads of potential.  Most importantly, the land area is more or less around 733m2 and it is a 4 bedroom house.  It has two fireplaces, one in the living room. The other one is in the kitchen and is a wet back (connected to the hot water cylinder) so you can save on electricity for water heating.

I had an idea to open the living room up by removing the windows pictured below and putting in bifolding doors.  These would then open onto a deck that flows onto the backyard.  This would give excellent indoor/outdoor flow.

Exterior:

Living & Dining Room:

The Bedrooms:

Laundry:

Toilet and bathroom:

Once done up property managers have said this will attract around $280-$320 per week if you want to rent it.  Otherwise it is an affordable family bach.  My loss can be your gain!

Turangi is becoming a popular place to buy a house and use it as a holiday home.  In the general vicinity there is the best trout fly fishing in the world on the Tongariro river, skiing at Whakapapa is around 45 minutes drive, Taupo is around 40 minutes drive, and there are loads of Department of Conservation walks such as the Tongariro Crossing within one hours drive.

In any case I will be listing it on Trademe, I will post the link once I have completed this.  If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

International fraud awareness week is observed 11-17 November 2018.  Only the week prior I saw first hand a person who has fallen victim to an elaborate international scheme set up by dishonest individuals.  An elderly man popped into our office asking for advice on investing a large inheritance he was going to receive.

The AML/CFT rules now apply to accountants. So I asked him for some further details regarding the inheritance as well as some personal identification.  Apparently, the inheritance was coming from somebody the victim has never known but “shared the same last name.”  The inheritance (which was in the millions) was brought to his attention by a letter received unexpectedly in the post from overseas.  On top of that, the funds were frozen and required a court order to unfreeze them to make them available for distribution to him as the beneficiary of the estate.  In order to do this he was required to pay money by wire transfer to the lawyer who had contacted him to cover the legal costs to do this.  Unfortunately, the man happily obliged and parted with a significant sum of money.  This was done without seeking any advice from any professional in New Zealand such as a lawyer, accountant or financial planner.

I advised him that he had probably been a victim of a inheritance scam. Unfortunately, I am under the impression he didn’t believe me.  He didn’t come back with the details I needed so that I could act for him.  When he left the office he said was going to contact the “lawyers” to see if he could provide that information.  I did, however, offer some parting advice. This was to not pay any further money if requested unless he consulted a professional.

So after seeing this first hand I thought I would point out some warning signs of an inheritance scam.  Remember to stay safe out there!

Warning signs:

• You are contacted out of the blue by a scammer posing as a lawyer or banker and offering you a large inheritance from a distant relative or wealthy individual.
• There may be requests to pose as next of kin to an unclaimed inheritance.
• The offer comes on official looking letterhead, however, contains spelling and grammatical mistakes.
• The size of the inheritance is large.
• You are provided with fake bank statements, birth certificates and other documents if you question the legitimacy.
• You are asked to provide your bank account details, copies of identity documents as verification.
• You are asked to pay a series of fees, charges or taxes to help release or transfer the money.
• The fees may initially be for small amounts, however, you are then asked for further larger payments.
• The scammer offers to meet you in person to verify the proposal, but this rarely eventuates.

How to protect yourself:

• Never send money or give credit card, account details, copies of personal documents to anyone you don’t know or trust.
• Avoid any arrangement with a stranger that asks for up front payment by money order, wire transfer, pre-loaded card or bitcoin. It is very difficult to recover money this way.
• Seek advise immediately from an independent professional such as a lawyer, accountant or financial planner if in doubt.
• Do an internet search using the names, contact details or exact wording of the letter/email to check for any references to a scam.
• If you think it’s a scam, don’t respond.
• Remember if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

What to do if you have been scammed:

• Contact your bank immediately and see whether they can cancel or reverse the transaction.
• Report it to the police.

I recently installed the Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress. The plugin has provided me with an interesting analysis on how I write content.  I have noticed that I use the passive voice far too much in my posts. Also my sentences and paragraphs are too long, and I use far too many consecutive sentences.  It would also help me if I use more transition words.  Wow! I knew that my English was not great but from the analysis it sounds that my writing is terrible!

This sounds like an opportunity to look at how to write better.  But, as far as this post is concerned it says I don’t have too much to be worried about!

Welcome to my blog.  I am writing this sitting in my office waiting for a manual backup to complete so I can complete a practice management software upgrade.  In the past I wanted to get into blogging to teach myself how to set up and use WordPress as a content management system.  Also it is an opportunity to provide comment on the things that interest me.

I’ve had plans to set up a personal blog for some time. However, over the last 3-4 years time constraints due to work and my family life have been prevented from doing this.

I wanted to register knobby.co.nz or knobby.nz as a domain name.  However, an Australian underwear club managed to register all those domains in tharlt time as part of their “intellectual property.”  Therefore I have settled for a Belorussian domain name.

You are probably wondering why I want a domain name with knobby in it.  Firstly, it was the nickname I was called at school and through the sports I played. Secondly, my wife hates the nickname for some reason and has never called me by it :).