Car

Well it was about time I wrote another post here, it's been way too long. First off we bought a car. Unfortunatly that really is the only way to get around Auckland or out of Auckland. The public transport here is really crap, I'd say it's the worst I've seen in a city this size anywhere. There is about 2 or three train lines in Auckland, so you can hardly go anywhere by train, apart from the fact that they are awefully slow as well. When I still used to live in Avondale, it took approx the same time with the train to go to the city as it took by bus. Ok so that leaves busses. The thing about the busses here is, there is just way too much traffic on the roads, so they are not really fast either. From Avondale to uni it took me about 10-15min during peak hours and maybe 5min during normal traffic more than on my bike. Lucky me I don't live in Avondale anymore. The other thing is the busses are really crappy busses as well. The are awfully loud, I am just glad I don't live on a bus route, or worse at a traffic light or bus stop were they accelarate. Public transport was privatized I maybe 10 years ago, because well all these neoliberalist crackheads tell us everything will be better if it's privatized. Now the main bus company here is stagecoach an english company. But they don't make a profit on ticket sales, but the city wants a public transport system, because there are many benefits: less congestion on the roads, less polution, it makes the city more attractive for tourists etc.. So Auckland pays around 30-40million to the bus company, approximately the same amount the company takes home as profits. So essentially the city of Auckland and the people in Auckland are subsidising a british company. A company which does not have intersest in improving their service (the community is paying them), buys the worst busses (they don't care about the polution and noise) and pays really low wages (a busdriver makes about $NZ12-13 an hour). Why don't they just make public transport public again!! Mmh now I got in to a rant about the public transport, I wanted to write about our car. Well we bought the car mainly to go on trips, weekend trips short holidays etc.. We don't need a car to get to uni we live close enough about 14min walk. So we wanted a station wagon, so we might put a matress in the back and could sleep in it. It's just a lot more convinient when you travel in a car like that. So we got a Subaru Legacy TX-S. It's fairly new (1995) and in really good shape. I had quite a look around before we finally got it and we got a very good deal on it. We bought from a dealership as we wanted to play it save with the first car. It was advertised for 6000 but we got it for 3300. There should be some pictures up on our pic site soonish.