Tracks in NZ

One of the best ways to spend a day in NZ is to go for a walk on a track. There are thousands of them across the country. I go on tracks a lot, and most of my videos are filmed there.

The photo shows the Donald McLean to Whatipu Caves track, one of my favourites. This video was filmed on this track. A bonus hi-res photo is in the comments.

A few notes about tracks:
- the best place to choose a track is alltrails.com (they also have an app, the free version is fine)
- there are lots of filters for what you want to see (waterfalls, mountains, rivers, lakes, dams, etc) and how challenging you want the track to be
- there are also dedicated bike tracks
- all tracks are free
- there are usually car parks, toilets, water, etc at key points of the tracks
- tracks are maintained by the government, and unless it’s very rainy, you won’t even get your shoes too dirty
- there are no dangerous animals in NZ, so you can walk pretty much anywhere without worrying

(Russian)

Snorkeling

Thanks to friends, we discovered a great snorkeling spot near Auckland called Goat Island.

The fish, mostly snapper, are fearless and hardly notice people. The water is calm, and everyone’s out scuba diving, snorkeling, paddleboarding, etc. NZ is not tropics, so the water isn’t warm - more like summer lakes around Moscow - quite refreshing.

There’s also a small museum nearby where you can explore marine life under microscopes, see fish skeletons, and interact with a few species in a small touch tank.

PS The spot is very popular, so parking can be tricky after 9 am.
PPS A hi-res photo is in the comments.

(Russian)

Why I made my channels

A few people have asked why I created these channels - why anyone would bother spending time writing or filming content for others. Some assumed it was driven by nostalgia or by unhappiness after emigrating.

I understand why someone might think that, but that’s not the case for me. Let’s go over the reasons here.

Why I started the Telegram channel

1. Talking online. I’ve been involved in online discussions for decades, long before I moved to NZ. I’m one of those people who takes part in huge 100+ page forum threads, writes reviews, and comments on blogs and YouTube channels. I’ve always enjoyed doing that.

2. Freedom of speech. Unfortunately, most online platforms have some form of censorship (moderation). So if you want complete freedom, you need to create your own space. There’s no censorship in my channels and Telegram is one of the least censored platforms (they only prohibit illegal content).

3. Selection of topics. On other platforms, someone else sets the topics for people to discuss. Here, I can talk about whatever I want.

4. Sharing information about my move. After I moved to NZ, friends and family kept asking the same questions about how I was doing, so I was spending a lot of time repeating the same replies. Even copying and pasting replies was time-consuming. Now I can share everything in the channel, and anyone who wants to stay updated can do so.

5. Improving my English. I felt I needed to improve the complexity and sophistication of my English. In my opinion, the best way to do that is by working with written English. Also, I looked for normal (not ads or reposts) English Telegram channels and couldn’t find any, so I filled that gap.

Why I started the YouTube channel

After creating the Telegram channel, I got about 20 subscribers from friends and family. There are no promotion opportunities on Telegram, so that number would have stayed the same forever. To fix that, I made a YouTube channel with video versions of my posts, hoping to raise my subscriber count to 300-500.

YouTube turned out to be far better than I expected. Even my first video got thousands of views through its suggestions system, and later videos did even better. Subscribers quickly hit my target and keep growing. YouTube is incredibly generous.

I also really enjoyed video editing, and I’ve started treating it like a challenge - I want to make videos that get more views.

Is there a financial incentive?

Telegram brings nothing. YouTube monetisation brings in a bit of money, but it’s far (by tens of times) less than my main sources of income, and I doubt the topic of New Zealand could bring in significantly more. So for now, YouTube is just a hobby.

Why is the YouTube channel in Russian?

Because the topics I discuss are interesting to Russians, and I want my videos to be watched. If I move on to topics that might interest English-speaking audiences, I’ll switch to English.

Am I nostalgic about Russia?

No, I’m completely happy living in New Zealand. Here I feel free, and for the first time in my life I see a future for myself and my family. I’m just becoming more and more convinced that New Zealand is the best country in the world.

I’m not planning to go back, though I can’t rule out the risk entirely. I am working hard every day to make the risk smaller.

How would I talk about NZ if I returned to Russia?

Exactly the same - I wouldn’t be one of those immigrants who badmouth other countries just because they couldn’t settle there. New Zealand, like the rest of the Western world, is one of the best places to live. Everything I post and film is completely sincere, and it would be the same if I moved back to Russia.

Of course, I might change my mind one day - anything is possible - but I think the chance of that is very small.

(Russian)

Sadness

Just a very sad photo I took today during a bike ride. I don’t know what happened here, but it must have been something tragic.

Maybe it was the result of a revealed affair. Or vandalism. Or he parked next to a construction site. Or children were playing with paint. In any case, it’s painful to look at.

(Russian)

Motivation

I had wanted to move for many years, but I knew that simply wanting it wasn’t enough - plenty of people plan to move, yet few actually do. For years, I kept doubting whether I could really do it. Moving to another country felt overwhelming and too difficult.

2022 gave me a huge boost of motivation. Honestly, though, I’m not sure I would have had the willpower to move without a few key lifestyle changes and achievements that came before.

Here, I want to share how I gradually stopped doubting myself and started to take action. I genuinely believe these things were the turning point that shifted my life.

1️⃣ Routine. After my son was born, I decided to become a fit and strong dad to set a good example for him. I was going to the gym, but like most of us, I trained inconsistently, so the results were average.

Luckily, at that time I had a colleague who was very fit and looked exactly how I wanted to look. I decided to ask him what he did to achieve it. He turned out to be very open and explained the basic principles of his diet and training.

It was, essentially, the first step that started major changes in my life - I decided to follow his advice, be consistent, commit fully, and get the body I wanted no matter what.

His advice worked perfectly. In addition, I absorbed a huge amount of information on diet and fitness, and in ~8 months I transformed my body (all my knowledge on that is in this video).

I sorted out my sleep, diet, and training routines, but more importantly, I felt the power of consistency. I kept taking small, invisible steps, and slowly but surely they eventually led to major results.

2️⃣ Planning. While consuming tons of information about sport and diet, I also absorbed quite a bit about planning and motivation - these topics often go hand in hand. And it makes complete sense - it’s very hard to stay sporty without a systematic approach.

Motivated by my first success, I decided to implement a task planning system. It was an adapted version of Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen. There are plenty of videos about it on YouTube - it’s a very simple system. I tweaked it to be more digital and fit into my routine.

The core idea is the same - you perform small, regular steps (organising, planning, sorting, and executing) for your life tasks. Over time, this leads to big results - you get more done, procrastinate less, and feel better because your mind stays calm and focused. That was the second step.

3️⃣ Support. The sporty colleague became a friend. At first, he gave advice on training and nutrition, and later he supported me with planning my move abroad.

He was one of the few who said, “Others have done it, you can too, give it a go,” instead of the usual “It’s too hard, nobody needs you there.” Even simple words like that, spoken at the right time by the right person, can make a huge difference.

Importantly, he’s someone whose opinion matters: he competes in several extreme sports, is athletic, organised, doesn’t procrastinate, optimistic, and always takes action immediately. A living embodiment of the “just do it” motto.

Of course, I also had immense support from my family, though it almost feels taken for granted, simply because they are family and support me unconditionally.

As a result, these three factors transformed my life over a few years. I felt, and still feel, like a machine - always active, well-rested, and fully organised. I’m like a task grinder.

That was the state I entered 2022 with. So, immigration then became just another task, albeit the biggest one, that I slowly and surely grinded.

(Russian)

Video version of the post about time perception.

MP3 version of the video above.

Retirement benefits

There was a good question in the comments about retirement benefits in New Zealand. Let’s discuss it here.

There are two main types of retirement benefits in NZ:

1️⃣ NZ Super - a fixed payment made to citizens and residents after the age of 65, provided they have lived in the country for 10 to 20 years. The payment ranges roughly from $291 to $538 per week after tax, depending on additional income, relationship status, and whether the recipient has dependent children.

2️⃣ KiwiSaver - a voluntary savings scheme where an employee can contribute 3% (or more) of their salary, the employer adds the equal sum on top, and the government contributes a bit as well. Employers are not obliged to contribute more than 3%, but some do so to attract staff.

The KiwiSaver money is then invested to generate returns. People influence their accounts by choosing investment funds - some funds even include Bitcoin in their portfolios. The balance can be withdrawn from the age of 65, either fully or partially. In special cases, the money can be accessed earlier: to buy a first home, if moving overseas, due to financial hardship, or for medical reasons.

To get a sense of the numbers, let’s do a calculation for a case relevant to the audience of the channel - for an experienced professional who moved to NZ with their family at around 40, then worked until 65 with an average salary of $100k per year, and then retired.

Here is the calculation...

(Continued in comments)

This comment under the video about our move perfectly captured the sentiment in my voice and reminded me of that evening.

I left my PC in Russia in Sep 2022. It then travelled through several countries and arrived in NZ. I unpacked it in July 2023, almost a year later.

I remember that evening very well. I switched my PC on. The same wallpaper. The same icons. The same game, with a save dated Feb 2022. I loaded it and played a little. Everything worked. All the apps updated from the cloud and quickly came back to life. It felt like raising a submarine from the depths. I dusted it off, pressed start, and everything came alive again. I opened the music player - the same unfinished track was still paused. I hit play and was overwhelmed with emotions - so much had happened since I last turned it on. I then looped that track all evening while syncing my data.

Nothing special - just a person at a computer. But the moment meant way more than it looked.

(Russian)

The channel chat

Just wanted to let you know there’s a chat linked to this channel. Formally, it’s the same chat where all comments across the channel are posted. But it seems some subscribers don’t realise that if you go directly to the chat, you’ll see not only all post-related comments in one place, but several times more beyond that.

The chat has become quite active recently, which I’m very happy about. People start their own discussions, ask questions to me and others, and some even share photos and impressions from NZ. So it’s a good moment to let you all know about it.

PS Lately, I haven’t been very active on the channel - a lot has come up in real life all at once. I’m planning to get back to writing and filming in about a month. I have plenty of new experiences to share - so don’t go anywhere just yet.

(Russian)

Work-life balance

This is our office beer fridge. It’s quite common in NZ to have one or two drinks in the office on Fridays towards the end of the work day. Many companies, including ones I’ve worked for, have this kind of tradition.

After 1-2 drinks, colleagues usually hop into their cars and head home. At first I was hesitant to join in, but I was reassured that it’s normal - drivers over 20 are allowed to consume a small amount of alcohol.

Legally, up to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood is permitted. It’s individual, but for most this typically means 1-3 bottles of beer (~330ml) within two hours before driving.

There are also checks - police may ask you to blow into a device (I’ve seen it once in three years). If you exceed the limit, you get a fine and demerit points. In serious cases, the consequences are more severe.

But I haven’t seen anyone drink more than allowed or heard of anyone having problems with police - people behave responsibly, and the state treats them accordingly.

(Russian)

Claude reports

Some of you might not know that Claude can produce surprisingly deep reports if you ask it to output a file (DOC, XLS, or other formats).

Ways I’ve used it:

1. Compared construction drawings against a design brief to identify discrepancies. It turns out Claude can already read drawings - it picks up inconsistencies not just in the text, but also in geometry and dimensions.

2. Converted a screenshot of a table into a proper XLSX file with formulas restored.

3. Asked it to analyse a topic and compile a report with references to studies and documents. Here is an example from the channel's chat.

4. Restyled documents to match a template. Claude can work with styles, fonts, colours, etc.

To get this, you should ask it to deeply analyse the task and return the result as a file. It usually takes ~2-5 min, and the result is almost always worth the wait. This is available even in the free version.

Other LLMs can output files too, but at the moment none match Claude's level of quality.

(Russian)

Video version of my post about the sun in New Zealand.

MP3 version of the video above.

Woke agenda in NZ

Before moving to NZ, while I was still doing my research, I had questions about the woke agenda - specifically whether NZ schools had gender discussions and that sort of thing. I put the question to the largest Russian Telegram group about NZ, and a moderator deleted my post almost immediately. I checked the group rules - my message didn't breach any of them. So I contacted the group owner, who told me that challenging moderator decisions wasn't allowed, and that the deletion was entirely justified.

Now that each of my channels has more subscribers than that group, it feels like the right time to find out what the moderator and owner were so scared of.

I've already found answers to all my questions, so I'll just share my experience here - everything related to the woke, LGBT, progressive, sex, and gender sides of NZ life.

Feel free to post any questions or opinions below - same as everywhere else on my channel, there's no censorship, no moderators, none of that hypocritical nonsense. This is a place that values free speech, just like New Zealand itself.

Streets

➖Auckland is a very tolerant city. You can be whoever you want and nobody cares. I've seen men in dresses, trans men and women, people in all kinds of religious and national dress - burqas, turbans, etc - or people with fully tattooed faces. Nobody really cares.

➖Public displays of affection aren't common. I've seen people holding hands but never anyone kissing in public - gay or straight. It seems to be considered a private thing.

➖Rallies of all sorts happen most weeks on Queen Street and Britomart Square in the CBD. I've seen a lot of political ones (pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-Maori), but haven't caught a gay parade yet. I'm sure they happen too.

➖Prostitution is legal in NZ. There's one street in Auckland - Karangahape Road - where you'll find brothels, gay bars, hemp stores, strip bars, escort agencies, adult shops, and similar. I don't know what it's like at night, but during the day it's just a normal street. I actually walked down it while filming my video about learning English.

➖Gambling is allowed under regulation. There's one casino in Auckland, right in the city centre - next to Sky Tower, and a few in other cities around the country.

Work

➖Gay people generally don't hide their orientation - some of my friends have had gay colleagues, and it made no difference to how anyone treated them. Nobody seemed bothered, religious people included.

➖Harassment is barely an issue in practice. I've never seen or heard anyone raise it at work. There's no nonsense like women complaining about men holding doors for them - everything is completely reasonable.

➖In everyday conversation people are pretty open. I've heard all sorts of views on woke, vaccines, climate change, left/right politics - everything gets discussed except the most extreme stuff like racism.

➖Diversity is on the radar at many companies, especially larger ones. Job application forms often include questions on gender (with 2+ options), ethnicity, and cultural background.

➖On paper everyone supports diversity. But in practice the majority hires based on merit rather than race. I've also heard there are "whites-only" companies - I haven't seen it myself, but a few people, Kiwis included, have said it in private.

➖A friend of mine said he got accused of racism and banned in a professional Facebook group, just for saying the best approach is to hire on merit rather than race. I haven't seen anything like that myself, but I can believe it happens in isolated cases.

(continued in comments)