I moved to NZ from the UK just over 2 years ago and a bit taken aback by the broadband plans on offer to consumers. All of them had some sort of data cap in place, which limited the amount of data that could be transferred in a month. This was a bit of a strange concept to me, coming from the UK. Worse, the data limit applied for uploaded as well as downloaded data.

I’m sad to say that things haven’t changed all that much since then.

Soon after arriving in the country, we bought a house. As part of getting the new place up and running, I took the opportunity to get a decent internet connection. I did a bit of research and in the end decided to go with TelstraClear DSL (there is no cable available where I live).  Here’s what I know about Telstra’s PDQ MAX plan – admittedly some details may not be correct anymore:

• Doesn’t include a phone line – you’ll need one of those from elsewhere. We had a standard issue job from Telecom at around $40/month + calls.
• Any standard ADSL router hardware is supported.
• Internet is nice and fast with Telstra, even if they have a chequered history when it comes to playing nice (peering) with other network providers.
• 12 month minimum term.
• $10 of toll calls were included in the bill – even though I never used them. There was no way to opt out. This sucked.
• Static IP not available.
• 10Gb of data included in the $69.95 monthly cost – additional data packs added automatically (no data cap).

So total cost (including landline and around 30Gb of data) each month ran at around $150. After a year I decided to shop around to try and find a better deal. more…

During the New Zealand summer, hot weather brings the cicadas out in force. They make a noise not unlike a cricket’s chirp, but it’s more or less constant – and loud. You hear a lot of them wherever there is greenery – the sound is very distinctive, but the cicadas themselves can be quite a mystery as they’re often not obviously visible.

Coming from the UK, I had no idea what a cicada actually was – I had heard them in NZ many times but had never managed to see one, until the other day. I was cutting the grass and was getting dive-bombed by what I thought was a black moth. It flew up and landed on the gazebo, so I walked over to take a closer look. It was resting and had some friends with him.

I grabbed the camera and took a pic.

I counted six cicadas on our gazebo – they stayed still and chirped loudly together for a while. Once I knew what I was looking for, I managed to see a whole lot more of them, on tree trunks, branches and even clinging to the outside walls of our house.

If you want to hear what they sound like, I took a short video too. Watch a cicada chirping on Youtube.