Tuesday, November 20, 2007

I won't be moving to New Zealand

The USAF sent me to NZ for two weeks 29 years and 40 pounds ago. It looks like I'm stuck in the good old USA for now.

A British man who moved to New Zealand has been told by officials that his wife is too fat to join him.

Richie Trezise, 35, a rugby-playing Welshman, lost weight to gain entry to New Zealand after initially being rejected for being overweight and a potential burden on the health care system.

His wife, Rowan, 33, a photographer, has been battling for months to shed the pounds so they can be reunited and live Down Under but has so far been unable to overcome New Zealand’s weight regulations. Mr Trezise, who moved to Auckland in September after shedding two inches from his waist on a crash diet, said that if his wife was not allowed to come out by Christmas they would abandon the idea of emigrating. His employer-backed skills visa was initially rejected by immigration officials when they discovered that his body mass index, or BMI, was 42, making him morbidly obese under New Zealand regulations.

It was 29 years ago this week that I went to Christchurch, NZ for two weeks. I saw Peter Frampton in concert (and met his bass player ina bar the night before). I almost got us all killed on the way to Frampton. I made a right turn (which is like a left - across traffic) and wandered into the right lane (which in NZ is the wrong lane), but my buddies yelled at me enough to get me on the left side.

No comments: