Category: Work

After Hours Sign-in Books

A recent Massey Albany announcement:

As part of our Health & Safety requirement it has been necessary to provide after hour sign in books in all multi-storey buildings on campus.These have now been put in place and can be found either by the after hour entry doors or in the case of the Quad A and Atrium buildings close to the lift. Please make yourself familiar with the location of the books and ensure that all staff and visitors entering and leaving the building after hours sign the book.

Remember they are in place for your safety and in the unlikely event of an emergency they will assist security or emergency services in determining who is in the building.

How silly is this? Continue reading “After Hours Sign-in Books” →

Visiting Australia (Passport Requirements)

I’m visiting Australia (just for the day) next week, and realised last night that I foolishly have let my passport reach the stage where it expires in just over two months.  I know that many countries require the expiry to be a certain amount of time after arriving (e.g. six months) and wondered if I would have to speedily renew my passport (an extra $75 for the speed, and taking three days plus travel to and from the passports office, which would cut it close).

I googled for information about this for ages, and tried the sensible seeming sites (Australian tourism, New Zealand and Australian government departments that look after passports and immigration, travel websites.  Nothing helped.

Eventually my wife rang the New Zealand Ministry of Internal Affairs (who do the passports), who said that in their opinion (matching mine) the passport is valid until it expires.  They suggested ringing the Australian consolate.  They couldn’t do anything but play recorded messages, but one of those messages suggested a website to look at.

The website, which does have the information is australia.org.nz.  What a stupid choice of URL – how could I possibly be expected to guess that?  And why did google not find this? (They have a PageRank of 0, which explains much, so someone needs to do a better job of promoting the site!).

The answer, anyway, is that (for a New Zealander at least) you only need a valid passport for the duration of the stay (although obviously the length of the visa allocated will be effected).  So I can just renew my passport when I get back, and wait the 10 days, and save $75.