Allan Berke:  

Life Ye Gods, it's been over 50 years since I came to New Zealand. I've worked here as a sales engineer, then as a professional deer hunter shooting for venison export (including out of helicopters - gawdawful dangerous!) for about 7 months, got out of it when they started into LIVE CAPTURE - even MORE dangerous!! Shot HUNDREDS of deer, my mates gave me the nickname Bullet. Then went back as a sales engineer in Christchurch. Other than when I was on the South Island's West Coast shooting, I have lived in Christchurch, which is a wonderful city, ideally situated, weather pretty good, not too big - around 400,000 population. Known as the Garden City of NZ - DOZENS of parks, gardens and green spaces. LOTS of different things to do here. About 30 golf courses - I loved golf - and it's very cheap here, and you can golf 12 months a year. Great fishing, hunting, boating, hiking, climbing (The late Sir Edmund Hillary was a New Zealander who I met several times - absolutely wonderful modest man!) camping, cycling, skiing. An outdoorsman's paradise. There are also a hell of a lot of sports clubs here - rugby, cricket, rugby league, soccer, tennis, lawn bowls, softball, archery, clay target shooting, track and field, swimming, rowing, kayaking, jetboating, fishing, cycling - you name it, there will be a club for it here, or even a number of them. NZ'ers are a country of participants in sports, not couch potatoes, as shown by the 20 gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Some of New Zealand's best sports aren't even in the Commonwealth Games, like rowing, kayaking, and sailing, so the NZ team didn't do too bad! Almost EVERYONE in the country get behind our sports teams, which leads to a great atmosphere in the pubs, especially if there's something like a rugby test on! Well, on 4th September 2010, Christchurch really changed, with our 7.1 Richter quake. Then on 22nd February 2011 came the really devastating one when the whole centre of the city was badly damaged and 185 people lost their lives. There was also widespread devastation in many neighborhoods and suburbs, some of which were so badly affected that they were declared "Red Zones" and every home in them has had to be demolished. In the months after the February quake I decided I wanted to do something to help the city, so I found a job with a company called Geotechnics as their Services Location Coordinator. My crew of 3 including myself were responsible f...Expand for more